Research

HEAR HER SONG is a collaboration between Dr Sarah Browne at the University of Wolverhampton and The Canales Project, situating female composers and practitioners as an integral part of both the creative and performance process, thus allowing for a greater emphasis on female agency through phonocentrism. 

• Hear Her Song I focuses on the composer as an integral part of both the creative and performance process thus allowing for a greater emphasis on female agency through phonocentrism. 
  
  
• Hear Her Song II offers girls from working class backgrounds the opportunity to tell their story, using this as the basis for composition and music-making. 

The project also encompassed a presentation at the UN Headquarters which outlined the research’s contribution to Sustainable Development Goal 5, and was subsequently further explored at a national symposium (entitled Musical Theatre in Process) which brought together academics, composers, practitioners and industry specialists. The symposium focused on empowering marginalised groups to explore the processes they engage in the creation of new work. 

This project, led by Dr James Lovelock, explores LGBTQ characters and queer representation in musical theatre: 'Fantasies Come True', which will be published by Methuen Drama in 2022. The book is based around interviews with over 70 musical theatre practitioners in the UK, Canada and the USA and explores how musicals are representing different queer identities in the 21st century.

The aim is to help students, academics and fans of musical theatre to access soundtrack recordings, YouTube trailers and websites of specific productions and musicals in development that will be mentioned in the book.  There will also be occasional blogs about the writing process and eventually links to social media and websites for some of the practitioners interviewed in the book.

This project, led by Sean Mayes, an external partner, and Dr Sarah Whitfield, Senior Lecturer in Musical Theatre, has seen the recovery of hundreds of Black practitioners in British musical theatre industries. It has a particular focus on 1900-1950, and one of the first major outputs of the work is going to be released in September 2021, An Inconvenient Black History of British Musical Theatre 1900-1950.