Great episode! I have a different interpretation of the character of Aaron Burr. I believe Burr is a traumatized autistic person whose mask has become his identity. He contrasts greatly with Hamilton, who I believe is unmasked Audhd. Burr carefully calculates the risk of all his actions and has systems for keeping things safe and predictable, but it also leaves him feeling lonely and wishing he could be part of the action. Burr struggles with the way Hamilton behaves in the world because he wants what Hamilton has, but the constant risk taking and uncertainty would be too much for him.
Sami here - I'm the Content Manager for The Autistic Culture Podcast. I had the honor of seeing Hamilton at the Pantages in 2021, and I absolutely agree with this theory as well!!
While I can’t speak on autistic representation on the stage, I can provide testament to neurodiversity and its relationship to the stage. My senior year of high school, I auditioned for the drama club’s production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “State Fair”. I ended up being cast in the role of David Miller, as well as in the ensemble doing some singing and dancing during the show. It was the best experience of that time in my life and I carried it into my college days and the last part of my twenties, as a volunteer and/or a mere patron.
Hi Jason! Sami here; I am the new Content Manager for The Autistic Culture Podcast. I too was a theater kid growing up, and I always look back fondly on my time spent onstage. It's an extremely supportive and cathartic environment - and as a young autistic kid, I absolutely needed that. Thank you for sharing and I'm so glad you enjoyed this episode!
I love Broadway, and I LOVE musical theater - and most of this episode was absolutely fantastic. I'm really, really surprised that both of you had such antipathy towards Cats, however! I'm old enough that I remember seeing the Broadway show when it was on its first tour, back in the 80s, and it's always been a favorite.
Yeah, the plot is somewhat disjointed - but that's what happens when you take a book of POEMS and turn it into a musical. It was never a connected "story" with a single thread. Each poem was a character sketch about a particular cat, or in some cases cats. I still consider the staging of that production one of the best I've ever seen (although Lion King gives it a run for the money!)
You might want to do some reading into the source material of the musical - T. S. Eliot's "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats" - and in particular Eliot's relationship with cats (felines, not the musical) in his own life. Here are some articles that might be interesting to start with:
Hi! I’m Sami Harris, content manager for The Autistic Culture Podcast. Thank you so much for sharing your perspective—and those resources! You make such a great point about Cats being based on T.S. Eliot’s poems, which naturally leads to the vignette style. I really appreciate the insight about Eliot’s relationship with cats in real life; it adds so much depth to understanding the musical.
It’s also incredible that you got to see the Broadway production on its first tour—what an unforgettable experience that must have been! I’ll definitely check out those articles you linked. Maybe with a bit more context, I’ll see Cats in a whole new light. Thanks again for the thoughtful comment!
I was excited for this one! I like that you touched on so many different topics: the prevalence of neurodivergence in theatre vs. the lack of overt nuanced representation in actual shows, all the autistic reasons that "theatre kids are annoying," unfortunate overt depictions of autism in theatre, and of course, favorite autistic headcanons!
A few notes:
Asking me to pick a favorite Sondheim show would just be unfair, but gun to my head, I think I'd pick Sunday in the Park with George every time. "We Do Not Belong Together" especially destroys me, the way George tries to express his care for Dot within his painting but she needs him to *tell* her how he feels. "You know exactly how I feel. / Why do you insist / You must hear the words, / When you know I cannot give you words? / Not the ones you need." brb, sobbing...
I looooove Matilda so much, and the buildup to the chorus in "Quiet" is such a visceral description of sensory overload and meltdown/shutdown. "And I'm sorry I'm not quite explaining it right, / But this noise becomes anger, and the anger is light," oh my god!!
I was glad to see Quinn A. mention Seth from Kimberly Akimbo, because I came to the comments specifically to mention him! "Anagram" is such a great song. I love how wonderfully happy he is to be making an anagram of Kimberly's name, and I really like that, even though Kimberly's observations about him use words like "strange" and "weird," she repeatedly emphasizes that she *likes* that about him. "I like the way you understand, / I like the way you think. / A little weird, a little wise, / A little out of sync."
