The Dialogue of Giants: How Broadway and Hollywood “Saved” American Animation (and Were Saved in Return). (Kunze, Peter C. Staging a Comeback: Broadway, Hollywood, and the Disney Renaissance. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2023. 224 р.)

Abstract

Peter Kunze’s book Staging a Comeback: Broadway, Hollywood, and the Disney Renaissance is a (overwhelmingly) well-researched study of the transmedial migration of popular narratives in the 1980s and the 1990s. Focused on Disney’s appropriation of the Broadway integrated musical (H. Ashman, A. Menken), the study demonstrates how the musical theatre conventions improved the quality of Disney’s main product — the animated film. Kunze engages in close reading of an extended episode from the history of cultural production (the Disney Renaissance), showing the complexity and unpredictability of various media convergences. For instance, the book reconfigures the roles of managerial and creative labourers behind the Disney transformation, wittily (and convincingly) bringing to the forefront 1982 as annus mirabilis, which triggered immense changes in the cultural sector. After discussing Disney's appropriation of the musical Broadway, the book reveals how the updated animated musical comes back to the theatrical stage and transforms ‘respectable’ Broadway by alternative styles and agendas (Julie Taymor’s The Lion King). Apart from other sources, the research uses hardto- access archival materials, the author's interviews with the practitioners and their entourage.

Keywords

• transmedia
• animation
• cultural industries
• broadway
• musical
• disney