What Will It Take for Broadway to Embrace Size-Inclusivity?

“If you don't see yourself represented on stage, how could you feel like you could do it? How do you feel like you belong there?”
Plus size Broadway and theatre performers in a collage
Photos courtesy of Brianna McDonnell, Lisa Howard, Marisha Wallace’s album Tomorrow, and Dirty Sugar

In this reported op-ed, Gianluca Russo speaks to plus size Broadway and theatre performers about body standards in the industry and their dreams for a more inclusive future.

Booking the national tour of Wicked was a dream come true for Josh Lamon, a talented performer on the rise back in 2006, in what he refers to as his “Year of the Twink.” He’d lost 100 pounds in less than six months prior to auditioning, and he then landed the role of Boq, the show’s quirky, lovable munchkin. But even at his thinnest, Lamon was still the biggest Boq in the bunch.

“I remember at my fitting for the Tin Man outfit, one of the people doing the measurements commented that I was the biggest size out of any of the Boqs,” Lamon recalls. “Thank God the head of wardrobe was there to say, ‘The actor’s in the room, that’s not appropriate.’ But it left this deep-rooted scar with me throughout that contract of this fear that I would just never be what they wanted me to be.”

Uncomfortable moments like that one were not singular for Lamon. On another occasion, as frustration built around his weight gain, he was told that a staff member just “didn’t get his size.” When on tour in Dallas with another production, he recalls that a reviewer wrote that the show's ensemble was spending too much time at the hotel buffet. All of it was a constant reminder that no matter how thin or short or slender he attempted to be, Lamon would never be enough for the theatre industry’s impossible ideals.

Broadway: For many, it is the ultimate career destination. A place where dreams come true, where escapism takes full form through the telling of living, breathing stories. A place where the “othered” can be accepted, amplified, embraced.

That is, unless you’re deemed too fat.

Conversations about the lack of body diversity in the arts are not new — but they have for decades been relegated to whisper networks, concerns silenced into hidden corners of the community. That has, at long last, begun to change.

As Broadway begins to reopen this fall after a year and a half pandemic hiatus, many have questioned how the industry will pivot to a more inclusive, accepting narrative. Can the smokescreen — that Broadway is a land for those who always felt outcast in their miniscule, suburban towns — stay upright? Or will the time come for real, tangible change?

For Lamon, directors like Diane Paulus and Casey Nicholaw not only welcomed his size into the room, but embraced it. When making his Broadway debut in Hair, Paulus assuaged Lamon’s concerns, reminding him that hippies didn't have a gym membership at SoulCycle.

In recent history, the major stage roles for fat actors have included Tracy Turnblad in Hairspray, Madame Thénardier in Les Miserables, and occasionally Effie White in DreamGirls. But real theatre — authentic theatre — is reflective of the audiences it caters to, and the humans it draws inspiration from. In a medium that’s all about imagination and performance, there’s room for more.

“If you don't see yourself represented on stage, how could you feel like you could do it? How do you feel like you belong there?” questions Marisha Wallace, a Broadway alum who is now portraying Motormouth Maybelle in the West End’s Hairspray. “What if there’s a plus-size Elphaba, or plus-size Christine in Phantom?”

Broadway’s reluctance to embrace size-inclusivity has largely mimicked society’s overarching view on fatness. Even in the fashion industry, where plus-size women make up a majority of the market and are thus profitable for designers, important strides are still being made. Meanwhile, Broadway has hidden under an implied ethos of “obesity isn’t healthy.” In the eyes of the Great White Way, it’s not that plus-size performers aren’t welcome. The underlying message seems to be that their bodies can’t perform eight shows a week for months on end.

As made clear by many performers, however, that couldn’t be further from the truth. “Health does not equate to weight,” Wallace says. “I know big people who will outdance you, out run you, out train you, and do eight shows a week, every week and run circles around you.”

For some, like plus-size creative Brianna McDonnell, the hurdles that musical theatre often puts up were enough to make them step aside — it’s not just a Broadway problem, it’s embedded in the U.S. theatre ecosystem. “It’s truly traumatizing,” she says. “I will always remember this college professor who told me I should do commercial acting because I was ‘average looking.’ And I was like, ‘Clearly that's because you think I’m fat and unattractive, and you think that I can't play a lead.’”

That moment, among others, led McDonnell to creating her own forms of media—from video series to social media campaigns to IGTV shows—prioritizing the levels of diversity she knows the world is craving. Thanks to the digital age, it’s now possible to blaze your own trail in ways previous generations never could. But even then, why must plus-size folk do so much more than their thin-counterparts just to have a voice?

