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Our Lady J on “Transparent,” “Pose,” and Returning To Live Performance

Before Our Lady J was writing on the groundbreaking trans television shows Transparent and Pose, she was breaking ground at Carnegie Hall. She’s a pianist, a songwriter, a storyteller, and after years of focusing on screenwriting, she’s returned to live performance with two shows at Joe’s Pub in New York.

We’re in a challenging moment right now for trans television. Many of the issues that spurred the dual Hollywood strikes have been especially difficult for trans artists and trans stories. A decade since Laverne Cox appeared on Orange is the New Black, the promise of inclusive storytelling on streaming has faded. That this is coinciding with a rise in anti-trans legislation and public hate is doubly alarming.

But Our Lady J isn’t going anywhere. She’s already back to work even as she finds a different possibility of self-expression through music and theatre. Throughout our conversation I felt hope.

Being a trans artist isn’t getting easier — especially in Hollywood — but she reminded me that it’s never been easy. And yet, we keep pushing. And yet, we keep creating.

Drew: I like to start most of my first-time interviews from the beginning. Where’d you grow up and what was that experience like for you?

Our Lady J: I grew up in a very loving family of evangelical Christian hillbillies. The culture of Appalachia is rich with soulful music and a yearning to express. And that’s really where I found my footing as an artist. I was playing piano for the worship services and every time I played people would say, “Give the glory to God,” and shake my hand real firm.

It was all so loaded because this was during the time of the AIDS crisis and the sermons were filled with homophobia. There wasn’t really a recognition of trans people at the time but I identified with the queer community from a young age without even realizing it. I felt like I was living between two worlds at that moment, but music gave me the ability to transcend. I was a very feminine child and I was horribly bullied in school, but the moment I played the piano everyone was quiet. I knew I could create this space through art.

I started playing piano when I was four but I didn’t start taking it seriously until I was six.

Drew: (laughs) Oh yes at the late age of six you finally decided to really dedicate yourself.

Our Lady J: It’s time to learn about Bach now. (laughs)

There was this piano teacher in the town next to mine who taught me for $4 a lesson. My parents bought a piano at an auction for $100. My grandfather went to auctions any time — it sounds dark and twisted but I swear he had the best intentions — any time a piano teacher in the area passed away to buy all the sheet music. And that’s how I was able to create. Given my financial restraints, it really was a community effort to take care of me and to take care of my artistry.

When I see communities that have such a bias about some things and so much love about other things, I try to hold space for both. I think it’s important to acknowledge the depth and dimension of our existence within community. If I only focused on the negative I would be ignoring the gift of music and the gift of art that I have today. That was the beginning of my artistry and the beginning of me finding a voice within music, television, film, and media.

Drew: Did you move directly to New York from Appalachia?

Our Lady J: I did not. Among the many people who helped me with music was my piano teacher. I grew up in southern Pennsylvania right near the border of Maryland and it’s also really close to West Virginia. This piano teacher lived in West Virginia and he would come up to a community school in the town next to my town to teach. He helped me apply to get a scholarship at this boarding school for the arts called Interlochen Academy in Michigan. Thank God for that.

I left the week I turned sixteen and suddenly I was surrounded by queers and hippies and rainbows and mohawks. It was the 90s so it was a great time culturally. Alanis Morrisette was our Olivia Rodrigo. It was cool to rebel. And I desperately needed to rebel. So Interlochen gave me the space to find a whole other palette to play within my music and my art.

Drew: Did you continue to visit home a lot or did you create a deeper separation between those worlds?

Our Lady J: Financially it was difficult to visit home. I had never flown on a plane before then and most people in my family hadn’t flown at that time. Those plane tickets were very valued and they were used sparsely. But I tried to get home as much as I could and that continued in my further studies.

I went to college in Texas because of a scholarship. Unfortunately, discovered a lot of homophobia and ended up dropping out and moving to New York.

Drew: What was it like when you first moved to New York?

Our Lady J: It was the summer of 2000. I moved the day before I turned 22 because I thought 22 was way too old to not be living in New York City. (laughs)

Drew: (laughs)

Our Lady J: I had saved up for a deposit on an apartment and my room was a closet of a studio in the East Village. It was literally a loft in a closet where the bed was on top and my clothes were underneath. The East Village was not what it is today. It was still a bit dangerous in Alphabet City at night but it was filled with art and seekers and folks who were anti-establishment. The punk scene had died by then but there was still this excitement about New York pre-9/11. It felt like it was a great place to express myself and be living as an artist.

Drew: I feel like for any 22 year old it feels that way no matter how much some people will be like, ugh New York is dead.

Our Lady J: (laughs)

Drew: I remember when I first moved there at 18, I was reading the Patti Smith book Just Kids and was romanticizing that era. And then there’s this section where they’re like, ugh we missed it, Warhol’s Factory is dying out, New York is over.

Our Lady J: It is what you make it, right? Those folks created the scene that they were in. And we were creating our scene as well. I’ll never forget I performed a Chopin piece at CBGB. And on the bill was Lisa Jackson, Jayne County, and Justin Tranter. It ended up being this incredibly queer, trans night. We didn’t know how special it really was until many years later. Lisa is an incredible singer-songwriter and is writing a musical right now. Justin has obviously written every hit pop song in the world. Jayne County has gone down in history as an iconic trans trailblazer in the music scene. So it’s always there but we have to make it for ourselves.

Drew: Yeah, I love that.

Can you talk about Jean Genet? What was it about his work and specifically Our Lady of the Flowers that led you to choose it as your namesake?

Our Lady J: So 9/11 happened and it traumatized me more than I was willing to admit I was rehearsing in Times Square at the time for a national tour of a Broadway musical. Being so young and only a year and two months into living in New York, I didn’t want the dream of New York to die. But it did wound New York and it wounded me in ways that I wasn’t willing to acknowledge. Instead I started drinking a lot more and started partying a lot more. I was dissociating a lot. I’d done these things in college to dissociate, but now it got worse. It came to a point where I was living in an abandoned building in Brooklyn on a mattress on the floor. Playing Carnegie Hall by the way.

Drew: Wow.

Our Lady J: I looked around and I thought, oh my God what happened to my life? And so I got sober. I did it through the help of a lot of other sober folks who walked me through what it would be like to live a life of being present.

When you first get sober you read a lot. (laughs) Reading is very good when you’re sober! And someone else who was sober gave me the book Our Lady of the Flowers. To be honest, I haven’t read it since then, but I remember it opening up a world in literature that I hadn’t seen before. It’s about a group of queer folks from the 1940s in France who were struggling to survive much in the way that I felt I was struggling to survive. You know, it’s a 400-hundred page poem that Genet wrote in prison. He was a serial criminal. He didn’t know how to survive in the outside world so he found comfort in committing petty crimes and going to prison. And I felt that queerness had been criminalized in so many ways.

When I was living in Texas, sodomy was illegal and there was a case about a couple who was arrested for having sex. Consensual adult sex between two men was illegal.

Drew: Was that Lawrence v. Texas?

Our Lady J: I remember reading about it in the local newspapers and being very afraid. The same thing is happening right now with transness. There’s this stigma being attached and it’s being used by politicians to gain power while hurting a lot of people. I read that in Genet’s work at the time. It spoke to me. These characters were very messy and often downright terrible. They weren’t rootable. But they were there. And it was more than I had ever seen before. It allowed me to find a sense of freedom that there was community out there. And then I came out as trans. The book itself wasn’t an awakening for me, but it was an acknowledgment of an existence. And I found my awakening through reading many other books — Hiding My Candy by The Lady Chablis, She’s Not There by Jenny Boylan. I began to discover my own transness through literature.

Drew: Well, when I was first coming out your album Picture of a Man was a real comfort to me. For people who know you primarily from your screenwriting work, I’d love for you to talk about the experience making that album and how it came to be.

Our Lady J: When I moved to New York, I was a rehearsal pianist for a theatre. I was also a class accompanist for ballet schools and a rehearsal pianist for ballet companies. And as I began to transition, I noticed, especially in theatre, there was a real confusion about what I was doing. There wasn’t an acknowledgment of transness in the public consciousness. A lot of people had never heard of it and they certainly didn’t have the language.

I would show up to class or rehearsal wearing what I felt was me just being free, and people thought it was performance. They thought it was drag. I remember people saying, you don’t have to wear that. I believed they were good people but they just didn’t understand what I was doing. I found myself having to educate a lot. I was tired, they were tired, everyone was tired, and then the phones stopped ringing. You don’t get fired as a freelance musician — you just don’t get called back. The same with Hollywood, really. You rarely get fired but the phone stops ringing. And I knew I had to do something to support myself because I hadn’t equipped myself with any other life skills except art. (laughs)

Drew: (laughs)

Our Lady J: The calls that did come through were from other queer artists who needed a music director or an accompanist. They never paid well — if they paid at all — but it was a community. And that was when I started putting on shows. I realized that I could do two things at once: I could continue making music and I could educate the folks who wanted to understand me. The goal all along was to do those two things. Through that I ended up touring the world quite a bit and having some success.

Picture of a Man was a manifestation of everything I could put together. I look at it now and it seems like such a small piece of work because of the jobs I had to do at the same time. I still managed to play for ballet companies and I had to show up at 8:30 in the morning at Marymount University and I would finish my class at 9:00pm at Ballet Academy East. I didn’t have much time to make the art I wanted to make but eventually I did and that’s what the album became.

Drew: I’d love to talk about your screenwriting work. When you got hired on Transparent, what was your relationship to screenwriting?

Our Lady J: I stopped watching television when I got sober. I felt like there was so much homophobia on TV at that time and I just couldn’t stomach it. But then around 2012/2013, I started watching TV again. I had never really considered that as an avenue. I was very interested in making film, but I hadn’t considered TV.

And then right before I met Joey Soloway, I noticed people were responding to the dialogue between the music in my shows even more than the music itself. I was talking to Whitney Cummings actually about what it would look like if I did a standup routine and tried something new. I was writing all this material for my shows and also memoir material when I met Joey. They asked me if I had anything they could see, so I put it all into a short story and sent it to them.

Actually, that’s an inaccurate way of saying it. When the Transparent pilot came out, I said to Joey, “I will do whatever it takes to work on this show.” And then Joey said, “Do you have any work I can see?” I just thought the pilot was so brilliant!

They were making the first season and talking to other writers. There was this very public search for trans screenwriters. It wasn’t a contest exactly, but a hundred trans folks submitted short stories. That made it a mixed bag. To get the news that I was going to be hired was incredible and life-changing, but to know that it was just one show and I was just one writer felt a little bit isolating. The competition of Hollywood is not baked into what we aspire to as a community. Community is about taking care of each other and bringing other people in and Hollywood tends to be the opposite. It’s me first and how am I going to make it to the finish line. There were a lot of emotions I was having at the time, but mostly I was just happy to be employed and to be around such a great group of incredible writers in that room. I learned so much.

Drew: What was the best experience you had working on that show?

Our Lady J: Oh there were so many things. There was the glitz and the glam! That certainly was fun for a femme like me. The flashes of the photography. Everything you hear about Hollywood. We were decorated with a lot of awards. And that was intoxicating. It didn’t fill my soul but it was intoxicating.

The things that filled my soul were the conversations we got to have in the writers room. Really connecting with other writers. I realized how similar television writing is to playing in an orchestra.

Drew: Oh interesting.

Our Lady J: It’s chamber music. You seek out harmony and if something is off you pause and investigate and then you begin again. There has to be a reduction of ego to work in episodic television both in writing and directing. You have to learn to follow the showrunner. You have to mimic the voice of the showrunner and not just mimic but really fit in and inhabit their voice so it all feels cohesive. With Transparent, it was really important for us all to have the same voice. And there was a real concerted effort to make sure we were all heard. That was the highlight.

Drew: Now I want to ask the opposite question.

Our Lady J: Oh lord.

Drew: Not getting into the scrapped season five, but during seasons two through four, what was the biggest challenge? Was it that isolation of being the only trans person in the writers room?

Our Lady J: I don’t think so, because there were so many trans people on set. We had trans producers, Zackary Drucker and Rhys Ernst who are incredible human beings and very good at what they do. We had Silas Howard directing. Rhys also directed. So there were other trans folks around. And the cast, of course, as well. Alexandra Billings, Trace, so many. So I didn’t feel isolated. But I certainly felt pressured. From the outside community.

That was the most difficult part for me. It was being able to hear criticism, to not take it personally, and to also do my best to be open to that criticism. To say, what can I do to make this better for the show and the community? And to also know when I’ve given it my all and to say, okay that’s as good as it’s going to get.

Perfectionism is such a little demon for any writer and any artist. And in our community there’s this idea that we have to all be perfect activists. Or that we even have to be activists period! I had never considered myself to be an activist. I considered myself to be an artist and if that changed the world then great. If not, I hope I’ve made something beautiful, and at the end of the day something beautiful does change the world. I feel like in our community we talk about activism more than art and there’s a focus on perfectionism that holds us back. It makes us feel like everything we say has to be perfect and immutable and cemented throughout time. Rather than navigating an ever-changing world and an ever-changing conversation. So that was the hard part: navigating the perfectionism from within our community, which I later realized was about navigating my own perfectionism.

Drew: That balance you’re talking about is so tricky. I think it’s easy to do one of two extremes. Either to try and achieve that perfectionism which isn’t possible. Or to shut all the critique out completely and that’s also not great.

Our Lady J: Yes.

Drew: I think that balance is hard for any artist but especially an artist with a marginalized identity that has expectations from their community or communities that range from understandable to unfair.

Our Lady J: It can be very stressful.

Drew: I’d love to ask the same two questions about Pose. What was the best part about working on it and what was the biggest challenge?

Our Lady J: The best part was knowing that we could go even further than Transparent was able to go. Everything that we see in art and media has been built on something else. Transparent was built on Queer as Folk and The L Word and I felt like Pose was the next stepping stone from that. To go into a place with even more trans folks involved and an awareness that we were going to try and do the right thing in all ways possible. It felt like I could breathe even more. I could see my words on the page changing. I had already written two HIV positive trans women on Transparent and being positive myself I was eager and excited to put all of this into Pose. Yes, my life experience but also the experience of so many others who hadn’t had that voice yet. Being able to write about HIV/AIDS within the trans experience on a show that was allowing me to be — and encouraging me to be — honest was incredible.

Drew: And the biggest challenge?

Our Lady J: Hmm. Well, one challenge that I found when writing about characters living with HIV/AIDS in the 80s was that our audience didn’t understand that life. Our audience was much younger and they didn’t come up with the same stigma. That’s good, obviously, but they also weren’t raised with the same toughening of skin.

When people died from complications from AIDS, it wasn’t talked about or it was only whispered about and all of those things that were unsaid created this immense grief on everyone who survived. It was a scar that we all live with. And that scar allowed us a toughening in the face of death, in the face of violence and discrimination. The tools that we acquired from facing that day to day are quite different from the tools that this current generation has. I don’t feel like we were able to be as honest about how terrible it was and how much loss there was, because people didn’t like it when the characters died. They felt like we were punishing the audience rather than historically showing what happened. There’s this sense that queer art has to always be uplifting and always positive and we tried to do that with Pose. I’m glad we had it as our north star to give people something to aspire to. But knowing that the younger generation isn’t as interested in understanding what that grief was like was hard on a personal level.

But they shouldn’t have to know. Nobody should have to know that kind of grief. And I’m glad that they don’t know that kind of grief. Unfortunately, it’s coming and it’s coming from this new direction, this wave of anti-trans legislation, and so they’re going to have to learn that type of grief in order to survive this. And I want to remind anyone who is reading this that it is possible to survive. There is a richness in our history that we can call upon to learn how to survive.

Drew: I think about that a lot. For me, my queerness is so tied to history and so tied to understanding who came before. I think that has to do with my interest in the arts and if you’re interested in not just contemporary art but where that contemporary art was born from you inherently learn history.

But it also depends on what kind of media people are watching. There was obviously so much great queer art being made during the AIDS crisis but it wasn’t the stuff that was winning Oscars. It’s not Philadelphia. It’s Marlon Riggs and Derek Jarman. It’s much better and much more real. I just saw Chocolate Babies for the first time because it was restored and at Outfest this year. I hadn’t seen it before and was blown away.

Our Lady J: Chocolate Babies by Stephen Winter absolutely. There was also Diamanda Galas, David Wojnarowicz. There was so much great art to come out of it. And I think that’s the thing that’s going to save us now. I don’t think social media is going to save us. Even activism I think can be hijacked by other players who do not always mean us well. Activism can just be a series of words that are said and repeated. We need to really listen to those who have the soul in their message, because otherwise it becomes corporate activism. It’s just reposting and there’s no meaning behind it. And that encourages complacency. You feel like you’ve done something when you haven’t done anything at all. Don’t get me started, I could go on about this all day. (laughs)

Drew: (laughs) Okay well then instead let’s talk about the shows you’re doing right now at Joe’s Pub. Do you see them as a return to a different kind of creative expression? What are you able to do in these shows that you’re not able to do in screenwriting?

Our Lady J: I have to thank the strike for allowing me to create all this material. I had four projects that I was working on and I had to put them on pause. Thank God the strike is now over for the writers and I’m back to work as we’re still advocating SAG-AFTRA. We’re walking right alongside them in the pickets hoping that they reach an agreement soon.

In those months I wasn’t allowed to work on my film and TV projects but I had my music. It’s always been something I’ve done in the breaks between seasons. But the more I get into TV and the more work I have there, the less music I create. So this really allowed me the chance to reunite with music. I wrote a musical — or at least the first act of a musical, the second act is partially written — and I’m talking to some theatre companies about that. And I wrote all these little songs.

They’re kind of like diary entries or entries into a Mean Girls burn book. I think metaphor gets us so much further than anything literal because that’s how we find the soul in what we’re doing. That’s how we detect whether something is honest or not. In art, if something speaks to you and you don’t understand why, that’s an honesty you’re detecting. To be able to remove myself from something as literal as two characters speaking in a scene, I was able to go back to metaphor and really explore what I wanted to say. And a lot of it ended up being very light and comedic. These shows I’m doing at Joe’s Pub — and also I have a show on December 7th at the Wallace Theatre in Los Angeles — are a mixture of the original songs that I wrote during the strike and also me doing sit-down comedy at a piano bench. It’s Sandra Bernhard-inspired, surreal comedy. It’s absurd, it’s dry, it’s sarcastic.

I feel like there’s a lot of trans comedy coming up that’s a result of us losing so much. Respectability politics are becoming less of a tool and our anger and our frustration and our joy is coming out through absurdity and being completely irreverent. I’m leaning into all of that. All the terrible jokes that I tell my friends in private, I’m now telling in public.

Drew: That’s a thrilling little tease.

Our Lady J: (laughs)

Drew: You mentioned writing a musical. What are your biggest dreams in terms of music and performing work specifically?

