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Have you ever stopped to think about the history of bodies in theater? Or the implicit bias that goes into what we see on stage? When I began doing EDI work for theater and the arts, I couldn’t find many resources about the topic of inclusion and Broadway musicals. That is… until I found the book called Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity. It’s the book our industry desperately needs.
I had the opportunity to sit down and have an honest and thoughtful conversation with author, dancer, and scholar Ryan Donovan. He was incredibly generous with his insights and his time. We nerded out on some of our favorite shows and performers, discussed the kinds of discrimination that performers face in the industry, and so much more.
I know you'll love this conversation, whether you're a theater artist, audience member, or just interested in learning more about the history of Broadway. But to my actors—I think you’ll feel very very seen in this conversation.
In this episode, we cover:
The first show Ryan had ever seen
When Ryan knew he needed to be a dancer
The timeline of the career of a dancer
The inspiration for his book Broadway Bodies
Why casting has always been a topic of interest for Ryan
How implicit biases arise, particularly in casting
The kinds of discrimination that performers face in the industry
Ryan’s favorite chapters and sections in Broadway Bodies
A deeper look at the casting of Dreamgirls
Examples of the mixed messages performers receive when playing certain characters
Shows that have opened since Ryan wrote his book that he would’ve loved to include
What’s still left to be realized on stage
Let’s continue the conversation. What does inclusion look like to you? Reach out to us on Instagram!
More About Ryan Donovan
Ryan is the author of Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity and Queer Approaches in Musical Theatre. He is an assistant professor of theater studies at Duke University and a co-founder of the International Society for the Study of Musicals.
Links & Mentioned Resources
Connect with Ryan:
Connect with Kira:
Thanks for joining me on this episode of Inclusive Stages! If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review on Apple or Spotify to help me reach even more theater makers, theater artists, and theater lovers who want to make our industry a better place for everyone.
Thanks to our music composer, Zachary McConnell, and our producer, Leah Bryant.
More about the Inclusive Stages Podcast
Welcome to 'Inclusive Stages' -- the go-to weekly podcast for theater makers, theater artists, and theater lovers who want to make our industry a better place for everyone. We'll chat with actors, directors, designers, scholars, and more about the current landscape of the theater scene and get their thoughts on how we can do better.
Host Kira Troilo will also give you a sneak peek into live EDI coaching sessions and offer actionable tips for creating more equitable, inclusive, and empathetic theater spaces that support and value the diversity of artists and audiences. Join the conversation, and let's collectively shape the future of human-first theater, one stage at a time.
This post may contain affiliate links, so I may earn a small commission when you make a purchase through links on my site at no additional cost to you.
The unedited podcast transcript for this episode of the Inclusive Stages podcast follows
Kira Troilo (00:02.838)
Hi Ryan, how are you? I'm good, I'm so excited and still surprised to see you here. I'm so excited to talk to you.
Ryan Donovan (00:04.166)
Hi. I'm great. How are you?
Ryan Donovan (00:15.846)
I'm thrilled to be here.
Kira Troilo (00:17.518)
Thank you. What is your life like right now?
Ryan Donovan (00:21.542)
Right now I am in week four of our spring semester here at Duke. And this semester I'm teaching, I'm actually using kind of both sides of myself, my past as a performer and my present as a scholar, historian. And so I'm teaching a musical theater performance class and then a seminar on queer theater. And today I'm doing the reading, all the homework I assigned for class.
Kira Troilo (00:52.758)
Love that. And that's your second book focus, right?
Ryan Donovan (00:56.314)
Yeah, a little bit. This, actually, this seminar is called Queer Theater Straight Plays because I normally teach only musical theater and I wanted to signal to the students that this class was something different. So it's a fun, new challenge for me to teach plays since I mostly talk about musicals all the time.
Kira Troilo (01:16.726)
Yep, I can relate, me too. What is, I'm guessing it has to do with musicals, but what would you say is your theater origin story? How did you get involved in this wild business?
Ryan Donovan (01:19.007)
Yeah.
Ryan Donovan (01:29.702)
It does have to do with musicals, of course. And for me, because I grew up in the 1980s, it was the musical Cats, which everyone loves to hate. But I still have a kind of soft spot for that show. And I was taken by my mom and stepdad to see the national tour when it played the National Theater in Washington, DC.
Kira Troilo (01:31.985)
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Donovan (01:59.902)
And I think the moment that really grabbed me was when one of the ensemble cats came out into the house and started playing with the clip on tie that my mom made me wear to the theater because we dressed up to go to the theater then. And it just that kind of breaking of the fourth wall was transformative for me as probably I must have been.
eight years old or nine years old and I never looked back.
Kira Troilo (02:30.646)
Wow. That's amazing. Also, my husband is a lover of cats, so I won't, you know, I won't hate on it. Ha ha ha.
