Fun Home, or why this musical made me cry before I have had a chance to see it

Fun Home, merely by virtue of its presence in the mainstream, means so much more to me than people might think.

I have always been a tomboy, and for a lot of my life that fit in with the activities I pursued (sports, being 'obviously a lesbian' according to society's odd ideas of sexuality), but it definitely never fit in with my love of performing musical theatre. For a while when I thought I wanted to be an actress, I grew out my hair and started to lose weight. I also wore very feminine outfits to auditions. This was entirely unquestioned by a lot of the people in the theatre industry whom I encountered, and in some ways encouraged. I don't blame them for this, because the message from all sides is that the only roles for women in musical theatre (and really, theatre in general) are for women who fit a very limiting aesthetic. It felt like the choice I had was to either give up who I loved being to do what I loved or give up doing what I loved in order to be who I loved being. I chose the latter, and I don't necessarily regret it. I certainly enjoy my academic pursuits and have even started writing my own musicals.

But that joy, 'the thrill of the greasepaint', felt entirely out of my reach just by virtue of preserving my sanctity of self. The discussions that actors and actresses have, asking each other what their dream roles are, were full of tension for me, who felt more comfortable with male characters and male clothing than the female characters whom I was limited to playing. There was no room for me or women who looked like me onstage. It hurt, when I had so much love for the musical, for singing, for acting, to feel ostracised. Unwelcome, uninvited. I know there are other actors and actresses who bravely and boldly continue on, even knowing they either have to obfuscate who they are or hope that certain roles will come up. I am not that brave, or patient. Maybe I didn't 'want' it enough.

I have since discovered that there are many other places and ways that the alternative body can make its way into the performance lexicon, but it's not immediately obvious, and in any case, there shouldn't need to be specialist study done in order to discover that theatre has room for all.

And once I had settled into realising I could put or write butch characters, alternative characters, characters for anyone at all to play, into the work I was writing (including a musical which I cast completely gender, and its range of expression, blind), there came Fun Home. I read Alison Bechdel's graphic novel in the first year of my degree in drama, almost two and a half years ago. It was a gift and I cherish it. When the musical first started making waves (I first read about it on the Slate article that Jill Dolan mentions in her more insightful blog entry) I was shocked.

It was the first time I thought, 'Wow, that's a role I could play'. I had never seen 'me' onstage before. I went from have no genuine dream roles to two (Medium Alison and Alison) even before I'd heard the music, and hearing the music made me cry deep, heavy tears about what that representation meant to me. To quote 'Changing My Major', "Overnight, everything changed. I am not prepared. I'm dizzy. I'm nauseous. I'm shaking. I'm scared. Am I falling into nothingness or flying into something so sublime?"

That Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron have won Tonys, and that Fun Home has won best musical, seems to have answered Slate's question: 'Is America ready for a Musical about a Butch Lesbian?' with a resounding yes.

I didn't even know how to think or what to feel, but my answer was yes, too. Yes to feeling represented, yes to feeling hope, and yes to participating in a musical theatre that has proven it won't be impossible to write dream roles for everyone to play.