Our Lady J: If someone would just say here’s a ticket to write Broadway musicals for the rest of your life, I would say, absolutely sign me up. I would be so happy. I love working in theatre. Theatre folks are a whole other breed of artist. The community is amazing. In March I moved back to New York and I’m now doing the bicoastal thing. I’ll be in LA when I’m working in production there but I’ll be in New York otherwise. The theatre community here is just so incredible. Because there’s not that much money in theatre, you really have to love it. But I also need to make a living! So it’s the balance of figuring out how I can bring what I love about theatre into film and television. How can I bring that honesty and that boldness? The dream is to marry them all together.

I’d love to do more live performance as well. I’m doing a couple guest spots at Caleb Hearon’s shows in Brooklyn. I love him. We’re working on a TV project together. Collaborating with other live performers is the dream always. It’s a muscle that I have to keep in shape. This was the first show I’d done in four years and I slept for three days after. I was so tired.

Drew: Wow that’s a long gap.

Our Lady J: It is. But I want to keep it going. So that’s the goal right now: to keep it going and to follow the openings that the world has for me. That’s always been the plan as an artist. If one door is not opening and you’ve tried everything you can do, you have to look around and see what other doors are open.

Drew: I do think we’re in a moment right now where more doors are closing in film and TV for trans people. There was this really exciting boom for queer and trans TV, but now a lot of those shows have been canceled and new ones aren’t getting produced at the same rate. Do you feel disillusioned by Hollywood? What’s bringing you back?

Our Lady J: Well, I look at the things that I’ve survived in my life. Surviving an HIV diagnosis, immediately followed with an AIDS diagnosis. Being told that my body is not going to make it. Having to get sober. Having to build my life from nothing. Coming from a small rural village and having to make my way as an artist. Being harassed to the point where I couldn’t study and had to go out in the world without a degree. All these things combined. Hollywood is nothing compared to that. It’s a walk in the park and I have to remind myself of that. Those life experiences prepared me for the difficulties that lie within Hollywood.

It’s easy to get lost in the madness of it all, but I have to remind myself what I’m here for. I remember that I am here to be an artist, to create, to not get caught up in the drama. There will always be drama in every workplace that we’re in if we focus on that. But I learned survival from being face to face with death. That’s not something you can learn in a course and it’s not something that you can read in a book. And so I listen to that more than I listen to anything else. I stay close to my humanity by staying close with people in my community.

It can be disillusioning but only if I take my eye off of the goal and the goal for me is to stay in the room and to survive and to get these stories out there. I know it’s going to be better for me to be in these rooms than for me to not be in these rooms. So I just stay focused on the work.

Our Lady J is performing at Joe’s Pub in NYC tomorrow night and at The Wallis Theater in LA on December 7th. 

Spend Your Easter Weekend With the 90s Fever Dream That Is the Indigo Girls-Led ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’

During that first messy, lonely, scrolling and sourdough pandemic spring, I spent a lot of time trying to recreate rituals. When I was too anxious and exhausted to prepare for Passover, my wife lovingly gathered the components for a seder plate, orange and all, which we proudly displayed on the back-to-back Zoom seders (we did use Wheat Thins in lieu of matzah, which, given the circumstances at the time, was a pretty acceptable bread of affliction substitute). I used hot glue and an old shoebox to build a fourth-grade diorama of the supporters section for my local soccer team for a virtual tailgate. We even shipped Superfight cards to a friend in Denver to keep game night alive.

And then, there was Musical Mondays. For the uninitiated, Musical Mondays is exactly what it says on the tin — mainstay Chicago gay bar Sidetrack hosts an evening where they play showtunes and everyone sings along. Depending on how much of a theatre kid you were/are, it is plumbing the depths of cringe or it is the best night of the week, or both. So every Monday night for those first couple of months, I would crack open a beer and livestream a video playlist of showtunes, Glee clips and the like for whoever wanted to join and scream-sing together-apart in our respective homes.

It was this ritual, searching for clips to play every week for my virtual guests, that I first came across Jesus Christ Superstar: A Resurrection, a 90s fever dream reimagining of the Andrew Lloyd Webber rock opera starring the Indigo Girls, with Amy Ray assuming the titular role, Emily Saliers as Mary Magdalene and a host of other Atlanta musicians filling out the cast. It hooked me from the opening staging — that chugging rock guitar, the Pure Moods candelabra in the background, the of-a-specific-time aesthetics and choreography (“The Temple” includes inflatable sex dolls being tossed through the air like beach balls) that makes the whole thing feel like a pile of “Keep Austin Weird” t-shirts gained sentience.

It seemed at first silly and earnest with the festival dancing and the ensemble member riding a unicycle on stage, and silliness and earnestness alone would have been enough to make me fall in love during that dreary, heavy spring. We need more of both of those things, still. But in addition to the comfort of watching a live performance then, any live performance, even one from more than 20 years prior, there is so much about this zany project that resonates — the unabashed queerness, of course, but also the joy of watching a community of creative people who love each other coming together to celebrate a work they love and make it their own, the sincere love of the source material, and the comfort of losing yourself in time for a couple hours and letting Emily Saliers’ “Everything’s Alright” lull you into a state of calm.

It’s the perfect comforting, nostalgic queer Easter weekend watch, and thankfully, the good Samaritans at Indigo Girls fan archive lifeblood.net have put the whole thing on YouTube, for your viewing pleasure.

Jesus Christ Superstar: A Resurrection fits into the Indigo Girls continuum in a number of ways — Amy Ray talks a lot about growing up in the church (she says now she’s a “pagan who has a relationship with the historical Jesus,” according to a November 2022 interview with The Bitter Southerner), her music and lyrics often reflect those themes and her most recent album includes gospel influences.

Throughout their 40-year run together, the Indigo Girls have used their music and platform as a conduit for materially supporting causes they believe in, from co-founding Honor the Earth with Winona LaDuke to support indigenous-led environmental activism to a recent performance in Jacksonville, Fla., benefiting JASMYN, an organization serving queer and trans youth. The Jesus Christ Superstar project fits into this continuum — the performances raised funds for grassroots anti-gun violence organizations in each city. (Ray even told the Seattle Times that the gun control advocacy was more controversial to audiences in Texas and Georgia than the fact that Jesus was being played by a lesbian.)

The recording found on YouTube comes from the March 1995 benefit show at South By Southwest in Austin, Texas, a performance that had only two days of rehearsals. There are times where that shows, where things feel too frenetic and rushed and vocals are out-of-sync with the music. (If a constantly-moving, shaky camera will make you motion sick, I would track down the double album instead of watching.)

Amy Ray plays Jesus as reluctant, burnt-out savior (is this very millennial of me to be talking about Jesus having burnout?) and as righteous firebrand, at times thoughtful and subtle and at times bring-the-house-down fierce. Emily Saliers plays Mary Magdalene with a gentleness and warmth, a voice like a lap you can crawl into and doze off. The first number I watched in full from this production was her rendition of “Everything’s Alright,” which, backed with flute and dreamy blues guitar, is a temporary balm in an uncertain, messy world. Her “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” also slaps (as an aside, I appreciate the show’s approach to keeping the original pronouns, except in “This Jesus Must Die,” where the cast uses both ‘her’ and ‘one man’ to refer to Jesus — unclear if this is intentional, but honestly, here for it).

Aesthetically, this show is incredible. Typically in productions of Jesus Christ Superstar, Jesus is instantly recognizable — the golden lighting, the white robe, the complicated balance of trying to show rock-star savior and human man in one person. When we get our first glimpse of Ray, she approaches in the regular garb of the mid-90s — a peace-sign t-shirt, one-strap-off overalls, and, incredibly, a tool belt, which a friend had to point out to me had to do with Jesus being a carpenter and not, as I assumed, a lesbian who can confidently take on any DIY and navigate the aisles of Lowe’s. Kelly Hogan plays Simon the Zealot butter-smooth as a smoking, slick-haired power dyke.

The Pharisees are even wilder — one is dressed in a full-on Leigh Bowery fantasy, while Benjamin’s Caiaphas skulks around the stage like a gothic prince. Mike Mantione, as Annas in Party City nun getup with white pancake makeup and a thick cigar, feels more Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence than one of the show’s core antagonists. In fact, much of the attire, with disciples sporting kilts and Viking hats and feather boas, with Amy donning the most 90s shirt imaginable with a bold Mother Mary print on it in the Last Supper scene, feels, if not outright drag, then at least loose and playful with gender presentation in a way that I wish didn’t feel as refreshing and subversive as it does in 2023, but here we are. (It’s also worth noting that Benjamin regularly performed in drag as his alter ego Opal Foxx before his untimely passing in 1999, and I am grateful to this production for introducing me to another weird, wonderful queer musician who was taken too soon.)

There are moments in this production that feel simultaneously dripping with sincerity and frozen in time and fitting in right now. “Hosanna” feels like a raucous, irreverent protest, with the Feed and Seed Marching Abominables serving as movement music. The signs the crowd waves are corny as hell (“I BRAKE FOR JESUS,” “IT’S A JESUS THANG”), but Caiaphas and Jesus trading barbs through megaphones heightens the tension in a way anyone who has taken to the streets in the last couple decades will recognize (although, unfortunately, the sound quality from this choice is abysmal). The chorus channels the same energy, earnest and deeply powerful, as Midwestern theater kids belting “La Vie Boheme” in a Denny’s after a late-night tech rehearsal. I feel like Andrew Lloyd Webber would absolutely hate this take on his work, and it makes me love it more.

The beginning of “Gethsemane (I Only Want to Say)” is quietly devastating, when Ray looks out at her apostles, all passed out, pleading for companionship, for a moment of solidarity: “Will no one stay awake with me? Peter, John, James? Will none of you wait with me?” This moment felt particularly raw rewatching in March of 2023, in the midst of an onslaught of legislative and stochastic attacks on queer and trans people, in the wake of so many interconnected and head-spinning attacks on marginalized people trying to live their lives. It is the desperate plea for the ones we love to show up for us, the smoldering heartbreak when these pleas are met with more silence.

We all turn to art to make meaning of the world, to feel seen and understood, even by a decades-old, grainy VHS recording of a lesbian folk icon playing Christ. I hope that when I watch this again inevitably next Easter, I find fewer upsetting parallels to a gloomy political moment and more silly, earnest love. Until then, I hope you’ll spend some time with it and find some comfort and pleasure in it, whether in the goofy nostalgia of the fashion, the cozy familiarity of the musical numbers, the righteous ferocity of Amy Ray’s Jesus or the tenderness of Emily Saliers’s Mary Magdalene. And may this spring bring you joy, peace and renewal, whatever that looks like for you.

16 of the Gayest Musical Theatre Songs That Aren’t Actually Queer

Over the holiday break, instead of listening to nothing but Christmas music, I decided to mix in some showtunes to keep things fresh. I’ve been a musical theatre nerd my entire life; my Gram passed it down to my mom, who passed it down to me. I listen to everything from oldies like Cole Porter to newer shows like the Max Martin musical, & Juliet. And the thing that I noticed is how many songs just have this undercurrent of queerness running through them.

In the last 40 years, we’ve gotten musicals that are explicitly queer, like La Cage Aux Folles, Fun Home, and The Prom, musicals have always had queer people at the helm and behind the scenes. When I think about songs that are written for not queer characters but should be, here are a small sampling. Honestly, I could have added more Sondheim, but I had to stop myself.

I’m Still Here – Follies

There’s something about a song of survival that really screams “queer” to me. The character is a middle-aged actress who has held just about every entertainment job, as you hear in the song. The best version is sung by Elaine Stritch. Here’s a video of her singing it at Sondheim’s 80th birthday celebration.

The Rum Tum Tugger – Cats

The Rum Tum Tugger is a pansexual icon, I don’t make the rules. This song proves my point, but only if you forget the movie ever existed. “He will do as he do do, and there’s no doing anything about it.”

Don’t Rain on My Parade – Funny Girl

You can’t get much more queer than a song originally sung by Barbra Streisand. It’s loud, boisterous, and full of zeal. It screams drag brunch.

For Good – Wicked

I didn’t think of this one, but once my partner suggested it, I knew she was right. This song is about a relationship that had an impact on you and made you different in a good way. I can see it being sung on dyke night at the piano bar for sure.

Magic to Do – Pippin

This musical is weird af, but this song has just the right amount of musical theatre pizazz and a buzzy 1970s style. As soon as it starts, you instantly break out into jazz hands.

Ladies Who Lunch – Company

If you don’t think the lyric “Does anyone still wear a hat” is queer, I don’t know what to do with you. IT IS.

Nobody’s Side – Chess

Nothing says “queer but actually straight” more than something created by any member of Swedish pop group ABBA. Chess has music and lyrics by the two male members of the group. This song is all sorts of 80s queer, especially the music video featuring Elaine Paige.

Loving You – Passion

Yet another Sondheim ditty. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a queer woman who has the lyrics “Loving you is not a choice, it’s who I am” written in a notebook or on an online dating profile.

Maybe This Time – Cabaret

I didn’t think of this song as queer until I saw Emily Hampshire sing it in the Cabaret episode of Schitt’s Creek. A woman on the precipice of something who believes that “maybe this time I’ll win”? Gay.

Waving Through a Window – Dear Evan Hansen

Being an outsider is a feeling queers know all too well. This is the ultimate contemporary musical theatre song about being an outsider.

The Phantom of the Opera – The Phantom of the Opera

An 80s synth and that epic opera high note? Say less. It’s just really fucking gay.

Empty Chairs at Empty Tables – Les Miserables

In the musical, Marius sings this song after all his friends are killed in battle. If you relate it to the time when the musical was released, AIDS was ravaging the LGBTQ community. I don’t think the parallels are intentional, but now I can’t unthink it.

Bosom Buddies – Mame

Queer women love Bea Arthur and Angela Lansbury. As the queer best friend who often tells the truth, this song hits home.

Monster – Frozen

A lot of people want Elsa to be queer, and I am convinced that she absolutely is based on this song from the stage musical (and the songs she sings in Frozen 2 but that’s a whole different story.)

Send in the Clowns – A Little Night Music

Longing for the person you once had? Pining for the love that used to be? Gay.

The Telephone Hour – Bye Bye Birdie

No one loves gossip more than the queers. A whole story gossiping about your straight bestie who is now dating some dude? We love to see it.

Take a listen to all of the songs on this list:

A Big, Black and Queer-Ass Broadway Show Is Closing, “A Strange Loop” Filled My Nerd Heart

“How many minutes ‘til the end of intermission?”

With those words, you’re thrust into the world of the musical A Strange Loop. Written by Michael R. Jackson, it’s about Usher (played by Jaquel Spivey), a fat, queer Black playwright writing a musical about a fat, queer Black playwright, writing a musical about…you get the point. The name comes from an actual scientific concept, but also a Liz Phair song. Because the whole show takes place in Usher’s head, the other actors play Thoughts 1-6, who act out not only his thoughts, but the people in his life, including his family (who he has named after characters from “The Lion King,” the show where he works as an usher.)

After winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2020, A Strange Loop opened on Broadway on April 26, 2022 after beginning previews on my birthday, April 14. This year, it won Best Musical and Best Book of a Musical at the Tony Awards, and they were so deserved. After reading about the show when it first opened, I knew I had to see it during our family trip to New York City this summer. (I was smart and bought tickets the week before the Tony’s because I knew once it won, they’d be impossible to get.) It was announced this week that the show would be closing in January 2023. It is incredibly rare for a show that won the biggest Tony of the night to close within the year after winning, but given the state of Broadway right now (I mean, “Phantom of the Opera” is closing in February after 36 YEARS) then I can’t say it’s a total surprise. Even “Fun Home”, which is the only other explicitly queer Best Musical winner in recent history, will have played more shows at closing. The people who have wanted to see A Strange Loop probably already have, and the people who need to see the show either don’t live in NYC or can’t afford a ticket.

As a Black, queer creative person who loves musical theatre, I have NEVER felt more seen by anything than I have by A Strange Loop. It really is a “big, Black and queer-ass American Broadway show,” and I’m heartbroken that it won’t get to play longer. It’s such an important piece of theatre, not just for Black creatives, but for any creative person who is reconciling with how the intersections of themselves can co-exist within their art.

I have been a musical theatre nerd for as long as I can remember. I come from a line of musical lovers — my grandmother and mother introduced me to musical movies when I was a preschooler, and I knew I wanted to be on Broadway after seeing Beauty and the Beast in third grade. I have never seen a show where the vast majority of characters are Black (no, Hamilton doesn’t count. Not only that, but where the story is rooted in Blackness. Being Black is inherent to Usher’s journey as an artist.

Growing up in a pre-Hamilton theatre world, I was told that my love for musicals was never going to be a viable path for me. I saw it firsthand — I graduated with a degree in theatre studies and spent a year auditioning and getting nowhere before giving up. When I was in my early 20s, I would have done anything for a show like A Strange Loop. Even though I no longer want to perform, seeing a show like this being produced and not only that, revered, I knew I needed to get into that room and see the show.

https://youtu.be/uBawWwmXO50

One of the things that struck me most about the show is Usher’s relationship to his Blackness and how he reconciles that with his “inner white girl” and his alleged feminist beliefs. In the song “Inner White Girl,” he sings about the ability white women have to move about the world however they want to without regard for other people’s perceptions of them or fear of repercussions. The song immediately struck a chord in me — I spent most of my childhood and adolescence being told I was (or wanted to be) a white girl because of what I liked.

There is a freedom he feels when he releases his inner white girl that I deeply understood. Neither Usher nor I want to be white; it’s more about the freedom that being white would afford us in a world that doesn’t want to acknowledge us because we’re Black. Being white allows you to do whatever you want to, and in that way, Blackness is oppressive. As a Black woman, I am not allowed the space to make mistakes or missteps. I only succeed if I’m exceptional. People (especially white people) praise me for being articulate, for being able to write in a manner that makes people think. It’s almost revelatory to them that I can do that. Usher clearly understands and so deftly articulates what that feels like.

Much of Usher’s struggle as the main character feels really similar to my own as a creative. How do you make sure you’re checking all of the boxes? Am I Black enough? Queer enough? Mainstream enough? Who will I offend with this work? Am I alienating white people? Oh god, what if my mother reads this? Will she freak out? Was I too honest? Not honest enough? How the fuck do I put together all these pieces of myself together authentically? You’re always going to disappoint someone, and sometimes you just have to decide who it’s going to be. If I’m being honest, that person is usually you  — it’s easier to shove that part of you down to keep others happy, especially if you want to be successful.

For much of my life I’ve struggled with the concept of feeling like I’m enough. I don’t even know what that means, but thanks to social media discourse, I’m afraid of pissing someone off — of them calling me out because of my perception of Blackness, of queerness, of how I move through the world. There’s an invisible line I’m trying to stay behind to keep myself and my work as safe from criticism as I can. It’s like I want to piss people off, get them talking, but not too much. Because then they can turn on me. So I feel like I’m balancing the delicate tightrope with everything I write.

