It's not our business to be telling actors who they are

My Sunday viewing wasn’t a movie, instead I watched the Tony Awards, a celebration of the best of Broadway. This year was a bit different. The Tony organization negotiated a deal with the Writers Guild of America, currently on strike which shut down many TV and movie productions. The deal was the ceremony would not use a script and the WGA would not picket. That was better than canceling the ceremony. The WGA felt the stage actors needed to be honored. So instead of an opening monologue or song there was an opening dance, and a pretty cool dance taking advantage of their new location in the gilded United Palace in Washington Heights. It also meant presenters were not announced. Their names appeared on the screen above the stage and when they got to the microphone they introduced themselves. Instead of telling a joke (Nathan Lane was one of a few exceptions) they got down to the business of announcing the award, listing the nominees (usually with a short scene on the screen), and naming the recipient. That meant the show ended on time. There was only one place where I thought this didn’t work. There were lifetime achievement awards for John Kander and Joel Grey. While the screen showed scenes from their work there were two dancers on stage. While nicely done, there was no mention of why these two deserved lifetime achievement awards. A bit reason to watch is to get a sense of shows I might want to see if they ever came to Detroit. And a few do. The idea of & Juliet does sound intriguing – what if Juliet doesn’t kill herself when she sees the body of Romeo? But the scene played during the ceremony was so into spectacle that it was a turnoff. A couple that do look intriguing: There’s Kimberly Akimbo, the story of a girl with an aging syndrome so that by the time she reaches 16 she looks 70. The actress, Victoria Clark, who won for Best Leading Actress in a Musical and said she’s definitely older than 65, looked like she was having a lot of fun playing a high school girl encountering first love. The other is Leopoldstadt a new Tom Stoppard play about a big Jewish family in Vienna from about 1899 to 1938. Here’s an article about the opening last October that talks about why Stoppard wrote the play. Brandon Uranowitz, who won for Best Featured Actor for Leopoldstadt, talked about how the show resonates today.

We are seeing a lot of those tiny seemingly little inconsequential things [that happen in the play] happening right now. It's a clarion call to pay attention to those seemingly inconsequential things that accumulate and lead to mass devastation.

A big thing going on during this Tony Award show was the celebration of identity. Towards the beginning of the show Michael Arden won Best Director for Parade. During a part of his acceptance speech the sound cut out and when it came back the audience was cheering wildly. Today I learned it was to cut out foul language. When he was growing up he had been called a slur for gay men and now he’s a “[slur] with a Tony.” Later Alex Newell won for Best Featured Actor in a Musical for their role in Shucked (a musical about corn? Who knew?). Yes, Newell is nonbinary and was in a sparkling gold dress as they accepted the award and thanked the show producers and the Tony organization for considering nonbinary actors. Newell is the first nonbinary actor to win a Tony. Shortly after that J. Harrison Ghee won for Best Leading Actor for their role in Some Like It Hot. Ghee is also nonbinary. When that show did one of its numbers for the ceremony I wondered about Ghee. I noticed this tall person in a dress and wondered: Male or female? Perhaps neither or both. Some Like It Hot is a musical version of the 1959 movie starring Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis who escape the mob by dressing as women and joining an all female jazz band. I’ve heard trans people say this concept is outdated. But the new musical has a different ending – living as a woman actually feels pretty good. In that case a nonbinary actor would be quite appropriate. Both Newell and Ghee presented as female with lovely gowns. I wondered how they ended up in the male Best Actor categories. That got me to an NPR article by Jeff Lunden about where nonbinary actors fit. Newell said that although the role they play is female, the word “actor” is not gendered and that is their profession. As for Ghee the character is first male, then female. The award category was less of a concern. I found there is a third player in this story – Justin David Sullivan, who is nonbinary and plays May in & Juliet. Sullivan declined to be considered for a Tony because that would have required them to choose a gender, and they felt they couldn’t do it. Lunden reported several theater awards have chosen to have nongendered performance awards. They include Washington's Helen Hayes Awards, Chicago's Jeff Awards, and New York's Drama Desk

David Barbour, co-president of the Drama Desk Awards, said for years they had nongendered performance categories, until they realized more men than women were taking home honors. At that point, they switched to gendered categories — but this year, they switched back. "It really became evident to us that there were a number of performances by nonbinary performers who were very likely going to be in the mix when the nominations came out," said Barbour. "And it's not our business to be telling actors who they are. We're not in the business of defining them."