1980s

In the 1980s, shows from London seemed to infiltrate and take over Broadway, leaving little room for black women to find roles in the great blockbusters of the time. Shows such as Cats (1982) and Starlight Express (1984) which had diversity built right into them, failed to give African American women lead roles in the original casts. The all-white casts of Sunday in the Park with George (1984), Me and My Girl (1985), and Romance, Romance (1987) were indicative of an 80s Broadway ideology that prevailed for more than a decade. This attitude was that it was okay to be diverse, but not within the casts of hit shows.

African Americans did find roles on Broadway during the 1980s, in break-out shows that highlighted their abundant talent and abilities, but many of these musicals, like Black Broadway (1980), Sarafina! (1988) and Blues in the Night (1988) were not the blockbusters of Phantom of the Opera (1988) and had very short runs, winning few Tony Awards. Additionally, there were cases of black actresses replacing white performers well into the run of a show when the characters were not necessarily ethnically bound. For example Phylicia Rashad (née Ayers-Allen) stepped into the part of the Witch, abandoned by Bernadette Peters, in 1987’s Into the Woods because the role did not require a performer of a specific ethnicity.

The 1981 breakthrough hit Dreamgirls was the only 1980s show that really enabled African American women to find a strong voice on Broadway. Dreamgirls tells the story of a fictionalized girl group from the 1960s, and of the problems facing them when one member of the group, played by Jennifer Holliday (then barely 20 years old and having no professional experience), decides to have a solo career. As a result of her incredible performance, Jennifer Holliday became the first black woman in twelve years to win a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical (Tony’s 2004). Although Holliday later went on to record pop songs, she has not played a role on Broadway since, citing in a personal email to the author that “there just are not so many roles out there and after Dreamgirls, I was a heavyset black girl from Texan with a Tony Award and no job offers.”

The jobs that evaded Jennifer Holliday remained elusive until a decade after Dreamgirls, when Audra McDonald hit the stage in the 1990s and took Broadway by storm.