Broadway as Queer Bulwark

Come for the entertainment, stay for the revolution.

Photo credit: Tricia Baron

I am not always accepting of sharing queer culture with straight audiences. I want to keep what’s ours ours. But after seeing the thrilling new Broadway shows Titaníque and CATS: The Jellicle Ball, I felt like I was part of an exuberant, radical resistance. Come for the entertainment, stay for the revolution.

Titaníque (hilariously campy) and Jellicle Ball (brilliantly reset in New York’s queer ballroom scene) now playing right across the street from each other started downtown, off of Broadway, and neither of them straightened themselves out to make it on Broadway. In fact, uptown, their queerness is especially amplified.

As I watched the extraordinary Layton Williams play the iceberg in Titaníque, I thought about the crisis rapidly coming straight at our community. Currently, over 500 anti-LGBTQ bills are pending in state legislatures spanning over 40 states. “Don’t Say Gay” laws have been enacted to ban discussion of LGBTQ people in schools, teachers are being forced to out their students, parents and doctors are being criminalized for providing trans youth gender-affirming care, drag queens are being labeled more dangerous than guns. State governments are telling trans people which bathrooms to use and revoking their licenses that properly mark their gender, and the U.S. Department of State is now only issuing passports with a sex marker that matches the applicant’s sex assigned at birth.

The Trump administration is demonizing DEI, and corporations and universities are sickeningly following suit; lemmings Gavin Newsom and Rahm Emanuel, trying to burnish their images for a 2028 presidential run, can’t shake off our community fast enough; Pixar has exorcised queer characters and stories because, as Pete Docter, their Chief Creative Officer, explained, “We are making a movie, not hundreds of millions of dollars of therapy.”

But Broadway is audaciously bucking this disturbing trend, standing proudly as a queer bulwark with these incredible queer shows with queer creatives and diverse queer casts. (Wait till you see the extraordinary “Tempress” Chasity Moore as Grizabella.)

Titaníque and Jellicle Ball join Broadway’s storied canon — La Cage, A Chorus Line, Rent, and its newer sisters Hedwig and Oh, Mary! — shows that prove when you put the marginalized center stage, see the world from our lens, sing and dance about what we care and obsess about, you’ll have your hit, turn a profit and improve the world.

I know that shows have long, often treacherous trajectories to Broadway and sometimes the timing is just luck, but I am grateful these newcomers came this season. I am grateful to the producers who didn’t check the climate and postpone, I am grateful to the theatermakers who didn’t soften the edges of their work in order to gain easier acceptance, I am grateful for the performers who every night represent the very best of us.

Our adversaries don’t understand we aren’t going anywhere. Queer is now and forever.