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[0:00] David Armstrong: Welcome to Broadway Nation, the podcast that explores the remarkable history of the Broadway Musical with a special focus on the immigrant, Jewish, queer, and black artist who invented it. I'm David Armstrong, and today's episode is the second half of my conversation with Trevor Boffone regarding his fascinating new book, TikTok Broadway — Musical Theatre Fandom in the Digital Age. If you missed part one of our discussion, you may want to catch up with that before listening to this one. Trevor Boffone is a Houston-based content creator and social media manager, and his previous books include Renegades: Digital Dance Cultures from Dubsmash to TikTok and Latinx Teens: U.S. Popular Culture on the Page, Stage, and Screen.

Today, Trevor and I explore several massively popular viral TikTok trends that relate to the Broadway and West End musicals Six, Heathers, Wicked, and Mamma Mia. And he also shares with us his observations of the myriad ways that TikTok has become a performance space of its own for fans of Broadway musicals. And, of course, we delve into the phenomenon of musicals that have been created on TikTok, such as Ratatouille — The Musical and Bridgerton — The Musical. This all brings up some big questions relating to the very nature of theater itself and, of course, the future of TikTok.

[2:10] David Armstrong: Before we begin, I want to give a big shout-out to the generous patrons of Broadway Nation, especially producer-level member Bob Braun. If you would like to help support the work of this podcast, please listen to the end of the episode, where there'll be information about how you, too, can become a patron. At the end of the previous episode, we had just arrived at a TikTok phenomenon that Trevor has dubbed stealth musicals. Here we go. What exactly is a stealth musical, as you call them?

[2:34] Trevor Boffone: Oh, the stealth musicals. So these are musicals that the casual TikToker, the casual Gen Z listening to music might know they're from musicals, but they do not know the context of the musical. They don't maybe even know the name of the musical. They don't know anything about the musical, but they do these trends. This is actually where the book began, because I was seeing these trends from Six and Heathers that were completely detached from the dramaturgical world of those musicals and what the characters were singing about, and I became so amused. So in the case of Six, you had teenage girls that were using a soundbite from Katherine Howard's song, All You Wanna Do, and it was the part where, of course, I'm going up on my lyrics, but the part where she talks about, I decided to have a break from boys.

You'll never guess who I met. Tall, strong, Henry VIII, Supreme Head of the Church of England. I think I got it pretty right. And so what they would do is they would say, I decided to have a break from boys. They would show pictures of their ex-boyfriend. And then it was now I moved on. Here's the new boyfriend. The Henry VIII boyfriend was the good boyfriend, right? Was the handsome one, was the one that they were in love with that treated them well. And you had hundreds of thousands of teenage girls doing this. Again, it's funny, it's fun. It doesn't have that much meaning. But at the end of the day, you have these girls comparing their boyfriends that are perfect to Henry VIII, who in this musical is totally not the good guy, right? Who's going to kill them. Right. Like the character gets beheaded.

[4:02] Trevor Boffone: Yeah, exactly. And so I was just super amused by that. It became sort of this, like, teenage girl, like, feminine anthem in a sort of odd way. And then on the similar plane, Big Fun from Heathers, that's the dang, dang, diggity dang, you know, Martha Dump Truck in the flesh. Here comes the cootie squad. It's a song about bullying. The character that is sort of the laughingstock of this sort of high school world. You would have folks just like doing the lip sync, totally detached from this musical. And so these stealth musicals become popular, I think partly because they do become detached from those musicals. They become memes. It's just super fascinating how we lose the context. These are just soundbites.

How many seconds, like not even 30 seconds soundbites? It can be any length, but I would say these are typically between 10 and 15 seconds. Martha Dump Truck in the flesh. Here comes the cootie squad. We should shut up, Heather. Sorry, Heather. Look who's with her. Oh, my God. Dang, dang, diggity dang, dang, dang, dang, dang. Right. So these are just taking 10 seconds out of this musical and turning it into a major trend.