I cosign Charlene's interpretation of unmasked AuDHD Hamilton and high-masking autistic Burr! That's exactly how I see them!
Similarly, I definitely see autistic Elphaba, but to me, the movie's version of Galinda/Glinda feels like high-masking autistic and/or ADHD. She's really popular and fits in well, but *so much effort* goes into that. It's like she's constantly performing "personhood" for everyone around her, right down to the exaggerated hair-tossing. Contrast that with when she's being more genuinely herself in "Popular," and she's just so delightfully extra--that number is a big AuDHD mood to me. (Also, movie Fiyero gave me ADHD vibes, and then I discovered that Jonathan Bailey has ADHD, so I'm counting it!) Why yes, I have seen the movie twice in two weeks and haven't listened to anything but the soundtrack since, why do you ask? ;-)
Sami here - I'm the Content Manager for The Autistic Culture Podcast - and OH MY GOD, YES. I have had very similar thoughts about Wicked being sooo neurodivergent-coded. As an AUDHD woman myself, I can absolutely see myself in both Galinda/Glinda and Elphaba. I have always seen Fiyero as neurodivergent-coded too - and learning that Jonathan Bailey has ADHD absolutely validates this as canon in my mind.
As a woman who went the hyper-femininity route to mask her autism (was a cheerleader, favorite color has always been pink, special interests in skincare and The Girls Next Door/Playboy, worked in the beauty industry for 6 years, et cetera), "Popular" is so autism-coded to me - I too was a scholar of social norms/gender norms in order to mask what was so clearly different about me, and that is how this musical number always read to me since I first saw the show live at the Pantages in 2008. (Not sure if you've heard of the book series "The Clique" or if that's more of an elder Gen Z/younger millennial cutural touchstone, but I used the "rules" of the popular girls in this book as a guide for masking when I was younger, and I definitely think a few of the characters in the series are autistic-coded. Anyways, this seemed to me like what Galinda was doing with "Popular".)
Matilda is also such delightful autism representation - I grew up watching the movie on VHS and always felt such a connection to her (well, now we know why!). Thanks for listening and I'm glad you enjoyed the episode! :)
Gaaahhhh! I went through a Wicked phase in high school--I remember a period where I wrote lyrics from "Defying Gravity" on basically everything--and now the movie has slingshot me way past my teenage level of obsession, lol. Like, I could *feel* the hyperfixation developing in real time as I sat in the theater. For one, I just think it's a fantastic movie, but I also know a major part of my love is how neurodivergent it feels.
Elements of it were always there, of course, and I'm sure that's partly why I latched onto the show in high school, even if I didn't know back then *why* it spoke to me so deeply. But for me, the movie really highlights this aspect even more. I imagine that these particular actors and their interpretations of the character lend themselves to it, like seeing Jonathan Bailey's own ADHD in his performance as Fiyero (btw, that adds very interesting connotations to Fiyero talking about getting kicked out of multiple schools and calling himself "brainless" or "thoughtless.") And another part of it, I think, is just down to the medium of film itself. With Galinda especially, she's a character that I wouldn't have thought to view as AuDHD in the show, but when I can see Ariana Grande's subtler emotional reactions in close-up, it emphasizes how much is going on under the carefully-constructed artifice Galinda presents to world.
I've been waiting for this one! I was not a theatre kid, but my child was for sometime in the middle school years and we really bonded around musicals, which I love. My kid had the Hamilton shirt that read "My Thoughts Have Been Replaced by Hamilton Lyrics". Anyhow, I have created a Broadway playlist I call Tism' Show Tunes. Some of the songs may not be necessarily autistic coded characters, but I believe many are. You hit most of the one's that I would have mentioned like DEH, Matilda ("Quiet!"), Wicked, Hamilton, Legally Blonde, Sunday in the Park with George, etc., but here are a couple of other characters I believe are autistic or at least autistic coded.
