Academic track programming

This presentation will discuss what the legacy of Les Misérables can contribute to how we understand adaptation as a cultural process. Drawing on research into the afterlives of Hugo’s novel and the growth of adaptation studies as an academic field, Stephens asks: who gets to decide if an adaptation is good or bad, or indeed if an adaptation even is an adaptation in the first place, and why do these questions matter to fans and scholars alike? Neither the 1995 Claude Lelouch film or the 2019 Ladj Ly film retells Hugo’s novel straightforwardly, yet both play with and invoke its social conscience, dramatic characterisation, and artistic imagination. In constrast, the BBC/PBS TV 2018 miniseries, written by Andrew Davies and directed by Tom Shankland, positions itself as a faithful and definitive retelling of Hugo’s story; Davies laid claim to offering a ‘proper’ or ‘classic’ adaptation while openly mocking the stage musical as a ‘shoddy farrago’. Such a legitimising claim can be challenged for its artistic and ideological assumptions about how adaptation should work, and for how it can divert attention away from the creativity that all adapters rely on. Through these contrasts and the tensions they generate, Stephens emphasises the ways Les Misérables invites us to ask how we personalise stories and make them meaningful to ourselves and to one another as part of its humanitarian spirit.

One of the great attractions of Les Misérables is its array of thrilling escape scenes, most of which feature the outlaw hero, Jean Valjean. In a database of 2000 texts from nineteenth-century U.S. periodicals that focus on Hugo’s novel, half of the references to Valjean invoke his escape wizardry as a way of framing local events. From New York to Kansas City to Fort Worth, St. Paul, and New Orléans, Hugo’s character inspired not just prison breaks but also penitential lives in a clear illustration of what Michel Espagne terms ‘cultural transfers’ [’les transferts culturels’]. In this paper, Grossman looks at these American stories in relation to Hugo’s text from the viewpoint of both reception and adaptation studies, the better to understand how Les Misérables was read early on in the States — and in how it was reworked in the public mind in accordance with the American national mythology.

A short analysis of apartheid and South African imagery & narratives in Liesl Tommy’s 2014 production of Les Miserables at the Dallas Theatre Company. Topics covered will include discussion of its representation of toyi-toyi and other features strongly associated with the struggle against apartheid, as well as a brief history of South Africa and terminology. There will be time at the end for questions and audience contributions.

In this illustrated talk, Bellos will recapture the aural environment of Hugo’s novel by identifying the many popular songs that the characters sing and hear, and offer a challenge to fans to create a new musical version more faithful to its nineteenth-century roots.

Les Misérables has travelled all over the world and been translated into over 20 languages–and Valjean and Javert have been facing off with each other on stage for nearly four decades. Author Ruth Kenyon will present highlights from her research into the history of the show’s staging, with a focus on “Confrontation,” and discuss how performers have negotiated directing and acting choices over time in the effort to make conflict visible and understandable.

The autumn of 1985 saw some of the most violent protests that Britain’s streets have ever seen (described as riots in the popular press). But as the now worldwide phenomenon megamusical opened, staging uprisings on the Barbican’s stages only a mile from where protests were actually taking place, the connection never seems to have been made. This presentation explores the musical’s relationship to whiteness and considers how this helped audiences to ignore what was happening on London’s streets.

An introduction to anti-theatricality using the West End production of Les Misérables as a framework to discuss what makes musical theatre unpalatable to modern audiences. Theatre has been seen as a threat to social order in Europe since Ancient Greek writers were producing work for the stage, and it has often been religious, political, or economic concerns that have fuelled discourse against the theatre. Although the theatre is no longer condemned as resolutely as it has been in the past (although governmental oversights of the importance of arts and culture suggest this prejudice against the theatre has not quite gone away), musical theatre in particular is subject to stigma that is in direct contrast to its popularity as a form. This presentation will introduce the ideas behind anti-theatricality, the key books or movements that led to censorship in theatre and inspired centuries of anti-theatrical prejudice that still persist today, and discuss what it is about musical theatre in particular that people – both theatre critics and the average theatre-goer – hate so much. I will use Les Misérables as one of the most well-known examples of a modern megamusical to dig into these issues. We’ll look at what a megamusical is, how the form’s detachment from reality both undermine and bolster the poignancy a story like Les Miserables can have, what reality is in the musical world and how it is at odds with the real world, and at what level of reality an audience can become uncomfortable with musical theatre. We’ll also look at how musical theatre’s tendency to encourage intense emotion both in storytelling and in its audiences have played a part in anti-theatrical prejudice from Plato’s era to the present day. Works used for this presentation will include Jonas Barish’s The Antitheatrical Prejudice, Plato’s Republic X, historical antitheatrical texts, social sciences research, and references to other well-known musical theatre productions and films.

Amelia (@byjuxtaposition) is a British PhD student researching queerness in nineteenth-century France and literature of the period. Grounded in historical research, literary analysis, and queer coding, their presentation will explore the ways in which it’s possible to read and interpret desire and intimacy between Enjolras and Grantaire in Hugo’s Les Mis and its adaptations.

This panel-plus-discussion will focus on feminist spectators’ responses to and analyses of Les Misérables, the musical. The panelists are Princeton University undergraduates, both current students and a recent graduate, and the discussion will be facilitated by Professor Stacy Wolf, author of Changed for Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical. Each panelist will present a five-minute mini-lecture on one aspect of the musical, followed by a discussion among the panlelists. We’ll reserve the last 10 minutes of the hour for questions from the audience. In “Casting the Women of Les Misérables: Patterns and Problems,” Paige Allen will explore how productions have historically cast the women of Les Misérables, paying particular attention to race and body type. Do patterns in casting affect the way we see the characters and/or the performers who portray them? Who are we allowed to see play certain roles? In “A Father and Mother: Gender and Jean Valjean’s Heroism” Elliot Lee will explore Jean Valjean’s role as a hero and how he exemplifies more traditionally feminine traits than masculine ones. As a character driven by empathy and nurturing parental instincts, how does Valjean subvert gender expectations but not seem weaker or less heroic for it, especially as a foil to the more traditionally masculine Javert? In “Cosette’s Music,” Leila Abou-Jaoude will analyze how Cosette’s music contributes to and complicates her characterization. Could a performer, paying close attention to how Cosette’s music functions melodically and harmonically, imbue the character with more autonomy? ​​In “Female Archetypes and the Challenge of Empowerment,” Molly Bremer will explore the cultural context of Les Misérables in relation to the show’s traditional feminine archetypes, particularly Cosette as ingénue. And yet, although the female characters may be limited in some ways, their musical and performance opportunities present an alternative kind of empowerment for actresses, potentially one that extends even outside of the show itself. What do we make of this contradiction?

Maya Chhabra will present and discuss her translation of Alexandre Dumas’s account of the June 1832 rebellion, as described in his article “My National Guard Woes” (Mes Infortunes de Garde National). Chhabra and panelists will discuss this previously untranslated account, how the description of the rebellion fits into Dumas’s larger work on his experience in the National Guard, and possible issues of censorship, as the article was published under Louis-Philippe.