Theatre scores big Prom date Play explores fallout from graduate wanting same-sex date at celebration By: Ben Waldman Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Monday, May. 15, 2023

Megan Fry’s Grade 12 grad story is pretty standard: her cousin did her makeup, she did her own hair, and after slipping on a dress she found on sale for only $50, she met up to take pictures with a platonic friend she brought along as her date.

Ho-hum.

“I went to grad with a guy, and it was so easy because that’s what everyone expected to happen,” says Fry, 24, an alumna of Kelvin High School and a rising musical theatre professional in Winnipeg. Even though they weren’t romantically involved, nobody batted an eye when they posed arm-in-arm or exchanged corsages.

“There’s a lot of privilege in that,” adds Fry, who appeared in Winnipeg Studio Theatre’s recent production of Fame.

Just ask the character Fry is playing in Dry Cold Productions’ version of the Broadway musical The Prom. In her small town in Indiana, graduating senior Emma doesn’t feel like asking a male stand-in to co-ordinate outfits and share a slow dance with her: she wants to take her girlfriend.

It’s that simple, or at least, it should be.

Instead, the town is thrown into an uproar, with parents and complete strangers joining the fight, putting Emma in the middle of a battle on the creaky high-school gymnasium floor.

It’s a fictional story inspired by an unfortunate truth: in 2010, a Mississippi high school senior was thrust into international headlines when, rather than allowing her to bring her girlfriend to prom, her school cancelled the entire event.

School officials allowed parents to organize a private event with chaperones on-hand, but at the same time, most of her classmates attended a secret prom she wasn’t told about.

From that story came a Broadway show nominated for seven Tonys. It won the Drama Desk Award for Best Musical, and was adapted into a Netflix feature starring Meryl Streep and James Corden. The story’s real-life hero, student Constance McMillen, marshalled New York’s Pride Parade.

With music by Matthew Sklar, lyrics by Chad Beguelin, and a book by Beguelin and Bob Martin, the show added a Broadway plot to the mix, with four down-on-their-luck musical theatre impresarios descending upon small-town Indiana in an attempt to boost their careers.

The New York Times remarked that The Prom “makes you believe in musical comedy again.”

Dry Cold co-founder Donna Fletcher fell for the show when her vocal students began bringing in the upbeat, funny music to learn.

She watched the movie with her daughter, who loved the show’s message, and Fletcher waited patiently for the rights to become available.

As soon as they did, her company pounced: she’s now staging the play’s first professional production in Canada. “That’s a real coup for us,” Fletcher says.

With a cast of 19, the show will be the largest in Dry Cold’s history, which dates back to its founding in 2001.

“I think it’s very important for youth to be allowed to be themselves, unapologetically… I think this is a very impactful story for today’s generation.”–Joseph Sevillo

That year, Joseph Sevillo, who co-stars as Broadway busybody Barry Glickman, was waving goodbye to Grant Park High School.

“I was the only openly gay student in my class,” says Sevillo, who couldn’t — or rather, didn’t, feel comfortable — asking who he wanted to ask as his date. At that point in time, it didn’t even feel like an option, he says.

“I did the whole corsage and tux thing,” he says. “Everything I wore was not what I wanted to wear.”

For Sevillo, the story of The Prom is a reminder of both how far society has come and how far it still needs to progress in terms of LGBTTQ+ inclusivity.

“The issues of equal rights should just be a given,” says Sevillo, 40, currently at work on Ma-buhay, an all-Filipino musical. “I find it very sad that there are places where it’s illegal to be who you are, even in North America. There’s a long road ahead to educating people and making them understand.

“I think it’s very important for youth to be allowed to be themselves, unapologetically,” Sevillo says. “I think this is a very impactful story for today’s generation.”

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com

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Ben Waldman
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Ben Waldman covers a little bit of everything for the Free Press.

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