The portrayal of characters with disabilities in movies often earns critical acclaim: Think Dustin Hoffman in \u201cRain Man\u201d and Colin Firth in “The King\u2019s Speech.” Long before actors embraced these parts on the big screen, the stories unfolded live on the stage, and recently, have played a more prominent position in musical theatre.<\/p>\n
James Leve,\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0professor of music, researches disabilities in musical theater, a growing subfield of disabilities in music.<\/p>\n When an actor is singing while portraying a character with intellectual disabilities, those challenges may be more pronounced compared to a spoken theater performance, Leve said. Intellectual disability\u00a0can\u00a0severely affect vocal range and the motor skills required in musical theater.<\/p>\n Disability narratives\u00a0are very popular\u00a0in musical theater\u00a0because audiences\u00a0love plots where characters overcome their disabilities.<\/p>\n Leve addresses\u00a0actors and writers with disabilities as well as musicals portraying characters with disabilities. The professor also studies how theatergoers with disabilities experience musical theater since\u00a0the 1990 passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act.<\/p>\n These topics are part of a book Leve is writing,\u00a0titled\u00a0Sounds, Sights and Silences: Disability in Musical Theater.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThe first part of the book will be musicals with characters with disabilities, people who stutter,\u201d said Leve, who also addresses the role of intellectual disability, learning disabled and brain damaged characters and actors. \u201cHow are these disabilities being expressed musically and how do they affect music?\u201d<\/p>\n These questions were incorporated in a session organized and chaired by Leve during the most recent Society for American Music <\/em>conference. He discussed the role of musical theater in propagating disability stereotypes and the inherent difficulties in writing musicals about\u00a0characters with disabilities.<\/p>\n This semester, Leve is working on a monograph of Charles Strouse, composer of the Broadway musical Charlie and Algernon<\/em>, which portrayed an intellectually disabled man. Leve is conducting archival research at the New York Library for the Performing Arts and interviews with actors and writers of musical theater.<\/p>\n Leve’s textbook on musical theater was published last fall, and he is planning to incorporate his research on disabilities in musical theater into a writing class for juniors, which he said reflects the university\u2019s commitment to diversity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"