Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll, and Musicals

Eager to respond to the concerns and tastes of the increasingly influential baby-boomer generation, musical theater in the late 1960s began to embrace formerly taboo subjects-including the triumvirate of postwar social change: sex, drugs, and rock & roll.

Sex, Drugs, Rock&Roll, and Musicals shows how American culture has changed over the twentieth century, from the Roaring Twenties (The Wild Party) to the cultural chaos of the ‘50s (Grease) and the sexual revolution of the '60s (Hair) and '70s (Rocky Horror), to the rebirth of the art form in the '90s (Bat Boy), and up to the present, exploring where we’ve been and where we might be heading. This is a celebration of the counter-culture taking center stage in the most American of performing arts, and changing it forever.