FLYING BY THE SEAT OF OUR PANTS : THE POLITICS OF PARTICIPATORY MUSICAL THEATER IN THE 21ST CENTURY BURNED-OVER DISTRICT

Activists and scholars have argued for the last half-century about the role of art - especially participatory art - in transforming spectators and participants into active citizens. What is surprising about these debates is that they are often disconnected from detailed, ground-level, systematic empirical investigations. This dissertation is an effort to provide just such a grounded investigation, by seeking to discover the effects that involvement in participatory, oppositional musical theatre actually has on participants’ political sentiments and practices. Adopting an ethnographic approach, I seek to move away from abstract political theory and closer to the everyday perspectives of the participants, artists, and activists themselves. A key finding of this dissertation is that through this approach it becomes possible to discover the political messiness of participant perspectives, including views and practices that some may find surprising