“It's a lot of pressure, because sometimes you just want to be you,” Wallace says. “You don't want to have to be more than, or feel not enough because I'm doing all this extra [to prove my worth], and I'm still not getting the same results as the people next to me who are doing half as much. I have had so much success in my life, I've been very fortunate to have the opportunities I’ve had. Now what if I had all those things, but without oppression? Where would my career be now?”

That’s especially true for those who fall at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities, including race and gender. Ryan Donovan, visiting lecturer of musical theatre at Duke University and author of the forthcoming book Broadway Bodies: A Critical History, 1970-2020, believes that change is not approaching as quickly as one would hope. These biases are entrenched.

“Appearance-based disqualification is the norm on Broadway, and it has been for over 100 years,” Donovan says. “So this problem is so deeply rooted and structural, that it's going to take a lot to change.”

Meanwhile, the industry's superhuman ideals affect more than just plus-size actors — if thinness is the ideal, it follows that thin people might go to unhealthy or dangerous lengths to maintain it. And the problem is also about more than representation, it’s about quality of life.

“The lack of representation translates into different life outcomes for people who are represented and for people who are not,” he says. “And for actors in the industry, that translates into the amount of weeks that you are employed, which directly impacts your ability to get health insurance, to stop working temporary and survival jobs, and to really build a solid middle class life for yourself. It's not only about who gets seen in a Broadway musical or not, it's a much more systemic problem.”

Kathy Deitch, who was part of the original casts of Broadway’s Wicked and Footloose, is frustrated by the myriad of missed opportunities she’s witnessed over the years. Shows that center teenagers and teenage bullying, for example, are having a moment, and yet productions like Mean Girls and Dear Evan Hansen don’t include plus-size performers and relevant body image storylines that reflect the true struggles of teens today, she says. Everything has become so “aspirational” onstage that it feels out of touch with the next generation, the young fans being molded by these storylines.

“Your show about bullying, or about not fitting in, is made less [by not including diverse bodies],” Deitch says. “This is not legitimate storytelling, this isn't the truth. If you want it to be authentic, it has to look this way.”

The conversation is multifaceted, and not all plus size actors feel uniformly about the solution to inadequate, biased casting. (Though you can be sure they’ve thought more deeply about this problem than most Broadway leadership.)

Lisa Howard, who starred in Broadway’s It Shoulda Been You and Escape to Margaritaville, among other leading credits, has mixed feelings on the topic. Her deepest wish is for more leading and featured roles that don’t center on weight to be cast with diverse body types. “In Next to Normal, someone who's playing the Mom, why couldn't she look like literally any mom? Why does it have to look a certain way? That's what I get frustrated with,” Howard says.

On the flip side, however, she questions how this will impact the storytelling aspect of theatre. Because although body diversity should, in theory, be normalized, the reality is that it is not. Seeing a plus-size woman in a leading role is bound to garner headlines, which can, in turn, distract from a show’s prime message. Many of the performers interviewed brought up Bonnie Milligan, a ferocious talent within the industry whose recent starturn in Broadway’s Head Over Heels garnered widespread acclaim. In her role of Pamela, size was never a plot point. Rather, Milligan was just another star, belting to the gods each night.

Yet even then, The New York Times couldn’t get past her weight, describing Milligan as “provocatively” cast, to which she responded on Twitter, “I dream of a world filled with love and respect and inclusion…with correct pronouns and ‘provocatively cast’ women ‘trampling’ stereotypes.” Until body diversity becomes the norm, it will always be the “other.” And to aid in that difficult process, Howard calls on writers to create storylines that allow for different types of bodies to be seamlessly integrated without a need for worry or further conversation.

On paper, the situation feels difficult to face. Will there ever come a time when Broadway embraces size-inclusivity in impactful, long-lasting ways? Gen Z’ers like Carnegie Mellon University musical theatre student Annabelle Duffy aren’t giving up hope.

“Theatre is meant to be a place to remind us of our humanity, and remind us of what the world could be,” she says. “With all of the activists on Broadway right now, I really think that there is not only an encouragement, but a whole movement going on of making this space for everybody, and making this a safe space for everybody, which is the most important thing.”

As the conversation around diversity intensifies, it’s vital that size-inclusion be incorporated into the change occurring on the Great White Way. No more fat suits, no more stereotypical fat jokes, no more comedic fat best friends.

"There is a place for all of us, and I really mean that,” Lamon says, reflecting on his experiences and successes. “I think I'm proof of that. Our stories are unique. Our stories are individual, and what we bring to the table is fierce.”

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