Ryan Donovan (02:39.63)
I mean, it kind of makes no sense, but you know, you just go with it and It's I have to admit to not having seen the movie version yet, but I'm saving that for a rainy day
Kira Troilo (02:55.463)
Yeah, no shade, I was told not to see it, but yeah, maybe a rainy day. It's a good day.
Ryan Donovan (03:00.915)
Yeah.
Kira Troilo (03:02.89)
So from this, so you were eight or nine from there, did you know that you would pursue a career that you would try?
Ryan Donovan (03:10.042)
Yeah, I knew from seeing Cats and then I think a couple years later I saw a friend's ballet recital and that also really hooked me and both of those things made me know that I wanted to be a dancer. And I recall asking my parents at the time and late 80s, early 90s now and they were
there was still such a stigma against boys dancing back then that they were like, well, people will make fun of you and are you really sure that you want to do this? And so I didn't really press it and I waited. And then I think in 92, I saw my first Broadway show on Broadway, which was Crazy for You. And at that point, I knew I really wanted to do this. And I also realized that the majority of jobs in musical theater were at the...
in the ensemble. And so I was able to use that fact to make my case. And so I started taking dance classes as a teenager, finally. And that's really, and I was just very singularly focused on that. I majored in dance in college at first before I transferred and just got a degree in liberal studies and took dance.
classes on the side, but I knew, I knew I think from the time I was 10 really that I needed to be a dancer.
Kira Troilo (04:43.85)
that needed to be a dancer. Yeah.
Ryan Donovan (04:45.286)
Yeah, and then there was a point when I no longer needed that, and I ended up doing what I'm doing now, writing and teaching students about theater. So it's an interesting shift that some of us make out of desire and out of necessity. As dancers, our careers don't last forever, so you have to think of what else fills you up.
Kira Troilo (04:48.962)
Mmm.
Ryan Donovan (05:14.438)
other ways that you can give what you have to give the world that don't involve hurting your knees and back and all of that.
Kira Troilo (05:25.194)
Yeah, and I just, you know, I know what you're talking about, but I wonder just for folks who are interested, how long can you be a dancer? You know, like, what is the timeline on that career?
Ryan Donovan (05:36.954)
Yeah. Yeah, for most people, it's fairly short. I remember reading at one point that the average retirement age for a dancer was 28 or 29. And so most of us stop then or in our early 30s. And yet others, you know, especially principals in ballet companies, they can dance until their
Ryan Donovan (06:03.89)
early to mid 40s, I know. I can't imagine just how hard that is, the maintenance and the toll on your body that it takes to maintain such a high level. But it's entirely possible. And for instance, Baryshnikov switched genres from classical ballet to contemporary dance in his 40s and 50s and performed for a very long time. Now, he's Baryshnikov. That's not the case for most people.
Kira Troilo (06:05.517)
Mm-hmm.
Kira Troilo (06:33.006)
Sure.
Ryan Donovan (06:33.898)
You know, for most of us, it's a very short run that we get as dancers. And certainly now, I mean, I think in the wake of the pandemic and a lot of changes economically and in the labor market since 2008, there are fewer opportunities for dancers to have long careers than before. There are fewer companies.
The infrastructure behind dance has crumbled, and it's very precarious. If you're a concert dancer, I think in musical theater, there's still a fair amount of jobs, but there are no guarantees when you have a life in the arts.
Kira Troilo (07:19.546)
No, that true words were never said. And this, by the time this releases, this will be old news, but we just lost Cheetah Rivera. And I was thinking about how I just saw her on Broadway. So she was in her 80s. And how rare that is though, to see someone like a dancer in their 80s on Broadway.
Ryan Donovan (07:22.42)
Yeah.
Ryan Donovan (07:36.02)
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I was thinking about this yesterday, of course, and she performed on Broadway in seven different decades. And that's an unimaginable kind of legacy to leave. And I was lucky enough to see her on a few occasions. And I'll never forget the first time I saw her, which again, I had all these formative experiences at the National Theater in DC. But
This one, I think better than cats, was seeing Cheetah Rivera in the national tour of Kiss of the Spider Woman at that point in her 60s. And, you know, dancing rings around the younger people on the stage who were also brilliant dancers. And yet she just was incandescent, magnetic, all of the over the top adjectives that one can think of in that particular.
Kira Troilo (08:11.211)
Ha ha ha!
Ryan Donovan (08:36.206)
meeting of performer and role and choreography and everything was just really unforgettable.
Kira Troilo (08:45.782)
Yeah, I can imagine. And yeah, I mean, even seeing her in her eighties, it was, you know, there were moments where I was like, oh, she's sneaking off stage to get her water. Good for her, you know? But yeah, oof. I mean, so you wrote the book Broadway Bodies, and I'm thinking about, you're talking about a dancer's body and when your body is done. And was this book kind of in your mind before you became a scholar?
Ryan Donovan (08:53.441)
Yeah.
