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[0:00] Ruthie Fierberg: I'm Ruthie Fierberg, and this is Why We Theater.

[0:05] Ruthie Fierberg: The podcast that digs into the onstage works we love to make the offstage change we need.

[0:12] Ruthie Fierberg: After all, that is Why We Theater.

[0:17] Ruthie Fierberg: Last week, the topic of our panel episode diverged from previous episodes.

[0:22] Ruthie Fierberg: I decided to highlight INTERSTATE the Musical, written by Kit Yan and Melissa Lee.

[0:28] Ruthie Fierberg: In case you haven't listened to the full episode, which you absolutely should do, unlike the plays and musicals previously featured on the pod, INTERSTATE is not about the issue we discussed.

[0:41] Ruthie Fierberg: The show is about a pair of best friends and bandmates who go out on a road trip slash tour and experience a major falling out.

[0:49] Ruthie Fierberg: These bandmates happen to be an Asian American lesbian and an Asian American transman.

[0:55] Ruthie Fierberg: There is a subplot that follows Henry, a young trans teen who finds their music and holds onto it as a beacon as he grapples with his own gender identity.

[1:05] Ruthie Fierberg: But the show is really a best friend road trip story.

[1:09] Ruthie Fierberg: It is not issue-driven.

[1:11] Ruthie Fierberg: And yet, after talking with Kit, we decided an episode about INTERSTATE was necessary, and it did fit the mission of Why We Theater.

[1:20] Ruthie Fierberg: Because shows about Asian Americans are few and far between.

[1:24] Ruthie Fierberg: Shows about trans folks are few and far between.

[1:28] Ruthie Fierberg: Shows about queer women are few and far between.

[1:31] Ruthie Fierberg: And shows at the intersection barely exist.

[1:35] Ruthie Fierberg: And it's not enough to just exist.

[1:37] Ruthie Fierberg: These stories need to be written and performed authentically in order to make positive cultural impact for artists and audiences, and, as it turns out, positive financial impact for producers and presenters.

[1:51] Ruthie Fierberg: Authenticity was the heart of our discussion last week, which also included experts AC Dumlao of the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund and Sheena Brevig of the Center for Scholars and Storytellers.

[2:05] Ruthie Fierberg: Sheena called on data that demonstrates authentic representation has concrete impact on viewers and the box office.

[2:12] Ruthie Fierberg: So, for example, a musical that authentically portrays Asian Americans and makes them the leads benefits Asian American viewers by improving their self-worth.

[2:24] Ruthie Fierberg: It benefits non-Asian American viewers by improving their open-mindedness, cultural competency, and overall socio-emotional capabilities.

[2:33] Ruthie Fierberg: And it tends to make more money at the box office than a musical that inauthentically portrays the same traditionally marginalized group.

[2:43] Ruthie Fierberg: In that episode, the five of us deliberated about how we ensure authentic representation and how we can get producers, theaters, and studios to greenlight projects that have non-white or non-male or non-straight or non-cis central characters, because we just need more.

[3:02] Ruthie Fierberg: So, in this vein of more, more, I decided this week I'd recommend multiple pieces of art to put on your list as your queue and place on your shelf.

[3:13] Ruthie Fierberg: First up, the novel, If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo.

[3:19] Ruthie Fierberg: The book is a Stonewall Book Award winner.

[3:22] Ruthie Fierberg: The Stonewall Book Award is the first and most enduring award for LGBTQIA+ books.

[3:28] Ruthie Fierberg: It was also an Amazon Book of the Year and a Goodreads Choice Award finalist.

[3:33] Ruthie Fierberg: Russo's book follows Amanda Hardy, who, after years of bullying and assaults, moves away from her mother to go live with her father.

[3:41] Ruthie Fierberg: Here, Amanda gets a fresh start where nobody knows she used to be Andrew.

[3:47] Ruthie Fierberg: Now, unlike INTERSTATE, this book is very much about grappling with trans identity.