Usher’s white agent (played by one of The Thoughts, there are no white actors in the show) informs him that because Tyler Perry is too busy building his empire of mediocrity (my words, not his) they need ghostwriters for his plays. Usher’s mother has been begging him to use the MFA his parents paid for to write her a gospel play a la Perry, so this could be the perfect opportunity to shut her up and get her off his back. But to Usher, writing for Perry is the ultimate form of selling out because he is so vehemently opposed to everything Perry stands for.

During my brief stint as an actor, my dad suggested looking into Tyler Perry studios. Thankfully, I gave him such an earful about Perry’s misogynistic and tacky movies that when I became a writer he didn’t dare suggest it again. But the chokehold he has on the Black Boomer community is REAL, and I think Jackson portrays it so perfectly in A Strange Loop.

Later in the musical, we do get to see a gospel play, but it is definitely not the one Usher was writing for Tyler Perry. After a very intense argument with his parents about their lack of support for his art, or their understanding of his queerness, Usher confronts his mother, gospel style. In the song “Precious Little Dream,” he throws back in her face all the ways she’s hurt him, but he’s also forcing her to look at herself through his eyes. The whole song comes from a place of hurt.

It’s hard to listen to your mother talk about how much she loves you but at the same time puts you down for being queer. Usher’s incredibly religious mother repeatedly reminds him that being gay is a sin, and his family is obsessed with him getting AIDS like his dead cousin Darnell. She says the quiet parts out loud: “why couldn’t you bring me home a daughter-in-law and grandbabies?” “Why couldn’t you have been the daughter I always wanted?”

My parents aren’t religious at all and overall very accepting of my queerness. Unlike Usher’s dad, who asks his son if he’s ever been attracted to him because they’re both men, my dad has embraced my queerness in a way I couldn’t have imagined. My mother has been supportive, but is still reserved, especially when it comes to my relationship. She likes my fiancée, but hasn’t gone out of her way to be as enthusiastic about us getting married as I imagine she would be if I had married my son’s father.

During the confrontation, my eyes absolutely got teary seeing Usher tell his mother all of his feelings. I wish I had the kind of strength it takes to confront my mom on what her hangups are about my queerness. I wish I could write a gospel play to show her how her bullshit makes me feel like her acceptance is conditional. Will I? Doubtful, but that’s what therapy is for.

I think by the end of the show, Usher has figured out that there is a way to balance telling your truth and all of the other shit you need to consider when you’re a Black creative. Your perception of your reality isn’t going to be for everyone, and that’s what makes it special. Who cares if your parents are mad? They’ll either get over it, or they won’t. Having one person feel seen by the work is really what it’s about.

I hope Usher knows that he made an impact.

Quiz: Which Horror Musical Are You?

There are few things that get me revved up as much as a horror musical. The dramatics as base, the demand to suspend disbelief as flickering lights by stagehands turn ghosts and haunt, the crescendo in voice, music, and metaphor at the climax, the absolute bonkers concept of sitting in a room with a bunch of people as performers perpetual canon their co-stars to death. I am exhilarated, thrilled, absolutely gobsmacked at how horror musicals have gotten me through this pandemic (as well as tough shit before it) but it makes sense. How else do you make sense of the impossible but with media that demands you believe in it? I bring this quiz to you in the hopes that you get a glimpse of why I love this shit so much and so you can tell my friends to stop hating on it, it’s good shit!

You wake up and start to get ready for your day. Where are you headed off to and what time is it?(Required)
We’re out of the house/apartment/wherever you live, where we going next?(Required)
You run into someone you don’t really remember but remember enough that either you or someone you care about, doesn’t like them. How do you treat them?(Required)
Now that they’re out of your face, what can you finally do?(Required)
Time to wrap up and head home. Where’s home?(Required)
In the house, you decide to pop in some music to go along with your nighttime routine. How are you listening to your music?(Required)
Food put away, dishes washed, and the possible monster in your cellar ignored, it’s time for bed. Where are you sleeping?(Required)
What horror keeps you awake at night?(Required)

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Slow Takes: A Tribute to Zoom Theatre

The story of how I joined theatre is like if the Disney Channel was dark and gay.

I was an artist trapped in a jock’s story, a closeted trans girl who watched art films on weeknights and played organized sports on weekends. I’d done ten years of soccer, eight years of baseball, six years of martial arts, climbed Mount Whitney, and run three half marathons. Entering high school, my plan was to spend the next four years running cross country and track — the two sports with co-ed teams.

I wasn’t shy about my desire to someday make movies, but the arts were not something I saw as a viable extracurricular. It’s funny to think that prepubescent twink thought she was convincing anyone, but I played by my own misguided rules as I attempted male normativity.

Then I got injured.

I listened to my coach instead of the body I barely thought of as my own. I ran too hard, and my legs crumbled. The first six months of high school, I used a wheelchair, and my nerd jock friends — not to be confused with the less obnoxious jock jock clique — bullied me incessantly in a painful expression of ableism, homophobia, and their own insecurities.

During this fraught period of time, I attended one of my high school plays for English class extra credit. It was a production of Much Ado About Nothing, and the students delivered Shakespeare’s words like dogs eating peanut butter. But I didn’t know any better. I was enthralled. With my running career permanently on hold, my friendships lacking, and my suicidal ideation increasing, I decided to join theatre.

The first show I did was the big spring musical — The Wizard of Oz — and it was a nice enough time at a time in my life where nothing was nice. But it was the next show, the last show of the year, that changed everything.

Thornton Wilder’s Our Town is a classic of both American theatre and high school theatre. It’s one of those classics that’s easy to dismiss and easier to adore. I was cast as Wally Webb, and I had a crush I acknowledged on the actress who played my sister and crushes I didn’t acknowledge on the two male leads. These weren’t sexual crushes per say. Instead, I was enraptured with their teenage talent, their adolescent bravado. I watched them in rehearsal while other kids socialized, during the performances I stayed in the wings just to see them work. They became my friends, and I felt anointed by celebrities.

Wally Webb is dead through the last act and sits in a makeshift graveyard. With the same dedication that caused my legs to crumble, I sat there on stage not blinking. I wanted to impress my new friends. When the characters referenced my death, I wanted them to see my empty stare and work off that emotion. I wanted us to act together.

As I played dead, I realized this was the first time in months I felt alive.

Around the time I was falling in love with theatre, I experienced my first heartbreak. No, it wasn’t a romantic heartbreak. It wasn’t even a friend heartbreak. It was the kind of heartbreak that can occur in ninth grade Earth Science — I learned that people knew about climate change in the 1970s.

I was raised in my liberal bubble to believe every decade brought progress. After all, Barack Obama had just been elected president and, while I didn’t know a lot about politics yet, I knew that was good. I had this perception that Al Gore had uncovered climate change when he made An Inconvenient Truth. We’d learned about this man-made problem two years prior, and now the country’s brightest minds were at work to solve it.

When I found out people were discussing climate change for the past four decades, I returned home to my parents full of accusations. I asked my dad why he hadn’t done anything about it. He replied, fairly, “What could I have done?”

I thought about this exchange a decade later sitting in a Broadway theatre watching the buzzy revival of Angels in America. Closeted Mormon Joe Pitt tells his wife Harper that under Reagan, the world is healing. Harper brings up the hole in the ozone layer, and Joe is dismissive. The same conversation in a 1985-set play from 1991 could’ve been happening then about Reagan’s gaudier successor and increasing climate disaster.

Over the past decade, I’d had enough heartbreaks to doubt the world as a whole was inevitably getting better, but my world certainly had. I was no longer in the wings watching a high school play but sitting in a Broadway theatre in New York City, where I’d lived for six years. I was no longer a confused straight boy but a queer woman a year into her transition. And on top of all that, I’d gotten into this show for free.

Before my boobs grew in, old gays gave me theatre tickets like I was their pretentious sugar baby. Okay, it only happened twice, but still. This time, I’d shown up to the theatre hoping to buy a rush ticket to no avail. A gray-haired queen asked if I wanted his extra ticket. He only had one for the first part, Millennium Approaches, but I eagerly said yes. Once in the theatre, good fortune smiled upon me again — we were in the midst of a snow storm, so out of towners must’ve not shown up. An usher asked me if I’d like to move closer and handed me a new ticket to this show and a ticket in the same seat for the evening’s performance of part two, Perestroika. I happily ditched my new boyfriend and spent the whole day watching theatre.

This was even more special because I’d never seen Angels before. I held off reading or watching adaptations of oft-revived plays in hopes of seeing them for the first time on stage. And with this one, my patience had paid off.

Like Our Town, Angels in America is a classic that deserves its praise. Any play that labels itself “a gay fantasia on national themes” is either going to be insufferable or a once-in-a-generation masterpiece, and here we get the latter. Its intersecting characters — both real and fictitious — in the peak of the AIDS crisis exist in a world of tragedy and fantasy and thematic density.

I was so taken with the first part of the play that during the break I went to the old Drama Bookshop and bought the recently released oral history of the show. For me, this experience was one of intellectual stimulation. I wanted to know about the show’s history and meaning more than I felt moved.

Prior Walter is the heart of the play, and in this production he was played by cishet-identified movie star Andrew Garfield. He swished around the stage with a performative femininity and a forced faggotry. I admired Garfield’s capital A acting the same way I admired director Marianne Elliot’s flashy staging — with a cold remove.

But, hey, that’s Broadway for you.

During the first year of my transition, a friend from college asked if I’d be interested in directing a play he wrote. After years of working for Sleep No More, he’d taken it upon himself to write his own immersive play, and he wanted to use it to launch an immersive company. He’d hoped to find a director with more professional experience — I’d only done one self-produced professional show — but he didn’t have a lot of money. So I ended up with the gig.

At a time when I was still wearing long cotton dresses paired with a receding hairline, I took on the gargantuan task of staging what amounted to six concurrent plays at the Wyckoff House in Brooklyn. Looking back now, I’m astounded by the confidence I had to leave my house let alone leave my house and walk into a rehearsal room.

But just like theatre had saved my life during my first puberty, it was here to provide comfort for my second. Or, at least, a distraction. The play I was working on had nothing to do with transness and no explicit queerness beyond the camp and sexual tension the actors and I infused into it. It was a genre piece about faith and family in the 17th century, and it was a relief to remove myself from my world and enter this semi-fictional one of priests and farming.

By this point, my career goals had started to shift. Years of seeing professional theatre had changed me and remaining in that space had become a greater priority. I still wanted to make movies and television someday, but I wanted to start with theatre like a transsexual Elia Kazan — minus the whole ratting on communists thing.

While I was grateful for the work on my immersive show, I did wonder about my place in the theatre world at large. I had a meeting with a cis woman producer who wanted some free consulting, and she cried when I explained the harm that can be caused by cis actors playing trans parts. She was in the process of mounting a show on Broadway and wanted a trans blessing more than trans advice. According to Facebook, she quit theatre and works in finance now.

When I wasn’t getting into free shows off my good looks and youth, I was getting into free shows off my Juilliard grad girlfriend and her generous alumni perks.

Transgenders were in — or so I was told — and now we were getting our very own play at a respected Off-Broadway theatre. It was written by a white cis gay man, but the cast was full of trans people. My girlfriend and I eagerly accepted our comps and I was sorely disappointed. The cast was phenomenal, but the show didn’t connect with me. And I wasn’t confident enough in my transness yet not to spiral.

For some reason, I ignored the play’s author and decided that if I couldn’t connect with the hot new trans play then I would never connect with other trans people. Maybe I wasn’t even trans and was fooling everyone. I didn’t yet understand that our art was rarely really ours.

A week later, still in that headspace, I went with my girlfriend to a reading of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s Wig Out. It was part of an arts festival her former classmate had organized in a small high school auditorium.

It was just a reading, but it was one of the best plays I’ve ever seen. The text itself is brilliant, and the cast was wonderful. Even though the play takes place in ballroom and I am white and not in ballroom, the play’s discussions of gender and sexuality resonated deep within me. The experience I’d hoped to have at the buzzy Off-Broadway show was achieved at this self-produced reading.

I have had powerful artistic experiences with every scope of theatre, but watching these actors without costumes and props, folded scripts on stands, embody these characters, I was reminded why theatre felt like my home.

It doesn’t require the resources often kept from us — it just requires community.

Soon enough, all theatre was readings.

After a year in LA, working in television and disconnected from the stage, the pandemic brought theatre to me. It no longer mattered if you lived in New York, LA, or the middle of nowhere — if you had an internet connection, the access was the same.

Like in high school and during my early transition, I relied on theatre to cope with an impossibly changing world. I greedily watched all two and a half hours of the Sondheim 90th Birthday Celebration and all three and a half hours of the Rosie O’Donnell Actors Fund Fundraiser. Theatre icons in casual dress performed in their living rooms, desperate for the attention they rarely lacked and generous with their talents I was happy to enjoy. I watched Zoom readings of friends’ plays and participated in Zoom readings of famous scripts. While theatre was struggling to survive, I was reminded why it would never die.

Autostraddle’s own Ari Monts started a play reading group and, unlike other forms of virtual theatre, these meetings had no audience. It was just a group of stage-loving queers getting together to read and discuss theatre. The first play we read was Tony Kushner’s The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures. It was a fitting choice since the last play I’d seen pre-pandemic was Kushner’s A Bright Room Called Day.

The play was good, if not great, but the experience was a balm for the moment. Even more than the star-studded Zoom events and personal performances, this low-key gathering was what I looked forward to most.

We finished the play a couple months into the pandemic, but toward the end of 2020, Ari suggested we do another Kushner play — his Pulitzer-winning masterpiece. The Foundation for AIDS Research had just done their own virtual “Scenes from Angels in America” benefit, and watching it had reminded Ari of the play’s relevance.

Since our first round of reading, Zoom fatigue had set in. With the first play, we had actors for every part. But for Angels, there were only four of us who showed up consistently. It didn’t matter. We just recast every scene to fill in the gaps. Except I always played Prior.

When Andrew Garfield as Prior delivered the play’s final monologue to me in 2018, I had to fight a reply.

“This disease will be the end of many of us, but not nearly all, and the dead will be commemorated and will struggle on with the living, and we are not going away. We won’t die secret deaths anymore. The world only spins forward. We will be citizens. The time has come.”

Us. We. We. We. I had to resist the urge to shout, “You are not us. You are not we.”

Maybe that’s why I wanted to play Prior, a character written for out gay actor Stephen Spinella but since portrayed on-screen and in the buzziest revival by straight men. As a trans woman, a casual all-trans reading was probably the only chance I’d have to play him. And as we read, I realized why I felt so protective of this fictional prophet.

Angels wasn’t relevant to our moment because of some over-simplified comparison between the AIDS crisis and Covid. It was relevant because the play is about choosing to live when surrounded by death. It’s about being abandoned by God and deciding to have faith in one another instead.

During the play’s final act, the Angel warns Prior against his desire to live. “Life is a habit with you,” she says. “You have not seen what is to come: We have: What will the grim Unfolding of these Latter Days bring That you or any Being should wish to endure them?” She goes on and on in her angel speak.

Prior replies, “But still. Still.” He discusses the addiction to being alive, the desire to live past hope. He talks about how he’s lived through terrible times and others have lived through worse. But still. Still. “If I can find hope anywhere,” he says. “That’s it, that’s the best I can do.”

And in this moment, that’s what we were doing. A small group of trans people choosing to stay alive when the world wants us dead discriminately and indiscriminately. I thought Angels in America was just an intellectual achievement — I was wrong. It took this intimate setting, so far removed from my theatrical ambitions, to feel the play’s emotions.

Over the span of three months, four people in a Zoom room wildly miscast for our parts brought this work to life. We brought it back to its urgent roots and revealed new layers within.

If that’s not theatre, I’m not sure what is.

My official return to theatre occurred with Sondheim’s Assassins, another play about the futility of America.

Living in Los Angeles, I missed the Off-Broadway revival starring Steven Pasquale and Tavi Gevinson that occurred earlier this year. Instead, I bought a last minute ticket to see it at the David Henry Hwang Theater downtown. Los Angeles may have a reputation for being devoid of theatre but East West Players was founded in 1965 and has premiered more than 228 plays and musicals. You just have to know where to look. This all-Asian production of Assassins may not have been how the show was intended, but I’m so glad it was how I first experienced it.

Assassins posits that any kid cannot grow up to be President — but any kid can grow up to shoot the President. This production emphasized the fallacy in that suggestion. Maybe any kid can, but most types of kids haven’t. Whether justified or unjustified, successful or unsuccessful, most of the real-life assassins looked quite the same.

There are inequities in this country — whether we’re discussing politicians, assassins, or the theatre. Artists of all backgrounds deserve resources and celebration. But the pandemic reminded me why I fell in love with theatre in the first place. It wasn’t in a Broadway audience. It was in a school play as a depressed kid desperate for community.

I spent my first year in LA, complaining about how I missed theatre instead of discovering East West Players and the other companies creating interesting work in my city. No matter where you are, theatre is available to you. Whether it’s professional theatre, community theatre, high school theatre, or a Zoom room.

The final line of Angels in America is The Great Work Begins. It’s the work of activism, the work of community, the work of survival. It’s the work of theatre.

Slow Takes is a series of “belated” reviews by Drew Gregory of queer art released last year that Autostraddle didn’t cover.

It’s Your Anniversary: Rent Was My First Class On Anti-Capitalism

When I first came out to my parents, my dad — an Asian physician and a man of few words — looked at me hard and said, “I saw so many HIV/AIDS patients when I did my residency, it was devastating. We really tried to help as many people as we could.” Despite the emotional distance of his response, I knew this was his way of showing support and a hazy memory began trickling in — I realized this interaction had happened once before.

Thirteen-year-old me was (and still is) infatuated with musicals. My parents would take me to every show that came through our small town, but that usually wasn’t very many, so I often turned to any film adaptations I could get my hands on. I remember watching TV one day and stumbling upon the film adaptation of Rent, a show undoubtedly inappropriate for me, a prepubescent suburban Midwestern Catholic girl. Within the first 10 minutes of the film, I could already tell it was rated PG-13, and I was in danger of getting in trouble. As I saw my dad walk into the room from the corner of my eye, my heart beat out of my chest. Instead of reprimanding me, he casually walked over to me and started talking about his experience as a resident physician during the HIV/AIDS crisis. “It’s good for you to know this stuff,” he told me. When he left the room I was stunned, not only because I wasn’t in trouble, but because I soon realized that this would be my first encounter with queerness and, moreover, the beginnings of my anti-capitalist education.

