Laura MacDonald

Laura MacDonald grew up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where she studied journalism at the University of King’s College, and theatre at Dalhousie University. After a brief stint as a freelance journalist, she earned master’s degrees in International & European Politics at the University of Edinburgh, and Drama at the University of Toronto. This interdisciplinary path eventually led her to complete a Ph.D. in American Studies at the University of East Anglia.

Before joining the School of Residential Community-Engaged Arts and Humanities (formerly RCAH) at Michigan State University, she taught at the University of Lincoln and the University of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom, and at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Her fellowships and awards include a British Council Researcher Links Fellowship at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, South Korea; an Arts and Humanities Research Council Fellowship at the Shanghai Theatre Academy in China; a Botsiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies Research Grant; and a New York Public Library Short-Term Fellowship.

Her research focuses on Broadway musical theatre history, theatre producing and marketing, audience and fan studies, and transnational musical theatre history in Europe and East Asia. Her first book, Never Go Away: The Longevity of Broadway Musicals (in progress) expands her dissertation work, investigating how theatre audiences have been persuaded to attend certain musicals, and how their active consumption contributes to productions’ ability to sustain extremely long runs. Combining archival research and interviews with key industry figures, this book evaluates the contributions of previously un-assessed, or under-acknowledged contributors to the musical’s survival: producers, press agents, marketing and advertising professionals, journalists, and audiences.

Her second book project, Transnational Musical Theatre Journeys: The Circulation of Musical Theatre Practitioners in Europe and East Asia (under contract, Palgrave Transnational Theatre Histories Series), chronicles the history of the largest non-English speaking musical theatre markets—Germany, Austria, Japan, and South Korea—along with the emerging Chinese market. Mapping out the transnational journeys of key performers, directors, choreographers, producers, writers, composers, and teachers who each transported musicals, practice, and ideology, this book will establish how the American musical further developed European and East Asian theatre industries, from the 1950s to today. She has also co-edited The Routledge Companion to Musical Theatre (2023) with Ryan Donovan, and The Palgrave Handbook of Musical Theatre Producers (2017) with William A. Everett.

She has previously served in a range of leadership positions with the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR), the Historians of the Twentieth Century United States (HOTCUS), the British Association for American Studies (BAAS), and the Music Theatre/Dance Focus Group of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (MTD/ATHE). She regularly contributes to new musical theatre development as a dramaturg, and facilitates her students’ collaboration as dramaturgs with professional writers and composers.