ABSTRACT
Creating and staging musicals set in the past requires a careful negotiation of historical precision and dramatic imagination. Kate Van Winkle Keller’s dances for the film Last of the Mohicans (1992) and her scholarship on early American musical theater can help us better understand the tensions of combining historical awareness with the requirements of popular media. Following Keller’s tenets, historical awareness is paramount for any theatrical offering, including musicals set in Colonial America and the Early Republic. Applying Keller’s principle to this corpus, a study of two representative works—Dearest Enemy (1925, book by Herbert Fields, music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart) and Hamilton (2015, book, music and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda)—reveals how the question is not so much the degree to which each work adheres to documentary evidence but rather how particular interpretations of history facilitate contemporary commentary on historical situations. Historical awareness is not only for creators but also for audiences, who, when they are aware of historical dimensions, can deepen their understanding and appreciation of the resulting creative work.
