Ryan Donovan is Assistant Professor of Theater Studies at Duke University.
His first book, Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity (Oxford University Press), won the 2024 Outstanding Book Award from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, was selected for NPR’s 2023 Books We Love list, and appeared on Time Out New York's list of the top twelve theater books of the past three years. Broadway Bodies examines the body politics of casting Broadway musicals in the five decades beginning in 1970. Bloomsbury/Methuen Drama commissioned his second book, Queer Approaches in Musical Theatre as part of the inaugural cohort of the Topics in Musical Theatre series. He also co-edited The Routledge Companion to Musical Theatre.
He is a co-founder and vice-president of the International Society for the Study of Musicals.
Ryan has appeared on NPR’s The Takeaway, WNYC’s Morning Edition, several podcasts, and been interviewed by the New York Times, the LA Times and Teen Vogue.
Broadway has body issues.
In his new book Broadway Bodies, author Ryan Donovan explores how ability, sexuality, and size intersect with gender, race, and ethnicity in casting and performance. To understand these intersectional relationships, he poses a series of questions: Why did A Chorus Line, a show that sought to individuate dancers, inevitably make them indistinguishable? How does the use of fat suits in musicals like Dreamgirls and Hairspray stigmatize fatness? What were the political implications of casting two straight actors as the gay couple in La Cage aux Folles in 1983? How did deaf actors change the sound of musicals in Deaf West Theatre's Broadway revivals? Whose bodies does Broadway cast and whose does it cast aside?
“Riveting...Skillfully written in sharp, crystalline prose. It requires that we ponder what it is about ourselves that we really want our American musical theatre to reflect.”
Read an excerpt in DANCE Magazine
Hear Ryan discuss the book on WNYC/NPR’s The Takeaway
“A must-read for theatre and performance scholars and for anyone who cares about American theatre.”