No-Object Fandom: Smash-ing Kickstarter and Bringing Bombshell to the Stage

Sedgman, Kirsty

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-64876-7_7

Cited by 18 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…However, in 2017, #BeMoreChill began trending across social media platforms, and original cast members, now in other productions, were being met at the stage door of their new shows by Be More Chill fans wanting to discuss the musical with them. This phenomenon mirrors Kirsty Sedgman’s concept of “no‐object fandom.” Looking at the fictionalized Bombshell musical featured in the television series Smash , 8 Sedgman explores “how audiences develop emotional associations with theoretical texts: ones that they have never seen in full, because these texts do not actually exist outside the fictional world” (145). The difference here is that audiences were engaging with a text they had never seen in full or live (fan sites share links to bootleg recordings and animated videos), but unlike Smash’s Bombshell , Be More Chill did exist outside of the fictional world and had the potential to do so again.…”

Section: “Broadway Here I Come”supporting

confidence: 56%

“Does Anybody Have A Map?”: The Impact of “Virtual Broadway” on Musical Theater Composition

Chandler¹,

Scheuber-Rush²

2021

The J of Popular Culture

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N THEIR 2015 TEDX TALK, MUSICAL THEATER WRITERS BENJAMINPasek and Justin Paul identify a growing online culture within musical theater, terming this space "Virtual Broadway." This term refers to the virtual arena within which musical theater composers and audiences directly interact, necessitating explorations of how this democratization of the mediation process has impacted musical theater composition and consumption. In popular culture, "There are no longer subjective gatekeepers controlling who gets let 'in,' promoted and exposed. The choice is ours. Now, anyone can be famous" (Price). This transformation is evident in musical theater, where an upsurge in "YouTube musical theater composers" (Pasek and Paul) and social media engagement challenges the dominance of the book musical. Opportunities for self-promotion on the Internet are vast and allow composers to reach a more diverse audience. These emerging opportunities subsequently influence the form of produced works. With humans online having an average attention span of eight seconds (Microsoft Canada 6), this article considers how musical theater is evolving to meet the requirements of millennials and Gen Z.

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Section: “Broadway Here I Come”supporting

confidence: 56%

“Does Anybody Have A Map?”: The Impact of “Virtual Broadway” on Musical Theater Composition

Chandler¹,

Scheuber-Rush²

2021

The J of Popular Culture

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“…One of the primary limitations of online reception research is the difficulty of analysing how people's sense-making processes are informed by their subject positions. While its distance is also a key strength, allowing researchers to study how people phrase their responses in self-directed ways, this approach nonetheless limits us to 'gleaning insights from those tantalisingly rare things people choose to post about themselves' (Sedgman 2017). When applying this approach to the study of Cursed Child, it is clear that important questions were unable to be asked.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Suddenly, audiences went from communally piecing together an imagined version of the musical, to jostling for tickets, to ultimately mourning their exclusion from the event. Suddenly, some viewers had been privileged over others (Sedgman 2017).…”

Section: Leementioning

confidence: 99%

When theatre meets fandom: Audience reviews of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

Sedgman

2018

Journal of Fandom Studies, The

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The 2016 launch of the stage production Harry Potter and the Cursed Child presented fans with their final opportunity-the first in nearly a decade-to reunite with the characters of their beloved series. Running in London's West End since summer 2016 and due to transfer to Broadway in 2018, Cursed Child presents an unusual case-study of what happens when an author working in other media chooses to revive their own storyworld only onstage. This makes it the ideal focus point to explore what happens when theatre and fandom collide. The play script was also published in book format, and quickly became the fastest-selling theatre script since records began. But what did audiences themselves make of this dual rebirth? This article explores how the live performance and the playtext were received by fans as very different forms of afterlife. This has prompted important questions about access. Presented with an extension to their beloved storyworld after so many years, what happens when Harry Potter fans found themselves unable to actually take part in this new theatrical experience? And to what extent was the publication of the script a fair compromise in return for audiences' undying loyalty? This question has taken me on a journey from the specific example of Cursed Child to a more general exploration of fan-led efforts to democratise access to exclusive live events.

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TikTok Broadway

Boffone

2024

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TikTok Broadway: Musical Theatre Fandom in the Digital Age explores the phenomenon of musical theatre fandom as it materializes on TikTok. Given the critical mass of TikTok and the app’s cultural influence across nearly every industry, this book unpacks different TikTok subcultures such as its thriving musical theatre community. The book argues that TikTok democratizes musical theatre fan cultures and spaces, creating a new canon of musical theatre thanks to the way virality works on the app. TikTok has energized fan practices, leading to innovative digital fandom aesthetics and a democratized approach to fan community formation. In this democratized mode of creation, fans and audiences dictate trending content and, subsequently, canon formation. On TikTok, fans can make shows popular (Six, Heathers: The Musical), make them commercially successful (Beetlejuice), and develop new shows (Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical, Bridgerton: The Musical). The power lies in the fans, who have a far greater reach than on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. From Beetlejuice and Six to Wicked and Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical, this book tells the story of TikTok Broadway, the Great Digital Way that has transformed musical theatre fandom in the digital age. TikTok Broadway intervenes into our collective understanding of how social media reimagines musical theatre fan practices.

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No-Object Fandom: Smash-ing Kickstarter and Bringing Bombshell to the Stage

Cited by 18 publications

References 11 publications

“Does Anybody Have A Map?”: The Impact of “Virtual Broadway” on Musical Theater Composition

“Does Anybody Have A Map?”: The Impact of “Virtual Broadway” on Musical Theater Composition

When theatre meets fandom: Audience reviews of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

TikTok Broadway

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