Dawn from Waitress. "When He See's Me" is perfect.
Natalie in Next to Normal. "Everything Else" Maybe the mom Diana too, probably misdiagnosed bipolar.
Christine in Be More Chill. "I Love Play Reversal" is a great summary of the Theatre Kid trope.
Also probably Jeremy and Michael ("Michael in the Bathroom") in Be More Chill. Even Jeremy's Dad never wants to wear pants.
Deb in Ordinary Days. "Calm" is a great song of sensitivity overload.
Olive in 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. I love "My friend the Dictionary".
Most of the characters in Band Geeks. Especially Laura "Lost in the Brass"
Cady in Mean Girls? Stupid with Love. Also maybe Gretchen Weiner "What' Wrong with Me"
Seth in Kimberly Akimbo. "Anagram"
Also I agree on what was said about How to Dance in Ohio. I'm glad I missed the Macy's float thing. I don't think I want to see the play, but I have listened to the Original Cast Recording and there are a couple good songs. The autism mom song is the worst as is the one's that the therapist character sings on. Even some of the songs centered on the kids seem to be a little trite and over simplified. "Under Control", "Unlikely Animals", and "Nothing at All" are good songs that have made my playlist though.
Hi Quinn! Sami here, and I'm the new Content Manager for The Autistic Culture Podcast. As a fellow autistic former theater kid, I'm stoked that you loved the episode! I loved the recent Mean Girls musical movie and I absolutely agree that Cady's character in the musical is autistic coded (I think you could make the same argument with Regina's character as well). I will have to check out all your other recs! Thanks for sharing! :)
Great episode! I have a different interpretation of the character of Aaron Burr. I believe Burr is a traumatized autistic person whose mask has become his identity. He contrasts greatly with Hamilton, who I believe is unmasked Audhd. Burr carefully calculates the risk of all his actions and has systems for keeping things safe and predictable, but it also leaves him feeling lonely and wishing he could be part of the action. Burr struggles with the way Hamilton behaves in the world because he wants what Hamilton has, but the constant risk taking and uncertainty would be too much for him.
Sami here - I'm the Content Manager for The Autistic Culture Podcast. I had the honor of seeing Hamilton at the Pantages in 2021, and I absolutely agree with this theory as well!!
OOOOHHHH I LOVE LOVE LOVE THIS!!! Going back for another listen. <3 thank you for sharing.
I like this theory!
While I can’t speak on autistic representation on the stage, I can provide testament to neurodiversity and its relationship to the stage. My senior year of high school, I auditioned for the drama club’s production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “State Fair”. I ended up being cast in the role of David Miller, as well as in the ensemble doing some singing and dancing during the show. It was the best experience of that time in my life and I carried it into my college days and the last part of my twenties, as a volunteer and/or a mere patron.
Hi Jason! Sami here; I am the new Content Manager for The Autistic Culture Podcast. I too was a theater kid growing up, and I always look back fondly on my time spent onstage. It's an extremely supportive and cathartic environment - and as a young autistic kid, I absolutely needed that. Thank you for sharing and I'm so glad you enjoyed this episode!
I love Broadway, and I LOVE musical theater - and most of this episode was absolutely fantastic. I'm really, really surprised that both of you had such antipathy towards Cats, however! I'm old enough that I remember seeing the Broadway show when it was on its first tour, back in the 80s, and it's always been a favorite.
Yeah, the plot is somewhat disjointed - but that's what happens when you take a book of POEMS and turn it into a musical. It was never a connected "story" with a single thread. Each poem was a character sketch about a particular cat, or in some cases cats. I still consider the staging of that production one of the best I've ever seen (although Lion King gives it a run for the money!)