[5:12] David Armstrong: Do we know how these begin? Is it just somebody who knows the musical does it first?

[5:17] Trevor Boffone: A TikTok trend can start in any way, but typically it starts with a creator who has a certain following. I don't know what that means, but someone that people follow and mimic. So I might, I have 300,000 followers on TikTok. I mean, not everything I do does well, but I could take a song from Hadestown. I wouldn't because I don't like Hadestown. I said it, but I could take a song from Hadestown. I could do a lip sync or make a dance. And then what happens is my followers are people who see that video, then replicate it. Sometimes it goes nowhere and then sometimes it blows up and becomes like the next big trend. And so typically these are creators that have large followings that are able to sort of do it. And so for these musicals, I can't quite trace the Heathers and Six who started it, but the ones that are happening now, especially like they're creators that have large followings. And so that's how they become these sort of pieces of internet culture.

[6:00] Trevor Boffone: It's so interesting. I understand that you can't trace it because we're talking hundreds of thousands of videos and where did they start? And what I talk about in the book for Six and Heathers is more so about these mega famous creators that do it and then it sort of cements it into the culture. If Charli D'Amelio, for instance, she's the second most followed person on TikTok. She's got 150 million followers. If she does one of these trends, then you're going to have a lot of people doing it as well.

[6:33] David Armstrong: Well, immediately you're having millions of people see it. So yeah, the likelihood of people picking it up is much higher just in terms of the odds.

[6:37] Trevor Boffone: Exactly that. I was interested in, and you touched on this a little bit earlier, about the problematic nature of some of these snippets that they've selected. The Martha Dump Truck, which I had no idea what you were talking about. The character is a bully, is the one bullying this unfortunate woman. Everyone who's making this video is taking on that character and in essence, becoming the bully. I was interested when you were talking about this with your students and they just were not very concerned about that. You're reading too much into it. You're taking everything too seriously.

[7:02] Trevor Boffone: Yeah. Again, I'm a nerd. This is probably the nerdiest chapter in the book, I think, because at the end of the day, it is a silly TikTok trend and it's not actually harmful. It's just more so amusing to me because they're doing this funny, look how funny we are. It's literally a song about bullying or look how hot my new boyfriend is. It's literally a song about this awful person that beheaded the person singing. Those people don't realize that. The people doing it largely don't. They don't know Six. They don't know others.

[7:33] David Armstrong: Are these shows benefiting in any way from these videos being out there?

[7:39] Trevor Boffone: Definitely Six. I mean, Six has a tremendous global domination. We're in the midst of a global domination by Six. We can really attest that to the cast recording coming out quite early and being all over social media. In 2019, several songs from Six started to trend on TikTok and it became, I believe, the second most streamed cast recording on Spotify for 2019. I think Hamilton was the top. And Six has continued to be mega popular. And there's now a high school version that's not going anywhere.

[8:07] David Armstrong: So let's now look at Wicked. And you have a whole chapter about, you call it DIY diva drag. And you described this as one of the signature TikTok trends. Videos of queer men doing Elphaba singing Defying Gravity. Why? I guess is my question.

[8:26] Trevor Boffone: Well, I would say why not? So essentially, this is a very common Broadway trend where you have usually, I mean, not everyone's saying like, hey, I'm queer. Let me do this trend. But it's typically queer men who have done this trend where they are lip syncing the crescendo of Defying Gravity. And they do it in a very DIY way. There's no cherry picker. There's no fancy flying mechanism. There's oftentimes not a broom. It's very much, I'm going to grab my vacuum. I'm going to grab my Swiffer wet jet. I'm going to put a blanket on me. I'm standing on a ladder in my kitchen. The more ridiculous it is, the better it does. It should feel messy. It should feel chaotic. Think of it the way that when you're like a kid, when you're five years old, putting on a performance for your family, for your parents who are like, this is the best thing I've ever seen.

