Archives for the month of: May, 2025

The MOST AANHPI Season of Bway coming to a close, and let’s talk about that interview….

May 27, 2025 //

The Fairy Princess wants to acknowledge that when she called the 2024-2025 season ‘the most’ AANHPI season on Broadway without a show being set in an Asian country…she was RIGHT! Let the gloating begin!

While she cannot take credit for ANY of it, and one shouldn’t, she admits to being overwhelmed when the nominations were announced. She did not even write about it. It was personally moving, and it was hard to put words to the feeling of, “I may be done here’, as representation on Broadway was all that TFP ever wanted.

She wanted it for herself, but overwhemingly, she wanted to for her son. She did not want her child to grow up and only see his three stages of life represented in The King and I, and think that was all he could do in life, should he choose performing. So she started writing, and now, as he turns 13 in a week, all she can think is that what she chose to do to change the conversation, it was worth it.

He will never have to worry, should he choose performance (although she is Asian enough to hope he does not, and everyone needs a lawyer or a dermatologist) he will have a wide range of things to choose from, and he has inspirations, and people moving mountains he will never know that existed.

Names of people she has known forever, who have doggedly pursued their dreams when most would have told them, “it will never happen’.

Those people were wrong.

To that, TFP says HA!

We must acknowledge that Daniel Dae Kim is the first in the Lead Male Category of Play to be nominated. THE. FIRST. EVER. MAN. OF. ASIAN. DESCENT. to be nominated as the LEAD in a Play. DDK has been, has HAD to be, an actor, a producer, and an advocate for representation – and that, is actually what this blog is about, but give the man his flowers…he deserves them.

It took 78 years of TONY Award ceremonies for this moment.

Allow TFP to list the AANHPI Nominees, for a moment please…

Best Musical: Maybe Happy Ending (Starring Helen J. Shen, Darren Criss)

Best Musical: Operation Mincemeat (starring Claire-Marie Hall)

Best Musical Revival: Sunset Blvd (starring Nicole Scherzinger)

Best Play Revival: Yellow Face by David Henry Hwang

Best Lead Actor in a Play: Daniel Dae Kim

Best Lead Actress in a Musical: Nicole Sherzinger

Best Lead Actor in a Musical: Darren Criss

Best Direction of a Musical: Saheem Ali

Best Featured Actor in a Play: Francis Jue, Yellow Face

Best Featured Actor in a Play: Conrad Ricamora, Oh, Mary!

Best Book of a Musical: Hue Park (& Will Aronson) Maybe Happy Ending

Best Scenic Design of a Musical: (Dane Laffrey) Maybe Happy Ending

Best Lighting Design of a Play: David Bengali (& Heather Gilbert) – Good Night and Good Luck

Best Costume Design of a Play: Brenda Abbandandolo – Good Night & Good Luck

Best Orchestrations: Marco Paguia – Buena Vista Social Club

Best Original Score: Hue Park (& Will Aronson) – Maybe Happy Ending

Best Costume Design of a Musical: Clint Ramos – Maybe Happy Ending

Best Lighting Design of a Musical: Ruey Horng Sun (& Scott Zielinski) – Floyd Collins

In addition, you are perfectly able to go and see Lea Salonga on Broadway now in OLD FRIENDS, which is a Sondheim revue, although it seems an injustice to call it that – TFP saw it in London, it is remarkable.

(If the work stars AANHPI performers, TFP has included it on that list. If the designer is working in conjunction with another person, she has put brackets around the partner who is not Asian. If the person nominated is of Asian descent, but the play/musical is not – TFP has included it on the list. If the nominee is mixed Asian descent, in all parts of that diaspora, she has included it on this list.)

Truly, it is the list of her dreams. Did it irk her that the men have 6 nominations in the leads of musicals and the women have 5? Yes. Is there room for ONE more for the women….absolutely there is.

Ahem.