You might want to do some reading into the source material of the musical - T. S. Eliot's "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats" - and in particular Eliot's relationship with cats (felines, not the musical) in his own life. Here are some articles that might be interesting to start with:
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-improbable-insanity-of-cats#:~:text=Eliot%27s%20ardent%20and%20abiding%20love,Pushdragon%2C%20Pettipaws%2C%20and%20Wiscus.
https://letthemreadcake.com/2019/08/06/book-review-old-possums-book-of-practical-cats-by-t-s-eliot-%e2%98%85%e2%98%85%e2%98%85/
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/16/nine-lives-ts-eliot-book-practical-cats-andrew-lloyd-webber-taylor-swift
Hi! I’m Sami Harris, content manager for The Autistic Culture Podcast. Thank you so much for sharing your perspective—and those resources! You make such a great point about Cats being based on T.S. Eliot’s poems, which naturally leads to the vignette style. I really appreciate the insight about Eliot’s relationship with cats in real life; it adds so much depth to understanding the musical.
It’s also incredible that you got to see the Broadway production on its first tour—what an unforgettable experience that must have been! I’ll definitely check out those articles you linked. Maybe with a bit more context, I’ll see Cats in a whole new light. Thanks again for the thoughtful comment!
I was excited for this one! I like that you touched on so many different topics: the prevalence of neurodivergence in theatre vs. the lack of overt nuanced representation in actual shows, all the autistic reasons that "theatre kids are annoying," unfortunate overt depictions of autism in theatre, and of course, favorite autistic headcanons!
A few notes:
Asking me to pick a favorite Sondheim show would just be unfair, but gun to my head, I think I'd pick Sunday in the Park with George every time. "We Do Not Belong Together" especially destroys me, the way George tries to express his care for Dot within his painting but she needs him to *tell* her how he feels. "You know exactly how I feel. / Why do you insist / You must hear the words, / When you know I cannot give you words? / Not the ones you need." brb, sobbing...
I looooove Matilda so much, and the buildup to the chorus in "Quiet" is such a visceral description of sensory overload and meltdown/shutdown. "And I'm sorry I'm not quite explaining it right, / But this noise becomes anger, and the anger is light," oh my god!!
I was glad to see Quinn A. mention Seth from Kimberly Akimbo, because I came to the comments specifically to mention him! "Anagram" is such a great song. I love how wonderfully happy he is to be making an anagram of Kimberly's name, and I really like that, even though Kimberly's observations about him use words like "strange" and "weird," she repeatedly emphasizes that she *likes* that about him. "I like the way you understand, / I like the way you think. / A little weird, a little wise, / A little out of sync."
I cosign Charlene's interpretation of unmasked AuDHD Hamilton and high-masking autistic Burr! That's exactly how I see them!
Similarly, I definitely see autistic Elphaba, but to me, the movie's version of Galinda/Glinda feels like high-masking autistic and/or ADHD. She's really popular and fits in well, but *so much effort* goes into that. It's like she's constantly performing "personhood" for everyone around her, right down to the exaggerated hair-tossing. Contrast that with when she's being more genuinely herself in "Popular," and she's just so delightfully extra--that number is a big AuDHD mood to me. (Also, movie Fiyero gave me ADHD vibes, and then I discovered that Jonathan Bailey has ADHD, so I'm counting it!) Why yes, I have seen the movie twice in two weeks and haven't listened to anything but the soundtrack since, why do you ask? ;-)
Sami here - I'm the Content Manager for The Autistic Culture Podcast - and OH MY GOD, YES. I have had very similar thoughts about Wicked being sooo neurodivergent-coded. As an AUDHD woman myself, I can absolutely see myself in both Galinda/Glinda and Elphaba. I have always seen Fiyero as neurodivergent-coded too - and learning that Jonathan Bailey has ADHD absolutely validates this as canon in my mind.
As a woman who went the hyper-femininity route to mask her autism (was a cheerleader, favorite color has always been pink, special interests in skincare and The Girls Next Door/Playboy, worked in the beauty industry for 6 years, et cetera), "Popular" is so autism-coded to me - I too was a scholar of social norms/gender norms in order to mask what was so clearly different about me, and that is how this musical number always read to me since I first saw the show live at the Pantages in 2008. (Not sure if you've heard of the book series "The Clique" or if that's more of an elder Gen Z/younger millennial cutural touchstone, but I used the "rules" of the popular girls in this book as a guide for masking when I was younger, and I definitely think a few of the characters in the series are autistic-coded. Anyways, this seemed to me like what Galinda was doing with "Popular".)