The story of Rent follows eight friends in New York City living La Vie Bohème during the AIDS epidemic, told through the perspective of Mark, a young aspiring fuck-the-system filmmaker determined to document “real life.” As we meet each character, it becomes increasingly clear that their relationships will soon be tested by homophobia, transphobia, gentrification, and ultimately, a fatal disease. If you’ve heard of Rent, you likely know the song “Seasons of Love” or even better, the ultimate queer woman anthem “Take me or Leave Me” — which also happens to be my go-to karaoke song.

Idina Menzel stands at the bottom of the stairs in a tank top with a dragon on it and a glimmer of attitude in her eye.

In the song “What You Own”, Mark and Roger complain about the weight of trying to flourish as an artist under the “Rise & Grind” culture. They sing:

Don’t breathe too deep
Don’t think all-day
Dive into work
Drive the other way
That drip of hurt
That pint of shame
Goes away
Just play the game

The chorus repeats, “When you’re living in America at the end of the millennium you are what you own” — Yikes. As a young teenager, I didn’t really know what it was like to truly have nothing to my name, but I aptly understood shouldering the pressure of ceaseless perfectionism, only to be let down time after time. I found it frustrating that no one felt the burning desire to question why they were expected to do something, or why something needed to be done a certain way. Was anyone else questioning “The Game?” Was anyone else paying attention? Was anyone else feeling hurt, trapped, and closeted?

If it’s not clear already, I was born into a sheltered and conservative family. Although our Asian roots gave us a fast pass to being tokenized in quite literally every space, I still was growing up in a white and heteronormative Ohio town. I was constantly confused about who I was and how the world functioned. Every day, I noticed the paradoxes and double standards of the world around me and how these bled into race, sex, class, religion, and our social norms. I later came to understand this as the foundation of capitalism, and I couldn’t stand it.

By the time I finished the movie I really began to see myself represented in the outspoken, quirky, nurturing characters on screen. For the first time in my 13-year-old life, I felt like someone out there really understood my rebellious, angsty feelings of wanting to scream at the world “I’m not your f*cking machine!!!“ I was quickly learning that skills like taking the time to express myself, make art, nurture my connections, and explore my identity weren’t human rights — they were things people had to fight for. Instead of being the writer/musician/rockstar I had always dreamed of being, I was told to do better in science and math so I could become a doctor. It goes without saying that the consequences of capitalism are so much greater than my experience as a preteen, but seeing this musical made me cognizant of why the world seemed to glorify my overworking, competitive, straight, white peers.

One of my favorite songs from Rent is a toast to everything anti-capitalist. An ode to expression in its multitudes — art, histrionic emotions, sex and kink — all while cultivating a sense of community over grief and loss. I slowly began to adopt what I heard in the “La Vie Bohème” lyrics as my own personal “Anti-capitalist 101” lesson:

“To days of inspiration
Playing hooky
Making something out of nothing
The need to express
To communicate
To going against the grain
Going insane
Going mad
To loving tension, no pension
To more than one dimension
To starving for attention
Hating convention
Hating pretension…”

I was surely going insane and going mad as a hormonal preteen, but I was raised to avoid emoting or expressing my individualism. At a young age, I was considered shy, but what I felt deep down was silenced. I already understood the dynamic between the oppressor and the oppressed. I could relate to these friends on the screen who were dancing on tables and making music in protest of social and economic systems because I too understood the feeling of being trapped in an imbalanced power dynamic.

This January marks the 26th anniversary of Rent’s first stage production, written by Jonathon Larson and directed by Michael Grief at the New York Theater Workshop. Hours after the final dress rehearsal, Larson was found dead of an aortic aneurysm, making this first official production devastatingly memorable. Some of the original cast included Anthony Rapp, Taye Diggs, and Idina Menzel who would all reprise their roles when the film was later adapted, making it accessible for people like me to finally see. Its punchy soul was put on the screen under the direction of Chris Columbus with the screenplay adaptation by Stephen Chbosky.

When I finally got to see a stage production of Rent a few years later (with a significantly better understanding of the HIV/AIDS crisis and the effects of gentrification) I felt even more galvanized by the queer anti-capitalist characters I had come to know so well. I felt seen in the small choices I made to work towards an anti-capitalist future. I wore my heart on my sleeve, I started to speak up for myself, I auditioned for musicals and I attempted to defend my right to make slow, cautious, meaningful decisions. Now, having experienced the effects of capitalism in quite literally everything I do, I often revisit the film (and hopefully a theater production post-COVID) to remind myself that a life worth living is abundant with love, mess, grief, friendship — and art.

Meet Lauren Patten and Sonya Tayeh, the Queer Artists Ushering a Brighter Future for Broadway

All image credits to Matthew Murphy.

Every once in the rarest while, an artist shows up on Broadway in possession of such exceptional talent — audiences start thinking about their future not in years but decades. Jagged Little Pill’s Lauren Patten and Moulin Rouge! The Musical’s Sonya Tayeh are such talents currently in the running for their first Tonys.

Lauren Patten delivers a transcendent Tony and Grammy-nominated performance in the explosive musical featuring Alanis Morissette’s catalogue. She plays Jo, a teenage lesbian exploring masculine gender presentation and the aftermath of heartbreak. She imbues Jo’s fiery spirit with heart-rending fragility, painting a teenage portrait so vivid it feels created almost by memory.

Not just because of her talents as an actress and singer but for the way her performance encapsulates the social and cultural history of “You Oughta Know” with such richness and truth that adds a new layer of meaning with lyrics queered for the show. Her performance is a gift to queer people and an ode to sustenance and healing. She turns the mirror back to us, crystalizing kinship with audience members who identify with Jo’s experiences.

A still of the show Jagged Little Pill in which the cast is frozen dancing against red lights shinning on their faces.

In Moulin Rouge! The Musical, a stage adaptation of the 2001 film, Sonya Tayeh’s extravagant, multigenre choreography, is a dare for performers and audiences alike to share the truths of who they really are. It’s a call to understand that for two and a half hours, we all get the same shot at being carefree, to choose freedom and play over fear. It makes the word celebration, which at times seems frivolous, suddenly seem more necessary than one might have imagined.

“I try to celebrate the art of play in a room. Moulin Rouge! has such excess and such unapologetic energy. I got on board to choreograph the show because dance drives the story, and that’s the Broadway show I want to see,” says Tayeh.

“Dancing was how I was most comfortable with myself and felt the safest. I really can’t live without being in motion. Putting bodies in motion. That’s how I communicate with clarity, with the idea of using physicality as a map… feelings and emotions… and seeing where that map takes me. I get so much solace from it.”

A still from the play Moulin Rouge, where the cast is in various fancy french lingerie and are dancing in front of a plain brick wall

Queer representation is thankfully not a rarity in theater, but that pride has been reserved for queer men. Fun Home, The Prom, and Head Over Heels make the list of exceptions, but who says we should get so few and many of them short-lived? Patten and Tayeh’s Tony nominations signal that audiences and industry leaders are finally recognizing the work of queer artists that we need in order to achieve a radical queer vision of Broadway once performances resume but most importantly, the real change they can affect offstage.

Says Tayeh, “I want to generate electricity from the theater from the stage to the audience at a moment where we need to celebrate otherness, inclusivity, and righteous bohemian life, which means freedom for all. Moulin Rouge! celebrates love with people of all shapes, sizes, and colors, as it should be.”

Patten admits that as a queer performer, playing a queer character like Jo comes with a lot of pressure. Though she’s had principal roles on Broadway before, most notably Fun Home, Jagged Little Pill marks her most high-profile show to date.

“Everybody is desperate to see themselves because we don’t have that much representation, but any one person can’t represent every single person who shares their identity. I’m so happy to be able to represent even one specific person’s experience. But it’s also complicated.”

She has been with the production for approximately three years, through workshops, readings, and an out-of-town run in Cambridge, MA, so she’s acutely aware of the impact it has on audiences. “I love to be able to interact with folks and talk to them about their experience and what the show means to them. Sometimes those can be some of the most joyous and meaningful moments of my work.”

“The process of working on Jagged Little Pill has been very comforting,” Patten continues, “working on something that has something to say about this time that has been so fraught. To have a space and go to work where everybody has something to say about it, and we couldn’t leave that at the door. It was really helpful.”

A close up of the actor Lauren Patten in a Burgundy red beanie cap and a dark grey t shirt. Her hand is over her head and she stares directly into the camera.

Sitting in the reality of our feelings isn’t only a recurring theme in Jagged Little Pill but throughout this pandemic. Rather than focusing on personal and professional losses and loss of exposure that Broadway shows bring, Patten and Tayeh see this pause as an opportunity to fully invest their time and energy in ensuring that they, along with the rest of America, don’t just grieve but learn and be of service.

I am curious, of course, about what Lauren Patten has discovered about herself as an artist during this pandemic, and she’s not willing to forget once Broadway resumes performances. She is thoughtful for a moment.

“Taking a look at an institution and how it still needs to grow and change is never easy, but I do feel the energy of the community that wants the institution to respond to this moment and wants there to be change within the institution. There’s so much energy passion behind that,” she says adding that she feels hopeful that as a community of artists they can lead that charge, perhaps in a different way than other institutions might.

Patten’s also reflective of the ways the last year has impacted communities of color disproportionately and often violently. Over the course of our conversation, she repeatedly states that she does not speak for people of color. But she won’t be leaving us to fight for our freedom alone.

“The danger in talking about this as a white person is I can come across as like, ‘Yeah, well, I’ve learned so, you know, now I’m the good white person.’ It’s not that at all. I’m still very much on the same plane as anybody. I’ve made a commitment to continuing to learn into showing up differently in spaces. That can’t go away for me and I hope that that’s happened for enough people that we can make a change in the spaces and in the institutions.”

In the context of the pandemic and the current wave of resistance against white supremacy, Sonya Tayeh’s work is a reminder that the task of imagining a different world and a more accessible and inclusive Broadway exceeds a lifetime. To speak with her is to remember that the process of healing is infinite.

“The patterns don’t work, they divide. They cause friction and separation. The further away we go, the less we will understand each other.”

As a Palestinian, Lebanese, Muslim, and queer artist, Tayeh wants to make sure that she has a reflection in the room, in a very tangible way that also includes ignoring gender constraints when hiring associates for her projects, including Moulin Rouge!: “Why are we so focused on these labels, when you do that, you pull half a page off the list of possibilities. What are you afraid of?”

This is why she remains inspired by the up-and-coming queer and POC artists making names for themselves, a bold new class of dancers and choreographers whom she frequently collaborates with and mentors.

In a still form the play Moulin Rouge two actors hold each other in an embrace against windows that shine the word "L'amour" in red neon.

From an outsider’s perspective, it’s easy to only think of Lauren Patten and Sonya Tayeh’s accolades and accomplishments. But what brought them to this apex was their humanity, honesty, empathy, and ability to empower those around them to love themselves and speak their truth. It’s Patten and Tayeh’s tenacity that solidifies them as formidable queer artists eager to shift long-held perceptions that, quite frankly, have no place on Broadway.

In late 2019, before we all entered lockdown, I saw Patten in Jagged Little Pill. Interviewing her now, she leaves me with a question that stays with me long after speaking with her, much like the staying power of her presence in the show, except this one doesn’t have me stifling sobs. Instead, she asks how do we bring that kind of experience that we have in the theater — as connection and hope and empathy — into our lives, “because it has to be there too.”

That unwavering belief that Sonya Tayeh and Lauren Patten have in themselves, and the swings they’re taking in an effort to broaden our perspective of what theater can do, is galvanizing. They’re proving that regardless of whatever the future of Broadway or the Tony Awards holds, to make Broadway truly inclusive for marginalized people like us, you don’t ask for permission and don’t seek forgiveness — you have to simply exist.

Shakina Nayfack on Her New Audible Play, NBC’s “Connecting…,” and Forming Trans Community Through Art

I first saw Shakina Nayfack on Difficult People and in YouTube clips of her one-woman show Manifest Pussy. As a performer and a writer, Shakina has always pushed the boundaries of respectability — finding humor and thoughtfulness within that rebellion.

Her play Chonburi International Hotel & Butterfly Club was just released on Audible as part of the virtual Williamstown Festival with a star-studded trans cast including Shakina, Angelica Ross, Ivory Aquino, and Kate Bornstein. The play follows a group of trans women staying at the same hotel in Thailand while awaiting or recovering from gender confirmation surgery and it provides a window into conversations among trans women we so rarely get to hear. I talked to Shakina about the play, her role on NBC’s Connecting…, and what she feels is missing from trans narratives.

Drew Gregory: Despite quarantine you’ve had an exciting creative year — starring on NBC’s quarantine sitcom Connecting… and now being part of the virtual Williamstown Festival. Do you think these less conventional modes of storytelling driven by the pandemic have more room for trans voices?

Shakina Nayfack: That’s really interesting. It’s totally true that I’ve been blessed in this moment with opportunity when a lot of my colleagues haven’t been. I’m really aware of that and it influences how I feel about all of my work. But it’s gratifying to me that our call for representation has been upheld even in this transition into alternative media that we’ve been forced to embrace. Because oftentimes people say they just didn’t know how to find trans people or they just didn’t know where to go for diverse writers in their writers room and things like that. But I think the long term work we’ve been doing to achieve better representation managed to crest the tide as the wave broke into this new media frenzy. And you need the support of institutions, right? It would’ve been really hard to independently produce a play that has nine trans actors even as a radio play. If Audible hadn’t sent their caliber of recording equipment to the entire cast for two weeks of use I don’t know that we would’ve been able to do it.

Drew: It’s interesting to think about that, right? Sometimes changes in media create further exclusion but sometimes they create a mindset of newness and risk-taking in content as well as form.

Shakina: It’s also because there was this massive cultural reckoning that had to do with race during all of this so I think people’s ears were really perked up to the accountability factor of representation. In a way it bums me out that I’ve been wanting to break through the barrier of a network sitcom for years and I finally got to do it but I never left my house. But at the same time it’s nice to see we’re still able to push things forward even when the industry overall is struggling.

Drew: Yeah absolutely. I was lucky enough to see your show Manifest Pussy and like Butterfly Club that also centers around bottom surgery. As a community we talk a lot about cis people’s obsession with genitals, but do you think we’ve now gone in the opposite direction and don’t talk about genitals and surgery enough? Is that part of what you’re pushing back against?

Shakina: Absolutely. I think we all have a job in the revolution. Everyone has a different role. And my role at least for a portion of my life has been about telling this story and creating awareness and community around the experience of bottom surgery and gender confirmation. Part of it is writing for my sisters who never get to hear about this side of the story. But I’m also aware that I’m writing for cis audiences who — as taboo as we’ve made it — still kind of crave a window into understanding this really formative experience of transfemme identity. In some ways for cis audiences I see Manifest Pussy and Butterfly Club as edutainment. I’m throwing them a few bones of facts and things to know. But I’m also calling them to a higher order. Luring them in with the pussy and then challenging them with postcolonial theory.

Drew: (laughs) I know for myself I’ve only learned about surgery from talking to friends. The media that’s out there is very limited and anytime as a trans person you’re trying to learn anything about transness from Google it can be a total nightmare. So it’s interesting that even these things we say are constantly being talked about — like genitalia or transition stories or whatever — it’s like yeah okay but there aren’t a lot of good ones, there aren’t a lot of good conversations out there.

Shakina: Right. I talk about that actually in Manifest Pussy. When I was doing the research I was so turned off and terrified by what I was finding online that I resorted to trans porn to see what a real post-op vagina was capable of enjoying. And of course that’s a very sort of specific performative use of a neovagina. That’s why I was motivated to create Manifest Pussy — to sort of give people another way in, figuratively and literally.

Drew: Yeah totally.

Shakina: I’m so glad that you got to see it!

Drew: Me too! I’d seen part of it on YouTube early in transitioning so I was really happy to see it live last year.

Shakina: Oh at the Rockwell! They had that big light up cross on the ceiling. I loved that.

Drew: It was great. So I would say — and I think you even say this in your work — that you definitely have a rebellious streak.

Shakina: (laugh)

Drew: You’re definitely pushing back against certain conventional trans narratives. And I think I feel a similar desire to push back against the ways cis people talk about certain things or what cis people expect of me. But sometimes I wonder if that’s just a different way of centering cis people — they expect me to say this so I’m going to say this instead. I’m always trying to find a balance so the rebellion doesn’t become the point. Do you have any thoughts about that?

Shakina: I spent a fair number of years in my younger life as a radical youth organizer moving from a really reactionary standpoint. I was really focused on being resistant to all those gazes and expectations. And now I feel like I move from a more decisive place of taking action where I feel like my soul is motivated to express and it just so happens that that commitment to my own authenticity might push back on the respectability politic of the day. But I don’t really feel like I’m being driven to create out of a retaliation in the way that I used to, you know? I still feel like I’m seeing the negative space and seeking to fill it when I think there’s something missing in the narrative. But I’ve also become aware that if you’re constantly on the defensive then you’re really still playing the game of the oppressor.

Drew: Do you think about different projects as having different audiences? When it comes to the work that you’re writing are some parts for a trans audience and and other parts an awareness that cis people will be watching or listening?

Shakina: I think in both Manifest Pussy and Butterfly Club l give cis people a little trans 101 in nuggets. But I’m really conscious about that. The reason why I posted that I needed some trans people to listen to Butterfly Club and engage with me critically was because all the reviewers were cis and they were like obsessed with literally a 25 second moment in the play when the character Jerri played by Bianca Leigh describes for Kina the intricacies of the surgery — like what tissue used to be what tissue and is now something else.

Drew: Wow.

Shakina: It’s literally a 25 second moment that I wrote in as few words as possible! I did the same thing in Manifest Pussy. There’s a moment where I describe how the surgery works and then I take a drink and move on. And it was just so predictable to me that the New York Times said the play is confusing and about too much but in one moment it achieves the specificity it needs to soar.

Drew: Jesus.

Shakina: The specificity of this used to be my ball sack and now it’s my vaginal canal? But I knew that that paragraph would be candy for cis ears. And I don’t knock cis people for having curiosity about how it goes down. If you’ve lived an entire life feeling totally great about your genitals it’s probably hard to imagine wanting to reconfigure them.

Drew: (laughs) Sure.

Shakina: It’s certainly important to let folks know when it’s inappropriate to ask about those things but in a way opening up a parenthetical moment to answer questions gives people a little more knowledge and a little less ignorance and so they make fewer assumptions. That’s all that is.

Drew: Yeah absolutely. I like how the play shows the ways that different generations of trans women have different comfort levels with gender nonconformity and different ideas about what you have to do to be a proper trans woman. Have you faced that a lot? And do you have a lot of older trans women in your life?

Shakina: I have a few elders who I hold very dear who have always been supportive of my journey and the way that I’ve chosen to manifest my gender. But in my early days of coming into myself as a trans woman I experienced a lot of sideways glances and backhanded comments from trans women who jumped through all the hurdles in the decades before me who just had different expectations. And sometimes those people were younger than me. It’s weird how trans generations aren’t always age-based especially now that there are more young people who have been able to be out and socially transitioned longer than adult people who are transitioning later in life. They might be younger in human years but they’re older in trans years. It’s kind of a crazy phenomenon.