That list would not be possible, even ten years ago because AANHPIs did not have access like they have now. TFP repeats, that list would not have been possible 10 years ago because we did not have interest from either the public or the producers ten years ago in ‘our’ stories. TFP has been writing this blog for 14 years, and when she started, a list like the above was unthinkable.

It just would not have happened – and you cannot impose the open-ness of now onto the closed-ness of then. That is a very weird thing to her, to constantly go back and act like people have not changed, Broadway has not changed, and audiences have not changed in 14 years. She understands that ‘the kids’ who are very vocal about speaking up and out NOW, insist it all would have been different sooner if ‘we’ (the ones who were around back then, and before) had railed against the dying of the light at the time – and we did, but that list is GENERATIONAL CHANGE.

People have to be ready for change – and as we can tell from this last election – where they could have propelled us forward by voting for the Bi-racial Lawyer who was a prosecutor and always the best questioner on ANY inquiry panel she was on, and who was selected to be ONE heartbeat away from the Presidency – who would have taken seriously revisions on health care, vaccinations, tax relief, housing, who had plans all day long – and they voted for the Sundowning Tarriff Bogeyman and his makeup loving “I can’t be racist because I am married to a woman of color’ clown car of a disaster side piece.

Because white America was not ready to admit the white guy was unqualified, and she was qualified.

Yes, they are ignorant and racist. Yes, they are. However they were not ready to admit that, and so here we are, America.

So when TFP tells you, a list like that has taken deliberate and repeated attacks on the ‘establishment’ of white theater over and over and over, just by EXISTING – you should believe her. It has been a GROUP project by people like Ralph B. Peña, Tisa Chang, Baayork Lee, Mia Katigbak, DHH, Jon Lawrence Rivera, Roger Tang, AAPAC, East West Players, Lodestone, SLANT, NAAP, Pan Asian, NAATCO, Ma-Yi, Silk Road Rising, CAATA, MAM, Artists at Play, Grateful Crane Ensemble, Kumu Kahua Theatre, Pangea World Theater, TeAda, Theater Mu, A Squared and whoever else has contributed to this – she means it.

It took EVERYONE to change that narrative that AANHPIs could not act, or sing, or dance unless they were doing Flower Drum Song or King & I or Miss Saigon or Bollywood Dreams.

It is OPPORTUNITY and ACCESS meeting ‘the moment’.

WHICH IS WHY when TFP read the article in the New Yorker, she had some thoughts on one very specific section (well, she had thoughts on the whole thing, but most of that was that someone needed a nap or a cocktail…)

Now, placing a two-hander play next to a musical was not a great producing decision, but perhaps the theater was the only one available. However, she should not have taken it upon herself to contact the Producers of Hell’s Kitchen directly. That is and will always be, a producer discussion. That is a conversation that actors can and should never be involved in, because it falls outside the parameters of what is your responsibility as an actor.

The theaters are close together and they are old, however there is much that can be done, and again – THAT IS A PRODUCER DISCUSSION, STAY IN YOUR LANE.

So the ‘clap-back’ by Ms. Lewis was warranted. That is why Audra McDonald liked it – because ‘get off my lawn’ is not the right energy for Broadway.

If you act up and act out then you take your licks – you open that door, be prepared for someone to close it for you.

It was this next part that TFP really did not like:

Comparing your 28 Broadway shows, as a person who attended Julliard, and who has, as a white actress (yes, yes, even when she started, she would have been seen as a white actress, though in the 1800’s that was not the case because her family hails from Sicily) been offered things on a scale that is almost unheard of ALL her life….that is not the look, M’am.

She is confusing access with talent level.

Which, TFP wants to remind you, that Kecia Lewis has TEN Broadway shows as an African American woman living her life in the Predominantly White Industry that is Broadway. There are very few people that can claim 10 Broadway shows to their credit, so it is not a flex to compare 28 to 10.

Ms. Lewis did not have the ACCESS that Patti LuPone had, ever. She never, ever had it. She DESERVED it – but it was not available to her because, and TFP is going to say this AGAIN for the folks in the back – BROADWAY IS A PREDOMINANTLY WHITE INDUSTRY!