Matilda is also such delightful autism representation - I grew up watching the movie on VHS and always felt such a connection to her (well, now we know why!). Thanks for listening and I'm glad you enjoyed the episode! :)
Gaaahhhh! I went through a Wicked phase in high school--I remember a period where I wrote lyrics from "Defying Gravity" on basically everything--and now the movie has slingshot me way past my teenage level of obsession, lol. Like, I could *feel* the hyperfixation developing in real time as I sat in the theater. For one, I just think it's a fantastic movie, but I also know a major part of my love is how neurodivergent it feels.
Elements of it were always there, of course, and I'm sure that's partly why I latched onto the show in high school, even if I didn't know back then *why* it spoke to me so deeply. But for me, the movie really highlights this aspect even more. I imagine that these particular actors and their interpretations of the character lend themselves to it, like seeing Jonathan Bailey's own ADHD in his performance as Fiyero (btw, that adds very interesting connotations to Fiyero talking about getting kicked out of multiple schools and calling himself "brainless" or "thoughtless.") And another part of it, I think, is just down to the medium of film itself. With Galinda especially, she's a character that I wouldn't have thought to view as AuDHD in the show, but when I can see Ariana Grande's subtler emotional reactions in close-up, it emphasizes how much is going on under the carefully-constructed artifice Galinda presents to world.
I've been waiting for this one! I was not a theatre kid, but my child was for sometime in the middle school years and we really bonded around musicals, which I love. My kid had the Hamilton shirt that read "My Thoughts Have Been Replaced by Hamilton Lyrics". Anyhow, I have created a Broadway playlist I call Tism' Show Tunes. Some of the songs may not be necessarily autistic coded characters, but I believe many are. You hit most of the one's that I would have mentioned like DEH, Matilda ("Quiet!"), Wicked, Hamilton, Legally Blonde, Sunday in the Park with George, etc., but here are a couple of other characters I believe are autistic or at least autistic coded.
Dawn from Waitress. "When He See's Me" is perfect.
Natalie in Next to Normal. "Everything Else" Maybe the mom Diana too, probably misdiagnosed bipolar.
Christine in Be More Chill. "I Love Play Reversal" is a great summary of the Theatre Kid trope.
Also probably Jeremy and Michael ("Michael in the Bathroom") in Be More Chill. Even Jeremy's Dad never wants to wear pants.
Deb in Ordinary Days. "Calm" is a great song of sensitivity overload.
Olive in 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. I love "My friend the Dictionary".
Most of the characters in Band Geeks. Especially Laura "Lost in the Brass"
Cady in Mean Girls? Stupid with Love. Also maybe Gretchen Weiner "What' Wrong with Me"
Seth in Kimberly Akimbo. "Anagram"
Also I agree on what was said about How to Dance in Ohio. I'm glad I missed the Macy's float thing. I don't think I want to see the play, but I have listened to the Original Cast Recording and there are a couple good songs. The autism mom song is the worst as is the one's that the therapist character sings on. Even some of the songs centered on the kids seem to be a little trite and over simplified. "Under Control", "Unlikely Animals", and "Nothing at All" are good songs that have made my playlist though.
Hi Quinn! Sami here, and I'm the new Content Manager for The Autistic Culture Podcast. As a fellow autistic former theater kid, I'm stoked that you loved the episode! I loved the recent Mean Girls musical movie and I absolutely agree that Cady's character in the musical is autistic coded (I think you could make the same argument with Regina's character as well). I will have to check out all your other recs! Thanks for sharing! :)
You're so welcome! Thank you for providing a place where I can geek out about this with other fans! 😀
It's like they're both master chess players, but Burr is hyperfocused on how he could lose and Hamilton is hyperfocused on how he could win.
Yes! I agree :)