Drew: Yeah that’s so interesting. I definitely feel like based on the conversations I have with trans people that second age is more what factors into beliefs and experiences.

Shakina: Right and there were different societal expectations and different experiences based on the time you transitioned. Kate Bornstein talks about her gender confirmation process — she was alone with a bunch of nuns and had to drive home afterwards. The fact that she got to sort of reclaim a kind of sisterhood experience through being in the play that she didn’t get to have in her actual confirmation process was sort of magical.

Drew: Yeah wow. I like how the play shows a sisterhood but also shows some of the growing pains to get to that sisterhood. When you were first coming out, how did you form your community of trans women?

Shakina: I talk about this in Manifest Pussy but soon after I first came out as trans I lost a trans friend to suicide and then had an experience with sexual violence and I sort of reverted back into gay maledom for awhile. I held onto my trans identity but I just sort of lived in the world as an admitted imposter. So during that first period of time I started to forge some trans community but then I retreated back into the mask of maleness.

I didn’t really start to develop the community I have now until I began performing and telling my story. I stepped into a place of suddenly becoming a beacon for a lot of trans folks who sought me out and then I felt like I was maybe more of a mentor than a member of a community. But with Butterfly Club — by welcoming a bunch of other trans artists into this process of creating — I really started to feel like part of a roundtable, you know? Kina’s story is very much my story — I was very I’m a loner Dottie I’m a rebel. But then I needed people. That was new for me and challenging and also really exciting to feel the heart opening that happens when you let other people in. And so many more trans folks than are represented on that recording were part of creating Butterfly Club because the play has gone through so many different readings and iterations over the years. I have called upon so many friends and colleagues to come in and help me work through the material so you might hear nine trans folks on that recording but I would say there are probably twenty plus who have engaged with Butterfly Club in some way to help shape it into what it is today.

Drew: That’s beautiful. It’s a conversation that I find difficult to have or just complicated to have. But I think a lot of trans people have the experience of feeling like an outsider or a loner and struggling to initially make that community. I don’t know maybe it’s because we’re a particularly traumatized group of people so even in friendships and coming together there’s going to be difficulties. But I really like the idea of art and creating and collaboration being a sort of unifier because I definitely have experienced that myself.

Shakina: Yeah and I think political organizing works that way too. Some of the people that I’ve grown close to were people who were engaged in social justice so that became the kind of common denominator of our community. Folks expect that marginalized people just clump together and become besties but community doesn’t really work that way. Folks are more likely to congregate with people who share their interests or their passions or their career fields. Getting together with a bunch of trans people just means a bunch of different points of view and perspectives that are going to clash as much as they harmonize.

Drew: I really love how you show that in Butterfly Club. All of these women are very different and have some very different points of view — some to the point of having views that clearly you and your character and I find reprehensible. But still there’s some connection. What you’re saying is totally true and something I had to learn — of course you’re not going to get along with all trans people, you’re going to get along with the trans people who you have other things in common with or other compatibilities with. BUT ALSO when you’re forced to be in a room of all trans people, all trans women, there is something that connects you, right? There is this thing. And I think you show that so well in Butterfly Club where there is still some magnetism that pulls your character together with those other women. I really appreciated the portrayal of the difficulties and the ways even people who are vastly different having this one experience does create some sort of common ground.

Shakina: Thank you for saying that. Angelica or Ivory pointed out that folks haven’t really gotten to hear conversations between trans people like this before. Like outside of Pose, which is set in a specific historical time period, the ways that we talk together have really been kind of private. This represents a window into transfemme conversations you just haven’t seen or heard if you’ve been isolated in your transness or if you’re cis. That’s really exciting to me.

Drew: Yeah. Also I loved that you have Angelica’s character identify as a gold star lesbian. That made me laugh. Which leads to my next question — what aspects of transness do you feel still aren’t being discussed enough in art?

Shakina: I cast a wide net in Butterfly Club to try to pull in as many different perspectives because so many haven’t been given voice. I’m really into showing relationships and trans people being worthy of love. I want more examples of trans folks in healthy loving relationships that don’t necessarily have to follow a heteronormative model. I mean, I happen to be in a relatively heteronormative relationship right now, but I consider myself queer and my partner has also taken on that label even though he wasn’t really part of the queer community before we got together. But we never really see trans/trans love. That’d be nice to see more of. I really want to focus more on showing how worthy trans people are of love — look how wonderful it is to love trans people, look how great it is to be trans and be in love, you know? And just kind of painting that picture for folks.

Drew: Yeah because when we don’t see that it becomes I don’t know—

Shakina: Hard to imagine.

Drew: Well yeah. And when it does happen — and obviously it happens because we love each other and there are plenty of cis people who love us — I think it gets a heaviness that frustrates me. We’re just dating like anyone else! We have good dates, bad dates, bad relationships, good relationships, flings, whatever. Stop thinking every encounter is important! Stop settling! Obviously I think people should do whatever makes them happy — or whatever they think makes them happy — but sometimes I get frustrated with other trans people where I’m like you’re just a person you should have the same standards that any other person has. But I’m single so what do I know.

Shakina: (laughs)

Drew: But yeah I definitely think about which trans love stories we get to see — and which we do not. Even though you’re saying your relationship is heteronormative that detail that your partner previously didn’t identify as queer and now owns that identity — that’s so interesting to me! That’s different than the usual narrative where we’re insisting if a cis man is with a trans woman he can still be straight — which like yes, totally, absolutely true — but I love the idea that being around queer people and queer community opened up that cis man’s queerness. I love that narrative.

Shakina: Yeah and I’m also not going to allow my being in a relationship with a cis man to erase my own queerness.

Drew: Right!

Shakina: I’ve worked very hard to claim that space and own that space. But going back to what we were talking about representationally, I think it’s important to show people what’s possible. Because with all the discrimination and internalized transphobia we face it’s really important that folks with a platform use it to create hope. I went through the ringer too in my dating life, but I just have so many trans friends who feel hopeless in their search for love and companionship and it’s really important for me to show them that what they seek is out there and that they deserve it and they will find it. And also in my particular experience for cis men who might find themselves attracted to a trans person to see the joy of being in that relationship. Or like in Butterfly Club the cis women who are partnered with trans women. I just think we need to see more people loving trans people so that more people realize that not only is it okay but it’s actually really fucking great.

Drew: I’ve mentioned this before on Autostraddle but when the first season of Euphoria came out two summers ago all of a sudden all these cis women were telling me that Hunter Schafer was their celebrity crush as a way of hitting on me. I don’t look anything like Hunter Schafer but I was like oh for the first time they saw a queer women romance on TV where the desired person was a trans girl and so now that’s their point of reference. They now think this is something they could do because who doesn’t want to be Zendaya?

Shakina: (laugh)

Drew: I loved how — and maybe this is me projecting my own whatever — but I loved how the cis partners in Butterfly Club were both very loving and supportive and enthusiastic and also sometimes crossed a certain line into — (sigh) — I don’t want to say too enthusiastic because that sounds mean and it’s not quite fetishy or chasery really it’s just like — it’s just cis people, right? Even good ones. Being comically over the top where you’re like okayyyy.

Shakina: Well cisness is like whiteness in that way. Regardless of best intentions there are things about your privilege that you are never going to fully grasp. And so yeah it was important for me to show those cis allies/lovers/accomplices misstepping. But also show them being forgiven and welcomed back and realizing what they don’t know. Some people are so afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing and it’s like honestly if you’re walking on eggshells around me that’s just more painful than you saying something ignorant.

Drew: Absolutely. That’s something I feel like I face a lot dating in the queer world and dating cis queer people. Sometimes people are so worried about doing the wrong thing and I’m like I am just at a bar trying to have a random hook up it doesn’t have to be a whole thing. Like the level of, again, heaviness they’re attaching to a bar make out is very silly. And that cautiousness isn’t necessarily bad — maybe it’s even good — but it’s something people need to work on and work through because it’s annoying and othering.

Shakina: Right. And just having more examples of trans romance in media is going to be so helpful. The more that we see rom coms with trans people the more people — cis and trans — will understand that the messy comical nature of romance is actually pretty universal.

Drew: So you’re work is also very Jewish—

Shakina: (laughs)

Drew: I’ve been thinking a lot about how for me my transness and my Jewishness are not separate identities. They feel very intertwined. And I was wondering if they feel connected to you and if you could talk about that a bit.

Shakina: I consider myself kind of an interfaith priestess. You know, I’m Jewish, but I also was baptized Christian and have studied Buddhism from a couple teachers, a couple gurus, who I have a profound connection to. So I think my spiritual journey is inextricable from my transness and therefore my Judaism is a part of that. But the truth is I also have a lot of religious trauma around my transness and Judaism. I also had a lot of religious euphoria but there was a lot I had to reconcile and part of reconciling that for me has been stepping into my identity as a Messianic Jew. I grew up for a time in an interfaith family and while my stepdad converted to Judaism I still chose to become baptized in my own life. And that choice to become baptized was really linked to my decision to finally begin my medical transition. So overall I think the artillery I want to bring to the world in that regard is to tell trans folks that we are welcome in any spiritual tradition that calls us, we are welcome to have a relationship with the divine, and I’m going to show you as many pathways as I’ve encountered so you have some options. That’s what I’m trying to do all the time in my work. And obviously I bring my culture and my heritage and my ancestors with me so the Jewishness is always there. But also in Manifest Pussy when I talk about being a Eunuch of Heaven or in Butterfly Club all the Buddhist influences to talk about death these are all things that I really care about and I want trans people to have access to.

Drew: I love that. So I was really fascinated with the tone of Connecting… It’s a sitcom that takes place in 2020 and you know 2020 wasn’t great and there was a lot of trauma but it’s still a sitcom. And I think in your own work you’re hilarious and also dealing with things that are serious. I guess that sort of feels like an inherent aspect of transess that if you’re going to be funny there’s going to be a certain undercurrent of trauma or something. How do you strike that balance? Does it come naturally from expressing your own experiences or is it something that you’re consciously thinking about?

Shakina: I’ve always turned to humor as a way to process and deal with trauma. But I also don’t shy away from the gratuitousness of trauma either. For example, in Manifest Pussy it took several iterations of that show before I was able to talk about my experience of being a survivor of sexual violence because I didn’t want to put it in the show until I could end it with a joke. I was only going to tell that story if I could make people laugh at the end of it. I didn’t want people to sit there feeling sorry for the trans woman who was assaulted — that’s not what I want.

With Connecting… I think we all felt a responsibility to bring joy to people in a time of great trauma and trial. There was a sort of agreement amongst all of us in the cast and creative team that we weren’t going to shy away from anything in the cultural moment, but that we were always going to try to do it in a way that brought people together and put people at ease and gave people hope and comfort. It was really exciting to be a part. I’m bummed we didn’t get a second season because God I would love to be making that show right now. It certainly didn’t seem like the kind of show that had ten years of longevity, but for the experience of commenting on the world while in quarantine it was a really great outlet. I hope people will still return to it and see it as a time capsule of what 2020 was because I don’t think there’s any other media that came out last year that really tracked what we were all going through — and certainly not doing so while making you laugh. It feels like a really special offering. I’m really proud I was a part of it.

Drew: Yeah I definitely think people will revisit it. You’re right it’s a total time capsule. And I’m also bummed that it didn’t get a second season. The industry gives and it takes away.

Shakina: Yeah. The truth is it was a heated political moment and we were decisive about what side of history we were going to fall on. I think that presented certain challenges for a network whose audiences lie in multiple demographic groups. But we posed that challenge and I’m so glad we did.

Chonburi International Hotel & Butterfly Club is now available on Audible. Connecting… is now streaming on Hulu.

25 Broadway Musicals You Can Stream Online

Hamilton is coming to Disney+ this weekend, and if you’re looking to stream other Broadway shows online after you watch that one to one hundred times, here’s your guide to do that with many of the world’s most famous musicals! I did not include YouTube bootlegs of live shows here, you’ll have to hunt ’em down on your own. Of course that also means that most recent productions aren’t available, such as Spring Awakening and Jagged Little Pill. But we make do with what we have! Also, a lot of these shows are old and therefore problematic, but you probably knew that already.

Grease

Free for: Subscribers to Amazon Prime and CBS All Access (2016 Live Telecast)

The 1978 film adaptation of the 1971 Grease, starring John Travolta in a tight white t-shirt and Olivia Newton-John eventually donning a perm and black leather pants, is $3.99. The 2016 Grease Live! performance starring Vanessa Hudgens is included with Amazon Prime or via the CBS All Access Channel (free 7-day trial, $5.99 after). 

Legally Blonde: The Musical

Free on: YouTube (2007 MTV Production)

The story of Delta Nu sorority sister Elle Woods pursuing a particular man and eventually a particular law school was shown live on MTV in 2007 (MTV later produced Legally Blonde: The Search for Elle Woods to replace show lead Laura Bell Bundy) and has been uploaded to YouTube by a kind soul who cares about you and your thoughts and feelings.

Cabaret

Free on: YouTube (1993 West End)

The 1972 film adaptation of my favorite musical, Cabaret, is $1.99 on Amazon Who does tomorrow belong to? You, watching this movie. A kind YouTuber has, at least for now, gifted us with a 1993 video of the Sam Mendes West End production of Cabaret, which features Alan Cumming as the emcee and is a little bit queerer in general.

Alan Cumming in “Cabaret”

Billy Elliot!

Billy Elliot was a musical about a boy who wants to do ballet, set during the 1980s miner’s strike in Northern England, that became a Broadway show which was filmed live on the West End and can be watched by you for $3.99.

Company

Free On: YouTube (2007 PBS Performance)

The 2007 PBS Great Performance’s recording of the Broadway revival of Company starring Raul Ezparza (aja ADA Rafael Barba). lt was uploaded to YouTube pretty recently, so it’s hard to say how long it’ll last, but …. catch it while you can.

Jesus Christ Superstar

Free on: Hoopla (1973 Film)

You can watch the 1973 film adaptation of Jesus Christ Superstar on Hoopla (for free) or on YouTube for $3.99. In 2012, a Live Arena Tour brought the music of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s classic rock musical to the UK and Australia with Spice Girl Mel C, aka Sporty Spice, playing Mary Magdalene — Amazon has that for $3.99.

Hello Again

Free on: Hoopla (2018 Film)

Wanna see Audra McDonald, Jenna Ushkowitz, Rumer Willis, T.R. Knight, Cheyenne Jackson and Martha Plimpton exist within a daisy-chained exploration of bittersweet love throughout New York City History, originally performed Off-Broadway in 1993? What if I told you that the 1989 story includes a romance between two women played by the aforementioned Audra McDonald and Martha Plimpton? Wow, well you can do this for free on Hoopla.

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

Free on: Subscribers to Broadway HD (2000 Direct-to-Video Adaptation)

For $3.99 on YouTube, you can see a British direct-to-video adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s musical, which hit Broadway in 1982. The film stars Donny Osmond and is identical to the West End stage production aside from a little tiny framing device. It’s also available on Amazon free with a Broadway HD subscription or $3.99 as a one-off.

Annie

Free for: Subscribers to Disney+ (1999 Disney Adaptation)

Annie debuted on Broadway in 1977 starring Andrea McArdle, and has been turned into movies and revived several billion times since.The 1982 classic, which I watched several trillion times as a child dreaming of Broadway stardom (ahem has everyone here seen Life After Tomorrow???) is on Amazon for $3.99. Disney+ subscribers can exclusively enjoy the 1999 Wonderful World of Disney version of Annie, starring Kathy Bates, Audra McDonald, Alan Cumming and Kristin Chenoweth. The 2014 film adaptation of Annie, set in the modern day, produced by Will Smith and Jay-Z and starring Quvenzhané Wallis, Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz is on Amazon for $3.99.

Quvenzhané Wallis in “Annie”

Hair

Free On: Hoopla (1979 Film)

For zero dollars on Hoopla, you can enjoy the 1979 edition of the 1968 anti-war Broadway musical Hair: an American Love-Rock musical, about a bunch of hippies doing drugs and avoiding military service. The cast includes Treat Williams, Beverly D’Angelo and Nell Carter and choreography by Twyla Tharp. 

Into the Woods

Free On: YouTube (1989 Broadway)

Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods intertwines the plots of Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault fairy tales far before Once Upon a Time was even a glimmer in ABC’s little eyeballs. Lucky for us all, a high-quality 1989 performance featuring the original Broadway cast (including Bernadette Peters as the Witch) is free on YouTube.

The Academy Award nominated 2014 film adaptation’s cast is pretty spectacular: Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, James Corden, Anna Kendrick, Chris Pine, Tracy Ullman and Christine Baranski. You can rent Into the Woods on iTunes for $2.99 or Google Play for $2.99. It’s a purchase-only property at Amazon for $19.99, where you’ll also get some Bonus Features.

Chicago

Free On: Tubi, Hoopla or for Showtime Subscribers (2002 Film)

The 2002 adaptation of the 1975 stage musical was the first musical to win Best Picture since Oliver! snagged it in 1968. And Chicago is free for you on Hoopla or on Showtime if you happen to be a Showtime subscriber or on Tubi no matter who you are or what you do.. You also can rent the Catherine Zeta-Jones / Renee Zellweger black comedy musical for $1.99 on Amazon.

Gypsy

Free On: Hoopla, YouTube or Vudu or for Broadway HD Subscribers (1993 Made-for-TV musical)

Bette Midler stars in the 1993 made-for-TV musical of the 1959 stage musical Gypsy, available for you right this minute — it’s your turn! — on Hoopla or catch it free with ads on Vudu or just enjoy it for free on YouTube. It’s also included in a Broadway HD Subscription. The 1962 film, starring Natalie Wood and apparently loathed by Arthur Laurents, who’d written the musical’s book based on Gypsy Rose Lee’s memoir, is available on TCM (Turner Classic Movies) on demand or Fuboand can be rented on iTunes or YouTube for $3.99.

West Side Story

Free For: Starz Subscribers (1961 Film)

The legendary 1961 film for which Rita Moreno won an Oscar and a bunch of white people played Latinx characters is free for Starz subscribers or to rent on Amazon for $3.99.

Les Miserables

Free On: Hoopla (25th Anniversary Concert), Amazon Prime (1998 Film)

Hoopla’s got your free hookup of Les Miserables‘ Live 25th Anniversary Concert filmed at the O2 Arena in London in 2010 with Lea Solonga, Norm Lewis and Nick Jonas. This very epic and lengthy musical about the French Revolution also became a very long film in 2012, starring Anne Hathaway, Hugh Jackman, Amanda Seyfried, Russel Crowe and the hubris of Tom Hooper. HBO subscribers can watch the 2012 Les Miserables movie, others are permitted to You can rent it on Amazon for $3.99.The less-discussed 1998 film adaptation of Les Miserables, starring Clarie Danes, Uma Thurman and Colin Firth, is free on Amazon Prime.

