{"id":92183,"date":"2024-01-07T14:58:03","date_gmt":"2024-01-07T22:58:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/?p=92183"},"modified":"2024-01-07T14:58:03","modified_gmt":"2024-01-07T22:58:03","slug":"breaking-bway-barriers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/blog\/2024\/01\/07\/breaking-bway-barriers\/","title":{"rendered":"Breaking Bway Barriers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A friend of mine tells a story about a dinner theatre in Fresno where they had a production of <strong><em>Evita<\/em><\/strong> \u2013 presumably with dinner.&nbsp; There was a rotating cast, and one person stood out.&nbsp; Eventually people would buy tickets to see the \u201cBlack Evita\u201d \u2013 who happened to be a 16-year-old <strong>Audra McDonald<\/strong>.&nbsp; It was somewhat unusual to have an <em>Evita of Color <\/em>in the mid-\u201880s.&nbsp; But <em>Broadway <\/em>may get to see Audra break another color barrier.&nbsp; Rumors are flying about that McDonald will turn up in a revival of <strong><em>Gypsy<\/em><\/strong> next season (it should be noted that Audra reportedly played a minor role in <em>Gypsy<\/em> as a kid \u2013 also in Fresno).&nbsp; While everyone always talks about how often <em>Gypsy<\/em> is revived, it should be noted that the last <em>Broadway <\/em>production took place in 2008 \u2013 helmed by <strong>Patti LuPone<\/strong>.&nbsp; That said, I saw another revival slightly more recently \u2013 and starring a <em>Mama Rose of Color<\/em>.&nbsp; <strong>Leslie Uggams <\/strong>led <em>Gypsy<\/em> at the <em>Connecticut Repertory Theatre <\/em>in Hartford back in 2014.&nbsp; What I found more jarring was that Uggams was 71 years old at the time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A friend of mine tells a story about a dinner theatre in Fresno where they had a production of Evita \u2013 presumably with dinner.&nbsp; There was a rotating cast, and one person stood out.&nbsp; Eventually people would buy tickets to see the \u201cBlack Evita\u201d \u2013 who happened to be a 16-year-old Audra McDonald.&nbsp; It was<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92183"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92184,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92183\/revisions\/92184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}