Ryan Donovan (09:11.422)
You know, I think that it was always brewing there for me in the background. I didn't intend to get a PhD and then I did. But, you know, when I stopped dancing, I thought I might go into social work or something like that. And social work school had other ideas and thank goodness. And I...
Kira Troilo (09:25.89)
I'm sorry.
Ryan Donovan (09:38.886)
At that point, I knew I wanted to get a PhD, and I was very hesitant to go down that path because it's like training to be a dancer or an actor or artist where you train for a long time and there are very few opportunities at the end of training. So I was hesitant, but once I committed to that, I was all in and I was thinking about what can I write about that.
Kira Troilo (09:54.413)
Right.
Ryan Donovan (10:06.102)
combines my history as a performer and my current gig as a scholar. And I think that combination gave me a unique perspective on both sides of the theater, both in terms of theory and practice, right? And so it just...
Kira Troilo (10:28.993)
Yeah.
Ryan Donovan (10:33.574)
I didn't know that I was going to do this going in. I didn't know that I would write about musicals. I didn't know that I could write about musicals. And so once I figured that out, I thought, well, what has been making me curious and frustrated and excited my whole time in the theater? And it was casting. And I think I tell this story in the acknowledgements in the book where I have been grappling with this ever since.
Kira Troilo (10:40.852)
Hey
Ryan Donovan (11:03.474)
first grade when I was cast as Captain Hook and not Peter Pan in our first grade's stick puppet production of Peter Pan. And years later, I realized that I had the juicier part. But I guess in part, I was thinking about these questions of who I felt like I was inside and who other people saw me as and how did that match up on stage as a character.
And then, of course, the book is not quite so narcissistic. It's actually looking at many other instances of this and just thinking about how do we cast musicals and why do we see certain people on stage in certain roles and not in others? And I knew from my experience as a performer that the...
The kinds of discrimination that performers face in the industry is just so utterly normalized that it's taken for granted. I think this is less the case now since I left the industry, but at the time, going back 20 years or so, all of this was just taken for granted as the way things are. It was the air that we breathed.
there wasn't a ton of open questioning of the way that things were. So I think all of that led me to write the book. And, you know, that's why it's very long. You know, I had to get it all out.
Kira Troilo (12:45.982)
Yeah, and I'm sure you could have written like another, like, you know, there could have been double the size it is. Well, I mean, personally, I wanna thank you for writing the book because when I decided to be an equity, diversity, and inclusion consultant for theater and the arts, I couldn't find any books. And you said, you know, I'm not, I didn't know if I could write about musicals. It was like very difficult to find material that I could use that was relevant to our work.
Ryan Donovan (12:51.591)
Yeah.
Ryan Donovan (13:07.968)
Yeah.
Ryan Donovan (13:13.738)
Yeah.
Kira Troilo (13:15.63)
So yeah, thank you. And I also created, I've created workshops around our work and one of them is called Who Tells What Stories and it's about implicit bias in casting. And the spark notes of that workshop are that casting is implicit bias. And we have to recognize that yeah, we are making decisions based on
Ryan Donovan (13:18.431)
My pleasure.
Kira Troilo (13:43.47)
who we think represents what characters, right? Yeah.
Ryan Donovan (13:46.718)
Right. Yeah, and it's, you know, I note in the book that the book is more of a history than a how-to. And in part, you know, that's because that's what I have to contribute as a historian scholar. And also, you know, because of what you're saying, that, you know, we all have this implicit biases that we carry with us and that come to bear when...
we're casting other people in make-believe, right? And there's always necessarily going to be some gray area there. And that's interesting and uncomfortable sometimes. And it's where the make-believe part of it has
Kira Troilo (14:22.346)
Yeah.
Ryan Donovan (14:44.946)
very real world implications and that, the tension that produces was enormously interesting to me. I don't always know, you know, how to navigate that. And luckily, you know, I'm rarely in charge of casting things, so. But I, you know, even in my, in what I do this semester, for instance, where I'm assigning songs to students,
Kira Troilo (15:02.254)
I'm gonna go.
Ryan Donovan (15:13.17)
you know, sometimes you can see when it clicks for somebody, and sometimes you can see that they're like, well, why did you see me singing this one, you know? And it's just a fascinating thing, you know? Sometimes other people can see things about us that we're not aware of ourself. And I certainly had that experience as a performer that other people saw things in me that I didn't necessarily intend or...
try to foreground. So, you know, this, there's no getting around the subjectivity of it all. In some ways, I mean, there are many other ways that, you know, we can combat, you know, the, the existing structures that, you know, limit a person's opportunities. And yet, like, when it comes to, you know,
down to that decision of the director or choreographer and casting director, there's still ambiguity to an extent. I think that's what makes casting thrilling and dangerous and sometimes troubling and all the things. Yeah.
Kira Troilo (16:32.275)
All the things.
All of that, absolutely. And the way that you frame the book, I love, because you use case studies from musicals to kind of talk about, so, you know, this is what it was like for a chorus line, this is what it was like for dream girls. So I have my favorite chapters, but I wonder if there was a section that you particularly loved writing the most.