Bye Bye Birdie

Free For: Broadway HD subscribers (1963 Film)

Hi Margie! Hi Alice! What’s the story Morning Glory oh it’s that you can watch the1963 film adaptation of this “happy teenage musical” that hit Broadway in 1960 and has since been performed in every high school to ever erect a stage. You can rent it on Amazon Prime ($1.99) or Vudu ($1.99). Broadway HD has the 1995 film, starring Jason Alexander and Vanessa Williams.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Free On: Tubi

Tim Burton’s 2007 “musical period slasher film” adaptation of Sondheim and Wheeler’s 1979 musical stars Johnny Depp as serial killer Sweeney Todd and Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett is for rent for $3.99 or for free with ads on Tubi.

Rent

Free For: Starz Subscribers (2005 Film)

Have you ever considered measuring your life in love? These young aspirants are doing exactly that in this musical we’ve written about quite a bit on this website. The 2005 film adaptation is included with a Starz subscription or you can rent Rent Amazon for $2.99. Rent: Filmed Live on Broadway is — you guessed it — a live film of Rent‘s final production on Broadway in September of 2008. You can invest in your desire to witness this on Amazon for $12.99.

Fiddler on the Roof

Free For: Amazon Prime Subscribers (1971 film)

Matchmaker matchmaker make me a match with the 1971 film adaptation of the 1964 story of a poor milkman whose love, pride and Judaism help him face the oppression of turn-of-the-century Czarist Russia. It’s included with Amazon Prime or 99 cents for non-subscribers.

The Phantom of the Opera

The film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1968 musical that seemed incredible when I was a child and now seems completely demented is $3.99 on Amazon. A performance of the 2011 performance of the Phantom of the Opera at the Royal Albert Hall in London is also available for $3.99 on Amazon.

Kinky Boots

Free For: PBS Members and Broadway HD Subscribers (2013 Broadway)

The 2013 Broadway Musical with music by Cyndi Lauper and book by Harvey Fierstein tells the story of an entertainer named Lola and a factory owner who come together to create a revolutionary pair of sturdy stlletos. You can watch the filming of the stage production with a Broadway HD subscription or with a membership to your local PBS affiliate.

Little Shop of Horrors

Free For: HBO Subscribers

HBO subscribers can tap in to the story of suddenly Seymour and Audrey and a plant that eats people with their subscription. You can rent this 1986 film, based on Menken and Ashman’s 1982 horror comedy rock musical for $1.99. It’s not a Broadway cast, but there’s a pretty high quality recording of a performance of it the American Musical Theatre of San Jose.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Oh there’s so much wrong with this little 1975 adaption of the 1973 sage musical production Amazon describes as “a bacchanalian romp of murder, bisexuality and canibalism” but also it’s a cult film near and dear to so many queer hearts and you can rent it for $3.99.

Dreamgirls

A sweet $1.99 will get you a ticket to see Beyonce and Jennifer Hudson in the 2006 adaptation of the 1981 Tony award winning musical about a trio of black female soul singers, one of whom is not going, she’s staying, and you’re gonna love her.

Fame!

Free for: Broadway HD Subscribers (2020 West End)

Vudu’s got the 1980 film Fame!, the inspirational musical about a group of unique and talented students at New York’s prestigious High School for the Performing Arts for $1.99. Broadway HD has a recording of the stage musical from a 2020 West End production.

Newsies

Free For: Disney+ Subscribers (1992 Film and Broadway Musical Production)

The movie-musical that inspired the stage musical is available on Disney+ or can be rented for $3.99. If, like me, you were a fangirl of the film from the start but have yet to catch the Broadway musical production then you (me) will be pleased to know you can  watch it on Disney+ or watch it now for $3.99.

Falsettos

Free For: Broadway HD subscribers (2017 Broadway)

The 2017 revival of Falsettos was nominated for five Tony Awards for its story of “a a modern family revolving around the life of a gay man Marvin, his wife, his lover, his soon-to-be-bar-mitzvahed son, their psychiatrist, and the lesbians next door.” Broadway HD has the Broadway cast, including Andrew Rannells and Traci Thoms, “live” from Lincoln Center.

Peter Pan

Free on: YouTube (1960 TV Broadcast), Broadway HD Subscribers (’90s Broadway Revival)

You can read the history of women playing Peter Pan here to start. Broadway HD has a live production starring Cathy Rigby in Peter Pan from the show’s late ’90s Broadway revival. Mary Martin is perhaps most associated with the role and perhaps with your gay feelings, and the 1960 NBC TV Broadcast starring Martin is on YouTube for free.

Evita

Madonna played Eva Peron — an Argentinian actress who married Argentinian president and dictator Juan Peron and became famous and beloved and controversial — in the 1996 film adaptation of the Broadway musical you can rent for $2.99 on Amazon.

Hairspray!

It began in 1998 as a cult John Waters film starring Ricki Lake ($2.99). Then it got remade in 2007 ($3.99). Then it was on the television, live, with Kristen Chenoweth ($1.99)! Wow! It’s the story of Tracy Turnblatt, a teen who dreams of dancing on the teevee while growing up in Baltimore in the 1960s. You cannot stop the beat. Just try it, good luck!

Mama Mia!

Free for: Starz Subscribers (2008 Film)

Catherine Johnson wrote the 1999 musical Mama Mia! centered around songs by ABBA, which became a “jukebox musical romantic comedy” film ($1.99, or free for Starz subscribers) in 2008 that you’re undoubtedly familiar with and even inspired a sequel our reviewer called “the Mommiest movie of the summer.”

The Wiz

Free for: Starz Subscribers (1978 Film)

The 1978 movie-musical of “The Wiz,” starring Diana Ross and Michael Jackson, is free for Starz subscribers or rented for $3.99. The Wiz Live!, a 2015 NBC production starring Queen Latifah, Amber Riley, Uzo Aduba, Mary J Blige and Common, can be purchased for $9.99.

Funny Girl

You can catch Barbara Streisand’s legendary performance as comedienne Fanny Brice in the 1968 film adaptation of the 1964 Broadway musical on CBS All Access (free for subscribers) on Amazon Prime (Free with Ads).

Ring of Keys Collective Wants Your Heart to Say Hi

Until Beth Malone started giving interviews during the original Broadway run of Fun Home, to outsiders, it might have appeared as though the only queer people in musical theatre were cis men. Royer Bockus is ready for that stigma to die. A self-proclaimed “musical theatre lesbian,” she, alongside Andrea Prestinario and Holly Marie Dunn have founded Ring of Keys, a “National network of queer women + trans and GNC artists working on and offstage in musical theatre.” The goals of the network are manifold: to create community, serve as a hiring resource, and to diversify the leadership in the musical theatre world.

Bockus, a 2015 A-Camp alumnae of A-Camp (“the year of food poisoning,” according to her), and her friends started this network because they felt alone in the musical theatre universe. She was introduced to Andrea by a mutual friend, and they instantly connected. “I had felt so isolated as a queer woman in the musical theatre industry and… to get to talk to one other person about that experience has meant so much to me… I want more people who feel isolated in this industry to not feel isolated.” This desire turned into an opportunity for national and global networking that didn’t only aim to make queer folks feel less alone but hoped to show the musical theatre industry that queer women, non-binary people, and trans people existed and wanted to be recognized.

“The cis gay male quadrant of musical theatre seemed to figure out how to find one another a little better. They seem to be visible in a way that queer women and gender non conforming people are not and so our mission sort of expanded beyond just a social network to creating a visible network—meaning visible to the industry and to the public…because we are here.”

The network’s name comes one of the most memorable songs in Fun Home, “Ring of Keys”,  about the first time Alison Bechdel saw a butch woman as a child while in a diner. “When she [Little Alison] can finally see somebody that she identifies with, it helps her inform her own identity and standing in her identity,” Bockus said. “We wanted to be the ring of keys for a lot of other young, queer theatre-makers to go ‘if I can see it, I can be it. If I have an example then I can populate this world too; I don’t have to be someone else to exist here.'”

The network has goals that encompass changing the entire landscape of musical theatre. We talked about how writers, producers, and even the canon force AFAB folks (regardless of gender) into a particular feminine heterosexual aesthetic to succeed in musical theatre. The white cis men who are writing and producing musicals reinforce these aesthetics because “their idea of femininity…the way that women seem to be presented is pretty narrow,” says Bockus.

In addition to being a networking and hiring resource, the founders hope that community building will help queer actors to feel less afraid in auditions or rehearsals to advocate for directors to honor their own gender identities and expressions. “There’s no reason why the way I express my gender couldn’t be the way the character expresses her gender…” Bockus is especially interested in the ways the canon can provide opportunities for this to happen and cited an example from her residency at Oregon Shakespeare Festival this summer where a woman is playing Mercutio, not as a person in drag, but through the lens of her own gender identity. Bockus thinks that theatres are hungry for more diverse characters and actors regarding gender and sexuality, but the isolation queer women and trans folks experience, makes it hard for us to feel as though we can advocate that others honor our expressions.

Most exciting to me about the project is the network’s clarity about their commitment to creating a queer space that’s inclusive of trans people. In an interview with Stage and Candor, Bockus and co-creator Andrea Prestinario were clear that there is no room in Ring of Keys for trans exclusionary radical feminists (also known as TERFs). At a time when folks are claiming TERF as hate speech instead of a way to identify harmful members of the LGBTQ community, Ring of Keys’ radical inclusivity is refreshing. Bockus’ own understanding of the importance of including trans people in queer spaces came from her time at A-Camp. “I never want to be a part of any feminism that excludes women or people that don’t conform to any gender at all…” she said, concluding with the adorable metaphor  that “a queer space without trans people is…a cake without cake!” Amen, sister.

Membership is open for Ring of Keys to queer women and trans people who have worked professionally in musical theatre. Joining gives you access to a membership directory, job opportunities, a secret Facebook group, and hopefully, local outings with other queer folks in the industry. Ring of Keys hopes to have chapters all over America where meetups, collaborations, and relationships can grow. Through community building and networking, Ring of Keys hopes that no other queer woman or trans person in musical theatre ever feels like they’re the only one out there.

Musicals Won’t Save the World but “The Prom” Is Gonna Try Anyway

The Prom is a new musical from Alliance Theatre (Atlanta, Georgia) that’s coming to Broadway in November 2018 and it’s about lesbians and we need to talk about it right now.

Emma Nolan, a teenage lesbian in Indiana, wants to go to prom with her girlfriend. She soon becomes the town outcast when her PERFECTLY REASONABLE request results in the PTA cancelling the prom for everyone. Because if the gays want it, the straights must destroy it. But do not despair! A bunch of ex-Broadway stars who want to show the world how amazing and selfless they are will save the day! Or at least, try to. That’s when things get even more ridiculous.

Here is why you need to love this straight from my liveblog to myself:

There is a literal song where the girls sing to each other about how their lives went from black and white drab to full color BECAUSE THEY ARE LESBIANS AND IN LOVE

The straight couple just talks about how Broadway should still be alive and well and how sticking up for the kids in school makes work worth it and how to be better people its adorable

Coming out stories are great and I love them but it’s beyond refreshing to see girls who just know they’re gay and cannot be swayed from sticking to their truth

How many lesbian stories are there where
a.) The girls aren’t physically harmed
b.) She gets to stay the protagonist in their own story
c.) THE LESBIANS GET TO LIVE AND BE HAPPY BY THE END
I’m gonna tell you how many off the top of my head and that answer is zero

I AM A MESS I CANNOT BELIEVE I AM WATCHING A MUSICAL WHERE TWO GIRLS ARE IN LOVE AND THEY ARE GOING TO PROM IM CRYING I CANNOT CALM DOWN HOLY SHIT AND THERE ARE ADULTS FIGHTING FOR THE KIDS AND THEYRE SINGING ABOUT HOW THEATRE IS IMPORTANT WHAT IS THIS AM I IN HEAVEN

I 100% believe that life can be made better with musical accompaniment and perfectly choreographed dance breaks, so I was all on board for this show. I had a hell of a high school experience and am always up for any story that lets me rewrite it (however temporarily) into something less tragic and ridiculous.

See, I’m advocating for this show cause I was a theatre kid and even though the runninng joke is that theatre is gay, it really isn’t, it’s just….less straight. If you think about it, there are very few musicals for lesbians. Playbill wrote about this and highlights how even when we’re in shows (such as The Color Purple, Rent, and Falsettos), most of the characters are stereotypical, they don’t stay together or even stay alive, or you’ve got to read between the lines to get your representation.

Though Fun Home, Alison Bechdel’s musical based on her bestselling memoir of the same name, is a necessary masterpiece that avoids these pitfalls, it can still leave a young girl or non-binary kid wanting more than “when you grow up, it’ll get better.” Because sometimes you need to know that it can be a little more than bearable, right now. We all know that a lot of kids aren’t staying alive long enough to even find out if it gets better. Is this musical going to change that? Probably not. But it can give someone hope. And I’ve seen hope do impossible things.

Theatre is about taking a chunk of life and turning everything up to the highest setting. I think the idea is to give people a safe space to dream and feel and be without worrying if they seem too dramatic or gay or just plain wrong. It gives you a chance to work through some shit. Are you going to come out to the entire school after a year and a half in the closet? Of course not (but if you do, more props to you)! But seeing it play out on stage lets you indulge in the fantasy, feel a ton of shit and then get to the other side of it so you can be rational and do what you need to do. It lets you figure out what you can do in reality. It may even convince you that it’s the perfect idea and to go ahead with it. Theatre and this musical especially just gives you fucking options to the shit you don’t know how to deal with. And when you’re still in high school and everything feels like it’s gonna end, that’s some shit you need.

A List of Lesbian Moments from the 2017 Tony Awards

  1. Cynthia Nixon’s dress and win for Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes
  2. CYNTHIA NIXON’S REDHEADED ADORABLE CHUBBY BUTCH WIFE!!!!!!!!!

    She loves her wife SO MUCH!!!!

  3. Tracie Thoms (my root) and Betsy Wolfe as “the lesbians from next door” in Falsettos
  4. Laurie Metcalf looking Mommi as hell in a draped cowl neck dress sitting in a theatre seat introducing a Best Play nominee

    She’s proud of you even though she won the Tony

  5. Jenn Collella in a very gay patterned button-up as a Canadian pilot while being a real life queer polyamorous human who is publically dating at least three people right now.
  6. Close up on Marya and Helene (from Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812) making out.

    Happy Pride!!!!!

  7. Paula Vogel
  8. Bette Midler proposing to her lighting designer for making her look 20-30 years younger every night with a simple, “Natasha, marry me please?”
  9. Rebecca Taichmin (not gay) wins for directing Indecent by Paula Vogel (gay)
  10. Whoopi Goldberg dressed as the Babadook

    ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  11. Robin Wright as a silent but intimidating Claire Underwood: Daddy™

    We needed this

  12. Patti LuPone singing while drunk at the end of the show in a white caped mother-of-the-bride dress from David’s Bridal made me feel gayer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9nTUqcjg6o

Enjoy This 10 Second Play About Lesbians

Queer Artist Kelly Bartnik Blurs the Line Between Performer and Person in HERE

feature image of Kelly Bartnik and Tori Sparks by Elizabeth Romanski

This past Sunday, I approached the cozy corner cafe in the Bowery where I was instructed to show up at 5:30 PM with my email confirmation in hand. I didn’t know exactly when or where the performance would start or how long it would last or really what to expect at all. I was supposed to arrive here on time. Someone would find me and usher me to where I needed to be. That’s all I knew and I was anxious to begin.

A couple weeks prior, Kelly Bartnik invited me to the preview of her new long-term immersive play, HERE. Bartnik is best known as a performer in Punchdrunk’s immersive production, Sleep No More, where she originated the role of Bald Witch in both the Boston and NYC productions.

Immersive theater is a highly experimental genre of theatrical experiences that break down the fourth wall, blurring the lines between watching, participating in, and experiencing live performance. U.K.-based Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More was the first large-scale immersive performance in the U.S. when it opened in Boston in 2009. Sleep No More continues to sell-out in its current home in New York City, where it’s been running since 2011.

Bartnik met her girlfriend, Tori Sparks, at Sleep No More, where they were both original cast members. After experiencing HERE, I had the opportunity to chat with Bartnik about her craft, her thoughts on performing in and creating immersive work, and her four-year relationship with Sparks. Sparks is the art director for HERE. It’s the first time the couple have engaged in creating work together, though they worked together as performers for years.

Tori Sparks and Kelly Bartnik (photo by Elizabeth Romanski)

Bartnik says it’s fitting that they came together as a couple since they played the strongest female characters in Sleep No More, Lady Macbeth (Sparks) and Bald Witch (Bartnik). “We compliment each other,” Bartnik said, “We’re both alpha females.”

For HERE, Sparks strong design choices help create the feeling of being transported to another reality. At one point, I found myself surprised by lush green ivy creeping across the vintage wallpaper in a narrow room, spreading down into a wall of picture frames like what you might find in your childhood home. The ivy emphasized the passage of time in that space, the unreliable dull edge of reality and memory. It was both comforting and disturbing in its surrealism, as nostalgia for our childhood often is.

HERE is an independent production conceived by Bartnik in what she calls a highly collaborative process. The cast and crew are comprised of immersive theater forerunners. It was collectively written by Bartnik and the cast: Donna Costello, Jeff Lyons, Zach Martens, and Tori Sparks. The all-female production team includes Bartnik and Yvonne Chang, Jae Lee, Lisa Leighton, and Tori Sparks. “Most other immersive shows out there right now are produced primarily by men or focused on men,” said Bartnik. This is the first immersive show she has conceived and directed.

The concept of HERE is to stretch the immersive form into a long-term work that will run in episodic format, allowing audiences to witness the story unfold over time. Similar in structure to a television series, HERE invites audience members into the live performance of each new episode which builds on the previously crafted narrative. The ever-expanding storyline allows for new character introduction and the continuation of existing characters’ trajectories over time.

Jeff Lyons (Daniel) in HERE (photo by Tyler Sparks)

Bartnik said HERE was inspired by TV family dramas like Six Feet Under and Friday Night Lights, as well as serial TV shows that are available in full season releases on Netflix and Amazon. “I’m interested in material that’s easily relatable,” she said, “and in the connection between theatricality and reality and blurring those lines.”

The best moments in immersive theater, Bartnik explained, are the moments when there is a “crossing over from performer to person,” the moments of connection between the audience and the performers that are in some way genuine and earnest, even though the show is choreographed and scripted. “Sometimes,” Bartnik explained, “you’re exhausted or having a hard day and the emotions of sadness or anger in your performance are things you’re really experiencing. You have to be present [with the audience members] in immersive theatre. You can’t just phone it in.”

