Musical theatre professor co-edits publication exploring disability in musical theatre

Samuel Yates, assistant professor of theatre studies in the College of Arts and architecture, has co-edited Studies in Musical Theatre 19.2, “Disability in Musical Theatre,” which explores the intersections of disability studies and musical theatre, treating disability as a central structuring condition rather than a mere theme.

The issue, which Yates co-edited with Caitlin Marshall, a faculty member at the University of Maryland, and Lindsey R. Barr, a faculty member at American University, is the first full journal issue of any publication dedicated to exploring disability aesthetics and production in musicals.

“Building from our desire to make space for further contact between the fields of music theatre studies and disability studies, this special issue brings disability to the center of musical theatre studies as an aesthetic, historiographic and practical force rather than a marginal concern,” Yates said. “Our issue insists that disability is not simply something musicals depict—but an experience that musicals are built upon.”

Yates is a deaf artist, researcher, educator and dramaturge who came to Penn State in 2023 after holding faculty positions at The George Washington University, American University, The University of Maryland Baltimore County and Millikin University. Their work has long focused on disability in theatre and although they often pull from the lived experience of navigating life with a disability, Yates said the work isn’t just about representation.

“It’s about better-understanding the construction of normativity; which bodies, voices and communities are presumed to be default, and which are framed as ‘risky’ in commercial theatre,” Yates explained.

Across scholarly articles, artist interviews, a discipline-assessing roundtable and notes from the field, Yates said the issue poses urgent questions such as, what happens when musical theatre artists, teachers and scholars treat access not as accommodation but as composition? How does deaf and disabled artistry reshape musical form itself? What new critical and creative possibilities emerge when disability is understood as method, dramaturgical structure and lived practice?

“As one of the editors, my hope is that the issue helps establish a larger archive and vocabulary scholars can build from rather than build toward,” Yates said “If the field begins to assume that disability belongs at the center of musical theatre studies rather than on its margins, then I will consider our issue a great success.”

Aside from the practical support Yates received for the research through a College of Arts and Architecture faculty research grant, they explained that the culture within the college provided the material, intellectual and community infrastructure that makes the work possible.

“Penn State is a place where scholarship and creative practice are in active dialogue rather than seen as oppositional,” Yates said. “We have a collaborative and interdisciplinary community culture within the College of Arts and Architecture that empowers me to continue exploring disability- and access-centered research questions and to bring them into our classes and rehearsal rooms with colleagues and student-artists.”