ABSTRACT
In August 1976, 15 months after the fall of Saigon, journalist Tom Wolfe christened the 1970s “The Me-Decade” in a polemic for New York Magazine. This chapter examines the dramaturgy—particularly the use of song—for the 1970s musicals Company, Follies, A Chorus Line, and I’m Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Road, and demonstrates how librettists and composers musicalized the Me-Decade ethos. Furthermore, characters address the audience directly, suggesting that the musical functions as a means of asserting identity. Heather’s use of performance to recount her life story gives I’m Getting My Act Together a metatheatrical quality that appears in other 1970s musicals like Follies, Pippin, and The Act. Sondheim further challenges the postwar institution of marriage using a fragmented narrative in Follies, a collaboration with librettist James Goldman. Unlike the ghosts of Follies, the materializations of interiority are lighthearted, encouraging, and intent on moving the central couple toward happiness.
