by Caitlin Berg. @caitlinberg (Instagram), @caitlinhberg (Twitter).
NEW YORK, NY – Upon checking Facebook this morning, local woman Oriana O’Brien was shocked to see a photo of her Republican cousin at the touring production of Wicked, prompting her to ask, “are Republicans allowed to see musicals?”
“I want as many people seeing theatre as possible, but does it have to be Republicans? I honestly didn’t think that was something they could do," said O’Brien, who isn’t actually political at all. “I just assumed there was some sort of block that prevented them from even knowing about musicals. We should seriously do something about this.”
Equally troubled that Republicans are allowed to see musicals, Broadway League Health & Safety Coordinator Joshua Rauch assured The Broadway Beat that changes would be coming soon.
“We created Broadway vaccine mandates for two purposes: Keeping our cast, crew, and audience members safe, and to finally keep Republicans out of theaters. While this has worked on Broadway, local venues often do not require vaccines,” said Rauch, who has recently taken his nineteenth dose of the Moderna vaccine. “If local venues don’t issue vaccine mandates shortly, we’re going to start a rumor that seeing a musical will make you bisexual.”
Current touring Glinda Madison Berger was in shambles upon finding out O’Brien’s Republican cousin saw her on stage.
“I perform because I want to bring joy to people. I play Glinda because I want people to know that there is goodness in the world. But I need to be clear: I do not include Republicans in people who I thought were remotely interested in goodness,” sobbed Berger, whilst wearing a Bernie 2024 shirt. “I’m going to have to ask Winnie Holzman and Stephen Schwartz to adapt the script to include that Nessarose has a house fall on her because she's doing damage to her country.”
Comforted by the theater community’s response to her Republican cousin seeing a musical, O’Brien felt encouraged to confront her cousin over Facebook Messenger about her choice to see Wicked, to which the cousin responded, in between a series of American Flag gifs, that she thought Wicked was about Hillary Clinton going to hell.