In fact, they BOTH won Best Featured Actress in a Musical – Ms. LuPone in 2022, and Ms. Lewis in 2024. Two years apart. To be so dismissive of a colleague that is, by definition of that award alone, in the same category as you?

Ms. Lewis started performing on Broadway AT AGE 18!

18!

Ms. LuPone did not perform on Broadway at 18, she was in Julliard at 18.

Journeys are always different – some are harder than others.

Ms. LuPone had career ups and downs – however with as many fights as she has gotten in with cast members and producers – would she have been allowed to continue those ups and downs post the Andrew Lloyd Webber Sunset Blvd debacle if she was a Black woman?

Patti LuPone trashed a dressing room. She sued Andrew Lloyd Webber. Over a role. She has called former cast mates names in the press. She left the Union because she didn’t feel like paying and then abruptly came back with a new show. She moans about the folks who come and see Broadway shows and the space they take up.

TFP has no doubt she can be a wonderful colleague and super fun to get drinks with, but if she had that rep, as a woman of color – would she have been allowed to continue at the level she has?

It is just a question.

A question from a Mixed Asian Woman who watched all her classmates bounce to Broadway before she did because she did not fit a body type or a look that most thought of as Asian – so there were very few shows she could ‘fit’ into – even though she could see herself in all of them. Then she started writing and pointing out disparities and Broadway CDs said “no thanks’ for THREE years.

Just as an example.

Just food for thought.

Because TFP has seen what this industry does to POC who speak up.

TFP could say more. She could.

This is simply a woman who cannot see her privilege who continues to lash out, not realizing the damage she is doing to herself and her reputation. These are two colleagues she is lashing out at, in a ridiculous and unfair way. She doesn’t want to do Broadway again? TFP does not think that will be an issue, though she has enjoyed her performances for years.

As they say in COMPANY ‘I think there’s a time to come to New York and a time to leave”

Let’s discuss someone who is sticking around…Ms. Kecia Lewis!

However, as it turns out, TFP saw the luminescent Ms. Lewis SEVERAL times in her life on the stage INCLUDING just this past Saturday night on Broadway. She and her son were in the front row (they punk’d her at TKTS, y’all cuz the guy just said “i have two in the orchestra’ and didn’t say where) and Ms. Lewis was a revelation and a dream, she sang that stage up and down, and put us all in our places as we watched her perform in HELL’s KITCHEN.

The entire cast was FIRE, and you would think if sound was SUCH an issue, TFP would be deaf, being in the front row.

She is not deaf. The sound was particularly well managed from the front of house perspective.

She also got to see her son be totally captivated by Ms. Lewis and the cast’s performances, which, honestly is a win for a parent. He loved it. Particularly because he plays piano, and Ms. Lewis’s character teaches piano in the show.

Ms. Lewis and her ten Broadway shows and her TONY award in 2024 is a testament to her staying in the industry as it changed, and being the change she wanted to see. The two journeys are not comparable. That is all TFP wanted to say.

TFP is going to end by reminding people that access is not talent – and they should never be confused.

Some of the greatest performers the world does not know, have never been on Broadway because of access – very often there is little they can do to change it.

That is the way the world works, but to paraphrase Lorrell Robinson in Dreamgirls…from one Long Island gal to another….

“You got the same job I got?“

“You got the same TONY I got?“

“Then shut up“

TFP out

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Categories Diversity

No one can ‘make’ you sing…

May 9, 2025 //

The Fairy Princess was going about her day here in the dystopian hellscape that is the American theater/country and as she does, she often wonders “What fresh hell will be unleashed today?” As always, the news pudits prove her right at some point during the day.

