Skip to main content
construction release_alert
The Scholars Team is working with OIT to resolve some issues with the Scholars search index
cancel

Ryan M Donovan

Assistant Professor of Theater Studies
Theater Studies
Office hours Spring 2025: Wed 3-5pm  

Overview


Ryan Donovan specializes in musical theater, dance, and theories of embodiment. His first book, Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity (Oxford University Press, 2023), examines the body politics of casting Broadway musicals in the five decades beginning in 1970. Broadway Bodies won the 2024 Outstanding Book Award from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, was on NPR's 2023 "Books We Love" year-end list and was chosen as one of Time Out/New York's twelve best theatre books of the past three years. 

His second book, Queer Approaches in Musical Theatre, is one of the inaugural books in the new series Topics in Musical Theatre (Bloomsbury/Methuen Drama, 2023).

Ryan earned his PhD in Theatre and Performance at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Ryan's articles appear in the Journal of American Drama and Theatre and Studies in Musical Theatre. His editorial projects include The Routledge Companion to Musical Theatre (co-edited with Laura MacDonald, 2022), and the special issue of Studies in Musical Theatre(13.1, March 2019) on dance and musical theatre (with Joanna Dee Das). Ryan is a member of the editorial board of Studies in Musical Theatre and is co-founder and vice-president of the International Society for the Study of Musicals.

Current Appointments & Affiliations


Assistant Professor of Theater Studies · 2022 - Present Theater Studies, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences

In the News


Published December 13, 2023
Broadway Veteran Joins Local Students for Master Class in Song & Dance
Published November 20, 2023
NPR's Books We Love
Published February 14, 2023
Spring Books from Duke Authors from Wittgenstein to Capoeira

View All News

Recent Publications


"It Feels Like Being in Jail All Over Again": Staging the Criminalized Liminality of Sex Offenders

Journal Article Theatre Journal · September 2024 Abstract: Two plays focusing on the postincarceration experiences of sex offenders opened in 2018: Life Jacket Theatre Company's America Is Hard to See and Bruce Norris's Downstate . Both plays ask spectators to recognize the humanit ... Full text Cite

The Normativity of the Extraordinary: Musical Theatre on the Page and on the Stage

Chapter · August 27, 2024 Musicals communicate in multiple semiotic languages at once—music and lyrics; speech; blocking and dance; and set, costume, lighting, and sound design. Characters exist on the page and on the stage, portrayed by actors whose bodies and voices carry their o ... Link to item Cite

‘Now you know’: On Sondheim and middle age

Journal Article Studies in Musical Theatre · December 1, 2023 This article examines how Stephen Sondheim persistently and profoundly probed the second act of life, especially the years of middle age. I didn’t know it when I began discovering Sondheim’s works as an adolescent, but his lyrical insights prepared me for ... Full text Cite
View All Publications

Education, Training & Certifications


City University of New York · 2019 Ph.D.

External Links


ryan-donovan.com