Ryan Donovan (16:58.546)
You know, I think it was whichever one I had just completed. You know, they were all really fun to write and they were all really hard to write because I was writing about some painful histories and a lot of them were, in fact, you know, most of the ones in the book are things that I did not and do not experience in my everyday life.
Kira Troilo (17:03.511)
Yeah.
Ryan Donovan (17:28.946)
And so, that was interesting too. And I was really cognizant of that as I was writing that a lot of these histories were not my histories. And even the ones that might seem like they were more my history than others, I was a little bit too young to live through the AIDS pandemic in the 80s in the way that an older generation
of gay men did, and even just 10 years older than me. I have friends in their 50s who lost lovers and friends and an entire generation. So that section was really rewarding to write and also really hard, but that's, I think, the section in the book about sexuality, the two chapters kind of in the middle of the book.
You know, it's one where we see the most progress and the most change, the clear change over time. And the other, and so that was, that was, it was nice to write that chapter. And you know, I will say that I've always just had a soft spot for the Dreamgirls chapter. It's just one of my favorite shows and...
Kira Troilo (18:34.492)
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Donovan (18:52.014)
I can watch that show over and over and I watched the Tony performance with Jennifer Holliday tearing the roof off the theater hundreds of times. And so writing that chapter was just so fun because I got to do all of those things all the time.
Kira Troilo (19:09.126)
Right? I love that. And yeah, I would love to dive in a little bit more on the dream girls chapter. And something I love that you did in the book is, considering this intersectionality of identities because I'm a black woman, but I will never know what it's like to play Effie White. So yeah, you really dive into some dynamics about Jennifer Holliday versus Jennifer Hudson. And like, yeah, I would just love to hear you speak more about it.
Ryan Donovan (19:20.671)
Yeah.
Ryan Donovan (19:37.33)
Yeah, what really struck me, well, I'll backtrack a little bit. So this particular section of the book really is what got me started on this whole project in grad school. Because I was taking a seminar about musicals and figuring out what to write for my term paper. And I realized that at that point, there were only two musicals since the 1970s that cast.
Kira Troilo (19:42.711)
Yes, please.
Ryan Donovan (20:05.926)
bigger bodied women as the leads. And one was Hairspray and one was Dreamgirls. And, you know, nobody has played the lead in both. And you necessarily couldn't because both are about the dynamics of race in America and, you know, what it's like to be a black artist versus, you know, a white woman, not versus, but you know what I mean. And, so,
Kira Troilo (20:10.656)
Mm-hmm.
Kira Troilo (20:32.49)
Yes.
Ryan Donovan (20:36.094)
That started me down this path of looking into these questions of, well, then what happened? Why are there only these two shows when musical theater is the form that celebrates female performers more than almost any other? And we have these two shows that were enormous hits that won Tony Awards for Best Actress for...
Kira Troilo (20:55.196)
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Donovan (21:03.774)
Jennifer Holliday and for Marissa Jarrett Winnoker in Hairspray. And neither of them had gone on to ever play a lead in a Broadway musical again. You know, they've won the art forms highest honor and, you know, their careers thrived and yet they never had the chance again to repeat that same level of success. And so I started looking into that and I went into archives.
Kira Troilo (21:21.578)
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Donovan (21:33.694)
like Michael Bennett's archives at Yale, and the costume designer Theoni Aldridge's archives at the New York Public Library. And, you know, it started realizing that both Dreamgirls and Hairspray both used fat suits, or padding as costumers would call it, for actors in those parts.
Kira Troilo (22:00.401)
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Donovan (22:01.526)
And in Dreamgirls in particular, it was really unevenly applied. Not every Effie wore a fat suit, but some did. And it was really inconsistent. And sometimes Effie was on the thinner side, and sometimes she was on the bigger side. And sometimes it was the women who were a little bit bigger that wore the fat suit, actually. And then what I became really interested in was the way that the.
So there's that happening where it is replicating the show's onstage narrative in the way that it was treating the actors offstage. And then I became interested in how those involved in the production team, like Michael Bennett and the press agents, tried to really rewrite the narrative of the show and say that Effie was never envisioned as...
as a bigger woman. And so I found all this evidence that actually from the beginning she was, and that there was something else going on in trying to distance the character from Jennifer Holliday. And Jennifer Holliday was a teenager when she started in this role in the workshops. Yeah, I mean, and so,
Kira Troilo (23:06.809)
Mm.
Kira Troilo (23:14.473)
Mm-hmm.
Kira Troilo (23:23.894)
That's wild to me.