[3:52] Ruthie Fierberg: As the author acknowledges in her official author's note, she made, quote, Amanda's transness as unchallenging to normative assumptions as possible.

[4:03] Ruthie Fierberg: End quote.

[4:04] Ruthie Fierberg: So Amanda is white, she is attracted to boys, she passes as a woman easily.

[4:10] Ruthie Fierberg: In fact, let me just read this section of Meredith Russo's note.

[4:14] Ruthie Fierberg: To my cisgender readers, which is to say, to those of you who are not trans.

[4:19] Ruthie Fierberg: Thank you for reading this.

[4:21] Ruthie Fierberg: Thank you for being interested.

[4:23] Ruthie Fierberg: I'm nervous about what you might think of this book, though maybe not in the way you might think.

[4:27] Ruthie Fierberg: I am, of course, anxious that people might not like it, but even more than that, I'm worried that you might take Amanda's story as gospel, especially since it comes from a trans woman.

[4:38] Ruthie Fierberg: This prospect terrifies me, actually.

[4:40] Ruthie Fierberg: I am a storyteller, not an educator.

[4:43] Ruthie Fierberg: I have taken liberties with what I know reality to be.

[4:47] Ruthie Fierberg: I have fictionalized things to make them work in my story.

[4:50] Ruthie Fierberg: I have, in some ways, cleaved to stereotypes and even bent rules to make Amanda's transness as unchallenging to normative assumptions as possible.

[4:59] Ruthie Fierberg: She knew from a very young age.

[5:02] Ruthie Fierberg: She is exclusively attracted to boys.

[5:04] Ruthie Fierberg: She is entirely feminine.

[5:06] Ruthie Fierberg: She passes as a woman with little to no effort.

[5:10] Ruthie Fierberg: She had a surgery that her family should not have been able to afford, and she started hormones through legitimate channels before she probably could have in the real world.

[5:19] Ruthie Fierberg: I did this because I wanted you to have no possible barrier to understanding Amanda as a teenage girl with a different medical history from most other girls.

[5:29] Ruthie Fierberg: Amanda's life and identity would be just as valid if she didn't figure herself out until later in life, or if she were a tomboy, or if she were bisexual or a lesbian or asexual, or if she had trouble passing, or if she either could not or chose not to get quote unquote bottom surgery.

[5:47] Ruthie Fierberg: I hope that having gotten to know Amanda, you will not apply the details of her experience as dogma other trans people must adhere to, but rather as inspiration to pursue an ever broader understanding of our lives and identities, as well as your own understanding of gender and sex.

[6:03] Ruthie Fierberg: Recognizing all of this, I think If I Was Your Girl is a great starting point for any beginner who is cisgender who wants to understand a trans experience.

[6:14] Ruthie Fierberg: I also think it's a powerful way to explore other trans experiences if you are trans.

[6:20] Ruthie Fierberg: But that's obviously not my perspective.

[6:22] Ruthie Fierberg: The book was extremely helpful to me as a cishet white privileged woman.

[6:28] Ruthie Fierberg: First of all, a novel allows you inside a character's head, which isn't always the case in other art forms.

[6:34] Ruthie Fierberg: Seeing things from Amanda's perspective, I understood gender in a whole new light.

[6:39] Ruthie Fierberg: I better understood the separation between gender and sexuality.

[6:43] Ruthie Fierberg: And even though Amanda had undergone gender reassignment surgery, I better understood why that shouldn't matter to the rest of us.

[6:51] Ruthie Fierberg: In addition to serving as a perspective-giving tool, the book is just really excellent.

[6:56] Ruthie Fierberg: I blew through it in just a few days.

[6:58] Ruthie Fierberg: A total page-turner.

[7:00] Ruthie Fierberg: I love Amanda and her trio of girlfriends.

[7:03] Ruthie Fierberg: I love her relationship.

[7:05] Ruthie Fierberg: I love her parents.

[7:06] Ruthie Fierberg: The suspense was killing me.

[7:08] Ruthie Fierberg: It's just a great read.

