Pete Kunze (2:17)

Amen.

Ryan Donovan (2:18)

So I went to grad school and did my PhD in theater and performance at the CUNY Graduate Center. And while I was there, honestly I wasn't sure what I was going to study at first because I was coming back into the academy after about a decade away and I knew that I wanted to teach and to write, but I didn't know that I at that point I didn't know that I could focus on musical theater as an object of study. I was very pleasantly surprised when I discovered that there was this field that at that point was about 10 or 15 years old and growing and had peers interested in the same kinds of questions that I was interested in. Writing this book, which was based on my PhD dissertation, was the ideal way for me to combine my practice background and all of that experience with the tools that I learned in graduate school.

Pete Kunze (3:24)

So can you tell us a little bit more, being both a practitioner and a scholar, how your experience in the industry, your experience training, your experience maintaining a certain Broadway body, as you say, informed your thinking and your study of Broadway bodies?

Ryan Donovan (3:44)

I guess the irony is that when I was a performer, I never had anything close to the Broadway body. I mean, I used to go before ballet class, there was a donut cart outside of. Outside of the studio, and I would get donuts every day before class. And then I wondered, why aren't I getting cast in these dance parts? And, you know, so years later, I kind of understood a lot more about how the industry worked. And now I kind of. I'm no longer part of the industry. So I kind of see myself as an insider, outsider, you know, to borrow from ethnography, because I had all of this personal experience, and I, you know, all joking aside about donuts, I still did book a few jobs here and there and was a member of Actors Equity. And I, you know, I drew on all of that as I was writing this book and thinking about what I knew to be true from having been in the industry. And so part of what I was really aiming to do in this book is to. To bring all of that and bring all of that to bear and make it part of the historical record. So there's a lot in the industry that is accepted as just the norm and the unquestioned norm, in fact. And so the book really began with examining what are these unquestioned norms and why might they be there and what are the factors at play and how do they persist to this day? And in some cases they persist, and in others, they have changed a little bit. So thinking about all of the different kind of complex factors that go into casting and the fact that it's always going to be a subjective process. So how to acknowledge that there are multiple competing truths at play in this process was a real challenge and intellectually stimulating part of writing this book.

Pete Kunze (5:59)

Yeah, I was. As I was reading it, I was thinking, like, what an amazing topic, right? Because bodies obviously are central to the Broadway experience. We always hear about the wear and tear that performers go through how they're saving their voices, the injuries that performers experience on shows like Cats and Starlight Express and Turn off the Dark. Like, we're constantly being reminded of the effect it has on bodies and the sense that, you know, especially performers who are in shows for the long term, you know, for 20 years, and how do they maintain and endure and persevere when they're doing eight shows a week? Right. So it's such an exciting topic. And so much of musical theater studies is, you know, textual analysis. Right. Or archival research. So if you don't mind, I'm going to ask you a dissertation committee question, which is, how do we get to Broadway bodies? How do we study this? And what methods did you find useful in your own study?

Ryan Donovan (6:56)

I was always really interested in doing archival research for this project, and so it began there. And so I went to various archives for this, from the Library of Congress to the Lincoln Center Library for the New York Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center, Beinecke at Yale. And so I combine all of that, the insights from the archive, with interviews that I was able to secure. And then in. In other instances, there were. There are many interviews that I quote in the book that were done at the time of production of the shows that I'm writing about because I was really interested in, as a methodologically, tracking the ways that language and norms evolve. And so I wanted to really cite what people said at the time. In particular, this really comes to bear in the shows from the 1980s in the book and the ways that we accepted how the press spoke about size. For instance, when I read sections from. That allowed people gasp at the language that was just so common then. And the same goes for the ways that LGT LGBTQ+ folks were openly denigrated in the press in the 1970s and 80s. So that's really how I began this dissertation project. But actually, in some ways, the seeds of it were planted earlier because in grad school, you have to take in whatever your field is. You're likely to have to take an intro to theory course. I took that course, and I just wasn't finding anything that really made sense to me. And this was kind of a gloss on all of the high theory. And I realized later that I was really drawn to maybe what might be considered the low theory, because it was about the body. And so I discovered in one course that I could apply insights from disability studies to theater and fat studies to theater. And so that's really where it all began for me. Before I went to the archive was IMMERSING myself in those two fields in particular. And they really spoke to me deeply because of my experience as a. As a performer and that I approach things through the body first. And so once I found those, I thought, oh, this is a conversation that I want to be a part of. Yeah.

Pete Kunze (9:49)

I think that's one of the things that I really enjoyed about your book, is how it lays bare all this discourse that's just so unapologetically homophobic, fatphobic in an industry that we often associate with being LGBT friendly, inclusive. You know, they're not Hollywood, they're not sports. Right. In theater, everyone's welcome. And then you read this and you're like, my God. And in major presses and major junkets.

Ryan Donovan (10:16)

Right.

Pete Kunze (10:16)

It's. It's not like these were bloggers in the dark corners of the Internet. These were the leading voices in the theater community often.

