Please note: this lecture will occur online via Blue Jeans Network. Use this link to join. All are free to join, no registration is required in advance!

The Department of Arts, Culture and Media invites you to a collaborative event by the music and theater departments for a special Spot On! & Music Matters lecture. For this talk (Friday December 10th 2021, 13:00-15:00) we invite the newly appointed Special Professor of Musical Theatre at the University of Amsterdam (Joop van den Ende Chair): dr. Millie Taylor.

“Who Tells Your Story? Musical Theatre in the UK and the Netherlands”
It is incredible to think that the sound design and technology – the body microphones and sound mixing desks – we take for granted in even the smallest performances, were developed commercially only as a result of the demands of megamusicals in the 1970s and ’80s. The animation of scenery – the computerisation of its movements – and extraordinary feats of flying were required by megamusicals, whose popularity made their development economically viable. By looking at this history we can see what was provoked / made possible by the global success of musicals and their impacts on national and local contexts. Much academic literature points to a homogenisation of culture as the result, but equally we might ask what changes were effected in education and training, in support for new writing, and in the (re)development of theatres? This is a provocation to reflect on the consequences in the present of a commercially successful musical theatre scene in the Netherlands – on your stories, who tells them, where, and how.