For our final in our Acting I class, we were assigned a broadway musical and expected to cut it down until it was fifteen minutes in length, while maintaining the integrity and message of the original piece. We were assigned the musical “Hairspray”, which is about body confidence and facing adversity in difficult times. One of the larger themes of the show is racism in 1960’s America. Since only one actor in our cast is an person of color, we altered the script to reflect another challenging circumstance: the inequality of The Queer community. Certain words and phrases were rewritten to better suit our cast, while still telling an important story. The characters of Seaweed and Lil’ Inez were combined and their arc was altered from the struggles of being Black to the struggles of being Transgender. Tracy was played by a man, making the romance between Tracy and Link gay. Most of the cast identifies under the Queer umbrella. The reason we changed the pivotal conflict of the show was to avoid appropriating cultures that were not our own, or portraying ourselves as races we are not. We wanted to spread a message of acceptance and self-love while avoiding insensitivity. This has been described as the best fifteen-minute musical ever performed in all thirteen years since this project was introduced.