Ryan Donovan (10:24)

Right. And what really was kind of shocking to me as I. As I dug deeper into this was that sometimes those voices were coming from inside certain productions. And so in the chapter on Dreamgirls, for instance, you can see that I write about one of the actors who was a replacement in it and how she gave an interview in TV on a local TV station in la. And about two weeks later, two months later, she's interviewed in local press for the productions, moved to San Francisco, telling a completely opposite story than the one she told on TV in la. And it's clear that the PR people for the show and the creative team and producers had decided that she needed to change the narrative. And so there's that. And then in the. In the chapters on LA Cage aux Falls, I chart how this show was initially cast with two straight actors playing this gay couple in 1983. And then when the show was revived with gay actors in the early 2000s, there was no mention of the fact that they had, historically, for the first time on Broadway, two gay actors, two out gay actors playing these parts. But then when it was rare, revived again in 2012 with two straight actors, all of the press was all over the fact that, oh, these brave straight actors are playing gay. And in part, that is determined by a show's publicity team and its producers. So I was really drawn to these paradoxes of inclusion and exclusion. And whenever we're having the conversation about inclusion, it's implicitly acknowledging that exclusion has or is taking place. And so I was drawn to those contradictions within the industry.

Pete Kunze (12:33)

Can you talk a little bit more about bringing together these various fields you mentioned fad studies and disability studies. Obviously, there's queer studies here and musical theater studies. And they all kind of come together under this theme of. Of embodiment. But I'm just curious about kind of what you learned in kind of putting them in conversation with one another.

Ryan Donovan (12:55)

One of the ways that they all spoke to me in a cohesive way was that in terms of fat studies, disability studies, and queer studies, we're all talking about identities and bodies that are stigmatized. And one of the upsetting things, and one of the harder parts of the book is looking back at how all of those identities were stigmatized by eugenicists in the early 20th century. So we have these histories of these bodies that eugenicists sought to eradicate. And I was, in a way, without underlining that too much in the book, thinking about then, how did the stigmas that emerge from that era impact who we see on stage today? And of course, I'm not claiming that Broadway casting is eugenicist. Nobody is drawing from that ideology on purpose anyway, and I don't think people really are. One of the things I learned in writing the book actually, was how. How little power casting directors actually have. I mean, and they want to make the industry more inclusive. And it's often the creative team or the producer who's the barrier to that, not so much the casting personnel. But so I was really into making connections among these fields. And one of the ways that I did that was looking back at the sociologist Erving Goffman's famous book Stigma, and looking at how the social construction of the norm is still pretty much the same in the US as when he wrote that book. The book that I was interested in writing and researching was about bodies that challenge or subvert that norm and feel and finding academic fields that also do that. And so that's how I landed on those three fields.

Pete Kunze (15:12)

I was hoping we could talk more about casting. Right. Because it's such an important industry practice. And in my home field of film and media studies, there's been exciting work in recent years as well. But I think it really brings to the forefront these tensions between Broadway as an art form and Broadway as a business. So can you talk more about focusing on casting and not just on stage representation or the characters that are being written in these shows?

Ryan Donovan (15:39)

Right. You know, to your earlier point about how a lot of musical theater studies is drawn to textual analysis, I was never really drawn to that, and I love reading it, and I love when somebody's really amazing at that. I felt like I could bring other things to the table, and in particular, one of Those things was looking at casting as a labor practice. And it's a necessary evil. We've got the system that kind of works right now. You have to figure out a way to narrow down the pool of hopefuls because there are always more actors willing to be in something than there are parts available. And so Actors Equity, the union, has set up procedures to try to make casting be more inclusive. And yet they're still at the mercy of producers. So that's really how I landed on casting. And one of the things that I think is interesting about casting is that it's it, as I mentioned before, it's always going to be a subjective process. And I think that's why it's exciting. And so while I acknowledge that it's always going to be subjective, what I am arguing in the book is that it doesn't have to be discriminatory at the same time as it is subjective. And so, you know, I think we see these casting breakdowns that describe body size, shape, height. I mean, for me, I write in the introduction about lying about my height as a dancer because so many shows had height requirements and precluded me for. I was never tall enough. For Susan Stroman shows, for instance, I don't know that the producers needed male dancers to be 5, 11 or above, but she thought they did. So I'm interested in thinking about ways that people can make casting less discriminatory while still acknowledging that it's a personal process for the director and choreographer.

Pete Kunze (18:08)

And we've talked about this already, but I'm hoping we can kind of cycle back to it now in light of those comments, which is that Broadway Bodies draws attention to arguably like one of the defining tensions of Broadway. Right. Which is on the one hand, it seems far more inclusive than other cultural industries because it's so indebted to the labor of people of color, of queer folks. And on the other hand, it remains so inaccessible financially, physically, geographically. Right. I mean, sometimes I find myself as an able bodied person going to the theater and I'm like, how do people sit in these chairs? Or my knees are up to my chest and what does this do for people who use wheelchairs or who are older and have less mobility. Right. So I'm curious if you talk a little bit more about how does this culture of inclusion that Broadway seems to be selling us also kind of get or how's it undergirded by this kind of conformity and this reticence towards change?

Ryan Donovan (19:04)

Yeah. In the book I mostly write about what happens on stage, but I think this is an important point about the offstage dynamics or the front of house for audience members. Of course, it's financially inaccessible to the vast majority of people. It's a luxury product at this point to attend a Broadway show or a luxury experience. And historically, in the period after World War II, I think I just read yesterday that ticket prices doubled during that era or maybe went up 40%, but it was still affordable for middle class audiences then, and that's no longer the case. So it's both inaccessible, as you point out, geographically, financially, but also for disabled folks. It is uncomfortable, if impossible to attend many, many of these Broadway theaters, which were built mostly around a century ago and some a little bit before that, without a thought for accessibility. And this extends to the back of the house, too, for performers. All of these theaters have dressing rooms that are accessed by stairs, and few of them have elevators for performers to get up to their dressing room from the stage. And so the industry is not set up to be. To be accessible, really. And as you mentioned, I mean, for wheelchair users or for deaf and hard of hearing audience members or for low vision, I mean, it's an afterthought in many instances, or maybe they will. Producers will offer a performance once every six weeks that is sensory friendly or has sign interpretation. And if there is an ASL interpreter, often there's only one interpreter who has to play all of the parts and translate the language of the show into asl. And so that's not really so inclusive because it's kind of a separate and unequal experience.

