16.05 / 17:17
Entertainment
broadway
Tony Awards
‘Feminine, queer, and outspoken,’ Broadway’s Jaquel Spivey reimagines the definition of Broadway’s leading man
Jaquel Spivey is redefining what it means to be a leading man on Broadway, and both critics and audiences are paying attention. Hired shortly after graduating from Pittsburgh’s Point Park University to star in Michael R. Jackson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning musical, A Strange Loop, the endearingly sassy 23-year-old has already won a Theatre World Award and earned nominations for this year’s Drama League and Tony Awards for his performance as Usher, a young Black artist at odds with his sexual identity, familial expectations, torturous thoughts, and desire to create original art.Spivey spends nearly every moment of the self-proclaimed “big, Black, and queer-*ss Great American Musical” pouring his heart out as a conflicted artist trying to decide who he is and what he wants in a world that goes out of its way to remind him that he is too Black, too gay, too fat, and not hung enough to play in the big leagues.