Go Inside Opening Night of A STRANGE LOOP on Broadway
May 17, 2024
A Strange Loop has arrived on Broadway at last! The Broadway production of Michael R. Jackson's Pulitzer-Prize winning musical, opened just last week at the Lyceum Theater, directed by Stephen Brackett and choreographed by Raja Feather Kelly.
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Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World
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Michael R. Jackson's Pulitzer Prize winning groundbreaking musical A Strange Loop has come to Broadway
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and we're here to celebrate with the company. I can finally say it, welcome to Broadway. How does it feel
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It feels wonderful, amazing. This has been quite a journey. How many years has this journey been for you
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It's been about 18 years to Broadway. What made you like stick it through and stay and just just keep doing and doing and doing
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The thing that made me sort of stick it through was just trying to capture this experience kind of in a jar, like a butterfly or a firefly, I guess
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I was just I had never seen this kind of story told before and I wanted to try to nail the specificity and the nuance of it
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And it just, you know, it was also an exploration of it
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self. And like, as a younger person, I was always, like, going, like, why am I like this? Why am I like this? Why are things like this
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And so I sort of couldn't stop until I, like, solved the problem, as it were
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Everything is going through my mind. I'm just, I'm excited. I'm, I'm, I'm
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overwhelmed but I so grateful to be here I grateful to be on this journey I grateful to be talking to y I talking to Broadway world We made it Like you know like I just really excited to be on this journey with everyone here
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What's made it so special for me is to be in a space where I'm surrounded
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by black queer artists. I've never experienced that. And it makes such a difference
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for the work that you do when you're around people that understand your struggles and understand your triumphs
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and actually can lift you up on those days when it's like, I don't know if I have it in me to tell this story
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tell this story or to go through this stuff. They see it in me and they're like, we got you
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baby. Let's go. Let's tell it. And it's just a very, a loving room, a loving environment
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and the license is just so full of black queer joy. I keep thinking about Mesquite, Texas
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where I'm from, where like this is a wild, unimaginable dream. I remember in middle school
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you had to like choose what you wanted to do for the rest of your life. And I was like, I think I want to be an actor. And my teacher's like, you can't choose that. Like, that won't
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work for the assignment. Here I am. I think I understood the assignment. I love y'all. It's
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Playbill and Broadway World. We go back, honey. I used to skip class to see what's on Broadway
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World, okay? I love it. You said, don't touch my mic. I know that's right. You can touch it
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You can touch it. No, I think. Go ahead. I want you to hold this for a second. You're holding the Broadway World mic And it heavy This is good Y are rich Okay So you used to cut school right You can tell us I would cut class at Carnegie Mellon University just to see what posted on Broadway World and to be here
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It's kind of unreal. It's really unreal. I got all A's though, let's be clear
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For me personally, what's been special is being able to sort of follow and continue in the legacy that peppermint set and head over heels
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There's not a lot of black trans women being seen on broad women. women being seen on Broadway period. So to be the, in many ways, the second one
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originating a role is very important to me. It's really about visibility, honestly
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in representation. Yeah. It's been a long journey. I've been a part of the show for 10
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years from my first workshop and reading of it. It's been a journey about a group of
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people who just kept saying yes to each other. We just kept showing up for Michael
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Michael just kept having us back so it feels like a team that stuck together and now we're here
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feels like the instinct that we had about the piece is being validated and confirmed
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And that instinct was that it was special, that it was going to mean something to people
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I haven't really landed yet. Someone asked me the other day, you know, we're in previews
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Like, how was the first performance? And I was like, I don't recall. I wasn't there
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So I just, I haven't landed yet. I feel like I a leaf kind of landing slowly It feels heavenly right now It really does An artist friend of mine by the name of Corey Tutt did all of the artwork on my outfit
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today. He asked me what are some of the things that you want to say and I wanted to say
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something to all those gay black boys and I wanted them to know that they are loved
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they are loved, they are loved and so that is the statement on my outfit but
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Corey Tut designed it and then I've always wanted a pair of John Fleubovog shoes
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And so now that I'm on Broadway, I bought me some John Flewock shoes
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It's been such a long journey to get here, but it's like such a moment to celebrate
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with the amazing humans that are involved with this show. And so any moment, any occasion like this
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feels like a party. It feels like a celebration, so it's really great. I keep like waiting for somebody to be like
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no, not you, not for you. Like I have to keep reminding myself
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no, no, you've worked hard. You've worked hard and you deserve to be here and soak it in and celebrate this moment
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What made it special for me was really the cast, really developing a relationship with them
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and making them feel like themselves on stage and just turning that volume up so that it's both
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entertaining but that it's heartfelt, that it has a soul, and that's just not something you see
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all the time on Broadway, so that feels very special to me
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