Pete Kunze (21:25)

So. Thank you. I mean, I guess my question is a little unfair. I was thinking about the kind of. The broad scope. But let's go back to the stage. Right. And your study focuses primarily on, I would say, since A Chorus Line. Right. So, yeah. And so it was making me think, like, oh, like what would it mean to rewrite the entire history of Broadway or to rethink, you know, stars through this question too. Right. And so in my casual Googling, I looked up, you know, the greatest Broadway performers and divas of all time, and what struck me immediately is how many of them were white, cisgender, slender. In fact, the only performer on that list who I would associate as being one, a performer known for their. Their size, was Barbara Cook. And of course, that's more so later in her career when she transitioned primarily to cabaret performances. Right. So I guess my question in a very long way is how might this attitude towards bodies reshape other histories that could be written? Or how has Broadway Changed over time in its attitude towards bodies. That's two questions. So pick one or do both.

Ryan Donovan (22:34)

I think in terms of how it's changed, we're starting to see. We're starting to see different bodies on stage than more regularly than we used to see, I think. And we can. This is why, I mean, I purposely say C, because I wanted to write about what's visible to. To audiences in many instances, although sexuality isn't always visible. Right. So. But so shows like a Strange Loop that, you know are about a fat black queer guy and you know, to that. To that matter, for that matter, also fat ham that's coming to Broadway this, this spring. But also, you know, you're starting to see ensembles that aren't just full of the quote, unquote, Broadway body type. And so. But like with other as. As with earlier shows where there might have been one black chorus member or one Asian American chorus member or Latinx member of the chorus, now we're starting to see that with size and with disability in rare cases. Still, things are slowly changing. And I think part of why I focus on casting rather than dramaturgy or textual analysis is because that stuff is really slow to happen in theater. Theater is a slow art form. Takes a long time to write a musical these days to get it produced. It's a series of workshops. It's maybe an out of town tryout or a regional production. And casting is actually a much faster process. So casting is one site where we can actually see immediate changes. And that was interesting to me and also interesting in that force consideration of, well, why haven't we seen this sooner? So, yeah, I mean, I do think Broadway is changing. It's maybe not fast enough for some people and maybe it's too fast for others in some regards, but I do see that it is. It's attempting to change anyway and to be more inclusive. And that's a change really, in the last couple of years since Broadway reopened following its pandemic enforced shutdown. So, you know, I think this is. We can look at this as one of the good things that came out of the reckoning that the industry went through during COVID Yeah, absolutely.

Pete Kunze (25:26)

I mean, I'm just thinking of my own theater going in the last year as I'm trying to catch up for all the shows I didn't get to see during the pandemic. Or I should say that the heyday of the pandemic, in many ways, we're still living through the pandemic.

Ryan Donovan (25:35)

Right, right.

Pete Kunze (25:37)

And going to see a show like N. Juliet. Right. Where I was really struck by the diversity of bodies on stage in the ensemble. Right. Compared to say, you know, a show like Chicago, which traditionally has had, I think we would agree, maybe a more uniform, conformed body type. Right. So there seems to be signs of progress, but it always seems to ebb and flow with Broadway. Right. Like every time there's a moment of progress, there also seems to be an incident like, you know, the replacement of Josh Groban in Natasha and Pierre, where questions of race and who should play this part get called in and brought to the fore or, you know, concerns over Beanie Feldstein or Lea Michele as Fanny Brice. And, you know, which is the decision that's best for reflecting a commitment to social justice and which is the decision that's going to sell tickets. Right. Do you have any thoughts over these loose ramblings I'm offering?

Ryan Donovan (26:35)

Yeah, I have a couple thoughts. First, Broadway is about real estate. The theaters are owned by four corporations apart from the couple that are the three or four that are non profit houses. And so, you know, you can think of it as those corporations are the landlords and Broadway shows are the tenants. And in the the interest of the landlords is finding somebody to pay the most rent for the longest amount of time. And so in the instances of kind of casting controversies that you mentioned with Beanie being replaced by Leah and the kerfuffle around Manny Patinkin coming in to quote unquote, save the great Comet and then backing out because of the optics, you know, Broadway relies on a star system and stars are producers best bets to sell tickets. So that's where the producers are almost always going to land. And then I think the other point that I want to make is that, you know, in the book I'm arguing, you know, that the Broadway body has led to this kind of enforced conformity in many instances. I just want to make clear though that because sometimes I see this point get misinterpreted as me saying that this is always a bad thing. I think it depends on context. I don't think anything is all good or all bad. And I think there should be room for all kinds of shows and all kinds of casting on Broadway. And so sure, sometimes I love to go see a show like Chicago that celebrates this, this body type, but I don't only want to see that. And I think that's kind of, that's the distinction I am making in the book is that for far too long we've only seen that. And so I don't think that we need to throw it out in the name of social change. People should be able to look how they want to look is the bigger point. So, you know, I see myself as in the book, as contributing to more of the discourse around body neutrality rather than body positivity. Of course I support, you know, body positivity, but I think really the aim for my work is to see that there is kind of a neutralizing of the stigma attached to different kind of body types. And so, for instance, drawing from fat studies to use the word fat as a descriptor rather than bend ourselves into pretzels, trying to come up with euphemisms. So nothing. I think we have to move a little bit beyond the frame of good bad in order to actually talk about what's happening openly.

