A faggot with a Tony

In the New Yorker‘s 6/15/26 issue, a “Talk of the Town” piece “The Boards: Like Willy Wonka” by Zach Helfand on the theatre director Michael Arden experiencing indoor skydiving at a facility in Queens (in preparation for his latest show, “The Lost Boys”, which includes actors in intricate flying sequences). Then: In his acceptance speech for his first Tony, in 2023, Arden recounted being a bullied queer theatre kid in Texas, and then said, “All I can say is that now I’m a faggot with a Tony.” Post-flying, Arden said, “I was more nervous making that speech [than flying indoors]. That was terrifying.” In Arden’s I’m a faggot with a Tony, I hear a mixture of urgent defiance and anxious fear that’s familiar terrain — I’m a pussy-boy in the American Academy — that I passed through first as a child. Backstory 1: The Lost Boys on Broadway. From Wikipedia: A poster for the musical The Lost Boys: A New Musical is a musical with music and lyrics by American indie pop/rock band the Rescues and a…