Though she is encouraged by the election of Pope Leo XIV, an American from the Southside of Chicago. A dual citizen of Peru and the USA, shethinks he has the cajones to take on the current administration – he has degrees in mathematics from Villanova and in canon law, bravi tutti– Go Pope Leo! (please don’t make her shake her head in rage at you at any point with warped views on LGBTQIA+ or women. Ahem, she means, Amen) She should also point out, he was elected by the most diverse conclave, ever – and apparently this is what the world wants, let America – poor old battered Lady Liberty – catch the lifeline the church is attempting to throw at them – because this ‘first hundred days’ feels like a thousand.

Besides the cancelling of the National Endowment of the Arts, and Elmo, and all the other ways in which people who speak their minds who also happen to be artists are being threatened financially in a blanket mass defunding, the takeover of The Kennedy Center is one of the most egregious and early thrusts of the GOP sword into people who have the ability to think for themselves. The country watched in horror as beloved artists and shows that are guaranteed to make money for TKC either withdrew or were cancelled.

We, and by ‘we’, TFP means America, were told that there would be somewhat of a Make Musicals Great Again movement, and only what the Administration deemed ‘wholesome’ and ‘reflecting family values’ would be shown there.

Hamilton withdrew themselves.

Other shows like Finn were cancelled almost immediately.

Board members Shonda Rhimes, Ben Folds, Rhiannon Giddens, Reneè Flemming and many more, resigned.

You know what is most egregious about the cancellation of Finn? The Kennedy Center commissioned it in 2023.

TFP joked with her friends that musicals would be re-written and she tossed around titles like, “Annie get your AK-47”, “Oklahomophbic”, “Kool-AidJuice”, “Toupeè”, “Underage Girls”, “Hands on a Trans Body” or “JD Vance, Tiny Red Dwarf Star” – you get her meaning. (Have fun with those).

We saw ‘theater people’ of all kinds – even in the military, ‘protest’ this administration and sing from Les Miserablés, and the world applauded and wondered when people were actually going to do something. Like, when – the world asks – are Americans going to re-claim democracy from kleptocracy? When are elected officials on both sides going to rise up (sing that Hamilton clip here please)? When do seated elected officials relinquish their ‘proximity to power’ in favor of common human decency?

When, oh when, do the members of Congress and the Senate universally acknowledge that letting a businessman known for his lack of concern for his employees, the safety of his customers, and his blatant amorality was a grift of the highest order?

The American public knew prior to the ‘salute’, but it seems like some still choose to stick their heads in the sand. They let it continue – so now the man who lets people burn to death in cars is out to steal Senior’s Social Security to pay for billionaire’s sending their friends to space.

When is the revolution?

We may have to wait a while.

Particularly when it comes to places that Artists have effectively ‘lost’, like, The Kennedy Center.

The cast of Les Miserablés is booked to perform at The Kennedy Center from June 11th – July 23rd.

The first evening was to be a gala fundraiser for The Kennedy Center. The performers were given the option to NOT sing that evening for the fundraiser as the POTUS will attend. In response to the news that 10-12 cast members have chosen not to perform on June 11th, newly appointed Director of the Kennedy Center Richard Grenfell released this statement:

“Any performer who isn’t professional enough to perform for patrons of all backgrounds, regardless of political affiliation, won’t be welcomed. In fact, we think it would be important to ‘out’ those vapid and intolerant artists to ensure producers know who they shouldn’t hire – and that the public knows which shows have political litmus tests to sit in the audience. The Kennedy Center wants to be a place where people of all political stripes sit next to each other and never ask who someone voted for, but instead enjoys a performance together.”

Which, is a threat.

It is also important to note that threatening people who sing and dance for a living has to put one on the fast pass to the Hadestown that is NOT the musical, but TFP digresses. Please go ride your patriarchy pony elsewhere, Sir, we want none of that nonsense in the theater, thank you!

It is important to note that giving the option to not perform for that particular fundraiser would have been a decision made by the producers of that show.

Actors took the option. They did not release a statement, they did not infringe on the ability to sell tickets – they simply opted out. They took the offer presented – even though they do not then get paid for that show. They took a financial, personal ‘hit’, because they just could not – and it is completely within their rights to do so.

