A Bit of History…
Dorothy Marcic, creator of the book RESPECT, the musical RESPECT, and its evolution to This One’s For the Girls explains:
“I was a full-time professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee—Music City USA. Having always been interested in women and leadership, I decided to research how women were portrayed in popular music. I did what is called “content analysis” research on 20,000 Top 40 songs and saw women went from co-dependent to independent. From Someone to Watch Over Me to I Will Survive and Independent Women.
It turns out no one had looked at this before, and the presentations I gave electrified audiences and gradually evolved into a one-woman show. I was getting booked all over the US and the world, including England, Switzerland, Israel, South Africa, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and more.
This all led to a book deal, so I wrote RESPECT: Women and Popular Music, while at the same time I adapted the one-woman show into a four-woman musical, with the help of 3 talented performers in Nashville. We performed many times, and I even had to engage a second cast because of so many booking requests. A year after we debuted the musical, we all flew down to Florida to showcase RESPECT and got picked up by a commercial producer, opening professionally July 2004 in West Palm Beach, FL. It played 2 years in West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale, and over two years in Orlando, about a year in Boston, Cleveland, and Atlanta. And here we are, 100 cities later.”
RESPECT featured on NPR’s A Word on Words
John Seigenthaler, renowned journalist and Host of NPR’s famous A Word on Words, conducted an in-depth interview with Dorothy Marcic about her newly-written book, RESPECT: Women and Popular Music.
Fantastic Music & Rave Reviews!
RESPECT is filled with lyrics that resonate with everyone, including, Bill Bailey, Won’t You Please Come Home, Debbie Reynolds singing Tammy, Tammy, Tammy’s in love, The Shirelle’s Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? Reminiscences by both men and women of what these songs meant will strike a chord with every reader. What song did you lose your virginity to? What song played the day you graduated? The day you quit your first job?
Dorothy Marcic connects the lyrics and reminiscences of these Top-40 songs sung by women, together with the course of the women’s movement, showing where the lyrics heralded changes in women’s status and showing us what hasn’t changed at all.
As RESPECT garnered rave reviews in cities across the United States and abroad — it was successfully seen and wildly acclaimed in over a dozen successfully seen and wildly acclaimed in over a dozen U.S. cities and in Australia, South Africa, England, Holland, and Israel.
Your show is one of the best things I have ever seen, period. – Shawn Johnson, Kansas City
This was one of the most inspiring performances I have attended in my life. – Vladimir Brajkovic, Melbourne, Australia.
It was the musical history of MY life! Sheri Bewitt, Orlando
Respect Gets an Update and a New Name
After so many years in production, it was time to update Respect and give it new life and a new look. Dorothy finished this process in early 2017 and the decision was made to debut the updated RESPECT in New York City, but with a new name, This One’s for the Girls.