Ryan Donovan (23:28.97)
Working with teenagers regularly now, I can't imagine how much pressure it would have been for one of them to carry a Broadway musical on their shoulders. And in the 80s, there were very few support systems for performers in place. Jennifer Holliday didn't even get matinees off, and this is one of the hardest roles in the musical theater repertoire in terms of singing.
and she wasn't even given the opportunity to rest her voice. And that doesn't happen now when the show is done. The recent London revival at one point had three different effies sharing the part because it's such a big thing. And there was just no recognition of how hard this role was. And instead,
This story became one of Jennifer's missing performances and she's a diva.
Kira Troilo (24:29.979)
Mm-hmm, right.
Ryan Donovan (24:31.474)
And this is that intersectionality that we're talking about. And it's immediately making me think of the moment in Beyonce's new concert film where she talks about nobody listening to her as a black woman and she's Beyonce. It's her tour. And it's shocking and not at all surprising still, right? And I think in some ways,
We see a similar situation, similar dynamic happening in Jennifer Holliday's situation back in 1981 to 1983 or four when she left the show finally.
Kira Troilo (25:16.022)
Yeah, and I was really surprised to read about how they tried to take, you know, as they're saying, like the fatness out of the role of Effie White. And I think anyone who's a fan of theater, you know, for anyone who doesn't know Dreamgirls, I mean, just, you have to make sure you YouTube Jennifer Holliday singing, and I am telling you, because you have to understand what it's like to be that person in that body, like the first person in a leading role in that body singing that song eight times a week.
Ryan Donovan (25:40.19)
Yeah.
Ryan Donovan (25:44.53)
Yeah, yeah, you know, the it's a it's a tough role for an actor, I think, because in, in addition to the performance elements that it's so hard to sing that, that eight times a week, I think as a human being, it's hard because, you know, if you are a person in a bigger body, in this society, you deal with so much stigma.
all the time and then you're playing this part on stage where at You know in the build-up to and I am telling you The the character that's her boyfriend says to her you've been late You've been mean and getting fatter all the time and then You've actually even before that, you know, there's a song called heavy You got so heavy on me, baby. Like, you know, the show is just sending all these messages that you know
Kira Troilo (26:35.211)
Yeah.
Ryan Donovan (26:43.702)
Fat is bad and it's often hard to shed all of that, all of the things that the character goes through when you leave the theater. So some people are able to do it and not everyone is fully able to let that go at the end of their night. And to be told that eight times a week, I think.
Kira Troilo (26:45.166)
Mm-hmm.
Kira Troilo (26:58.346)
Yeah.
Ryan Donovan (27:11.29)
on some level, it's happening to your body. It's happening to you. And if you don't have a support system to get through that, it can be draining and innervating in just really difficult, a hard situation. Even, I think I say it later in the book, Cynthia Erivo talks about this when she was playing Sealy in that amazing revival of the color purple that
you know, playing Celie and being told that she was ugly eight times a week for a few years was enormously challenging and hard for her. So, you know, being an actor, it's psychologically hard sometimes.
Kira Troilo (27:57.01)
It is, and I'm so just obsessed with why it's okay, you know, and why it has been okay. And I've just been really focused on, especially actors, like, you know, I think Jennifer Holliday, she can't take quote unquote, take her costume off and walk out the stage door.
Ryan Donovan (28:04.981)
Yeah.
Ryan Donovan (28:16.819)
Yeah.
Kira Troilo (28:17.182)
You know, people who are playing Tracy who wore fat suits, maybe they could, but people whose bodies are telling the story are still in those bodies. And the psychological safety of it all, you know, of our body not really knowing the difference between, you know, a racist attack on stage and in real life, like our body is just carrying all of that, like it's real.
Ryan Donovan (28:27.635)
Yeah.
Ryan Donovan (28:45.29)
Yeah, and then, so there's that, and then you're receiving all these mixed messages as a performer as well, because for Effie, for instance, playing Effie, the audience is applauding your amazing performance, but also the pain you're showing. And then I'm thinking also about Hairspray, where at least with Marissa Jarrett-Manocca in the original cast and several others who played Tracy in that original production,
They were in this musical that was very fat positive, and yet offstage they were being weighed in. They had to wear fat suits, and they were being told to maintain a certain weight by eating candy, milkshakes, and very unhealthy foods in great quantities.
Ryan Donovan (29:42.598)
I think, I don't want to use the word unhealthy as a judgment, but you know, milkshakes in moderation for all of us, right? But they were essentially overfeeding these young women and then making them exercise on the treadmill in order to maintain a level of fitness. And that I think also places performers in this bind.
Kira Troilo (29:48.906)
Right, for everyone, yeah.
Ryan Donovan (30:13.058)
a narrative that the production sought to capitalize on. It was part of the publicity promoting the show's opening on Broadway that kind of like wink, nudge, nudge isn't it cute that we're making Marissa Jarrett, Winnoker eat Skittles and then run on the treadmill for 45 minutes. Even now it gives me the ick to hear about it.
Kira Troilo (30:18.382)
Mm.
Kira Troilo (30:34.206)
Right. And that's just so icky.