[7:10] Ruthie Fierberg: And we'll be back with more recommendations in just a moment.

[7:14] Ruthie Fierberg: Alright, keeping it in the book world.

[7:17] Ruthie Fierberg: Next up is the Crazy Rich Asians trilogy.

[7:20] Ruthie Fierberg: I gushed about Kevin Kwan's series during our roundtable last week, and for good reason.

[7:25] Ruthie Fierberg: I want to be clear.

[7:27] Ruthie Fierberg: Read the three books, Crazy Rich Asians, China Rich Girlfriend, and Rich People Problems.

[7:34] Ruthie Fierberg: Kevin's prose is so lush and descriptive, and yet the wealth described is still truly unfathomable.

[7:42] Ruthie Fierberg: The characters are so compelling, the drama so intense.

[7:47] Ruthie Fierberg: Every character except one in one book is Chinese.

[7:52] Ruthie Fierberg: First of all, when was the last time you read a book or watched a movie that was not the Crazy Rich Asians film adaptation, where every character was of Asian descent?

[8:01] Ruthie Fierberg: And that's important.

[8:02] Ruthie Fierberg: Again, as someone who is not Asian in any way, the book serves as an important reminder that people are just people.

[8:10] Ruthie Fierberg: They have marital problems, they have complexes given to them by their mothers, they have insecurities about their bodies and their wealth and their status.

[8:18] Ruthie Fierberg: They have holiday traditions and family gatherings and family rituals.

[8:24] Ruthie Fierberg: On top of that, the book includes a look at quote mainland Chinese, Singaporean Chinese, and ABC, American-born Chinese.

[8:36] Ruthie Fierberg: All terms that Kevin Kwan uses himself in the books.

[8:40] Ruthie Fierberg: And between these characters, we get to see culture clashes.

[8:40] Ruthie Fierberg: We get to see elitism.

[8:45] Ruthie Fierberg: We get to see status climbing.

[8:47] Ruthie Fierberg: We get to see hierarchy.

[8:49] Ruthie Fierberg: It's dramatic and it's fascinating.

[8:51] Ruthie Fierberg: So get to reading.

[8:54] Ruthie Fierberg: Finally, our expert Sheena recommended the autobiography Amateur about a trans person who enters a boxing competition.

[9:03] Ruthie Fierberg: Growing up, they experience displays of masculinity by family members from the perspective of a girl and later a woman.

[9:10] Ruthie Fierberg: As they enter this boxing world, they experience masculinity as a man.

[9:15] Ruthie Fierberg: Now I can't speak to this because I didn't read it personally, but from speaking to Sheena, similar to INTERSTATE, Amateur's themes are not really about identity.

[9:25] Ruthie Fierberg: They're about masculinity and the culture of genders.

[9:29] Ruthie Fierberg: So, in honor of INTERSTATE, I am adding that to my list, and I hope you add it to yours.

[9:36] Ruthie Fierberg: Moving into the television realm.

[9:39] Ruthie Fierberg: I am obsessed with the Netflix series Never Have I Ever.

[9:43] Ruthie Fierberg: If you subscribe to my newsletter at RuthieFierberg.com, you already know how much I love this show from executive producer Mindy Kaling.

[9:51] Ruthie Fierberg: Davy Vishwakumar is our lead.

[9:54] Ruthie Fierberg: She's a high schooler with a hot temper and relentless ambition.

[9:58] Ruthie Fierberg: The series begins after Davy recovers from a mysterious illness.

[10:03] Ruthie Fierberg: Her father, who was her biggest supporter and confidant, died suddenly.

[10:07] Ruthie Fierberg: And just as suddenly, Davy experienced lower limb paralysis.

[10:12] Ruthie Fierberg: Then, just as suddenly as she couldn't walk, she could.

[10:16] Ruthie Fierberg: And yes, this part, as wild as it seems, is based on a true story.

[10:22] Ruthie Fierberg: When she can walk again, Davy decided her number one priority is to have sex with the hottest guy in school, Paxton Hall Yoshida.

