At long last, mainstream theatre is beginning to return to its queer roots by allowing more trans and non-binary actors to take to the stage without hiding their true identities behind a binary role.

In 2023, actor J. Harrison Ghee was awarded Best Leading Actor in a Musical for their role in Some Like it Hot, and fellow non-binary actor Alex Newell won Best Featured Actor that same night for their performance in Shucked. The pair were the first non-binary performers in history to win a Tony.

Some Like it Hot has always been queer – it was originally a 1959 comedy film of two male musicians dressing in drag after witnessing a murder. The musical retains this plot, but does what the film was not allowed to do: it expressly states that Ghee’s character, Daphne, wants to continue her gender exploration, with her new boyfriend loving every aspect of her identity.

Famously, in Shakespeare’s time, it was illegal for women to act, so all of his characters were played by men. Many of the men playing women were teenagers who had yet to reach puberty, so their voices would be high enough to be considered believably ‘feminine’.

Enforcing male-only casts, however, didn’t get in Shakespeare’s way of queering his plays. He wrote many female roles with the young boys playing them in mind, joking about their voices and adding subplots where characters would dress in drag.

For example, in As You Like It, the female character Rosalind disguises herself as a man called Ganymede, a name specifically selected by Shakespeare because, at the time, it would’ve been associated with a term for a young male prostitute or lover.

Shakespeare’s women were usually far more logical and intelligent than their male counterparts, but the only way these traits would be accepted by his audience, and most importantly, the Royal Family, was for the characters to ‘become’ male. Overall, Shakespeare, one of the most important figures in theatre-making history, knew it was at its best when a queer narrative was involved – boys dressed as girls disguised as boys falling in love with each other onstage.

Shakespeare also used the pronouns ‘they/them’ as a singular pronoun; for example, in Hamlet, the character of Polonius refers to a mother as ‘them’. The irony of ‘mother’ being the queered term here does not escape me.

Why is this important? It reminds our modern-day audience that queer theatre isn’t a groundbreaking, new phenomenon; it’s how it originated, it is a return to what the many Renaissance playmakers intended for theatre to be. Queer storylines, characters, and actors add a new context to theatre works that need a new perspective.

For example, Andrew Lloyd Webber is currently having a massive resurgence in popularity due to his willingness to allow his work to be adapted. Cats: The Jellicle Ball on Broadway took home nine Tonys, three of which were major awards. Qween Jean became the first openly trans person to take home a Tony for her spectacular costume design.

Cats: The Jellicle Ball doesn’t try to rewrite the original story of Cats; it simply reimagines where the story takes place. The musical has always been camp, and like all musicals, requires a suspension of disbelief – because we all knew that was Elaine Paige with cat ears, but we chose to believe otherwise for the sake of a message and our own enjoyment.

Setting the musical in an LGBTQ+ vogue ballroom scene is nothing short of genius. The musical had gained an infamous reputation after its movie adaptation, where it became clear that what had once been revolutionary was now a bit unsettling. The directors of Cats: The Jellicle Ball, Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch, breathed new life into the musical by tearing away the notions of gender being attached to the characters, and gave the characters a reason to be as bold and as expressive as they wished.

Meanwhile, on the West End, shows like Legally Blonde, Mean Girls, Hadestown and Oh, Mary! have embraced gender-neutral casting for particular roles, making the shows feel connected to today’s audiences and adding depth to characters who may have once been one-dimensional.

My favourite example of this is not a Broadway or West End production; it’s from the Zach Theater in Texas, which is currently showing Dear Evan Hansen. The show was massively famous in 2016, when it dominated the Tony Awards season and made Ben Platt half an EGOT in the span of six months.

However, in the last 10 years, people have begun to distance themselves from the show, now feeling that the subject matter was handled inappropriately due to some characters not being developed enough. You don’t root for a villain if they have no origin story, and you don’t understand their horrendous actions if no reason behind it is suggested by the character.

The Zach Theater recently cast trans-femme actress Dominic Pecikonis in the role of Connor Murphy, a 17-year-old who dies by suicide after struggling with depression and what is hinted at as queerphobia. Pecikonis playing Connor as someone non-binary, or perhaps as a trans woman, adds layers to the character despite Connor passing early on in the show.

With this context, it makes more sense why Connor struggled to maintain a relationship with their father, who was determined to make Connor into his overtly masculine son he could play baseball with. It makes sense why Connor was seen as a ‘freak’ by their peers, why they consistently felt isolated, why they grew out their hair and why, ultimately, no therapy could save them, because the core issue of their gender identity was completely ignored.

Connor’s family, the Murphys, are wealthy and picture-perfect. They know nothing about who their child was to the extent that they believe in a hastily fabricated identity supposed to resemble Connor after they’ve passed away. Connor was constantly feared while they were alive, but nobody suggests that they were ever physically violent towards anyone. It makes the audience question why Connor was ever seen as an inherently bad person, and this production offers us a sad but likely answer.

Theatre has always been intended as a way of telling stories in an accessible format that evokes empathy by allowing audiences to see events unfold. Theatre still remains far from fully accessible in numerous ways, but allowing queer, non-binary and trans actors to take to the stage during a time when they need to be celebrated loudly gives me a lot of hope.

It’s a reminder that queer people have always existed in every space; we just adapted to what was safe for us. It’s about time that the theatre began adapting to hold space for us, in both local and mainstream productions.

As the great Steven Sondheim once said: “There’s a place for us/There’s a time for us”.