Pete Kunze (29:44)

Yeah. I think of scholars like Christine Gledhill and Pleasurable Negotiation or Stacy Wolf on Dissonant Pleasures and realizing that there's going to be these elements in which we're never going to be completely satisfied. But that doesn't mean we can't enjoy it, and that doesn't mean that progress can't be made. Still, I realize I've committed a bit of a cardinal sin, which is we've been talking about Broadway body, but we actually haven't laid out clearly how you are defining this, this term in your work. And I was hoping you could could offer us kind of a concise preview of what this concept means for you and in particular, how you link it to neoliberalism, which I think was an interesting theoretical move in your work.

Ryan Donovan (30:29)

I'm defining the Broadway body as the. I should pull out the back of the book here to read what I wrote for that. The hyper, hyper fit, exceptionally able triple threat performer who I think I kind of made a joke that this is the performer who does their workout with their trainer and then goes to do their matinee of Hamilton and then goes on for the lead that night, their matinee in the ensemble, and then plays the lead that night. So it's this performer whose body can do anything. And they're usually tall, they're conventionally attractive. And. It became the ideal body for Broadway musicals over the course of the last few decades. And looking into it, I found all of these examples where performers, I think, inadvertently contributed to this through associating themselves with exercise and fitness. And actually, the first instance I found of the term Broadway body was from a workout tape that was put out by original west side Story darling Carol Lawrence in the 1980s, which is part of this Bigger fitness Trend in the 1970s and 80s, with celebrities like Jane Fonda associating themselves with fitness. And on Broadway, Ann Reinking made a book called the Dancers Workout. And even Angela Lansbury, may she rest in peace, did this kind of iconic, low impact workout that you should all check out on YouTube just to see it. So that's so camp. But, you know, this is. And so to your question about how this connects to the neoliberal body is that there's a few ways. One is that it was the consolidation of all of these skills and this look in one performer's body. So before the, before west side Story, which was in 1957, most musicals, most Broadway musicals were cast with separate singing and dancing ensembles. So let's say there would have been 14 members in the singing chorus of Oklahoma. And 14 dancing members in the chorus of Oklahoma. And so the dancers would come out and dance and the singers would just stand there in the back and sing, kind of like musical wallpaper. And west side Story was the show. It wasn't the first show to cast one ensemble of just singer dancers, but it was the one that really shifted the paradigm. And it took about a dozen years for that to really catch on. And by the time of Pippin in 1972, Bob Fosse is also using a similar tactic in casting these triple threat performers who sing and dance and act and cover all of the leads. And so, you know, the consolidation of all of these skills into one body saved producers money. It made shows more profitable, and it also made them more profitable because they were more replicable. And this is where I'm talking about A Chorus Line in the book. And the fact that it's runaway success meant that producers had this opportunity to capitalize on that by opening the show three companies simultaneously. So in 1976, they were rehearsing three companies at once. One to open the show on Broadway with a new company, one to go to la, and then I think the third was London. And so they were, you know, the fact that they were doing this all at once, all together, kind of made it like this neoliberal machine that, you know, put these bodies to work. And I also, in the book, I talk about how a Broadway show eight times a week is. Is kind of, it's repetitive labor, as you were mentioning before about injuries. And, you know, dancers and performers and Broadway shows are at risk for injury because they are doing the same thing eight times a week. And that creates certain strengths, but also I think exposes some weaknesses in the body too. All of this is coupled in with this fitness culture that I was mentioning that pressures all Americans to be thin and to exercise. And if you're not thin and you don't exercise, then to spend money getting thin and not eating certain foods and not doing certain things. And so that's how I see the connection to neoliberalism, how it's enacted on the body and in particular, how it's enacted upon bodies that don't conform to thinness or to the ableism of the world, not just the theater industry. And so those bodies face even steeper burdens for not conforming. And so in the book, I'm also looking at how there are wage gaps for all of the identities that I write about. There are wage gaps if you are, for instance, a fat woman. There was a 2015 study that showed that you earn on average $8,000 less per year than your peers. And also despite the media saturation of, like, wealthy white gay men, you know, LGBTQ people as a whole, including, you know, white gay men, still face wage gaps compared to our heterosexual peers. And, you know, the statistics for disabled people in the labor market kind of blow all of the rest of that out of the water because it's so dismal. So in that way, you know, the neoliberalism impacts all of those identities much harsher than those that are normative in the goth minion sense.

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Pete Kunze (38:20)

But it also brings a really important materialist dimension to musical theater studies. Right, and I'm biased here because I do industry studies in my own work. So it's one of the elements of your book that I really enjoyed. I'm hoping we can now kind of transition to talking about three case studies in your book to kind of give listeners a sense of the deep dives you provide your readers. And the first I'm hoping to look at is Jennifer Holliday as Effie White in Dreamgirls. What drew you to this case study?