But it's not really. And so this sort of happened. But it taps in. Wicked is a very queer show. I mean, not on the surface necessarily, but the subtext completely. Yeah, there's a lot of queer things happening. And Wizard of Oz, of course, we can go back to the queer connection, especially with gay men, with the Wizard of Oz. And I talk a little bit about that in the book. But essentially you have this diva anthem of empowerment and embracing the weirdness and embracing the queer. That's when you become powerful. That's when she becomes powerful. And so you have all of these sort of men becoming Elphaba. And the way they do it is what's interesting to me, because on TikTok, and this is still to this day, I still see stuff like this all the time.

Drag is big, but it's what I call the DIY drag. It's do it yourself drag. So instead of having all of the wigs and the costumes and all of the makeup, I'm going to do the most basic way to get that point across. So you'll see people take a towel or a dish towel, put it over their head, and that signifies long hair. So if I'm playing a woman in a skit, I put the towel on my head and people know this is a female character. If I am going to smoke a cigarette, I might use a pen or my cat might be the cigar. So the more ridiculous it is, actually, the better it might do and so these videos sort of really tap into all of that. And I just love them. There's a lot of different ways that people have engaged with Wicked, but this is my favorite one. Because again, if you hate Wicked, you like Defying Gravity. You might not admit it, but you do. Everyone likes Defying Gravity. Stephen Schwartz did the thing.

[10:50] David Armstrong: You also did one of these videos yourself.

[10:56] Trevor Boffone: Oh, you saw. There's pictures in the book. Yeah, so you have a picture of it in the book.

[11:00] David Armstrong: Yeah. So talk about that. You actually did that at a conference originally, right? At an academic conference that was Song Stage & Screen, I think 2021. So it was a virtual conference and the way I started my presentation was I said, picture this. Your students are talking about TikTok and

[11:16] Trevor Boffone: You finally download it. You start to scroll. You see this, this, and that. And then all of a sudden, you see a video like this. And then I hit the play. I stood on my chair. I had my partner offstage, like, you know, billowing the sheet. And I lip-synched to "Defying Gravity" at this academic conference. And of course, I had pictures. So I put them in the book. It was actually the first time I had done it. And I felt, like, super empowered. It felt like I was sort of querying what an academic conference can be. And you've been there. People don't do these things, right? And people, I still will see scholars that will reference that. They're like, I can't believe you did that. I'm like, we're stuck at our home. Like, Zoom is boring. It's not the most exciting place in the world. And so I'm trying to spice it up. Well, they're still talking about it. That's great. Well, at least one person. Now the people reading your book will talk about it as well.

[12:29] David Armstrong: Don't go away. Trevor and I will be back with more Broadway Nation right after this quick break.

[12:57] Trevor Boffone: You have little interludes between the main chapters. And the next one is about Mamma Mia cosplay. So those things are very closely related. I'm sure they're following each other in your book on purpose. Because again, you have this drag element, this DIY element, and this question of identity. What is this telling us? I don't have the quote in front of me. But I remember you quoted somebody talking about the presentation of identity on TikTok. What's your psychoanalysis or your social analysis of these trends and in terms of identity?

[13:26] Trevor Boffone: Well, it gives us the place to play. It gives us a place to perform. It gives us a place to tap into these characters that we love. And so in the case of Mamma Mia, I talk about my niece and I. It's wild when your nieces and nephews grow up, because now she's, what, 12? But when she was eight, I think, we always made TikToks together. And usually we danced. But she loves Mamma Mia, she loves Abba. And so we did this "Angel Eyes." You know, one night I was taking a walk along the river. Because he always used to look at me that way. And I thought, maybe I should walk right up to her and say, uh-huh-huh. In that moment in the Mamma Mia 2 film, they are in the spa, and it's sort of like a spa vibe.

