♪♪ Hi.

My name's Sav, and this is how art changed me.

So I identify as non-binary transmasculine.

So I use they/them pronouns.

Like, when someone refers to me and wants to tell me how cute I look, they might say, "Oh, look at Sav.

I really like their jacket."

It was probably the seventh or eighth grade that I knew that I was queer, and I was very lucky that I had some role models in my life who I had met through a theater camp that I was attending and now work at.

They really helped me come into myself.

And I moved to Philly and I was like -- I hit the ground running as a queer person, and I, like, put myself into this, like, contrived form of, like, what I thought a lesbian was supposed to look like.

Then it kind of became a question of what does this mean in terms of being an actor and finding work in musical theater?

At this point, there had only been like two pretty popular roles in musical theater that were written for queer women, and those were -- well, three actually -- Maureen and Joanne in "Rent" and then the Alison tracks in "Fun Home".

All of a sudden, I was faced with an industry and going to college for four years and knowing that there were only two roles supposedly that existed for me that I could play for my entire career post-graduation.

And I was like, "How in the heck am I supposed to do that?"

There's other lesbians.

We can't all just keep playing these two roles over and over and over again.

We're like, "What are we gonna do about that?"

As I was lamenting about being frustrated at the lack of opportunities I was going to be having, my friend said, "You should write them."

And it was through my writing for musical theater that I was able to start dissecting my own identity.

I started using they/them pronouns.

I essentially came back to my program after a summer, and I said, "I have spent the past two years preparing myself to continue pretending to be a woman to move through this industry.

And I think that that is literally causing me physical and emotional pain.

And I think that I have to start from scratch, get rid of all of the songs in my book and in my repertoire that are for and by and about being a woman, because that's simply not who I am.

And I can't keep pretending."

At the end of 2019, I got top surgery and then I moved to New York all within the span of like a month, all in November.

And in December, I got an e-mail from my agents, and it was asking me to audition for "1776", and I immediately was like, "What?"

It was just me being reluctant, because I feel our American history is not something that trans people have been included in.

I didn't feel interested in indulging or telling a story that I've been erased from over and over and over again.

My agents called me and they were like, "Here's the thing.

It's gonna be very cool.

It's gonna be an all female and trans cast, and we think you should really go in for it."

Getting to wear a sheer shirt on a Broadway stage is my favorite part of the whole thing.

I really love showing my scars on my chest now that I feel so comfortable in my body and my scars feel sort of like a badge of honor, like something that I earned, you know?

And the sign and a symbol of this body that I've made mine over the years, and on a Broadway stage, it feels like the same thing.

And it feels like I am demanding that people see me for who I am and where I'm at, and that I will not continue to participate or perpetuate the erasure of trans people in the telling of the history of this country, because we have been here forever and will continue to be.

I have had the incredible gift of getting to connect with a lot of trans babes who've come to the show, and I've gotten a handful of really, really, really incredibly sweet messages from people who seeing a body like mine on a Broadway stage is life changing for.

I now, really, very much passionately and fundamentally as an artist, I care about adding to the theatrical canon.

Many more queer stories, many more trans stories, free of trauma, free of, you know, all of these insane stereotypes that have been the only representation that we've had in media for so long.

My goal is to continue helping Broadway grow into something bigger and better and more inclusive and more representative of the actual world that we walk through together.

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