Who I'm Looking Up To: Ali Stroker
When I was a little girl, I wanted nothing more than to perform on stage. Some of my earliest childhood memories are in a dance studio, I participated in my summer camp’s musical productions, I would put on one-woman Broadway shows in my room and car. I loved the idea of putting on a costume and telling someone else’s story...but never thought I could. My parents would take me to see shows and I never felt represented...until 2015.
The 2015 - 2016 season was historic for Broadway. Hamilton opened and received a record-breaking 16 Tony nominations. Steve Martin and Sara Bareilles made their Broadway debuts as the composers of Bright Star and Waitress respectively. Cynthia Erivo, in her Broadway debut, won the Tony for her role of Celie in The Color Purple. The revival of Spring Awakening paved the way to making Broadway more accessible for people with disabilities, featuring deaf and hearing actors performing the show in English and American Sign Language (ASL) simultaneously and featuring the first Broadway performer to use a wheelchair. Her name is Ali Stroker and, as I write this in July of 2020, she remains the only person to perform on Broadway in a wheelchair.
Paralyzed at the age of 2, Ali Stroker first came to my attention during her time on The Glee Project. A few posts back I mentioned that I did not watch Glee, but my brother did, and, during times of sibling bonding, I would watch Glee and The Glee Project with him. I remember watching Ali on TV and finally feeling seen. No, she’s not a little person, but she is a member of the disabled community, a community that is still grossly underrepresented on stage and screen.
When it was announced that she would be making her Broadway debut in the 2015 revival of Spring Awakening, I didn’t immediately realize she was making history. I wrongfully assumed that there had been wheelchair-bound Broadway actors before her. Seeing her perform on Broadway, a dream I had abandoned for myself long ago because of my being a dwarf, I felt immense pride for my community and an industry that I love.
In 2018, Ali was cast as Ado Annie in the revival of Oklahoma! For her performance she made history yet again- being the first performer in a wheelchair to be nominated and win a Tony Award for acting. I remember watching the Tony’s, sitting on bated breath as they announced the nominees for her category, squealing with pure joy when her name was called, and my eyes welling up with tears as she gave her speech. She dedicated her award to children with disabilities, exclaiming,“This award is for every kid who is watching tonight who has a disability, who has a limitation or a challenge, who has been waiting to see themselves represented in this arena. You are!”
Ali Stroker never let her wheelchair limit her ability. In an interview with the New York Times after her Tony win she said,“One of the crazy parts about being paralyzed is you have such a specific relationship to your body. You know the parts that you cannot use, you cannot feel. So the parts that you can, sometimes you feel like you have superpowers.”
Her voice is her superpower and listening to her, watching her, she truly is unstoppable onstage and off. Right after she took her final bow in Oklahoma! Aerie announced that she was joining the #AerieREAL campaign as one of their role models joining fellow actress Beanie Feldstein, Olympian Aly Raisman, and body positivity activist Iskra Lawrence. The #AerieREAL campaign promotes body positivity and diversity and chooses role models that are “real” women igniting real change. As a role model she is proving to the fashion industry and society as a whole that being disabled is beautiful, being different is beautiful.
