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Podcast: New Books in Christian Studies
Episode: Jake Johnson, "Lying in the Middle: Musical Theater and Belief at the Heart of America" (U Illinois Press, 2021)
Description: Jake Johnson, author of Lying in the Middle: Musical Theater and Belief at the Heart of America (University of Illinois Press, 2021) takes as his subject the artifice of musicals—no one really bursts into song and dance to liven up a simple conversation and even the historical characters are not true-to-life. He argues that it is the very unreality of musicals that makes them powerful sites of belief—whether it is a reflection of the beliefs of the creators of the work, or what audiences want to believe about themselves. He focuses on how musicals serve large and small commun...