And so all these people on TikTok have done this trend. They have towels wrapped around their heads, and they have a robe on and a glass of wine, and they're at the spa lip-syncing to this song. My niece and I did this, and it was just a fun way to bond, intergenerational bonding, about this thing that we both love in very different ways. And so that's part of it. TikTok is a place to dress up, to put on costumes, whether they're very legitimate cosplay costumes, as we've seen, or whether it's I'm being silly and wearing a towel on my head and funny glasses. It has something sort of for everyone, and all of it can sort of find success.

[15:03] Trevor Boffone: Let's now get to what I think is probably the most famous, certainly almost everybody will have heard about Ratatouille, the musical that was created entirely on TikTok, that then went on to, had a very unlikely trajectory. Just remind us of that whole story.

[15:14] Trevor Boffone: So in 2020, we're stuck at home, Broadway shut down, West End shut down, so on and so forth, and also Disney World. And so the ride Remy's Ratatouille Adventure at Epcot was supposed to open, and then it got pushed back because of the COVID. Emily Jacobsen, who was a, I think she's a second grade teacher, a kindergarten teacher, she teaches little ones, and she just made this really dumb little jingle about Remy and Ratatouille. So it was, "Remy, the Ratatouille, the rat of all my dreams," let's spare y'all the rest of that one. It got picked up by a famous TikToker who used the song, and then Daniel Martzloft, who is a composer, a musical theater person through and through, and a composer found this sound, and then orchestrated it.

[16:19] Trevor Boffone: And he made a video where he was like, if I were going to produce this on Broadway, this is what it would look like. And he used text on screen to explain the different parts of the staging of it, and he had all the instruments, he had different friends that sang, and then he tripled the voices to give it a full ensemble sound, and it took off. And so other creators started to really engage in sort of a crowdsourcing event on TikTok where people felt like, oh, we're going to all crowdsource a musical. We're going to make Ratatouille the musical. It's a thing. We're doing it. And so people would take this sort of Remy the Ratatouille song, or "Ode to Remy," that's what it's called, "Ode to Remy," they would play instruments.

So like a trumpeteer might play the trumpet, a pianist might play the piano, like filling out that score. There was a set designer, Stagebox Musical, they created a set for Remy, for this "Ode to Remy" song. Choreographers offered their choreography, directors their direction. And then it continued to blow up, and you had other creators, other composers, these were mostly like actual composers who posted songs that were their submissions to the TikTok Ratatouille musical. So hey, here's the song for when this happens, or here's the song for when this happens. And then by nature of just virality, sort of the cream rose to the top, like the best songs or the canonical songs in that musical rose to the top.

And this was a trend that was across the board on TikTok. It was not just a musical theater thing, it was something that was drawing a lot of attention outside of TikTok even. It ended up being all over the news. I mean, every major news outlet. Good Morning America and things like that were talking about everything. With Disney's blessing and Pixar's blessing, we ended up with Ratatouille the TikTok musical on January 1st, 2021, which was, I would say it was an hour, 50 minutes or so. And it was basically a very, very chaotic, very messy, but like fun, like in the best way musical. And very much this musical on, I don't know what platform they use, but it was, you know, like a Zoom sort of Vimeo thing, a YouTube thing.

And it very much looked like a TikTok, right? They leaned into the TikTok aesthetics. The choreography was very much like TikTok dance moves. The backgrounds were green screens and it was very cheesy in a lot of ways. But I think what happened was that a lot of people tuned in and it became a mega success. It was a fundraiser for the Actors Fund, but a monumental success. And I think a lot of people tuned in expecting it to be dumb and stupid. And then once it started, it was like, oh, these songs are good. The score is quite good. It's quite cohesive. The book is quite funny. This could be a thing. And so it sort of changed the game. And it made, I think, Broadway producers a little more aware of talent can come from TikTok.