Ryan Donovan (38:53)

I was gonna say it's a loaded question. Yeah, I mean, my obsession with watching her, that performance on the Tonys. I mean, I can't not play the whole thing every time I put it on. So as I was. I began that section of my dissertation by thinking about the musical Hairspray and how that was the only role for a fat white girl in a Broadway show. And then I started thinking, well, what other roles are there for fat actors of any race or ethnicity? And the only other leading role that I came up with in the period I'm looking at was Effie in Dreamgirls. And so as I got into that, I started looking at the record around Jennifer Holiday. And one. And part of. Part of why I think I was drawn to this is because I actually got to see her play effie in a 2007 production at Atlanta Theater of the Stars. I was rehearsing for west side Story there, and it was at the time that the production of Dreamgirls was going up. So we were in rehearsal and they were in production, and we all got invited to the Fox Theater to see her in the show. And it was just such an amazing experience to see her play this part 26 years after originating the role. And she's. The association of Holiday with Dreamgirls is so profound that she's mentioned and almost every single review of the show, whether she's in it or not. There's a headline in Newsweek when Amber Riley was starring in the west end production in 2016, I think that the headline was essentially, can Amber Riley Match up to Jennifer Holiday? So I was really intrigued by that. And then looking back at interviews Holiday had done and knowing that she had a lot of weight loss after having gastric bypass surgery and that when she returned to the role, there's always this question of whether she's going to wear a fat suit or not, I became obsessed by that. I actually felt so vindicated about last, I guess, a week ago, there was this article in the New York Post to coincide with her Holiday's run of shows at the Cabaret 54 below, where they talked about her wearing a fat suit in Dreamgirls. And it's fascinating to me that in addition to my book, 42 years later, Jennifer Holliday is still so associated with Effie and with the fat suit and that it's still part of the public discourse. And, you know, I wrote about shows that I love, and, you know, my love is not unconditional for these shows, as my research found. Found me kind of grappling with the more troubling aspects of what went on backstage in many of these productions. But, you know, I began this project by really looking at. At things that I love, because you have to. To write a book, you have to have some kind of sustaining passion for the. For the topic. And, you know, the benefit of writing about Effie and Dreamgirls was that I got to listen to the cast album over and over and over again, and I'm still not tired of it. I will still put it on maybe more than any of the other shows I wrote about. That's the one I listened to the most.

Pete Kunze (42:49)

Yeah. And I think your passion comes through here brilliantly. Right.

Ryan Donovan (42:52)

Thank you.

Pete Kunze (42:53)

I first came across Jennifer Holiday in the late 90s when there was that. I don't know if you know, that Carnegie Hall Leading Ladies concert they did.

Ryan Donovan (43:02)

Yes.

Pete Kunze (43:02)

And of course, she comes out and the chime starts, you know, that kind of that intro chime that lets you know it's coming.

Ryan Donovan (43:08)

Right.

Pete Kunze (43:09)

And then just kind of like being fascinated to see that song out of its context and then her face.

Ryan Donovan (43:15)

Right.

Pete Kunze (43:15)

That kind of that jaw that deserves its own. It deserves its own, you know, compensation. Just the work it does. But I mean, and then to go back and see what you're talking about right. On. On YouTube, the. The original Tony Award performance, which, you know, every once in a while, I think Playbill maybe does, like, best Tony performances of all time. Right. And it's always, like, number one or certainly up there. I mean, how do you compete with that?

Ryan Donovan (43:39)

Yeah.

Pete Kunze (43:40)

And to put it in this context, I think really brings to light some of the really troubling notions of what went on behind the scenes. And I think that readers will. Will enjoy hopefully as much as I did, learning about, you know, what do you do when Jennifer Holliday leaves the show? Is Effie now a fat character? And going back to your earlier point, how some actresses kind of talked about or, you know, understood or presented their Effies in light of this kind of shadow she's cast over this role.

Ryan Donovan (44:11)

Yeah. And, you know, this is what I was really drawn to throughout the research was this tension between what happens on stage and the show's narrative and then how, in many cases, that was kind of eerily mirrored in the offstage behaviors of people involved. And, you know, in Dreamgirls, Effie is famously replaced because Curtis, her manager slash boyfriend, makes her sing back up and then dumps her because, as he says, quote, she's getting fatter all the time. And, you know, so she's replaced with a thinner, smaller voiced person. And that's actually exactly what happened to Jennifer Holiday after she left the show. They replaced her with thinner performers who had to wear fat suits in many instances and who didn't have voices as big as hers. And so I was. I was so intrigued by these. These overlaps. And it was really fun to look. I mean, I had. I had so much fun looking at all this archival material, even though a lot of it is so messed up. Every time I found something that was particularly awful, I was like, I have to write about this. People have to know. And, you know, part of the work of this book was bringing together all of these sources that I found into one narrative. And, you know, painting, it's like creating a mosaic. You're putting all the pieces together and hoping that it creates a bigger picture. And, you know, so every little bit that I found was so exciting. And to feel their connections happening as I was doing that was one of the real joys of writing this book.

Pete Kunze (45:57)

Great. And I'm hoping we can now talk a little bit about George and Albin, the original production of La Cage Aux Folles. You alluded to it earlier, right, that this was, you know, two straight performers, one of whom was a, you know, had played Sweeney Todd, was the replacing Sweeney Todd. Right. So, yeah, it's an interesting kind of, you know, thinking about Marvin Carlson's work, right, that kind of, you know, for Sweeney Todd to show up on stage as Albin. Can you talk a little bit about this famous musical about accepting gay love and the way that the performers themselves were talking about the roles they were playing in the show.

