In what ways does this scene look backwards to classical musicals and how does it look ahead to new disruptions that we now know will happen in the movie musical?
We begin at an audition, which immediately brings the backstage musical to mind, however this audition is already rigged. Musicals had established a veneer of wholesomeness after the code came into place. In The Wizard of Oz, Toto pulls back the curtain to show that the wizard was a fake - and all is made right. In Gypsy, Mama Rose threatens to pull back the curtain on the corruption in the theater but this isn't the act of
