Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity

"So much of the casting for Broadway musicals depends not on voice range or mastery of dance styles, but on the height, thinness, age, color, ethnicity and lack of disability of certain bodies. Ryan Donovan, an assistant professor of theater studies at Duke, examines the history of the “Broadway Body” over the last 50 years, looking at questions like: Why do some shows use fat suits instead of casting heavier actors? Why are there so many disabled characters in musical theater and so few disabled actors? And most crucially: Is casting based on body shape/size/ethnicity/color actually crucial to the work onstage, or is it just a form of entrenched bias and legalized discrimination?"