[10:31] Ruthie Fierberg: The show is laugh-out-loud hilarious and is just the teen drama I pretty much always need.

[10:38] Ruthie Fierberg: What's awesome is that an Indian teenager stands at the center of it.

[10:42] Ruthie Fierberg: The series isn't about her Indian-ness, but we inherently learn so much about Indian culture and traditions, whether that's a funeral ritual for Davy's father, or her mother's insistence on bringing a gift anytime you pass the threshold of another person's home.

[10:58] Ruthie Fierberg: It's all just so real.

[11:00] Ruthie Fierberg: And the supporting cast is stellar.

[11:02] Ruthie Fierberg: Her best friends are Fabiola, a queer woman of color, and Eleanor, an Asian American thespian.

[11:09] Ruthie Fierberg: Just as we learned from INTERSTATE, it's enough to put these characters and performers at the center of a story and just press play.

[11:17] Ruthie Fierberg: It doesn't have to be about their otherness, and this is a prime example.

[11:23] Ruthie Fierberg: Finally, I just binged the entire debut season of HBO Max's The Sex Lives of College Girls.

[11:31] Ruthie Fierberg: Yes, the title is self-explanatory and boring, but that is the world we live in.

[11:37] Ruthie Fierberg: The show is not boring.

[11:39] Ruthie Fierberg: We follow four college suite mates as they navigate their first few months of school.

[11:44] Ruthie Fierberg: The main quartet includes Whitney, a black woman who is the new star of the soccer team, Leyton, a white woman practically plucked from Gossip Girl's Upper East Side, who also happens to still be in the closet, Kimberly, a lower-class white woman who has never met a black person until her work-study job, and Bella, an Indian woman whose goal in life is to be a comedy writer, but whose parents want her to be a doctor.

[12:12] Ruthie Fierberg: And this is another one from Mindy Kaling, and I love it.

[12:16] Ruthie Fierberg: There's also theater talent here.

[12:18] Ruthie Fierberg: Renee Rapp, who is the winner of the National High School Musical Theatre Awards from a few years ago, and Broadway's former Regina George in Mean Girls the Musical stars as Leighton.

[12:30] Ruthie Fierberg: Midori Francis, who was in Usual Girls and a play called The Wolves, plays a supporting character, a love interest.

[12:37] Ruthie Fierberg: And Broadway director Lila Neugebauer helms the seventh episode of the series.

[12:43] Ruthie Fierberg: It's sexy and flirty and so funny.

[12:46] Ruthie Fierberg: Honestly, it's what we wanted the new Sex and the City to be.

[12:50] Ruthie Fierberg: And once again, it's not about any identity issue.

[12:53] Ruthie Fierberg: We simply watch the sex lives of college girls.

[12:56] Ruthie Fierberg: And identity just is.

[12:59] Ruthie Fierberg: Truth be told, it was tough to find quality content with historically marginalized people at the fore.

[13:05] Ruthie Fierberg: That lack is precisely why I included so many options this week, and why I hope you'll rewind in your queue and listen to last week's episode on INTERSTATE and authentic trans, queer, and Asian American representation.

[13:20] Ruthie Fierberg: After all, that is Why We Theater.

[13:25] Ruthie Fierberg: Why We Theater is a product of the Broadway Podcast Network.

[13:29] Ruthie Fierberg: It's edited and mixed by Derek Gunther.

[13:32] Ruthie Fierberg: If you like the show, subscribe at bpn.fm, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[13:38] Ruthie Fierberg: And don't forget to leave a review and tell your friends.

[13:41] Ruthie Fierberg: Our theme music is by Benjamin Velez.

[13:44] Ruthie Fierberg: Special thanks to Dori Berinstein, Alan Seales, Lee Silverman, Patrick Taylor, Wesley Birdsall, Elena Mayer, and Suzanne Chipkin.

[13:53] Ruthie Fierberg: For more resources for change, info about our guests, and more, visit us at WhyWeTheater.com.