Thread by @TheLizWasser

Listen. It took me years to realize I stopped auditioning for musical theater not bc I was lazy, but bc I was in pain. It wasn’t the rejection—it was walking into a room & being made to feel like your body was unreasonable, that by showing up you were wasting everyone’s time.

It was standing in a row with 30 girls in leotards and LaDucas and watching the casting director’s eyes skip over you as he scanned the line, or mindlessly push your headshot to the rejection pile with without even looking at you long enough to see your face.

It was the urge to walk up to the only other big girl in the holding room & sit in silent camaraderie, while secretly hating she was there. There were only so many “old lady” (or “fat friend” or “clueless teen” or “sassy villain”) roles to go around and they’d never cast you both

It was hating yourself for feeling that way. It was the opposite of community.

It was how condescendingly nice the other women were to you because they didn’t for a moment consider you to be their competition.

It was being careful not to sit too close to the other big girl bc sitting next to each other would somehow draw more attention to your bodies and “other” you further, oblivious to how you much you needed to talk to her. Not remotely ready to have that conversation.

It was the desperate need to be the, funniest, most quick-witted person in the room up to the point of sheer exhaustion, because you knew the other parts of you—your talent, your voice, your vulnerabily—weren’t going to get you through The Door and weren’t particularly relevant.

It was playing every old lady in the canon by the time you got to college, where the cycle began again. How you only booked characters were loved “in spite” of their weight (or loving them was a punchline) teaching you that you weren’t a believeable object of love and desire.

It was dragging this lesson behind you—like Peter Pan’s shadow attached by a thread—through every relationship, romantic and platonic. It was learning this lesson so early that it felt more like unmoveable bedrock than someone’s opinion.

It was every thin person you saw in a fat suit.

It was the festering resentment for the professor who gave you unecessarily cruel “feedback” & “advice” & blocked your opportunities for the sake of “preparing you for the real world” even though it wasn’t. Even though you just wanted to take full advantage of an arts education.

It was being taken aside in a very public manner to be told that you were fantastic but too fat, or too fat but they were going to cast you anyway because director was willing to see past it bc they were so innovative. (THEY didn’t care, you see, but OTHER PEOPLE would.)

It was being told by a man safe behind his plastic picnic table that he “just didn’t think you were castable” as if he wasn’t the one doing the casting. As if he wasn’t savoring the moment.

It was how, on the rare occasion you did see a fat person play a “beautiful” character, the team clearly reveled in their SUBVERSIVENESS, how in their gratuitous signaling of how BODY POSITIVE they were for NOT making it about the actor’s size, they made it about the actor’s size

It was feeling begrudgingly grateful for the positive representation. And knowing it was all well-meant.

It was knowing that people would constantly site that production as an example when arguing that theatre isn’t fatphobic.

It was being able to recall every detail of the few times you saw a fat person play a “beautiful” character, mystified by their ability to do so w/o any trace of apology (and bc it was so novel.) It was never clocking a thin actor playing “beautiful” bc beauty is thin by default.

It was listening to friends you respect talk about “Broadway Bodies”—when, of course, anyone who has ever been on Broadway has a “Broadway Body”—and wanting to scream, “JUST FUCKING SAY THIN. JUST SAY MY BODY DOESN’T BELONG ON BROADWAY.”

It was gaining weight out of defiance. It was gaining weight because fuck them. It was gaining weight because fuck it.

It was losing an enormous amount of weight, feeling like the same person you were before, and being furious at yourself for wasting so much time, ashamed of how little progress you’d made in pursuit of your dream, terrified you missed your chance and that it was too late.

It was how avoiding auditions didn’t stop the painfully longing to perform.

It was years of training yourself to feel nothing because it was just easier.

It’s knowing that you’ll eventually be sucked back in because that’s showbiz, babyyyyyy.

Friends.

Broadway is fucking sizeist. It’s a lot of “ist”s. It’s a Luxury Community in a field where most of us can’t afford to buy property and the gates at the perimeter are HIGH.

And the institutionalized bias is coming from inside the house.

The @nytimes made a fatphobic comment and they shouldn’t have and it was gross and yes we have every right to call it out and complain.

It was also a symptom of a deeply ingrained disease.

Broadway needs to come back better. We all deserve it.

#broadwaybodies
#Broadway

#broadwaybodypositivity #musicaltheatre #broadwaymusical #actorsequity #AEA #fatphobia #fatphobic #Theatre #scottrudin #karenolivo

I have no excuse for not understanding Twitter tho, so let’s just say technology is also fatphobic. Here’s the damn thing in order: threadreaderapp.com/thread/1390697…

SCENE!DIVIDER

Oh, friends. I'm overwhelmed & touched & torn open & sewn back up again by your comments & DMs across social media. Thank you from the bottom of my shriveled raisin heart

I am reading each one, and I promise I will respond to all of them in time, I just need a few days (the first which will be spent weeping.) Your vulnerability is not going unnoticed and I am exceedingly grateful for you.