Ryan Donovan (46:43)

What really struck me about La Cage aux Fall is that Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein and Arthur Lawrence were working on this in the waning days of the gay liberation movement. And they had a generational divide among them because Harvey Fierstein was much younger than the other two, and so he had a completely different point of view than they did. And I think that tension produced this wonderful show. And yet the show opened in 1983. So this is. AIDS is spreading. It hasn't been yet called AIDS. And, you know, so I was so drawn to the fact that, you know, they were writing this really fluffy romantic comedy at a Time of terrible fear and stigma against gay men in particular, and, and then the choices that they had to make as a result of the social environment into which they were bringing this show. And I spoke with, I interviewed one of the original producers of the show and he made the argument, as they did back in the 1980s, that they didn't consider actors identities when they were casting the show and they simply went with the best actor for the role. And while I believe them, I think it also has to be said that in 1983, when they were casting this show, there were no out gay actors. It would have been career suicide for an actor to come out at that time and still hope to find work. So in that way, I'm looking at how I'm charting how the show responded both to the gay liberation movement, the impact of aids, and then also it appears at the moment that we switch in the gay rights movement from the discourse around liberation to one of equality. And the show is perfectly poised to meet that moment. And I think, as with the other shows I write about, maybe La Cage is actually the most perfect example of this kind of ambivalent inclusion that I'm addressing in the book. Because, yes, it was the first Broadway musical to feature a gay couple, and a middle aged gay couple at that, as its romantic leads, and yet it cast two straight men who had, as you mentioned, both been associated with these kind of hyper masculine roles. And so, you know, in that sense, there's this ambivalent inclusion. And Harvey Fierstein argued that Alban at least should have been played by a gay actor. And he later went on to see the role. He actually went on to play the role himself on Broadway in the second revival. But before that he did live to see a gay actor play the role. And he said that he felt that I am what I am. The big gay anthem from the show worked better with the gay actor. And the famously cantankerous Arthur Lawrence was forced to admit that he agreed with him, which is quite a win for Harvey, I think.

Pete Kunze (50:27)

Yeah, I mean, it's. It's amazing to think about the show and it's in its history within musical theater. You know, we were talking about the Tony Awards earlier, and I remember watching Jerry Herman's acceptance speech when he won best Musical. Right. Defeating Sunday in the park with George. Right. Even though Sondheim and Lapine had won the Pulitzer, I think, by then. And he kind of frames it as in like, the tuneful musical is not dead.

Ryan Donovan (50:55)

Right. Yeah. I think he said the show tunes are alive. And. Well, or something like that. Right, right, right.

Pete Kunze (51:02)

Because, you know, and of course, Sondheim has that famous jab about the Hummable song and merrily. Right. So it was an interesting kind of artistic moment, but also thinking about it in its political moment, too. And I seem to remember, do you remember reading in the press around the time that Kelsey Grammer was doing La Cage Auxohl with Douglas Hodge, that he actually had said to Douglas Hodge, like, don't kiss me on the mouth or something. I remember reading this, right. And you're kind of like, dude, you're doing Georges. Like, how are you being so anxious and homophobic towards your co star?

Ryan Donovan (51:34)

Right, right. Well, there's this whole history of whether or not Georgia now band should kiss. And in the original production, they famously did not. And, you know, I understand why they couldn't have politically at the time. I don't necessarily agree with that, but I understand it. Right. So. And then there's the revival of the Jerry Zaks revival, And I think 2003 or 4 maybe. And they did kiss in that production, I believe. And then in the. It turns out in the last production, the Kelsey Grammar Douglas Hodge production, there's this moment where it looks like they kiss, but Kelsey Grammar actually, like, kissed his own hand or something like that. I mean, of course, to find out his politics later after the fact, has colored our view of him in the role. Maybe. But, yeah, it's wild to me that you would take that part and then refuse to kiss. And it's not like a deep kiss or something that is required on stage. It's just, you know. But I was so struck by how many actors would take on roles like that and then refuse to give the character the full humanity that they deserve. And, you know, going back to the Tonys for La Cage, actually, I write about this in the book how George Hearn refused to do to wear the Zaza dragon to sing I Am what I Am on the Tonys that year. So all of the Kajals, the drag ensemble from the show, come out in full drag and do a little bit of a number. And then George Hearn walks in, walks on stage in a tuxedo in total male drag to sing I Am what I Am, which is in the show, sung as Alban's drag Persona, Zaza. And I just felt that it was such a betrayal of the show's values. And, you know, speaking of this kind of tension, it's so odd then to think that that same year on the Grammy Awards, which gets a much, much bigger viewership than the Tonys. They sent Walter Charles out to LA to perform I Am what I Am on the Grammys. He was the COVID for Albin on Broadway, and he performed on the Grammys in drag. And so it was this real, like, on Broadway's own home field, let's say. Hearn made this choice not to do the number in drag. And I think that's indicative of a lot about the 1980s, about what it was, what Broadway was like then, and, you know, what certain actors felt comfortable doing and where. And, you know, I was enormously fascinated by that.

Pete Kunze (54:55)

And if we can now talk briefly about Ali Stroker as Ado Annie in the recent revival Revisal Oklahoma, however, we. I mean, it's not really a Revisal, Right. It's more of reimagining. But can you talk about that casting decision? And, you know, how. How might we think about that?

Ryan Donovan (55:19)

Right.