Ryan Donovan (30:44.771)
And she also faced this question that a thinner actress wouldn't have faced, which was that did she have the stamina to do eight shows a week? I don't think anyone asked that of Laura Bell Bundy, her co-star in Hairspray. And this is after Marissa Jarrett-Wenigra has already done Grease on Broadway for a while with apparently no issues doing eight shows a week.
You know, the, it's, and I do think, you know, one thing to add is that I think a lot of this is implicit bias because, you know, fat phobia, for instance, is in the air that we breathe in this country. And I don't think that the creators of either of these shows were necessarily mean-spirited or ill-intentioned, although Dreamgirls, maybe there's a couple situations where I'm like,
Kira Troilo (31:27.405)
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Donovan (31:41.398)
you might regret having done that. But I think in the case of Harris Bray, it's 20 years past Dreamgirls. You don't devote your life to creating this fat positive musical, this feel-good story. If on some level you don't believe that, and yet I think the implicit biases of the creative team kind of leaked over into some of those practices and into
Kira Troilo (31:44.671)
Yeah.
Ryan Donovan (32:11.326)
you know, some of the fat jokes that the show tosses in here and there. You know, comedy's hard. Sometimes you're laughing with and sometimes it's at, and I just think that show kind of walks the line. And, you know, for some people it's going to be successful and others it might be a little icky. But, you know, that's the risk you take when you're making jokes.
Kira Troilo (32:20.447)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Kira Troilo (32:36.12)
Yeah.
Kira Troilo (32:41.298)
Right, right, and also just, you know, wondering who's in the rooms writing the jokes, who's behind the scenes of these shows, you know, and you speak about that too. Yeah, it's really, you know, when you talk about Dreamgirls and Hairspray, but some of the other shows you talk about, it really, like, I don't know what the right word is, but it like gets me that these shows that are so iconic.
Ryan Donovan (32:48.986)
Yeah.
Kira Troilo (33:07.186)
that did such good things for a community of people who didn't see themselves were mistreating the people who were involved in it and what it did to their identities. No question, they're just kind of, you know, it's such a thing.
Ryan Donovan (33:15.571)
Yeah.
Ryan Donovan (33:22.07)
Yeah, I mean, and you know, so as much as the book talks about, you know, the painful parts of inclusion, I think, and a lot of cases, the shows that I'm writing about were the first or one of the first to do something. You know, for instance, A Chorus Line was the first major Broadway musical, hit Broadway musical to take gay men seriously and not just treat them as comic sidekicks.
It really was the first since West Side Story to foreground Puerto Ricans as major characters, and in this case, absent the harmful stereotypes that West Side Story has. Even with those things, when you are the first or among the first to do or represent a group of people, there's a lot of pressure on that. And you know...
In a sense, there's no getting it right. You'll be criticized for trying. And you'll also, you stick your neck out to do that. And I know that, for instance, Byrock Lee, who played Connie in the original cast of A Chorus Line and restaged the show all over the world for the decades since and is still doing so.
She told me that in the 70s when she was in the show on Broadway, people would walk out of the theater during Paul's monologue where he talks about coming out to his parents, and that doesn't happen as much now, so it's nice to be able to see that change. But yeah, I mean, even in these shows that are at the vanguard of inclusion at their time,
Kira Troilo (35:04.238)
Hmm.
Ryan Donovan (35:12.97)
there's still a kind of ambivalence offstage to how the performers are treated. And in some cases, I think the fictional characters on stage were treated with a little more care than the real people charged with embodying those characters eight times a week. And yet then in other productions, more recent ones like the Deaf West's Broadway revivals that I write about in the last section of the book, we get to see
a completely different way of doing things that bakes in inclusion from the outset of the production. So I'm hopeful that is becoming more of a norm in the industry than it previously has been. And I think that we can see that at least in terms of whose bodies we are seeing on stage on Broadway right now.
Kira Troilo (36:10.154)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think we need, you know, we need your book. We need the history of, you know, what it has been and really understanding it so that we can move forward more responsibly. Yeah, and I'm curious, you mentioned, you know, the future. I'm hopeful as well. That's why I do what I do. But are there any more recent, since you wrote the book, are there any recent shows that have come up that you've thought, oh, I would have loved to have written about that one?
Ryan Donovan (36:17.823)
Yeah.
Ryan Donovan (36:39.25)
I would love to have been able to include shows like the About to Close, How to Dance in Ohio, about a group of teenagers on the spectrum, cast with actors on the spectrum, and to actually just talk about the very positive changes that have happened since the book, the timeline of the book, which ends in 2020.
to think about that and to also think about what's still left and what's still yet to be realized on stage and I think since 2020, we've also seen more Broadway musicals with trans and non-binary characters and it would be great to be able to write about those steps and in particular, I'm thinking when I talk about
the pressure that a show that is among the first to represent any community that really comes to mind and You know, that's also why I say there's no getting it right for everybody and That's not to say that we should be grateful for any kind of representation at all I think we have been in that place with certainly many of the Communities and identities that I write about in the book
you know, for instance, in the 70s, early 70s, to have a gay character in a Broadway musical at all was a big step, and yet, you know, we don't necessarily need to apply just the simple act of being represented anymore. Yeah, so, yeah, I think, you know, there have been a lot of interesting developments, and, you know,
Kira Troilo (38:23.562)
Right. Especially if he's being walked out on several performances a week. Yeah.
