“I Can Show Them Every Side”
Identity and belonging for boys in theatre
Several months ago, Evan invited me to see his middle school musical. The night of the show, I rode my bike across town and found a seat next to his dad, who was watching for the second time. The theatre filled up, and the lights went down.
The whole thing was a remarkably good show, but one of the most memorable moments for me took place right away during the opening number. Evan was unmistakeable in the front row, eyes darkened with makeup and shining at the audience. His voice carried through the ensemble. His body committed entirely to the scene. He was captivating.
That was the moment I wondered if he had a story to be told.
When he started in Grade 7, Evan had the choice between tryouts for the fall sports teams or auditions for the school play. He liked singing, but he’d never done any acting before.
In the first couple weeks of school, he worked up the nerve to audition in front of four teachers he didn’t know, and got a callback before he’d figured out exactly what a callback was. The following months turned out to be one of the most formative experiences in his life. By the time he was standing under the spotlights in front of an audience, he had found a completely new passion and place of belonging.
“I was surprised at how sad I was after it ended,” he reflected on the podcast. “I was just like…I just felt bored, ‘cause that was a big part of the first few months at my school. And I knew like, oh, I’m definitely going to do this next year. I missed it so much.”
It was a year later when I got invited to watch Evan onstage. Over that year he had gained a deeper understanding of why theatre mattered to him. He told me it was the fun of performing, for sure, but it was also the closeness that he experienced as part of the cast.
“I think what made the play and those relationships so magical is that we all got along really well as a group. Whereas within my grade, I don’t feel like I belong as much, you know…like, I have friends from different areas, but it’s not the same. With the play, we were all focused on the show, and we all got close as a group through that.” — Evan on the podcast
“Everyone wants to have friends,” he added, “to rely on and talk to.”
They might all want friendships like that, but not all boys have them. That’s why Evan’s story matters. By signing up for auditions at the start of seventh grade, he chose to be his authentic self.
The performing arts present unique opportunities to express yourself and show off your skills in front of a captive audience. Evan knew he loved it long before he found his way into theatre.
“I know some people get really nervous with public speaking or being in front of a crowd, but that fuels me. I love that. Everyone like, watching you…and you have that moment to shine and show what you’ve got.” — Evan on the podcast
I talked about this with Jen Kuhl, who has been involved in theatre both personally and professionally throughout her life and has seen firsthand the transformative impact of the performing arts for young people. “It’s not every kid,” she said, “but it’s a lot of them.” She described the feelings that go along with putting yourself out there, finding a sense of belonging and getting a performance just right. “They’re having the time of their lives.”
If you haven’t experienced this yourself, you can witness it pretty much anywhere you see young people in theatre. It’s different than watching a sports game. For some youth, it’s the fullest expression of who they are.
For Evan, the joy of performance was what drew him to the musical, but it’s not what made him stay. “I think it was being with that group of people,” he told me. “We got really close.”
Boys are not often seen as particularly intimate with their friends. Over and over again, however, the boys on this podcast have demonstrated that the opposite is true. Many of them feel like they live and die on the quality of their closest friendships, and maintain rich and emotionally honest relationships even when it means resisting long-standing codes of masculinity that undermine the intimacy of male friendships.
Research has shown that close friendships are deeply intertwined with boys’ wellbeing. Boys who hide parts of themselves in order to seem more tough are in fact more vulnerable than their peers. But if trusting and supportive relationships are key to adolescents’ resilience, how do boys actually build those friendships?
“I feel like the closer I am with someone, the more I can just like, act normal and not worry about what they’ll think of me. I guess tying back to the show, I’ve spent a lot of time with these other kids, kind of ironic…playing a character that’s not who I am. Yet through that I’ve become really close with them, and I’ve become really comfortable to just show them every side of who I am. So that’s interesting.” — Evan on the podcast
I explained Evan’s experience to Jen Kuhl, and asked how she would explain the incongruity of finding authenticity while playing a character that’s not who you are. She pointed out that youth in theatre put on a made-up character for the audience, but not with each other.
“Theatre has a lot of down time, waiting during rehearsals, doing their makeup before the show, preparing to go onstage,” she told me. “It’s a collective creative project with a lot of space in between, where you get to develop and build relationships. And nobody nails it every time in rehearsal, which allows you to bring a less perfect version of yourself.”
“You’ve also gotten to practice vulnerability in a character that’s not yourself, so it’s safer, and you might go further…you might never cry in front of people, but then you have to cry for a scene, which makes it sort of feel like you’ve practiced letting them see you cry anyway. So when your partner breaks up with you two weeks later, you’ve already practiced crying in front of them…so maybe you actually do.” — Jen Kuhl on the podcast
We know that theatre offers uniquely meaningful experiences for young people, but we also know that many forms of the performing arts are seen as effeminate and off-limits for boys. Boys with a passion for musicals, dance or fashion, for example, often face homophobic insults in response to their interests.
Evan compared the perception of artistic boys to stereotypes of athletic girls, except that he said there are campaigns for women’s sports being led by powerhouses like Nike and Under Armour, and he felt like the same couldn’t really be said for boys in the arts.
Instead, the growing movement of boys finding themselves in the arts is being led by boys themselves, especially those whose passions are bigger than the pressures of traditional masculinity around them.
When I asked Jen Kuhl what she would recommend for arts educators to engage boys in the arts, she suggested less stigmatized entry points like hip hop dance or rap music production rather than ballet or choir, and diverse male role models for boys to see themselves reflected in the arts. “Mostly, though, you need that one first kid,” she said. “When I left the youth theatre company I helped start, I think we had two boys. Now, three years later, they have six. But it’s because boys came to see the show, and then they were like, oh, I can do that too.”
“So you kind of need to have that one brave boy to lead the way for the others, which is hard. So once they’re there, try to do everything you can to find them friends.” — Jen Kuhl on the podcast
I was a preteen the first time I saw a boy my age in a professional theatre production. He had blonde hair and dark eyes and he played a character who was clearly meant to be gay. The playbill said he was on a hockey team. I was captivated.
In the following months, I became the first boy in my elementary school to join the cheerleading team. Several years later, a friend’s little sister posted a photo of the school cheerleading team with a young boy in the front row.
In writing this podcast episode, I realized that when I was on the cheerleading team in Grade 7, he was probably in Grade 4. In following my passion and resisting the homophobic enforcement of norms of masculinity, I became a role model.
When I think back to Evan at the front of the stage, lungs full and eyes shining, I wonder how many younger boys watched him with their hearts open and their imaginations starting to light up. As I work with boys and young men, a lot of what I do is about shifting our culture of manhood. Some shifts happen subtly and quietly over the span of decades. Sometimes, however, they’re lit up in a spotlight and singing with every ounce of their being.
Breaking the Boy Code is a feminism-aligned publication on masculinity on Medium, and a podcast on the inner lives of boys on Apple Podcasts, Google Play and Spotify. Connect with @boypodcast on social media for podcast-related updates and masculinity-related news.