Pete Kunze (55:19)

I mean, I think that, you know, it's. It's a hypersexualized character, it's a comic character, and, you know, I think it brings positive and potentially troubling dimensions to how we think about that show. Right. I'm curious how you kind of think through it.

Ryan Donovan (55:34)

Yeah. I was actually just teaching Oklahoma two weeks ago, and we looked at on the Town the week after that. And these two musicals in particular are from 1943 and 1944, so the final years of World War II. And I think that Ado Annie in Oklahoma and Hildy on the Town are Broadway musical theater's horniest characters. And I think it's, you know, and looking at them in historical context, they make sense, given women's newfound freedom in America in those years, especially in the workforce and just having a little bit more agency over their lives than previously. And, of course, you know, after the war, the 1950s comes and, you know, the nuclear family becomes dominant above all, and we start to lose characters like this. And yet when these shows are revived, it's really risky because, you know, we're not in that 1940s context anymore. And so how do you deal with the kind of potentially icky parts of reviving these hypersexualized female characters? And I actually thought in casting Ali Stroker, who uses a wheelchair, just in case listeners don't know who she is. Casting Ali Stroker as Ada Annie was this real casting coup because this was her second Broadway musical after appearing in Deaf West's revival of Spring Awakening, but and her first in this kind of major role. And, you know, it was revolutionary because it allowed A performer with a visible disability to actually be sexual and to acknowledge that disabled people have a full range of desire and sexual expression. And so it was really liberating in that way. And she had so much fun and joy with those aspects of the role that, you know, for me at least, any potential outdated gender politics felt totally different. And there was this kind of celebratory aspect to the role that, you know, it might not have had if they had just cast some traditional comic ingenue in the role of. And what's interesting to me about that production and that role in particular is that since Ali Stroker played the role on Broadway when that production toured, Ado Annie was cast with a trans performer named Sis. And then in the recent West End production, which began at the Young Vic and is now going to the West End this spring, Marisha Wallace played, played Ado Annie and she was actually just nominated for an Olivier Award yesterday. And I interviewed her when she was playing Effie in the West End production of Dreamgirls. And she went on to play Motormouth Maybelle in the West End revival of Hairspray. And now she's playing Ado. She was playing Ado Annie, now she's playing Adelaide and Guys and Dolls at the Bridge Theater. But her career is kind of this marker of what kinds of visible markers are now being cast in certain roles differently than before. And so to get back to Edo Annie, I think it's fascinating that this is the role that Daniel Fish, the director, casts a disabled performer in, a trans performer, and then a plus size black woman in. And I guess that goes also for CIS too. But you know, that Ado Annie became kind of the container in that show of these visible markers of difference from the norm. And of course, in each of these productions, you know, I have to say that Laurie was played by black actors. And so, you know, there were, you know, Ado Annie wasn't the only one that only role who's casting veered from like the, you know, your grandmother's version of Oklahoma. But I just think it's so fascinating to think about why this role as the, as the container of difference. And I think maybe it is about reframing who gets to own their sexuality in this culture. And so it always came off as, as less constrictive than it might have. So, yeah, And Ali Stricker is now becoming a big TV star, so it's exciting to see her rise.

Pete Kunze (60:34)

Absolutely, absolutely. And I didn't have the opportunity to see the other performers who took on Ado Annie. But I think one of the things that was interesting compared to, as you mentioned, your grandmother's Oklahoma. Is not only is Ado Annie in that show or Stroker's performance of Ado Annie, sexual but sexy.

Ryan Donovan (60:50)

Right.

Pete Kunze (60:51)

Like, normally it's played as more of a kind of like, oh, you know, she's promiscuous, you know, but like in. She really kind of exudes a confidence that comes from this sexuality in a way that in addition to the optics of the role. Right. Also kind of reinvents the character too.

Ryan Donovan (61:10)

Totally.

Pete Kunze (61:10)

So as we head into the home stretch in our conversation of Ali Stroker as, you know, hopefully a sign of progress afoot, I'm curious what you think about where Broadway's at now in this year. Right. I mean, obviously book publishing requires us to stop before now, but, you know, thinking about a non binary performer like Jerry Coffer, whose stage name is Jinx Monsoon, taking on a role that's traditionally a cisgender woman of, you know, matron Mama Morton in Chicago, or. I was also thinking of Bonnie Milligan's performance and Kimberly Akimbo as Deborah. And in the spirit of your research, I went and looked at the casting notices and they do not mention anything about being a fat performer. And I loved that musical so much. And she stole the show in those moments when she's on screen. I mean, you know, Victoria Clarke holds her own, don't get me wrong. But. But it's. It's not about Milligan's body.

Ryan Donovan (62:08)

Right, Right.

Pete Kunze (62:09)

It's about the character. And so I'm answering my own question. Excuse me. But I'm curious what you think about. Sorry, I'm curious about what you think about what you're seeing now on Broadway in terms of casting.

