Research

Lindsey’s research centers around representations of disability and madness in the American musical as it intersects with race and gender. Deeply informed by her work as a dramaturg, she utilizes performance studies, critical theory, disability studies, and feminist theory frameworks to analyze musical theatre as a critical site of cultural production that responds to sociopolitical happenings.

As a scholar, she has published work on musical theatre, madness, disability, dramaturgy, and performance studies in peer-reviewed journals and anthologies.

Publications

  • Staging Stigma: Representations of Disability and Madness in American Musical Theatre

    Staging Stigma examines how American musical theatre constructs disability and madness not only through representation, but through theatrical form itself. Moving from Lady in the Dark through A Strange Loop, the book considers how characterization, music, sound, staging, and other formal conventions produce disability and madness as social and cultural difference. The project develops crip dramaturgy as a framework for understanding how theatrical form can operate as ideological argument, asking how musicals participate in constructing the very categories of bodily and mental difference they appear merely to represent.

  • “Beyond Access Overtures: Disability Cultures in Musical Theatre,” Co-editor with Caitlin Marshall and Samuel Yates. Special issue of Studies in Musical Theatre. 19, no. 2.

  • “Dramaturgy as Pedagogy: An American University Case Study,” Theatre Topics, 36, no. 2 (July). (Forthcoming)

    “Madness Made Manifest: Mad Dramaturgy in Jane Eyre the Musical,” Modern Drama, 70, no. 1: (forthcoming).

    “‘And the Jimmy Goes to…’: Nostalgic Adolescence and the National High School Musical Theatre Awards,” Journal of Pop Culture, (forthcoming).

    “Constituencies of Care: Reimagining Access in Theatre Pedagogy.” Theatre Topics, 34, no. 3: 229-235.

    “Waving Through a Window: Prosthetic Memory and Nostalgia in Dear Evan Hansen.” Studies in Musical Theatre, 14, no. 3: 313-320.

  • “Dramaturging the Dramaturgs’ Gathering Space,” in Dramaturgies of the Real World, ed. Karen Jean Martinson and Dan Smith (London: Routledge), (forthcoming).

    “Toward a Mad Feminist Dramaturgy,” in Contemporary Feminisms in Musical Theatre, ed. Clare Chandler and Sherrill Gow (London: Routledge), (forthcoming).

    “Disability and Female Desire: Multi-Modal Exploration in Deaf West’s Spring Awakening,” in Dramaturgy of Sex on Stage in Contemporary Theatre, ed. Kate Mulley (London: Routledege), 39-44.

    “Mourning Mothers: Historicizing Madness as Deviant Motherhood in Next to Normal” in (M)other Perspectives: Staging the Maternal in 21st Century Theatre and Performance, edited by Lynn Deboeck and Aoise Stratford. London: Routledge. 129-145.

    “How a World Can Seem So Vast: The Craft of Musical Theatre Dramaturgy” in The Routledge Companion to Musical Theatre, edited by Ryan Donovan and Laura MacDonald. Co-authored with Laura MacDonald. London: Routledge, 39-53.

  • Adaptation in Musical Theatre, by Adam Rush, Adaption. (Forthcoming)

    Seriously Mad: Mental Distress and the Broadway Musical, by Aleksei Grinenko. Book Review. Studies in Musical Theatre. 18, no. 2: 191-193.

    “The Making of a Conference: Practices in Transnational Planning, Programming, and Translation.” LMDA Review, 27, no.1: 3-8.

    The Routledge Companion to the Contemporary Musical, edited by Jessica Sternfeld and Elizabeth L. Wollman. Book Review. Theatre Annual, 43.

  • “Global Dramaturgy: Thinking with LMDA,” Dramatist Türkiye Magazine, August 26, 2025.

    “Directing a Stage Kiss,” Backstage Magazine, November 15, 2023.

    “What is a Sitzprobe in Theatre?” Backstage Magazine, May 12, 2022.

    “The Hidden Code in Wilde’s Earnest: An Interview with Director Joseph W. Ritsch and Production Dramaturg Lindsey R. Barr”The Baltimore Sun, December 13, 2018.

    “Sweat in Baltimore with Lindsey R. Barr,” Interview. The Context: A Podcast for the Dramaturgy of All Things Awesome. Created and hosted by Kate Langsdorf. October 23, 2018.