Given that the current administration is openly hostile to LGBTQIA+ and women, it is not a surprise to anyone that some artists would choose not to perform for those patrons who enable hate. Those patrons coming on ‘overpriced fundraiser day’ to demonstrate their fealty to the giant orange have actively tried to hurt people in this country. This very exclusive crowd with their votes and with their funding – they paid for all the things to be put in place that we see across this nation – defunding veterans benefits, taking history out of school, trying to close libraries and eliminating health care in rural areas, refusing to pay for feeding children at schools….this audience is made up of people who wanted that to happen.

How do you sing about revolution for over two hours for a smug crowd who laughs and delights at cruelty? Who revel in the news that American citizens have been deported and terrorized to foreign countries? That people who do not appear Caucasian are regularly attacked on the streets for no reason other than they are not Caucasian?

Look at the words of “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables” –

How could you bring yourself to sing to an audience about standing up to tyranny when they are extreme bigots with endless financial power who will pay for the active subjugation of the American public?

It is ONE performance for an audience full of Marjorie Taylor Greenes.

A regular audience is always a mixed bag – no performer goes out on stage and says “Well, I am only singing for Democrats and Independents” – That is not how ‘this’ works. Ever. NO performer does that.

But a fundraiser? Where ticket prices are $2 MILLION dollars and you get a photo with POTUS?

People who will pay $2 Million dollars to sit through a musical they do not understand just to get a photo with the Orange?

So the company members who were OFFERED a chance to skip the show, chose to take the option….

…and they are now being threatened with career termination.

Some Producers that are on and about ‘The Broadway’ are not liberal and left leaning.

This ‘threat’ could be quite crippling to those performers, and yes, there could be retaliation. As we have seen amplified in this Administration, if you have money, you can do anything to anyone without consequences. Singers who do do musicals set in 1815-1832 in France, kind of a nichè career, so yes, they could absolutely be in a tight bind when this tour ends.

In the name of Sondheim – if we are having a McCarthy era redux, TFP feels that we should have had more of a warning.

(Oh wait, we DID, they published their project, but no one thought it mattered. Now they are hauling off elected officials in New Jersey who are out and about performing their duties, literally hauling them off.)

As much as the current Administration bullies and attempts to bend the laws to benefit their pocketbooks, there will always be those whose moral compass will not allow them internal peace if they go along with what they have been ordered to do.

There are people who will say no.

It is the people who will say no, who will save this country.

Look at Harvard, they said no, and then sent it back with the errors circled in red ink!

Slay all day, Crimson!

They are singing every night for the French values of “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, – which mean, Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity – and you expect them to ‘shut up and sing’ for that fundraising audience? That particular one?

Performers are more than Broadway tune singing bots. They are individuals with agency. They get to choose who they sing for – their talent is not guaranteed for the price of a ticket. No one can ‘make’ anyone sing who chooses not to – and their Producers are smart to offer an alternative – not that TFP thinks anyone would sink the show on purpose – that is just not in performer DNA.

All that is guaranteed by a ticket is a show – and the show will go on regardless.

It is called “understudies’ and ‘covers’, and the show will go on.

The Administration wanted their ‘show ponies’ – they may not get them. That cast is chock full of amazing talent – a show will be performed nontheless. They bought a ticket to Les Miserablès – and that show will be seen.

As to the Individuals who will not be onstage that night – TFP salutes you.

To be publicly threatened and still stand up is a courage TFP wishes on members of Congress and the Senate, who KNOW that what is happening in our country is wrong, and who still sit, enabling it.

Never forget, that for as many conservative Producers who will take directives from a Government, there are just as many if not more, who will not. You will work again after this tour, TFP is sure that someone in Chicago knows how to get the new guy on speed dial.

It will be ok. For a while it might not be. However, the attention spans are short, something else will distract them, and all will go on, just like Cèline Dion sang.

We salute you!

“Vive la révolution” 

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Categories Diversity