BroadwayCon 2025

A little bit about my weekend!

When I was in college, my friend and I (both former dancers with a deep love for musical theater) used to spend weekend days teaching ourselves the dances to songs from Glee or High School Musical as a way to de-stress. One afternoon, we found ourselves lamenting about how no matter how much fun we had, we would never be good enough to be in musicals; we were both good dancers, but neither of us could sing particularly well, and who knows if we were any good at acting, since outside a few community theater programs and stray acting classes here and there, we didn't have a ton of experience in that regard either. We decided that this was deeply unfair, and that skill should not be randomly assigned at birth but instead be directly correlated to passion. We wanted it more, so why would a random lawyer in Missouri who doesn't sing (or have any aspirations to sing) outside the shower have a better singing voice than us?? I was reminded of this youthful lament earlier this week when I saw a trend of artists showing their work with the caption "when you have the passion but not the skill" or "the skill but not the passion."

That said, despite long ago giving up my dreams of ever performing in any professional capacity (I realized I like creating more than I like performing, anyway), my passion never ceased, and I love to consume musical theater in any and all forms whenever possible. Whether it's seeing literal Broadway shows, going to random city’s local theater productions with my dad, enjoying a singing waitstaff, or discovering a niche musical soundtrack online and becoming too attached to a show I will probably never get to see staged, I want to be in the room where it happens. This weekend, my love for the medium took the form of me attending BroadwayCon.

In the past, I never knew BroadwayCon was happening until the weekend it was happening and Broadway performers I follow on Instagram were posting about it. This year, my parents gave me tickets for my birthday, so I finally had a head's up and could attend. Not unlike FlameCon, it's a relatively small con (compared to some of the other conventions I go to like NYCC) held in a hotel in the Times Square area. As much as I don't love to have to elbow through tourists to get to my destination, being in the theater district did feel right for this particular instance.

Over the weekend, I got to see so many amazing performances. The casts of some currently running productions performed numbers from their shows, and some upcoming shows gave us preview performances of what's coming to the Great White Way. I went to a panel of understudies and swings who performed a song from the role they are covering plus a song from a role they hope to have someday, and a competition between extremely talented Broadway hopefuls. I saw two different panels where Broadway stars (including Anthony Rapp from RENT, a co-founder of BroadwayCon) played theater-themed games against each other, attended singalongs where everyone released their inner theater kid and sang their asses off, and a panel featuring Krysta Rodriguez, Emily Bergl, and Jonathan Burke where they talked about the differences and similarities between stage and screen acting. I listened to Gregory Maguire and Winnie Holzman talk Wicked (and got to meet Tori aka The Oz Vlog briefly!), watched the cast of Seussical reunite and talk about the journey their show went on to get made, and heard Lin Manuel Miranda break down his life journey, alongside amazing performances from all his shows by Aneesa Folds and Joshua Henry.

If you're not into musical theater, those sentences probably meant little to nothing to you. When I was younger, I used to be embarrassed to be a theater geek. I wouldn't tell anyone I liked musicals unless I knew they liked them too. I made sure none of my mix CDs that I listened to in the car with friends had any Broadway on them. Musicals were just for me to enjoy alone in my room, "watching" amazing performances unfold in my mind's eye. (Or sometimes to perform songs from Newsies with my cousins at family gatherings.) As I got older, I learned to stop caring about people who think caring about something is uncool, and now am unashamed. (And also have found friends who enjoy it as much as I do.) But it's still not something everyone is into. Which is totally fine! Obviously. But it doesn't have universal appeal - even when you attend a show, Broadway or local, you’re not necessarily surrounded by people who are as into theater as you are, or who even like it. Sometimes it’s a tourist who felt like they had to see a show while they were in the city, someone seeing a stunt-cast actor, or a friend of a performer being supportive but entirely out of their depth. All super valid reasons to be at a show, and I don’t care people’s reason, I want more and more people to consume theater and find the type of musicals they enjoy. But, still, to be in a space stuffed to the gills with theater nerds this weekend made my heart happy.

I think the spontaneous singalongs were maybe my favorite part; and since most of the people in the crowd did theater at one point in their lives, if not currently, there was actually harmonizing going on and it actually sounded good. Like how at the Grammy's when Chappell Roan pointed her mic to the audience during Pink Pony Club and it sounded like a heavenly choir and then you're like oh right, these are like the best singers in the industry. I've gotten lucky in my life where even my friends who know nothing about musicals don't bat an eye if I sing a response to something they say because it reminded me of something from a musical, but it's not something we can do just anywhere, so it was fun to be in a space where that was happening at every turn. And the merch! Such niche, clever merch. My favorite thing I saw was so clever I got it in pin AND sticker form, because it appealed to not only the theater geek in me, but also the word nerd and 90s kid.

You, too, can own one of these nerdy delights from Pinbill’s Etsy shop.

There were so many clever little in-jokes like this throughout the con and it was just so fun. There were also people dressed in cosplay, which for some reason, was not something I anticipated. But I saw more than half a dozen queens from Six, a human Burn Book from Mean Girls, a walking Phantom chandelier, a whole litter of Cats, and more!

One of my other favorite moments of the con was during aforementioned understudy panel, when my friend Nic and I realized someone on the panel was a woman we met when she was our waitress at Ellen's Stardust Diner (a restaurant in the city with singing waitstaff) years ago. We had loved her voice and had such a blast with her that we followed her on Instagram and had been following her journey ever since. So to see her on stage at BroadwayCon talking about how she's going to make her Broadway debut in Hell's Kitchen, the Alicia Keys musical, was really exciting. Because if there's one thing I'm going to do, it's be proud of relative strangers. I just like seeing people achieve their dreams, you know??

Because even though that isn't my dream anymore, it's still a dream I respect deeply. It's not a job to be taken lightly; it takes years of grueling training and auditioning and training some more, and the work itself is nonstop rehearsals and eight performances a week. It's not for the faint of heart, and I have so much respect for everyone who sticks with it. I will forever admire their commitment to bringing people joy, to telling magical stories and inspiring others to make THEIR dreams come true, whatever they may be.

And hey, maybe someday I'll write a musical. When I was younger, I used to listen to my Hanson Middle of Nowhere CD and imagine a whole story that linked all the songs together. Though maybe I just need to write a book and hope someone will turn it into a musical one day. Or I could hit the lottery and be able to produce a performance of We Are the Tigers, the super niche lesbian cheerleader murder musical of my dreams no one has ever heard of. Doesn't hurt to dream.

Even if the only way musicals stay in my life is by getting to witness magical, talented people do what they love most, that's enough for me. I'll be the best damn audience member I can be.