Meet your leading male(?) actor

I had a special interest in Sunday night’s Tony awards — saluting the best on Broadway — for two reasons.

First, I was the Philadelphia Daily News’ theater critic for two years, in the late ‘70s, and also because I have tickets for the much-nominated “Some Like it Hot” Saturday night.

This is J. Harrison Ghee accepting the Tony for best male leading actor.

Yes, my jaw dropped. Male leading actor.

I reached for Mr. Google to learn about Ghee, who made history as the first openly, nonbinary actor to win the category. Or actress?

Or neither?

Tony winner Alex Newell also nonbinary, also chose to compete in the male category of featured actor.

Is Ghee a transman, meaning born female, or a born-male who identifies as other? The latter category would include swimmer Lia Thomas, who has a physical advantage over biological female swimmers. That doesn’t apply to Ghee when acting.

Ghee uses the pronouns he, she and they, which makes Ghee a triple threat. (I will refer to Ghee by his name, not by his pronouns. It’s just easier.) Wikipedia and other media prefer the pronoun “they” for Ghee. 

At a guess, almost half the winners last night declared their non cisgender sexual orientation. 

Being as they talked about it, I can talk about it, too.

Usually, they had a message along the lines of, “Don’t be afraid to pursue your dreams. If I can do it, you can do it, too.” 

That’s a positive message. 

Gays on Broadway? That’s about as surprising as Irish in Dublin.

Without gays — and I will use that term rather than the unwieldy and constantly expanding LGBTQIA+ — there would be no Broadway. From actors to writers to lyricists to musicians to directors to costumers to dancers — they are the heart and soul of Broadway. For real. 

So this isn’t a complaint. It is a question: Have the categories of “actor” and “actress” outlived their usefulness?

Instead of dividing categories by gender, five nominees of each, perhaps the Tonys should go to, say, six nominees, of three men and three women.

But that could be problematic, too. Could Ghee fit in either category?

How about three categories — male, female, and nonbinary?

Or could that be seen as exclusionary? We wouldn’t dream of having white and nonwhite categories, would we?

Or would we?

And should we?

“Some Like it Hot” is based on the 1959 comedy with male stars Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon  dressing in drag (aha!) and joining a female jazz band to escape danger from gangsters. (Ghee takes Lemmon’s comic role.)

Both Curtis and Lemmon are white. Ghee is Black. 

Changing the race of the character is not consequential, and if Ghee plays the character as male, then his orientation off-stage shouldn’t matter.

I guess.

What do you think?