And I think it made composers also very aware that, hey, this is a space where I can sort of use it as a space to sort of do a concept album type vibe, where they're putting out different songs and getting feedback and seeing where the energy is, right? What people want to see more of, what they're sort of don't really want to see. And you had, of course, the next big thing that comes out of this is the Bridgerton musical, which won the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Cast Album, even though that show will never happen on stage because of ye olde cease and desist legal issues. But again, if you go on TikTok today, you'll see a lot of composers and a lot of writing teams that use this as out-of-town tryout type space, concept album type space to really get their work out there and to build momentum for an eventual production.

[19:48] Trevor Boffone: It's very interesting because I was talking to somebody about this yesterday of how the concept album, which was so effective now 50 years ago with Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita and those shows, is impossible to do today because we don't have albums, much less concept albums. I hadn't thought about this being sort of a substitute for that. Very few people now, it's one of the things that drives me crazy, is I want to put on an album and have it play in the order that I know the songs go. Not just a cast album, but like I remember albums from, you know, like Bette Midler's first two albums. I know exactly what song comes after, what order they're in. I don't want it to stream in the way that most platforms do it now, where it just doesn't play the entire creation. So it's interesting that composers might be seeing this as a substitute for the concept album or a new way of doing a concept album.

[20:35] Trevor Boffone: No, and I totally agree with you. And I mean, musical theater albums are meant to be listened to to tell that story, right? In a certain linear way or chronological way. But I think what these composers are really interested in is the attention. Maybe it's not what people dream of doing, but I mean, at the end of the day, if you're getting exposure, you're getting record deals, you're getting producers interested in your work, it can go a long way. And so that brings us to Jorge Herranz, who is the composer of Epic, which is another musical I'm not convinced we're ever going to see on stage because it is so epic. And this is a musical adaptation of The Odyssey, and it's long. It's quite long. But having that TikTok success, he then put out concept albums like Part One, Part Two, and those have done extremely well in terms of streams and sales and so on and so forth. So it can look a lot of different ways.

[21:26] ♪ Musical number: "Epic" — performed by Jorge Herranz ♪

[22:10] ♪ Musical number: "Calypso" — performed by Jorge Herranz ♪

[22:32] David Armstrong: It also brings up the question of what is a musical? Somebody was quoted in your book as saying a musical doesn't need a production to be theater. And that really got my attention. I struggle with that because to me, there's something about a stage musical that is not the same as a movie musical or any other medium, unless you're just doing a video capture, like a pro tape video capture of a show, which we are seeing the theater show, you're just seeing it in a video form. But once you've turned it into something else, it's now a movie or it's a television show. It's not theater anymore. But young people don't seem to see any of those divisions that I was just talking about. It's all the same to them.

[23:38] Trevor Boffone: Yeah, absolutely. And I actually wrote an article called TikTok is Theater, Theater is TikTok. And I think that is one of the exciting things about this sort of new frontier because at the end of the day, like even like a TV show like Schmickadoon, it's theater, it's musical, it's theater. And I think what's happening on TikTok is we're sort of breaking out of the proscenium. I think the part that is exciting is the giving access to people that might not have access to create musicals. I'm certainly not going to do this, but I could literally finish this podcast and then go write a one minute musical and I could post it on TikTok. People are going to watch it. It might not do really well. It might not become popular, but like I can put out a musical in this way.

And you have people who do that who are actually like musical theater writers. They might make jingles, they might show off their different talents, but it's all with the means of sort of taking agency and having the agency in a way that might not have historically been able to do because you need to have the training, which is expensive. Student loans is an issue or applying to these really difficult to get in programs and labs, so on and so forth. So TikTok is giving people the tools to make musicals and to put musicals out into the world. In musical theater history, historically, we talk about these sort of Broadway musicals, West End musicals, but a musical doesn't have to play on Broadway to be a musical, right? It doesn't have to play on a stage to be a musical. And so I think that's what's happening here.

