Got up at eight, did my hair, did my face, sang my scales, limbered up at the bar.

It's the takeaway. I'm Junae Pierre, in from Melissa Harris-Perry.

Here's a song called The Broadway Boogie-Wogie Blues, which was cut from the original 1975 show, a chorus line, and later sung by Donna McKekney.

I'm much too tall, much too short, much too thin, much too fat, much too young for the roll.

I sing too high, sing too low, sing too loud.

Could you read it with a little control?

I got the Broadway boogie-woogie known as, don't call us, we'll call you.

The song pretty much sums up the exasperating process of actors auditioning and trying to get cast in a show on Broadway.

And while being in a Broadway show is physically demanding, sometimes training and singing and dancing your heart out isn't enough.

And many people have historically

been excluded from casting because of certain body types, gender, race, or disability.

Take one famous example when La Cajé Fall opened in New York in 1983.

It was the first musical to star a gay couple, but cast two straight actors.

And in the critically acclaimed show Wicked, the role of Nesser Rose, a character who uses

a wheelchair, has historically gone to able-body actors.

So we're looking at whose bodies Broadway casts and who it casts aside.

My name is Ryan Donovan.

I am assistant professor of theater studies at Duke University and author of Broadway

Bodies of Critical History of Conformity. In his new book, Ryan looks at Broadway musicals and

casting from 1970 to 2020 and the bodies that Broadway has excluded from its stages based on size,

gender, disability, and how that intersects with race and ethnicity.

So what is a Broadway body, Ryan, and what are the politics and paradoxes of that representation

...