Making "Weird Art" is the only way Broadway evolves for years to come

Deirdre O'Connell Craig Schwartz

by Chris Peterson, OnStage Blog Founder

During her Tony Award acceptance specch, Deirdre O'Connell said words that shook me to my bones.

The actor who had just won for her incredible performance in ‘Dana H.’(a show that everyone had a hard time pronouncing correctly that night), brilliantly said the following,

"I would love this little prize to be a token for every person who is wondering, 'Should I be trying to make something that could work on Broadway or that could win me a Tony Award? Or should I be making the weird art that is haunting me, that frightens me, that I don't know how to make, that I don't know if anyone in the whole world will understand?' Please let me standing here be a little sign to you from the universe to make the weird art."

I couldn’t agree with this statement more. If there ever was a year that proved that weird art can succeed on Broadway, this was it. ‘A Strange Loop’ is weird art. ‘Six’ is weird art. I would even go as far as to say that the reimagining nation of ‘Company’ is weird art.

Broadway can survive on the tourist-attracting shows. But the only way it evolves into something better and bolder is by having weird art grace its stages.

We often complain about how there aren’t enough “original stories” being told on Broadway, how everything is either based on a movie or an album or some sort of biographical piece on a famous singer. And while some of those shows have created brilliant performances and pushed the way material can be designed, I do find validity in that argument.

Too many times, experimentation and exploration is relegated to off-Broadway or off-off-Broadway or regional theaters. I agree that those destinations can afford to take risks, but it’s refreshing to see Broadway producers take chances too.

I gave Barbara Whitman a lot of shit on Twitter the other day for being the one person that spoke when ‘A Strange Loop’ won Best Musical. The optics of seeing a white woman taking credit and speaking for a musical by a Black creative and populated by an all-Black cast wasn’t great. I fully understand why she was the one who spoke, given that she is the lead producer. At the same time, if there was ever a time to understand the moment and pass the mic, that was it.

However, that does not take anything away from the fact that Whitman deserves credit for taking a chance on a brilliant piece of weird art and coordinating with other producers and investors to make sure it gets to Broadway. ‘A Strange Loop’ is one of the most interesting pieces of theatre I’ve seen, and I would not have been able to see it if folks like Whitman and Jennifer Hudson, and RuPaul, among plenty of others, didn’t also believe in it.

One of my biggest takeaways from this year‘s Tonys was that I felt that the groundwork had been laid for what will be a very transformative period for Broadway. I think that producers and investors and theatre owners saw what many fans have been wanting for years, and that’s a more diverse presentation of material with more diverse representation than there’s ever been before. I hope this is a trend that continues for years to come because that’s the only way we move forward.