Here's a Nice Story About Two Women Getting Married Onstage at a Broadway Play
CelebritiesThis weekend’s news cycle was grim and merciless, and so I feel compelled to write up a tale of love and matrimony that does not involve a Bieber.
Instead, it involves Armelle Kay Harper and Jody Kay Smith, two women who, after a performance of The Prom on Broadway, got onstage and got married, according to the New York Times. Harper is a script coordinator for the musical, and one of the show’s writers, Bob Martin, officiated, making the couple official in front of an entire (assuredly unsuspecting) audience:
They picked the production not just because Harper worked on it (Smith is an actor, though she’s not in The Prom), but because the musical—which is about two Broadway actors who try to help a lesbian high school student in Indiana take her girlfriend to the prom—is inclusive and celebratory.
Harper told the Times:
“There are so many shows where lesbians are secondary characters or the butt of the joke,” Ms. Harper said in an interview. “We all love ‘Fun Home,’ but it’s a drama. So ‘The Prom’ is really unique in that it’s a celebration, and it’s funny without being at the expense of lesbians. It’s just so much joy.”
Harper and Smith—who got engaged just 19 days after meeting, which sounds insane, but so is love—are having a family wedding in September, though apparently they wanted a small ceremony first, not that a Broadway theater is particularly intimate. Still, they snuck this one in just in time, since The Prom’s final show is August 11.