Ryan Donovan (62:22)

Yeah. I am such a Bonnie Milligan fan. And so it's a thrill to get to see her play characters like the one she played in Head Over Heels and Aunt Deborah in Kimberly Akimbo. I mean, I go, I return to her songs in the cast album again and again, and she's so fascinated, fabulous in the part. And I really hope that she gets a Tony, at least a nomination. So, yeah, it is exciting. And, you know, so we have that. And then, you know, as I mentioned before, Broadway relies on the star system. Jinkx Monsoon has sold more tickets to Chicago than anybody had a right to expect for a show that's been playing on Broadway since I was in high school in 1997. Like, this show has been going and going and going and it's always, you know, relied on stars, but they had really started to get kind of no shade here, but like C list stars to come in. It's not like in the late 90s when it was a hot ticket. And so it was this real coup to get Jinx Monsoon, who's a big star, to do this. And, you know, I think it's thrilling. And I, I love to see the interviews with Jinx where they're talking about being in this show and what it means to them and that Broadway was always part of their dream. And I do think that actually casting a star like Jinx Monsoon in a show like Chicago or any show is a really great way to get new audiences into the theater, which is something the industry is forever obsessed with. And I, you know, I think the answer is that younger audiences want to see inclusive casting. It's not just that they want to see it, they expect to see it. And so, you know, thinking about Jinx Monsoon as Mama Morton, Bonnie Milligan, other performers, you know, too many to name right now almost, you know, this is, I think I'm hopeful that this is kind of becoming the new norm.

Pete Kunze (64:39)

Absolutely, absolutely. And you mentioned the Tony Awards. And I'm hoping that I can ask you quickly about an incident that was reported last month in the New York Times in which trans non binary performer Justin David Sullivan from and Juliet decided to opt out at Tony competition because they felt it's a gendered competition and didn't reflect their positionality. How do you and your work think through what we're seeing here about this persistence of conformity? And how might the awards themselves be something we need to radically rethink if we want to create a more inclusive and diverse industry.

Ryan Donovan (65:22)

Yeah, this is such a hot button issue right now. And I was actually reading an interview, an article yesterday that had an interview with Angela Bassett about this at the SAG Awards this past weekend. And she and actually Sally Field, I think both said, you know, while they, while they understand paraphrasing, but while they understand the impetus to create non gendered award categories, that's ultimately going to mean fewer awards are given. And I think so there's that perspective. And then there's the perspective that, you know, gender is a fiction and a performance and that, you know, it's ridiculous to have awards doled out by gender. And then there's also the fact that if our culture is so misogynist, there's the fact that if we do away with gendered categories, it's very likely that the majority of awards are going to be given to CIS men. And thinking about the SAG Awards, several actors made the point that until women, trans and non binary characters have equal screen time to male characters, this is not a fair fight. And so thinking about it that way just shows how complicated it is. And this is a conundrum, I think. I don't think the industry was prepared to have this conversation, unfortunately. And also thinking historically, gender norms are changing so swiftly. I think much faster than norms of sexuality changed. And certainly they're coming to the mainstream much more quickly than before. And so I think a lot of people are playing catch up here and. Yeah, so I don't actually know what should be done about this because I can. I can see how all of these sides are in tension with each other. And I don't really think anybody's wrong here, which makes it hard to know exactly what the Tonys and other awards should do. I think that this might be one of those situations where by solving one problem, you create another. So, you know, for instance, if we do nothing, that creates its own issues of exclusion and if we do change the way it's done, that's going to bring other consequences about too. So I'm glad that the conversation is happening and I'm also glad that I don't have to be among the people deciding how to. How to navigate this, because it's. It's a really evolving conversation and not everybody is up to speed and using the same language even yet. So there's still a fair amount of education that has to happen for people that don't even understand the concept of a gender binary at all. I also read this great article a few months ago. Forgive me for forgetting the name of the writer, but they argued that everyone is non binary because nobody wakes up and says, I'm so binary today. If we acknowledge that the binary is fake, then actually none of us are really part of it. And so that's a more academic perspective on it, but I think an important one to toss into the mix too, especially if we're in this moment of trying to get people to understand the fluidity of identity and in particular sexuality and gender identity. And, you know, and those aren't the same thing, of course, but in terms of casting, I think it's really a challenge because as much as we are having that conversation about fluidity and inclusivity, conversely there's this kind of rigidity that arises about who should play whom. And it becomes particularly vexing when it's around issues of gender and sexuality. So we're at a real inflection point there and it'll be exciting to see what happens.

Pete Kunze (70:08)

Absolutely. I certainly get the reticence to offer the answer, but I think you're modestly not mentioning that, you know, work like yours provides the history and the analytical tools to start to have this conversation. And I hope readers will feel that way and industry insiders when they come to your work. So my last question what are you currently working on? Are you continuing on this path or do you find yourself heading in a new, exciting direction?

Ryan Donovan (70:34)

I am in the very early stages of researching a book about the rise of virtuosity and musical theater performance in the 1970s. So I've begun by looking at Bob Fosse's Dance in, which is about to begin Broadway previews later this week, a revival of that. And I started looking into that because there was this persistent notion that the show was so hard and that it would be so difficult to dance that it would be unethical to revive it. And so I've actually begun in the archive. I've been doing research at the Shubert Archive, which is above Broadway's Lyceum Theater, and looking at stage managers reports to tease out why performers were missing shows. And it's not always what the mainstream media would have you believe. So that's where I'm at right now. But I plan to look at how the standards of virtuosity for all three of the constituent skills of musical theater performance were leveled up in the 1970s. So acting, singing and dancing. And that'll be preoccupying me for the next several years, hopefully.

Pete Kunze (71:55)

Excellent. Excellent. Well, we hope you'll come back on when that book comes out.

Ryan Donovan (72:00)

Absolutely.

Pete Kunze (72:01)

Thank you for your time today, Ryan. The book is Broadway A Critical History of Conformity, available now from Oxford University Press and other online booksellers. This is Pete Kunze, and this has been New Books in the Performing Arts on the New Books Network. Thank you for listening and we hope you'll join us again next time.