The Tonys ... Next Year? Maybe 2027.

Christine Merser, June 12, 2025

“You see we think our lives won’t be different, but we are wrong. They will. Slowly, people will disappear. Opinion pages will only have one opinion, and Broadway? Well, if you like Oklahoma and The Sound of Music, you will be fine.” - Christine Merser

Every country that turns to autocracy loses the arts. Every single one. It’s part of the dumbing down, the flattening of complexity, the silencing of critique, the sterilization of culture. And no, it’s not just Harvard and the Ivy League taking a backseat in this new America they’re building. It’s Broadway. It’s music. It’s the symphony, the poetry reading, the gallery opening. It’s the Tonys.

Just look at this past Sunday’s ceremony. The stage belonged to stories we weren’t even allowed to tell a decade ago. Kara Young made history as the first Black performer to win three Tony nominations in three consecutive years. Oh, Mary! brought queer, chaotic brilliance to life, and Cole Escola’s performance as a nonbinary Mary Todd Lincoln had the room in tears and hysterics all at once. Hell’s Kitchen, with its Black, female-driven story and Alicia Keys’ music, lit the place on fire. And everywhere you looked were stories of resistance, identity, grief, ambition, joy — everything the far-right wants to scrub clean from the American narrative.

Let’s break it down. These are the shows and performances that will be banned, censored, or erased. They will. And if you think I’m exaggerating, go read the parts of Project 2025 that outline “restoring the moral foundation” of American culture. Art that challenges, that provokes, that centers marginalized voices — that’s the first thing to go.

Buena Vista Social Club lit up the stage with Natalie Venetia Belcon’s powerful performance, a richly Afro-Caribbean production that won’t survive a cultural purge.

Audra McDonald in Gypsy, the first Black actress in the iconic Rose role, owned the stage. That motherhood-steeped portrayal of a Black woman? Gone.

Purpose, a play by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, centered on a Black family confronting legacy, justice, and identity. Kara Young’s historic win as a Black actress will surely be scrubbed.

Cole Escola’s career-making, nonbinary performance in Oh, Mary! was groundbreaking, but under hardline cultural rules, nonbinary visibility will be erased entirely.

Saheem Ali, queer director of Buena Vista Social Club, also lifted voices that will be hushed in a sanitized theater landscape.

Jinkx Monsoon, two-time Drag Race winner, starred in Pirates! The Penzance Musical. This type of openly queer drag presence will be blacklisted.

LGBTQ+ voices dominated the ceremony. Cynthia Erivo, Jonathan Groff, Gina Belafonte, Drew Burnett. All signals of an inclusive culture that will be sacrificed.

These weren’t just performances. They were declarations. This is who we are. This is what we won’t let go of.

Now fast forward three years. You think Columbia University and the Paul Weiss caved in five minutes? Well, James L. Nederlander has donated to both Republican and Democratic candidates in the past, though in small amounts. There’s no strong political activism associated with the organization itself. And, he spends winters in … yep, Palm Beach. You cannot count on these theater companies to stand up. They say they are liberal but are never in the line up marching down Fifth Avenue protesting.

So is this what is next?

The Tony Awards open with a cornfed, whitewashed revival of Oklahoma!. The camera pans to a crowd of polite clappers. Nobody too colorful. Nobody too loud. When the “aw shucks” leading man wins for Best Actor, he steps up to the mic, blinks into the teleprompter, and thanks Donald Trump “for giving me the opportunity to show what real American values look like again.”

The room applauds. Because they have to. Not because they feel anything.

That’s where this goes. The autocrats aren’t just after elections or judges. They’re after joy. They’re after difference. They’re after the imagination itself. I repeat. If you think I’m exaggerating, go read the parts of Project 2025 that outline “restoring the moral foundation” of American culture. Art that challenges, that provokes, that centers marginalized voices — that’s the first thing to go.

So yes, Hamilton will vanish. And along with it, Oh, Mary! for its queerness. Buena Vista Social Club for its Blackness. Gypsy for daring to cast Audra McDonald. Hell’s Kitchen for centering the dreams of a Black teenage girl. Purpose, Suffs, Fat Ham — all gone. And with them, a generation of voices that dared to take the stage and say, “This is me.”

And what replaces it? Sanitized nostalgia. Patriotic musicals with no soul. White casts performing flattened versions of the past, where no one is gay, no one is trans, no one is poor, and everyone stands for the flag on cue.

Let’s not forget, Broadway has always stood its ground in political moments. Remember AIDS? The theater community was one of the first and loudest to scream into the silence. They raised money, marched, told the truth when no one else would. Angels in America didn’t just change theater, it changed the national conversation. So… where are they now?

Too many people are missing from this fight. Maybe it’s time we ask them why. Maybe it’s time we ask them where they are.

Because it’s time for all hands on deck, my friends.

And I mean all hands.

And yeah, the only reference to what’s happening in America this year last Sunday night when Los Angeles was marching was the oblique one, the Hamilton cast in black, standing together, ending with a whispered: “History is watching.”