"Evita is not American history.
And such shows as Falsettos and Zoot Suit tell a fictional story with made-up character inspired by a particular era. I like both of them, but it's hard to call them musicals about American history.
Anyway, here are the results of the poll so far:
1. Hamilton
2. Ragtime
3. 1776"
I beg your pardon, I got it right the first time. Falsettos tells of all too real events using fictional characters (as I said). The characters in Zoot Suit are drawn from composites, but the Sleepy Lagoon Murders were real events as were the subsequent trial and the Zoot Suit riots, though not every historian agrees with Valdez' interpretation of events. (I'll wager the same is true of 1776.) The major characters are all based on real people: El Pachuco on the stereotypical Chicano gangster of the 1940s and Henry on several members of the Sleepy Lagoon "gang"; Alice was a real lawyer for a left-wing legal aid group. (As I said, based on composites of real people, at least as Valdez understood them.)
But if you want to get technical about fiction v. nonfiction, then why even ask about musicals? all the entries in your sample are out of place. It's nearly impossible to do a purely nonfiction musical, as real people rarely sing about their deepest feelings while walking down the street. (I know there have been attempts to tell stories using songs from the actual period of the tale, but these haven't often succeeded, at least not without turning those pop songs into personal statements.)
Instead, the purest nonfiction theater about American history might be Execution of Justice, where Emily Mann takes every word from court transcripts or media interviews; or Twilight Los Angeles where Anna Deveare Smith takes every word from media accounts or her own interviews with the real-life people she portrays.
Updated On: 7/7/15 at 09:26 AM