If one purpose of HERE is to facilitate intimate moments between performers and the audience, it succeeds. The pilot episode is limited to just five audience members per night, with a cast of three performers. Walking through the rooms and memories of a childhood home, the characters use monologue, physical contemporary dance, and storytelling to connect with the audience, at times performing for and interacting with just one audience member in solitude.

Zach Martens (Jack) and Donna Costello (DeeDee ) in HERE (photo by Tyler Sparks)

On Sunday, the first day of previews, I entered the cafe at the address emailed to me. I must have looked lost because a woman came right up to me and asked if I was there for HERE. (The cafe serves as front-of-house for the show because the performance itself is in a small unconventional space.) I sat down in the reserved area of the cafe, ordered my complimentary drink, and took notice of a funeral card for a person I didn’t know placed at my seat.

When all five audience members had arrived, the host notified us it was time to go and took us to the performance space, which was behind a nondescript door with no signage or indication of what was behind it. We descended a staircase down to a dark landing and from that moment, the show had begun, before we even realized it was happening. We emerged through that same door less than an hour later, shaken and a bit disoriented and eager for more. (Like a good TV pilot, the first episode ends on a cliffhanger.)

I left feeling exactly how you feel when your favorite show drops a new episode—anxious and hyped up and wanting to over-process it. It was jarring coming back out onto a NYC street, after being transported to another reality just down a staircase. My fellow audience members (all of whom, coincidentally, were queer women) and I spent a few minutes discussing our different experiences in the show. We realized we all saw different pieces of the same story and started putting the narrative together collectively. We ended up going down the street to grab a drink because we wanted to talk more.

As soon as the first episode opens officially, work will begin on the second episode. The next episode may be at a different location, have a different format, introduce new characters, etc. “Maybe next time it will be in a high school gymnasium with two actors and 500 audience members,” said Bartnik, “…or maybe the next two episodes will be at a different location and then the fourth will be back at this one.” The open format of immersive theater is part of what appeals to Bartnik. Like a TV show, the episodes will be written and created in real time, similar to how a “writers’ room” creates episodes of a serial TV show. There’s no set ending to this story or set narrative for these characters, nor is there a set end date for the production.

HERE is a mash-up of live theater and episodic television drama in the best way. The production value of this show is high and far beyond what you might expect for off off Broadway. The actors are superb and experienced with immersive performance. The set design and art direction for the pilot episode is beautiful and works in tandem with the incredible sound design (by John Glover) and direction.

There was a moment, for example, when a character was telling me about a memory of hearing china breaking and, as he was saying it, I thought I heard glass shattering in the distance. It turns out, after discussing it with another audience member, that the character she was with was breaking china at the precise same time in another room.

HERE manages to be both experimental and accessible. Anyone would enjoy the performance and be able to relate to the very human stories that drive the narrative, even if you’ve never experienced immersive theater before. Queer audience members will surely connect with these characters, with the discord between past and present identities, the complicated relationships we have with our hometowns and childhood friends, how we negotiate surviving trauma and being present.

The pilot episode of HERE is in previews this week, running through Sunday, February 26th. Tickets are $75 and are available at the HERE website. Hurry if you want to see it; the shows are selling out fast! Look for the official opening of the pilot episode of HERE this spring.

Pilot Episode (via HERE website): With the news of the death of a long-absent father, two siblings and their childhood neighbors find themselves returning to the place they once called home. As they singularly descend on the location of their last physical connection, the four of them find themselves jolted into a layered whirlwind of memory and sensation where they must not only come to terms with their connected pasts, but with the paralleled and unexpected reality of the present.

Sins Invalid’s “Birthing, Dying, Becoming Crip Wisdom” Features Crip Art, Activism, Love & Liberation

“Disability is a common human experience and yet it’s made invisible and shamed. So we always hope audiences leave our shows with a greater capacity for self-love.” A decade after cofounding the performance collective Sins Invalid, executive director Patricia Berne maintains a bold vision for its work: disability justice must be born out of intersectional collective struggle, lead by those most impacted by systemic oppression. In preparation for the world premiere of its latest, Birthing, Dying, Becoming Crip Wisdom, Autostraddle spoke to Berne and performer Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha about centralizing queer and gender non-conforming disabled artists of color in crip art, activism, love and liberation.

Tovah: I was moved by the show’s title, specifically the phrase “Becoming Crip Wisdom.” “Wisdom” evokes a very specific way of knowing or unknowing. What does “crip wisdom” mean to you?

Leah: People rarely get to view art that asserts that crips are geniuses. That we have knowledge, that we have life-saving brilliance. The ableist idea that we’re just these huge deficits is so strong. But my whole life is based around the idea that crip wisdom is both the ultimate reality and wisdom that everyone needs to learn from. I see crip wisdom in all the life-giving ways disabled, Deaf, sick and neurodivergent folks mentor each other, giving each other lifesaving wisdom that no doctor’s office will. We are often smarter and more skilled at navigating both our bodyminds and ableism than most medical professionals. Much of what I wrote about for this new show comes from the mentoring I’ve gotten from more seasoned crips and the mentoring I’ve passed on. Crip wisdom is the wisdom of slowing the fuck down and making movements that stay at the pace of the “slowest” members — disabled, parents, older folks, poor folks, caregivers — because when you move at the pace of the majority of people on the planet you have stronger movements.

Patricia: Knowledge is when we take information, facts, and create a system of understanding. Wisdom is when we know something because it’s in our bones. It’s our experience. Some things you just have to live through to really fucking get it. Aging in a disabled body is hard. The demands of ableism take a toll on you. Always having to take an ableist hit when you get on a plane. Or when you don’t have an attendant assistant when you need it. Every time you spend money you shouldn’t have to spend for healthcare. It makes you age faster — seriously. These are some of the themes we explore in the show.

Tovah: Did any recent political or social events influence the writing/performances in this upcoming show?

Patricia: As queer and disabled people of color, all of us have been impacted by the visibility of violence that impacts our communities. The Black Lives Matter movement has spoken to all of us very profoundly. Patriarchal violence against trans women of color hit us very hard. We’ve also all been deeply affected by climate change and the ways US consumerism contribute to the ongoing devastation of our planet, our earth body. All of these things have impacted the way we articulate what it’s like to live and birth and die as crip wisdom.

Leah: Jerika Bolen’s life and murder was very much on my mind throughout the lead up to the show. So were the deaths of many femmes in communities I am part of through suicide in the past year and a half. My piece “all the femmes come back” is about that. I wanted to write about the specific pressures that femmes and crips feel that can increase our suicidality — the intense pressure on us to be perfect, diamond hard and always competent and emotionally laboring because otherwise ableism and femmephobia and transmisogyny and sexism say that we’re crazy, too much, too emotional, too needy. There is a really intense place ableism and femmephobia come together, the “too needy” “don’t ask for help, you won’t get it” place, that is incredibly dangerous.

Tovah: I admire the way Sins Invalid never assumes an able-bodied audience nor strives to appeal to one. Sins has never been interested in “teaching” able-bodied audiences about disability or claiming, “we’re just like you!”

Patricia: If able-bodied audiences want to learn about disability, they can go read a book. This is not the academy. This is a theater space. One of the reasons I created Sins Invalid was because I needed it. I grew up consuming a ton of media and cultural narratives that made no room for disability. I really needed to see a performance like Sins. I needed to see the types of stories told by Sins performers. It’s necessary to reflect disabled bodies as part of the collective narrative.

Leah: We deserve to have art that is by us and for us and is us being complicated and depicting all our lives as they are, without simplifying or reassuring. I think one of the most important things about Sins is that it’s not for abled people — they can come, but in the words of the great disabled poet Laura Hershey, “Don’t do us any favors.”

Tovah: What role does sex and sexuality play in this show?

Patricia: There’s the idea of the perverted cripple. It’s so tired and so predictable. I’m not against being a pervert. I’m a down pervert! But it’s a trope. It’s either that or we’re sexless. People with impairments do not battle the myth of the virgin or the whore, but a counterpart — are we saints? Or monsters? The reality is that both are ableist projections and we have to go between myth and fantasy to find the truth of what we want and need as people.

Leah: My pieces in the show aren’t erotic the way a lot of folks might think of erotic, but they are sexual because they are me, in a hot dress and a cane, being the midlife crip femme leather witch of color of my dreams. They are me invoking that we all stay alive.

Tovah: What’s next for Sins?

Leah: More sex, more brilliance, more survival, more beyond survival. And more access — I am so proud of how every show has more access. Crip wisdom is in all of our movements.

Sins Invalid‘s Birthing, Dying, Becoming Crip Wisdom plays at the ODC Theater (351 Shotwell Street/17th Street, San Francisco) Friday 10/14 at 8 pm, Saturday 10/15 at 8 pm (ASL interpreted and audio described) at 8 pm and Sunday 10/16 at 7 pm. Tickets are $25 online or in cash at the door. Wheelchair accessible. Scent free. Other information on collective access available from Sins Invalid.

Who Tells Your Story?

After a tragedy, my self-care looks a lot like looking the other way. After the day I had on Sunday, it looked like a few hours of work, and then live tweeting the Tony Awards using #powerbottomstweetthetonys. It was three and a half hours of pregnant ladies tap dancing, casts doing full musical numbers in their evening wear, a host that changed suits at least six times, and truly earnest and emotional speeches. This year’s award show was deeply healing for me. I needed the Tony Awards.

The big highlight of this year’s awards ceremony was, of course, Hamilton. The musical, if you haven’t heard of it, is about Alexander Hamilton, a founding father, and can be summed up in the first sentence of the show. “How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman, dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in the Caribbean, by providence, impoverished, in squalor, grow up to be a hero and a scholar?” The creator of Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda chose to cast the parts of American revolutionaries and founding fathers as people of color. The only white people in the show are a few in the chorus, and the British—the bad guys.

What Miranda does that is so powerful in Hamilton isn’t that he changes what the story was—it’s fairly accurate, and based off a biography by Ron Chernow— it’s that he changes how the story is told. The thing about theatre is that in its most pure, honest, utopian state, theatre really is the great equalizer. It’s supposed to be the place where the only thing that matters is your dedication to the craft and your talent. But the American theatre is a spinoff of America itself, and it is not a place of endless possibilities for most people. Hamilton brings us just a little closer. I think as queer folks, Hamilton has been so important because it reminds us that our stories are everywhere, and we can tell them however we want.

By placing actors of color in all the most important roles in the musical, Miranda shows us that the story of America doesn’t only belong to white men. And I saw that so much watching the Tony Awards this year. I saw it and felt it in more ways than I have in a while, and it made me hopeful. Shuffle Along, another nominated show, had an almost all Black cast. The revival of Spring Awakening starred deaf actors and included an actor in a wheelchair. Marlee Matlin introduced the cast’s performance using ASL, and her introduction was translated for hearing audiences. So often, it’s done the other way around. Cynthia Erivo won the Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical for her portrayal of Celie in the revival of The Color Purple. Every single category for performance in a musical went to a Black person. So many of the people and shows honored tonight were not voices that we hear from. It felt good to be heard.

This year’s awards felt so good to watch as a Black person, a queer person, and a theatre artist. It felt like the theatre was finally listening to the voices that were being ignored. I think the theatre is full of possibilities, it’s full of room for any and everyone’s stories to be told. This year’s Tony Awards reminded me that there was room for my stories to be told and that they would be celebrated. Last year, when Fun Home was winning everything, I think we got a peek into what our theatrical future could be.

Now, more than ever, in the climate we’re in, our stories need to be told. And our stories include loving, joy, revolution, dancing, crying, raging, surviving, and so, so much more. We have so much to tell, and it’s so important that we do. Miranda wrote a sonnet as his acceptance speech for Best Score. He summed up why the Tony Awards felt so important this year, and what to do with these voices and these stories that need to be heard.

…We chase the melodies that seem to find us
Until they’re finished songs and start to play
When senseless acts of tragedy remind us
That nothing here is promised, not one day.

This show is proof that history remembers
We lived through times when hate and fear seemed stronger;

We rise and fall and light from dying embers, remembrances that hope and love last longer
And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside.
I sing Vanessa’s symphony, Eliza tells her story
Now fill the world with music, love and pride.
Let’s go make some magic!

Team Pick: Why Aren’t You Listening To Brittani Nichols and Khalehla Rixon’s Hamilton Podcast Right Now

Carmen’s Team Pick:

Have you all heard about this thing, Hamilton? I think it might be a play of some sort, perhaps something involving song and dance as well. People seem to really like it! Potentially because it seems incredibly badass and on-point and #deeplymoving as well.

I’m inclined to like the musical most of all because Brittani Nichols does too, and we all know Brittani Nichols is both hilarious and a perfect human with perfect taste. And that’s why even though I’ve never seen the damn thing, I’m gonna live my best life and listen to Brittani Nichols and Khalehla Rixon talk about it on “Hamilton: The Podcast.” Because what could get me more excited and passionate about something I don’t know much about the way Brittani can? NOTHING, that’s what. NOTHING EVER.

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Brittani and Khalehla, coincidentally, have also never seen the musical, although they reportedly listen to the Broadway cast recording of Hamilton on a daily basis. They have so many feelings about these songs, in fact, that every week, they’re taking on a new track — in performance order — and talking about it for your listening pleasure. They combine this with some historical perspective, being that they’re both also working on the corresponding book about Alexander Hamilton’s life that inspired the musical.

So far, they’ve covered “Alexander Hamilton,” “Aaron Burr, Sir,” “My Shot,” and “The Story of Tonight,” which gives you a good two hours worth of amazing conversations to listen to as you begin your journey down this road to your new best life, in which you listen to the rest of this podcast as it’s released.

If you’re a Hamilton superfan, this is pretty much the best thing that’s ever happened to you; Autostraddle Senior Editor Heather calls it “the middle of a venn diagram of perfect beauty.”If you’re thinking to yourself “I don’t know anything about musicals! I don’t think I care about Hamilton!” buckle up anyways, because Brittani and Khalehla could talk about rock gardening and it would be the most engrossing and hilarious part of your day. And this is much more important than rock gardening! When we asked Brittani a little while ago about why this podcast matters, she told us: 

A lot of people ask why Hamilton has become so important to some LGBT people and people of color and I think it goes beyond the simple answer of “we’re seeing a more diverse version of Broadway.” Hamilton is about one man trying to overcome a set of expectations that are put on him because of his identity and we see the ways in which he uses that as motivation but also how other people working through their own stuff impacts how they see him and his life. It’s also like Harry Potter in that the characters are so well-drawn and complicated that it’s not easy to call anyone good or bad.

You can subscribe to “Hamilton: The Podcast” on iTunes, SoundCloud, and in your heart today. Don’t deny yourself this experience one second longer.

Give My Regards to Broadway: The Mixtape

feature image credit: Maciej Bledowski / Shutterstock

A series in which we use the power of song to share a multimedia slice of our memories and experiences across time and bandwidth. Do you remember where you were when you heard this one, or this one? We do.

When I was 12, my parents took my sister and me to see the Phantom of the Opera at the Pantages Theatre in Toronto, Canada. I remember being completely overwhelmed. It was like the movies, but more intense, more real, more tangible. When Christine hit those high notes, when the Phantom played his own death knell song, the music became a thunderous vibration, filling the whole theater. It lifted me, made me catch my breath, holding a fullness in my chest that was new and thrilling.

Though Phantom is one of my least beloved musicals now, musical theatre is one of my favorite hobbies. I’m not a particularly skilled vocalist. I’m an OK actor. After failing high school musical auditions more than once, I settled for running the lightboard. My relationship to musical theatre is as audience member, listener, sing-a-long-in-the-shower belter, and devotee of contemporary and weird musicals. Musicals are escape and transformation and connection to your deeper self. As someone who is always thinking of the next 10 things I have to do — or that are overdue — good theatre forces me to pause and sit and become immersed in fantasy.

There is nothing I love more than sharing a deafeningly silent, poignant moment with 300 other audience members; grinning wide through a rousing musical number that makes me want to stand and cheer; or tearing up at a matinee with the gray-haired woman seated beside me. In that spirit, I want to share some of my favorite musical moments with you. Here are some of my favorite things from my favorite shows, the songs that embrace me in the tender places of my steely heart.

Ring of Keys from Fun Home

Let’s just start here, because everyone has cried to this song. If you haven’t, you are probably going to right now. Or you are a cyborg incapable of emotion, which is understandable.

Do you remember the first time you saw a visibly queer person? A beautiful butch? The first time you felt that glimmer of recognition or tingling of desire. For many, this song is about self-realization. For me, it’s more about naming my desire. I remember the first time I saw a woman with short hair and men’s clothes and a cocky swagger in her walk. She was a manager at the McDonald’s I worked at in high school. She was bisexual and had a boyfriend and was in her twenties and a huge flirt. I’d known I was bi for a while, but I had never flirted with a woman before. I didn’t know what I even liked in a woman, what I was attracted to, until I met Stacey. I didn’t know a woman could be like her, look like her, make me blush like her. It switched something on for me that couldn’t be un-switched. When I listen to “Ring of Keys,” my heart just stops for a second. It makes think about coming into my own identity, about seeing someone and suddenly having my whole future open up before me. It’s a song about unlocking all those lonely queer places in your closeted heart, finding your people and your self.

“I know you. I know you. I know you.”

Good Morning Sunshine from Hair

I was not yet born to see Hair in 1967, the musical that set the stage for rock musicals and was billed as the “American tribal love-rock musical.” (That “tribal” part’s a bit awkward, but hippies, amiright?) So I watched the 1979 movie version on VHS, over and over and over. Sometimes I think about how Hair defined my mom’s generation and I knew it as video and about how Rent defined my generation and teens today know it as a video. What I’m saying is, I’m sure the movie was nowhere near as impactful and moving as the original stage version. There is no way I could understand the racial tensions of the 60’s, the toll of the Vietnam War, and the beauty and trappings of the sexual revolution. Similarly, I grew up in the angsty aftermath of the AIDS epidemic and I doubt today’s teens could really understand that from watching Rent.

I loved Hair, the movie. As a teen who was both really sexually curious and terrified of my sexuality, watching Hair with my friends and singing along to “Sodomy… fellatio… cunnilingus…” and “I’ve got life, life, life, life, liiiiiife!” felt really good. It’s a musical that made me feel a way about politics, about our role in effecting change, and about our responsibility to each other. Years later, I was carrying a cardboard coffin through the streets of D.C. during a Bush inaugural anti-war protest in my bright red faux fur coat, shouting “No Justice! No Peace!” into a megaphone. I think it’s safe to say that my obsession with Hair was because it shouted about sexuality at a time in my life when I was afraid to whisper and it called me into my activist soul.

