Jordan Ealey

“Dissonant Dramaturgy” examines Black women’s music-theatre as a legitimate form of Black feminist intellectual production. Centering the musical works of nineteenth and early twentieth-century creators such as Pauline Hopkins, Zora Neale Hurston, and Alice Childress to more contemporary contributors like Micki Grant, Vinnette Carroll, June Jordan, and Kirsten Childs, “Dissonant Dramaturgy” situates music-theatre in a continuum of Black feminist studies, ultimately intervening in the Eurocentric, patriarchal canon of musical theatre historiography by rejecting an additive model of research. Rather, this project emphasizes Black women’s musical theatrical production as a cultural and intellectual site where Black feminist theorizing occurs. Thus, the book argues that Black women’s music-theatre is not simply a creative form, but an aesthetic and sonic history of ideas about Black life—both its structural limitations and its radical imaginaries.