30 Days of NYMF: Fairytale, The Musical

By Joshua Robinson (Book)

Over ten years ago, I started writing Fairy Tale as a high school kid in Indiana.  At that point, it seemed like the issue I was dealing with, albeit through a bawdy comedy, was too taboo to talk about, especially in a place like Indiana.  Growing up gay in the Midwest is a strange experience.  The Fairyland I was writing about was close to my reality.  Everywhere I turned, the idea of having feelings for a member of the same sex was greeted with condemnation.  Forget the idea of same-sex marriage; just having thoughts seemed like a crime.  Fairyland was a much darker place at this point.

Now cut to the present.  Things have changed…sort of.  The dark show that I began has taken a lighter, more hopeful tone.   I am sitting in rehearsal and the cast, led by Broadway vet and cabaret legend Terri White, has me in pain from laughter.   I am now engaged to my partner.  Those are words I thought I’d never be able to say.  We haven’t won the fight yet, but we have won a few battles.  When I started the show, I wanted to scare the religious right into submission.  Now I’ve learned a different path.  Love restricted by gender is absurd; the way to show that is to laugh at it.

So I sit back in my chair and ponder while our villainous drag queen, currently in the guise of infomercial star Ms. Cleo, lectures a young boy on the negatives of being “de gay.”   I take a break from concocting my next one-liner or contemplating a needed cut in the prologue of the show.  I think about the little show I dreamed in my head as a high-school student scared of telling anyone but the blank page in front of me what I was feeling.  I also think about the country I live in and the hope presented by potential change.  Both the show and the country have come a long way.