Satisfied from Hamilton

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrbCFR1FsZk

Methinks I relate a little too much to Angelica Schuyler, as portrayed by the super-talented Renee Elise Goldsberry. Not because I’m potentially in love with my sister’s husband. No, I relate to Angelica because she is a smart, witty, independent woman who is always pushing herself and her politics, who really struggles to put her own needs first. She’s always reaching for more, more, more, and she’s so strong in her convictions. I’m pretty sure Waffle has actually said to me, “You’re never satisfied with what you have.” I am always thinking about, “OK. What do I want to be doing in five years? What else can I do to make change? Am I doing enough? Could I do this one more thing?” and I am less inclined to think, “Am I taking care of myself? Is this too much?” Dating me can be a challenge for a romantic. I’ve scheduled outreach programs on the same night as my spouse’s birthday. I’ve gone to out-of-town lobby days on our anniversary. I may be out of town for our anniversary again this year. Like Aaron Burr, sir, I’m the worst. Too bad Angelica wasn’t into gal pals and/or isn’t alive anymore, because we could definitely hang. I feel like we’d get each other on a deep sisterly level.

People Like Us from The Wild Party

“Oh, the city. So many lights you can actually pretend one of them’s shining on you.”

Toni Collette, you gorgeous femme fatale. I don’t even know why I like this song so much, other than that it’s fucking beautiful. This musical was genius and had an incredible cast including Collette, the incomparable Eartha Kitt as a Vaudeville diva, and Mandy Patinkin as the abusive boyfriend. It’s based on a controversial 1928 narrative poem of the same name by Joseph Moncure March, that was banned and impossible to find in print until it was reprinted in 1994. There is some bad representation. The lesbian is aggressive and possessive. The bisexual is a sexual predator. But again, in 2000, we were still in the dark ages. The fact that a character even was bisexual, that there was a love song by a woman for another woman, made me feel less alone.

There’s a Fine, Fine Line from Avenue Q

Driving through the woods and farms on Route 3., white-knuckling the steering wheel, crying into the hair falling across my face. That’s what this song is to me. It was my go-to breakup song during the year of on-again-off-again, the track I screamed into the nothingness expanding endlessly in front of me as I drove as far as I could go until I had to turn around and head back home again.

Last Night of the World from Miss Saigon


First off, this musical is my problematic fave. Oh dear, it’s such a mess. It is the white savior-est of the white savior stories. Its portrayal of Vietnamese people is awful. It literally upholds the Asian virgin/whore stereotype. It’s the actual worst.

Tell that to 12-year-old me, who picked this soundtrack up right when I was starting to get into musicals, right after Phantom. When you don’t have any media representation that looks vaguely like you, you grab onto what you can.

Lea Salonga, who played the lead role, enchanted me with her voice and her power. She was 18 when she originated the incredibly difficult role in London and then on Broadway, showcasing her impossibly wide vocal range. Beyond being a popular recording artist in the Philippines, Salonga was also the first Asian woman to play a lead role in Les Misérables on Broadway. She is the singing voice behind Disney’s Jasmine and Mulan and she is currently back on Broadway in the original cast of Allegiance. Her voice and her story as Kim in Miss Saigon brought me to adolescent tears, laying on my bed, reading along from the liner notes as I played the double-disc CD.

When I first started becoming friends with my spouse in college, this was one of the musical soundtracks we discovered we both loved. On a car ride to Hamilton College to see Dorothy Allison speak, we put this CD in and belted along to the songs and this was our favorite song. Despite all the reasons it should be problematic, I will always have warm fuzzy feelings for this song and it will always make me think of my love.

Miss Saigon is coming back to Broadway for a revival. I think it should probably stay in its racist past, but I also know that deep in my heart, I am totally going to want to see it again.

Out Tonight from Rent

Mimi. Mimi. Mimi. I know I should have latched onto Joanne and Maureen. I KNOW. And I did. I mean, I loved every character in RENT, every song. RENT was the musical of my teen years. Everyone who went to high school circa 1996-2000 sang “Seasons of Love” in chorus as some point. It was the 90’s. It was the aftermath of the AIDS epidemic. ACT UP and Queer Nation was a little before my time, but RENT was, in many ways, a slightly sanitized version of the radical queer heart of the 90’s. Maureen was the first bisexual character I saw in popular media. Mimi was everything I wanted to be when I grew up, though looking back, I suppose she was supposed to be somewhat of a cautionary tale. It didn’t matter. She was free in ways I wanted to be free and for me, she was 100% about owning your sexuality, owning your body, being shameless. I wanted her and I wanted to be like her.

The movie never quite meant the same to me as the stage version did and as the music did on it’s own. I was a senior in college when the movie came out. Rosario Dawson absolutely killed it in the movie performance (the clip above), but Daphne Rubin-Vega was my one and only true Mimi. I was lucky to see her a few years later as Magenta in the Rocky Horror Picture Show revival and she slayed my heart.

Carrying the Banner from Newsies

This dumb-ass musical about some hot guys who kind of look like dapper lesbians was a staple of my puberty years. My two best friends and I would watch it every weekend, sing all the parts in harmony (sort of). We had Newsies doppelgangers. Cat was Sarah, the hot chick and the only girl in the whole damn show. Heather was Davey, the sensible one who took care of the less sensible ones. I was Racetrack, the funny wise guy. I was always the funny wise guy growing up. The cool friend who my friend’s boyfriends enjoyed hanging with. The funny fat girl Korean sidekick to my white friends who I felt sure had so much more sexual capital than me. I digress. This song is just so fun. I have to admit that I mostly like the movie version of Newsies. I saw the Broadway show and it was… I dunno… too cheesy for me as a stage show. Maybe I just grew up a bit and had a harder time finding myself in it. I don’t know. This song still reminds me of sitting on the floor in Heather’s den, watching this tape and rewinding to watch this song over and over and discussing which dancers were the hottest.

Touch Me from Spring Awakening

I intentionally linked this newer version of “Touch Me” from the 2015 Deaf West revival of Spring Awakening. I saw the Deaf West production twice this past year and I honestly loved it more than the original production, which I also saw on Broadway. In the Deaf West revival, the whole show is performed (not interpreted, performed) in ASL and spoken English, with a half-hearing and half-deaf cast. It brings another layer of intimacy and meaning to the show, which is at its heart about teens being cut off from knowledge and self-autonomy. It’s also historically accurate, as deaf kids were often and still are forced to adapt to oral communication for the comfort of hearing people.

This musical is for millennial misfits what RENT was for my teen years. Spring Awakening is a powerhouse. It’s the musical that launched Lea Michele’s career. It’s about teens rebelling and bursting into their sexuality at a time when adults refuse to listen to them and trust them. It’s still very relevant today. “Touch Me” brings me back to my childhood bedroom, where I privately and guiltily explored the pleasure of my body while being absolutely sure it was wrong and dirty. It’s about that time in your life, whether it is in your teens or after you come out in your later years, when you are aching to be touched, ripping out of your skin, throbbing with desire, and kind of afraid of what giving in to your desires might do do to you, too. It gives me chills every time.

Say It To Me Now from Once

Can you tell that I like emotional power ballads? Actually, I knew my spouse and I were going to be friends for life when I realized we liked all the same belt-it-at-the-top-of-your-lungs musical tracks from all the same musicals. This song is like that moment when you’re with that person you like and you think they like you, too, but neither of you can find the words. And you’re looking down at your hands and wondering if they will touch and hoping, hoping that they will. It’s the moment right before I sloppily kissed my boi on the sweaty dance floor of that drag bar, even though we were both in long-term relationships with other people, even though it was a huge risk, even though I didn’t know if he’d kiss me back. It is the moment just before I took the leap and in my mind there is always two versions of that story, the one that really happened and the one that could have happened if I’d stopped myself before my lips reached his neck.

“This is what you’ve been waiting for…”

I could go on forever and ever and ever and ever. I have so many favorites that it’s impossible to put them all here. Let’s keep the mixtape going in the comments. I’d love to hear about your favorite musical tracks and artists and your favorite musical moments. What songs make your heart soar?

Ease on Down the Road with Autostraddle: The Wiz Live! Liveblog and Sing-a-long

Tonight, NBC will bless us, once again, with their annual Live! musical production. It’s The Wiz Live! and it’s gonna’ be so damn good. Honestly, it wouldn’t take much to top NBC’s last two Live! productions, Peter Pan Live! and The Sound of Music Live!. Peter Pan Live! gave us feelings for Allison Williams we really weren’t ready for, but was otherwise awful and kinda’ racist. The Sound of Music Live! was straight up milktoast. But musical theater geeks like me will watch anyway. Especially tonight, because even if The Wiz Live! is silly and over-produced like the last two, it is still going to be effing spectacular.

I mean, look at this flawless, gold star cast!

Source: People / Photo credit: Paul Gilmore/NBC

Source: People / Photo credit: Paul Gilmore/NBC

The original Dorothy in the 1975 broadway production of The Wiz, Stephanie Mills, is playing Auntie Em. Dorothy is newcomer and real talent, Shanice Williams. Glinda the Good Witch and Evilene the Wicked Witch are played by Uzo Aduba and Mary J. Blige, respectively, and good lord, their dresses are incredible! The Wiz, herself, is none other than Queen Latifah, in some sort of David Bowie-ish hair and makeup situation that I’m getting used to. Ne-Yo and Common and David Alan Grier and Amber Riley and Elijah Kelley (who musical nerds might remember from the Hairspray movie) are in the mix, too. Goodness gracious, what an ensemble!

Here’s a sneak peek clip that is giving me life, oh yes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVIHBdTuVGc

Oh gosh, look at Mary J. Blige absolutely killing it in this other clip. EXCELLENCE.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg5yJPZ1nR0

Here’s some behind the scenes action with the stars, oh my:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97m0soGP1oU

The Wiz opened on Broadway in 1975. It is a retelling, or reclaiming, if you will, of Frank Baum‘s The Wizard of Oz, taking the classic story about home, loss, and finding one self out of rural Kansas and into modern times, with an all-Black cast. The 1975 production won seven Tony awards and is one of the first musicals with an all-Black cast to break through to a mainstream theatre audience. There have only been a handful of Broadway plays or musicals with an all-Black cast since.

According to the most recent 2011-2012 stats from the Asian American Performer’s Action Coalition, white non-hispanic actors occupy 79% of the roles on Broadway. African American performers account for 14% of roles and Latino and Asian performers for 3% each. There is still an urgent need to see Black performers’ in a theatre production that centers and celebrates Black artists. Alaina, my theatre nerd co-host for tonight’s liveblog, recently posted a list of plays they’d like to see recast with Black actors, that really drives home this point. What’s great about The Wiz Live! is that, unlike a Broadway revival (which is slated for the 2016-2017 season, actually), this show is coming into people’s homes on their television via basic cable, accessible to people who can’t typically afford the ticket prices for live theater.

Also, I’m looking forward to some strong female characters. I do like me some strong female characters, as my Netflix recommendations prove. The director of The Wiz Live!, Kenny Leon, says choices were made to make a statement “about the treatment of women” in this version of the show. Dorothy will have an expanded backstory that gives her more depth and direction, as will the female Wiz, a role traditionally cast with a male actor. Leon says, “All of the women in this story, they make their own decisions…men are not speaking for them, and that’s the way it should be anyway.” It is. I’m interested to see how it all plays out.

Alaina and I are going to be right here tonight, singing along and slinging snark and commentary. The liveblog will start at 8 p.m. EST. See you soon!

8:00 PM: We are so EXCITED!!!!!!!!!!


    Alaina: I love when Queen Latifah introduces things.

8:02 PM:

    Alaina: Real dogs and live theatre, I love it.

8:08 PM:

    KaeLyn: Stephanie Mills has still got it. Shit.
    Alaina: Camera in the shot #1

8:09 PM:

    Alaina: Spooky wind people! Wait this is my favorite part so far!
    KaeLyn: I wish they would stick with a camera for more than 1 second.
    KaeLyn: Reusing that Peter Pan Live! rig, I see.
    Alaina: Gotta get allll the use we can.

8:12 PM:

    Alaina: Everyone’s in skirts! I’m into this society.
    KaeLyn: MERCEDES!

    Alaina: I’m in love with her shoes!!
    Alaina: I want sushi with Amber Riley!
    Alaina: I was her when I was in The Wiz and I feel like we’re really connected
    KaeLyn: OMG you are soul twins

8:24 PM:

    KaeLyn: “Sometimes the most dangerous things are the most beautiful.” #femmetruth

8:27 PM:

    KaeLyn: Can you imagine if this was your acting debut?
    KaeLyn: I can’t even.

    KaeLyn: This was her first NYC audition ever.
    Alaina: Like she is KILLING it
    Alaina: For the entire United States of America
    KaeLyn: LIVE
    Alaina: In a really good high def foundation
    KaeLyn: She’s going to be like the next Fantasia
    KaeLyn: Yes, her skin looks great.
    KaeLyn: She could do Clean and Clear commercials next. Or take over for Katy Perry on Proactive duty.


8:30 PM: Did ya’ll know Queen Latifah played Dorothy in her 7th grade production of The Wiz? The Root put together a bunch of cool facts about The Wiz Live cast. Great for commercial break reading!

8:36 PM:

    Alaina: the nae nae
    Alaina: I love/hate popular culture
    KaeLyn: hahahahahaha when does the twerking start?
    KaeLyn: actually I’m ready for twerking
    KaeLyn: I hope there is twerking
    Alaina: PLEASEEE
    KaeLyn: What if Big Freedia made a cameo
    Alaina: WHAT IF
    KaeLyn: AZZ EVERYWHERE, that’s what
    Alaina: I just want every queer hip hop artist in NYC to make a cameo
    Alaina: MISANDRY

8:40 PM: If you’re not singing along right now, you’re doing it wrong.


8:41 PM Commercial break reading: NBC Black interview with Stephanie Mills on being a part of The Wiz, 1975 until now.

8:47 PM:

    Alaina: Neyo has a grill because he’s the tin man!
    Alaina: Also, this song is about the importance of lube.



8:55 PM:

    KaeLyn: I love everything so far. #noshade
    Alaina: Like, this is a huge improvement from the last two live shows
    Alaina: Those were good, but this is SO good!

    https://twitter.com/chescaleigh/status/672595007778476032

9:03 PM:

    KaeLyn: Don’t give her those shoes?
    Alaina: This is not her mom!
    KaeLyn: Laser MONKEYS!!!
    Alaina: Spooky! This is actually terrifying!
    Alaina: She’s jumping in bedazzled heels!


9:09 PM:

    Alaina: BUT THESE DANCERS!!!!!
    Alaina: It’s like Beyonce Broadway

    Alaina: I want to be able to do this and also have someone do this to me
    Alaina: So my friends have identified “Thick Poppy” and “Pregnant Poppy”
    Alaina: Bodies of all shapes and sizes!


9:11 PM

    KaeLyn: Is there really a Wicked ad during this? so meta
    KaeLyn: Maybe for all those mad white people
    KaeLyn: They can go see Wicked

9:18 PM

    KaeLyn: Oh fuck yes
    Alaina: Vogue!
    Alaina: This is amazing

    Alaina: This is an afro futurist dream!
    KaeLyn: Does this mean that queers are the evolved class in Oz?
    Alaina: Seeing Black bodies on stage being flaunted is a really beautiful thing
    Alaina: And omg YES the queer elite

    KaeLyn: I love this. I could just watch this scene on repeat for the next hour and a half


9:17 PM



https://twitter.com/KimberlyNFoster/status/672602469818470401
9:36 PM


https://twitter.com/yemi_isms/status/672605695385161728
9:45 PM

    Alaina: This feels like the Activism Song
    Alaina: Like, it’s part of the Wiz, but also relevant to life today lol
    KaeLyn: #OccupyWeGotIt

    KaeLyn: Makes sense—this is the new song
    KaeLyn: kumbafuckingya
    Alaina: “We’re all in this together.”


9:51 PM

    KaeLyn: “All Hail, Evilene!”
    KaeLyn: Bow down, bitches!
    Alaina: She is KILLING that outfit!

    KaeLyn: This is my favorite costume so far.
    Alaina: She did her one signature dance move already



9:57 PM

    Alaina: stilts!!
    Alaina: All the monkeys have on thongs


10:05 PM:

    Alaina: All this natural hair!
    KaeLyn: So much excellence. And how many dance steps have we seen so far? the nae nae , dab, vogueing, stepping, the peter pan…


    Alaina: Almost every dance from 2015 in that one!




10:13 PM Straddler, @hollisb, killing it in the comments!
Screenshot 2015-12-03 22.13.11
10:17 PM: YAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSSS!!!!
https://twitter.com/AudraEqualityMc/status/672615986445598720
10:18 PM:

    KaeLyn: “All these years later, hiding in the dark.” Yuuuup. #nationalcomingoutday


https://twitter.com/JMac_SOsweet/status/672617033050161152


10:29 PM:

    KaeLyn: Why does she look like she’s going to have a walk-on on Law and Order now?
    KaeLyn: I mean, it’s fine
    Alaina: Right?
    Alaina: like
    Alaina: Yeezy 2016 line with a scarf from Kohls


10:31:

    KaeLyn: BLESS US
    Alaina: BLESS US ALL

https://twitter.com/broadway_buzz/status/672619647645196289

    Alaina: Her crown is her hair!
    Alaina: “SHE IS BEAUTIFUL!”
    Alaina: Yes she is
    Alaina: This show is hers. She just stole the whole show


https://twitter.com/jmjafrx/status/672622621075365888

    KaeLyn: Remember when they wouldn’t let Suzanne be in the play on OITNB
    Alaina: And look at her now!
    KaeLyn: She got hers!


10:38:

    Alaina: It’s coming
    Alaina: It’s coming
    Alaina: I’m so ready

    KaeLyn: This girl is insanely good
    KaeLyn: She’s 18!
    Alaina: No way!!
    Alaina: What am i doing with my life
    KaeLyn: No I lied she’s 19
    Alaina: BUT STILL
    Alaina: She’s a baby! and is KILLING IT
    KaeLyn: OK Conflicting sources. She’s either 18 or 19. Either way, she is basically a CHILD.
    Alaina: OMG!
    Alaina: Toto came back!
    KaeLyn: I was wondering if we’d ever see Toto again

Final Thoughts:

    Alaina: I loved it! It was really beautiful.
    Alaina: It felt really important, too, in a way I didn’t know it would!
    Alaina: I love seeing Black actors working and all the focus on natural hair and Black styles…it was great!
    KaeLyn: I agree! Every bullshit argument about not being able to find enough Black talent for more diverse casting was just blown out of the water. It was excellence in every way. It was so real.
    KaeLyn: I cried three times.
    KaeLyn: I am just so happy that families all over the US watched this tonight, that kids saw this. And there was such a diversity of bodies and people and they didn’t shy away from gender-bending or frank sexuality and it felt so damn good.
    KaeLyn: Like, TV could be this way if we wanted it, if we really, really wanted it.
    Alaina: Tonight was really important. Everything is so sad all the time, and sometimes it’s important to just see black people being excellent in an excellent musical.



What did ya’ll think? Put it in the comments!

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