I Met a Girl...

Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS is a charity organization that I have supported from time to time. My favorite way to support them is to put money into an orange bucket at a live show. It’s a thrilling moment to get to look a hard-working actor in the eye, say thank you for their performance, and give something toward helping lots of people. Broadway Cares also usually holds live performances for donations. With live shows on hold because of the pandemic, neither way of donating has been an option.

This year, Broadway Cares has a virtual performance called Broadway Backwards, available through 11:59 PM on April 3. It focuses on how the isolation of the pandemic has affected the LGBTQ+ community. The Broadway Backwards performances gender-flip songs so that those originally scripted for men are sung by women, and vice versa. There have been several Broadway Backwards performances to raise money over the years, and this virtual version includes some of them.

Which brings me to Bonnie Milligan and “I Met a Girl”.

https://twitter.com/BeltingBonnie

The whole Broadway Backwards show is glorious and well worth the watch, but Milligan’s performance of “I Met a Girl” from Bells Are Ringing made me really take notice. So much so that when it was over, I turned to my wife and asked her if that really happened. Because here was a fat woman, wearing a dress similar to what I could probably find at my local Torrid, singing about having met a wonderful girl and falling in love. I saw myself on stage in a way that I have never seen before.

Bonnie Milligan, Debra Monk, and ensemble in Broadway Backwards.

This… this is why representation matters. Because I saw a fat woman enjoying her new-found identity and being supported by the people around her. I saw someone who looks like me loving her life.

Milligan’s performance starts around 39:35, but I encourage you not to skip past what comes before (and everything that comes after). Her performance gave me a certain kind of hope that is much-needed more than a year into this pandemic life. I’m the newest member of the Bonnie Milligan fan club for sure.

If you miss being able to see Milligan’s performance in the virtual Broadway Backwards 2021, you can find it here from Broadway Backwards 2019. If you are able, please consider donating to Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. On top of helping many AIDS and family organizations, donations are also going to help those in the performing arts who have been struggling due to job loss and having their careers put on hold. This year’s proceeds also go toward helping The Center which has been serving the LGBTQ+ community virtually almost as soon as their building closed.

Body Diversity on Broadway

Current musicals on Broadway. Source: broadway.com

When Hamilton burst onto the scene in 2015, it was rightfully hailed as a radical shift in casting for Broadway roles. Almost the entire cast then and all the touring companies and the resident Broadway cast now are people of color. And it is part of the point that black men and women are playing the Founding Fathers and Mothers, the very same people who enslaved and oppressed their ancestors. Hamilton is the story of America then told by America now, and looking at the people on stage, you can feel that. They look like the people we see in our neighborhoods. Except for one thing…

In all of Hamilton, only one character is ever labelled fat, and it’s the incompetent President John Adams, who we never see during the show. We are told in the show that Adams privately refers to Hamilton as a “Creole bastard” and Hamilton publishes his response in the papers, summarized with the lyrics, “Sit down, John! You fat mother[bleep]!”

Despite all of the other adjectives thrown about in the show—arrogant, bastard, orphan, loud-mouth, son of a whore, hero, scholar, right-hand man—only fat is reserved for someone Hamilton hates. Not even King George, who the American rebels have taken arms against, earns this particular epithet. Nor does Thomas Jefferson, who Hamilton regularly did political battle with. Only John Adams, who was clearly in a war of words with Hamilton earns it.

What makes it feel particularly disturbing is that this just occurred to me today. I’ve been listening to the original cast recording at intervals since October 2015 and this is the first time it occurred to me that the one character actually referred to as fat is someone we’re supposed to hate. And it’s not as if there haven’t been fat actors in Hamilton. James Monroe Igelhart is a fat actor who is currently in the role of Marquis de Lafayette/Thomas Jefferson. But I think that he’s an anomaly, not only in Hamilton but on Broadway in general.

One of the few times that I’ve seen remarkable body diversity on a stage was in a touring production of Come From Away, which is the story of a small town in Newfoundland where 38 planes were diverted on September 11, 2001 when the US airspace was closed. The town doubled in size with the arrival of all of those passengers from all over the world. And when I looked on stage, there were the kinds of people I knew. Mostly thin or average-sized people, but also a couple of fat people. They looked like a group of real people that I would expect to see in an airport or getting off a plane.

Seeing that production of Come From Away, it was one of the first times I saw even a glimpse of myself on stage in a real way. I’m sure I’ve seen fat people on stage before, but always as a caricature or as someone evil, annoying, or unwanted. We need more of that on stage, just like we need it in movies and television. We need more of people like Igelhart winning a Tony for playing a role like the Genie in Aladdin. We need more of people like Ali Stoker, the first wheelchair user on a Broadway stage and Tony-award winner for best featured actress in a musical. And we need to stop using the word fat against people, even for fictional or fictionalized characters that we never see.