BROADWAY NATION: HOW IMMIGRANT, JEWISH, QUEER, AND BLACK ARTISTS INVENTED THE BROADWAY MUSICAL
DAVID ARMSTRONG
© 2025 Bloomsbury
$31.45
456 pages
For 18 years, David Armstrong committed his life to the 5th Avenue Theatre as the producing artistic director. When he decided to step down from his role in 2018, he was approached by people in the school of drama at the University of Washington to teach a class on Broadway history.
Thus, the theme of “Broadway Nation” was born. Taking the information from his classes, as well as his successful podcast series by the same name, Armstrong dedicated two years to researching and writing the history of Broadway that isn’t at the forefront.
“I didn’t invent any of it; there are pieces of it all over the place,” Armstrong said. “There are books and documentaries about the Jewish influence on Broadway musicals. There are things about the Gay influence on the Broadway musicals. What no one has done before is bring all those threads together to make it one cohesive story.”
One of the major points in the book is that you cannot tell the story of the Broadway musical without the story of America. They are tied together so plainly in musicals like Hamilton and Wicked, just to name a couple.
According to Armstrong, the Broadway musical has three themes: transgressive women, equity and social justice, and the forming of community. Wicked happens to have all three.
But aside from highlighting how these productions reflect real-life issues and stories, the book highlights many Queer artists in the Broadway scene that most people have never even heard of, as well as how, over the decades, Queer artists on Broadway were able to find each other, and contribute to its success even in the present day.
“The Broadway musical has been handed down from one person to the next, almost like a medieval craft,” Armstrong said.
The dynamic duo of Charles Dillingham and Charles Frohman were Broadway producers at the turn of the century, with successful shows like Peter Pan and The Importance of Being Ernest, both written by Queer men. At the time, according to Armstrong, there was an air of openness among the theater community about the relationship between Dillingham and Frohman.
Peggy Clark was a designer of stage lighting in the early 1940s, working on more than 60 Broadway productions. Tharron Musser was also a lighting designer on more than 150 Broadway shows. Both Queer women in a male-dominated field, they turned lighting design into an art form throughout their careers.
Hassard Short, the master magician of Broadway, originally discovered by Dillingham, became the first great stager of musical theater. Working on 50 shows throughout the 1920s and 1950s, Short was the first Gay director on Broadway.
There are more stories, of course, and Armstrong goes on to explain how events in American history have always impacted Broadway in some way, especially how the Lavender Scare during the McCarthy era put many theater careers for Queer people in jeopardy.
“My job was to weave it all together in the narrative,” Armstrong said.
The book is available at most bookstores in hardback, paperback, and e-book formats, but it is strongly recommended to buy it directly from Bloomsbury Publishing.
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