Ryan Donovan (38:36.154)
as it becomes safer to be out and open about all of the different ways that your queerness is embodied, the industry is playing catch up. And I'm also interested now in just the way that everything's always changing. And now I think it's more mainstream to understand gender and sexuality on spectrums.
and that our place on a spectrum is going to shift throughout our life, maybe for some people millimeters, but for some people miles. And what does that mean in terms of this, the current conversation around authentic casting and how do we navigate that as an industry is I think an interesting and almost unanswerable question in some ways.
Kira Troilo (39:10.934)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Ryan Donovan (39:33.922)
I'm fascinated by that and the ambiguity and the openness that challenges us to bring into conversations around casting and representation. Those are the things that I'm curious to write about.
but I don't think I'm gonna do a sequel to Broadway Bodies. I'm gonna move on to something else. Yeah, I mean, I'd love, you know, for someone to turn it into a documentary or something. One of the, yeah, one of the things that I, one of the reasons I wrote this book is that those of us who have been performers in the musical theater know all of this to be true and
Kira Troilo (40:03.342)
No, I get it though.
Kira Troilo (40:13.646)
It's like already written. Yeah.
Ryan Donovan (40:28.394)
for me it was really important to make these histories part of the record. To say, you know, this happened and, you know, it's also why we are where we are right now. And, you know, to make these kind of unwritten histories legible, visible, accessible. And, you know, to also point out to people that this is, nothing's fixed, this is changeable.
Kira Troilo (40:56.738)
Yeah.
Ryan Donovan (40:58.374)
And that's why I end the book with hopeful examples of positive changes in the industry.
Kira Troilo (41:07.198)
Yeah, and I love that because we need to be hopeful or else, right, things just do kind of stay like, all right, well, this sucks, you know? Yeah. The last question I kind of ask, I'm trying to ask everyone is, what does inclusion look like for you in the future of theater, you know?
Ryan Donovan (41:15.579)
Yeah.
Ryan Donovan (41:27.558)
Yeah, inclusion to me looks like we're seeing on stage the full range of diversity that we see off stage walking around our communities. I realize that not everyone's communities have that, but so maybe I could be more specific and say, who we might see in a cross section of the country, or if we visited.
Kira Troilo (41:48.151)
Hehehe
Ryan Donovan (41:56.102)
New York City, for instance, or Chicago or San Francisco or LA, you know, to see the full array of humanity that exists and to see that on stage. And I don't think that every production can or should necessarily try to do that, but I'm speaking about the whole ecosystem that, you know, it's not just about one show. It's
It's about a whole ecosystem of an industry that is doing better, but can always do more in terms of making sure that audiences get to see that the full range of humanity represented on stage. And that tie to this...
inclusion is a sense of belonging and what's the word I'm looking for?
Ryan Donovan (43:02.578)
I don't know. Along with that belonging comes feelings of attachment to the art form that, if it's for you, and musicals are not for everyone, but I'd like them to be. I think they're written for everyone, but not everyone loves them. So that's what I mean when I say they're not for everyone. I think they are, but.
Kira Troilo (43:08.499)
Mm.
Kira Troilo (43:19.606)
Yeah.
Kira Troilo (43:25.738)
Right, and that's fair, but...
Right. Yeah.
Ryan Donovan (43:32.102)
you know, that people become attached to the art form and, you know, I think that's gonna just help it grow and, you know, and flourish. So, you know, I think that, you know, inclusion and belonging and attachment all form, you know, a kind of symbiotic relationship with each other.
Kira Troilo (43:58.082)
Yeah, I love that. I love all of that. And then the other thing I took from your book is the humanity, you know, you're saying the full spectrum of humanity on stage. But if we could all, you know, like audiences and theater makers and other artists, we all recognize the humanity on the stage, not just the performance, I think we'll take huge steps too.
Ryan Donovan (44:00.554)
I'm gonna go.
Ryan Donovan (44:18.386)
Yeah, I mean, and just the labor that goes into a performance. And it's not even only just what somebody does to prepare. It's a lifetime of training and sacrifice and hard work and rejection. And that brought the performer to the stage in front of you that night. And that's true, whether it's Broadway, a tour, a regional theater,
you know, your community theater, even, you know, high school theater. Those kids in high school have faced a lot of this already and, you know, everybody brings that to the stage. And one of the things that I really appreciate about, to circle back to kind of where we started, what I appreciated about teaching musical theater performance to students at a liberal arts college rather than a
Kira Troilo (44:50.358)
community.
