TikTok Broadway: Musical Theatre Fandom from Six to Ratatouille with Dr Trevor Boffone

Centre for Creativity, History and Identity in Performance (CCHIP)

Wednesday, 10 March, 3 pm - 4 pm

In 2018, TikTok emerged into the U.S. cultural zeitgeist, quickly becoming the app of choice for Generation Z. While TikTok features nearly every type of digital video content, the app is home to a growing community of adept, young social media users who use the platform to engage with musical theatre fandom. This TikTok subculture—TikTok Broadway—serves as a digital theatre community that makes musical theatre popular and mainstream and a part of Gen Z culture. This talk will offer an introduction to TikTok Broadway as well as an in-depth overview of two case studies: Six and Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical. 

Dr Trevor Boffone, University of Houston 

Trevor Boffone is a Lecturer in the Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program at the University of Houston. He is the author of Renegades: Digital Dance Cultures from Dubsmash to TikTok (Oxford University Press, 2021). He is the co-editor of Encuentro: Latinx Performance for the New American Theater (Northwestern University Press, 2019); Nerds, Goths, Geeks, and Freaks: Outsiders in Chicanx and Latinx Young Adult Literature(University Press of Mississippi, 2020); and Shakespeare and Latinidad (Edinburgh University Press, 2021). His current book project, TikTok Broadway: Musical Theatre Fandom in the Digital Age, explores the relationship between Broadway musicals and the social media app TikTok to demonstrate the cultural capital that Generation Z has to make or break a musical, even if they are unaware that they are engaging with the musical at all. 

Register for the seminar here