[25:02] David Armstrong: That's very interesting. I'm not sure we'll agree on that. You don't have to agree. Just because to me, it would definitely be a musical is just will be a video musical, not a stage musical. I guess my fear from that, and I probably speak for other people too, is the devaluing of the live experience that can't be replaced by anything else. It can't be replaced by film or video or anything else. That's where I get caught up with the idea that it doesn't need a production for it to be called theater. Theater only happens in a room.

[25:32] Trevor Boffone: A lot of people would agree with you. Yeah. Because what I think attracts so many of us to theater, why we're here, is what liveness does. One of my favorite things, maybe my favorite thing in the world, is that moment when you're like in a Broadway theater or like in a London theater, like a beautiful theater, right before the show starts and then the orchestra starts. Like that little two minute, five minute period is my happy place. Right? I love that. You don't get that online. You just don't. And so I don't know that it's a either or. I think there's just some nuance here. And I think what's happening on social media is just expanding the ways that people engage with it. But hopefully people continue to go see and support live in-person theater.

[26:13] David Armstrong: Yeah, that'll be the interesting thing. And does the community aspect of live theater, which is the thing that I think it's its most intrinsic value, is that those people in that same space all at the same time having this, I always say that the show happens somewhere over the orchestra pit where the energy of the audience meets the energy of the people on stage. That's actually the show. And if you perform to an empty house, you don't have a show. You just have a rehearsal. But it'll be interesting to see how that will compare to the community experience. Obviously, the TikTok is creating as well. It is definitely a community that's being formed and fed by TikTok and nurtured. But it's a very different kind of thing.

It's not people actually in the same room. Before we end, just talk a little bit about, because this is something that's come up since your book was finished, I'm sure, is the future of TikTok. Is there going to be a TikTok? You know, some people say, well, who cares? Something else will come up to replace it. You're so knowledgeable about TikTok. Do you think it is replaceable?

[27:11] Trevor Boffone: Well, I mean, if TikTok were to go away with this ban, if it does go through and it's being fought in the courts at the moment, people will flock to YouTube. They will flock to Instagram. But what those platforms don't have is that algorithm I talked about. And so we can try to replicate it, but I'm not sure it can be replicated. And so there is the potential that sort of all this momentum in terms of marketing Broadway and bringing Broadway to the people can potentially go away. But I do want to acknowledge that this is a United States conversation and my book does largely focus on American musicals for the most part. But, you know, this same conversation is happening in the UK or not the TikTok ban conversation, but the conversation about what musical theater is doing with TikTok in the UK.

It's super robust. There is a whole different set of shows that are popular. There's a whole different set of variables. And in Canada, it's big, right? It's big all over the globe. And so even if TikTok were to lose its sort of stature in the US market, it's still affecting theater across the globe. I think something like the United States TikTok, it's less than 25% of TikTok's global market. And if they were to lose it, it puts them like where they were in 2022 in terms of revenue. I'm not sure what's going to happen. I do know I have some friends who are on the inside that part of these lawsuits and there is a lot of optimism. But, you know, we'll see. Will I have written the book about the platform that went away, that got banned? Maybe, maybe not. I hope not.

[28:37] David Armstrong: I could sell more books at that point. No, it's a really interesting conversation. And as I say, I think this book is fascinating, especially for someone like me who is not immersed in this world. I learned a lot, which is always to me the thing I look for most in books about Broadway is did I learn something that I didn't know before? And the answer is absolutely yes.

[29:01] Trevor Boffone: I'm so honored to hear that and just appreciate the super generous reading of the book you did. And I'm glad that it spoke to you. And I think that was one of the important things is I'm writing a book about something that a lot of people are not on that they might not understand. And so I wanted it to be legible and accessible and to make sense. So happy to hear that.

[29:15] David Armstrong: Maybe I was your target audience, but I was not TikTok's target audience, certainly. But I thoroughly enjoyed it. Trevor Boffone, it has been a pleasure to have you today on Broadway Nation to talk about your new book, TikTok Broadway — Musical Theater Fandom in the Digital Age.

[29:29] Trevor Boffone: Thank you for having me.