Ryan Donovan (45:17.402)
is that they're all focused on other careers for the most part, but what comes through in training them and their performances is their humanity. They may never be on Broadway, and that's great, you know. They're going to go do amazing things in whatever they choose to do, and yet, you know, to have this avenue, this outlet of expression for their humanity through
Kira Troilo (45:33.069)
Yeah.
Ryan Donovan (45:48.646)
something that I am in awe of, you know, a performer, a person's ability to get up and share this with others. And, you know, I honor that sharing, and the vulnerability that encourage that takes to get up and give something of yourself to your fellow people is...
It's wonderful. So I love getting to see that. And the more humanity, the better. And I was thinking, I watched a video of Cheetah Rivera last night singing What the World Needs Now, and just so beautiful. And a sentiment that is, sadly, ever, ever perennial.
Kira Troilo (46:38.91)
Mmm, yeah, sadly, and it's comforting we can return to things like that too. Yeah, um, what did I forget to ask you? Is there anything you- I mean, I could talk to you for another two episodes and maybe you'll come back if we- Uh, that would be great. Um, but yeah, I'd love to hear, you know, anything that you'd love to say or, um, if you'd like to share about your other book that I'm excited to read.
Ryan Donovan (46:45.551)
Yeah, absolutely.
Ryan Donovan (46:51.038)
Hehehe
Ryan Donovan (46:56.975)
I'd love to, yeah.
Ryan Donovan (47:07.718)
Um, the other book is really just like a, it's a really teeny tiny textbook for musical theater studies class. So we don't have to talk about that one. Don't, don't tell the publisher I said that. Let me see. I don't know. One thing maybe I don't need to talk about this but.
Kira Troilo (47:18.208)
Oh!
We won't, we won't, we won't put that part in.
Ryan Donovan (47:34.522)
if you want in setting up the book to mention the dedication to the book, that feels important to me. So yeah, I don't know. I think we covered so much and it was really fun. You're welcome.
Kira Troilo (47:45.422)
I would love to ask, yeah. Yeah.
Kira Troilo (47:52.374)
Yes, thank you so much. No, thank you, yeah, so I would love to hear a little bit about your dedication and just tell me a little bit more about that.
Ryan Donovan (48:03.59)
Yeah, so I'll read the dedication of the book. It says, this book is dedicated to anyone who has ever been told they were too fat, too short, too gay, too disabled, and otherwise too much or not enough to be in a musical. And this, you know, performers are often told they're too much or not enough, even, you know, someone who's stereotypically fit.
gorgeous, six feet tall, the whole nine yards. Even they get told this sometimes. And yet, being told this is common and damaging and it's often told to young performers before they even have a chance to break into the industry. And almost every time I give a talk about the book or my research,
Kira Troilo (48:36.843)
I'm sorry.
Ryan Donovan (49:01.262)
a young person comes up to me with tears in their eyes because they finally feel like somebody said out loud what happened to them. So I really wanted to acknowledge that and that because the book writes about size, sexuality, and disability, it was important to me to dedicate the book to performers who have navigated
Kira Troilo (49:10.751)
Yeah.
Ryan Donovan (49:30.802)
are ableist, homophobic, transphobic, size stigmatizing, fatphobic, white supremacist, racist, anti-black society, misogynists. I don't wanna forget any other things, but to open the book with that dedication was a way of saying I see you and I know
Kira Troilo (49:44.434)
All the things.
Ryan Donovan (50:01.118)
that what happens is when I know that, you know, this kind of discrimination is real and, you know, you can't simply explain that away by saying it's artistic license. And, you know, part of what I wanted to achieve in the book was to, you know, highlight where there, you know, yes, there are artistic decisions that are made, but those decisions are made within a context and within a structure.
Kira Troilo (50:15.693)
Right?
Ryan Donovan (50:31.018)
and all of the identities, the groups that I write about in the book face wage penalties. And I lay those out in the book and make the argument that representation in Broadway musicals is not immune to the same kinds of discrimination that fat women, black women, queer people, and disabled people face in the American labor force.
You know all of that is kind of packed into that dedication and then unpacked later in the book
Kira Troilo (51:07.582)
Yeah, well it's really beautiful. It spoke to me, of course. I just can't recommend this book enough. I mentioned to you, Ryan, that I'm just requiring anyone who wants to learn what I do to read this because
We do need, even me, I've been doing this for decades and I didn't know so much of what you've written. So I said thank you a lot of times, but I'll say it again, thank you for writing this book and for giving us all a history, writing down what we know. And now, you know, theater people and people who love theater, or maybe even people who are new, can have a little more perspective.
Ryan Donovan (51:47.338)
Thank you so much. It's really an honor.
Kira Troilo (51:51.35)
Well, thank you so much. And yes, I will hope to see you again for sure.
Ryan Donovan (51:57.142)
Great, bye.
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