It’s Time to Close the Door on Whitewashing Loophole in ‘Kinky Boots’

J. Harrison Ghee as Lola in ‘Kinky Boots’ (Photo: Matthew Murphy)

by Chris Peterson

Let’s clear this up once and for all: Kinky Boots’ Lola is not a blank slate for “whoever can sing it best.” Lola is a bold, defiant, and deeply layered BIPOC character, and casting a white actor in this role strips away everything that makes her story matter.

And yet, in 2025, we’re still having this conversation. Ballarat Lyric Theatre in Australia made the baffling decision to cast a white actor as Lola and then defended it with the tired excuse of choosing the best person for the role. As if skill and representation are somehow mutually exclusive. As if there weren’t drag artists or performers of color in or beyond their community who could have brought both.

The problem didn’t start with Ballarat. It started with a loophole that exists in the show’s official licensing.

In the materials distributed by Music Theatre International, Cyndi Lauper and Harvey Fierstein include a note saying they prefer Lola to be played by a Black performer, but they stop short of requiring it. Instead, they leave room for interpretation.

They state,

“While we have always cast the role of Lola with a Black actor on Broadway and the West End, and while that is our strong preference for your production, we realize that the demographics of each individual high school (and other school-aged groups) in a given region can be limiting. In the event that you are not able to cast a Black actor as Lola due to the demographics/population of your school or group, we strongly encourage that Lola be played by a person of color and that other key roles be cast with BIPOC performers as well.

While Cyndi and Harvey’s message is well-intended, it creates loopholes for all-white casts and turns representation into a suggestion, not a standard.

And this isn’t the first time we’ve seen that backfire. Years ago, Hairspray had the same kind of loophole. The show was being performed all over the country with white actors playing Seaweed and Motormouth Maybelle, characters whose Blackness is central to the story. I wrote an article exposing the problem, and it helped spark a movement. Licensing was changed. Now, only Black performers are allowed to portray the Black characters in Hairspray. And the show is better for it.

Kinky Boots needs the same revision.

Lola is not just a glamorous drag queen. She is a BIPOC character navigating generational trauma, masculinity, queerness, and the long shadow of cultural rejection. Whether the actor is Black, Latinx, Asian, Middle Eastern, or Indigenous, it matters that they are not white. The story demands it.

Because when a white actor plays Lola, the show’s central conflicts, the way Lola is treated in the factory, the backstory with her father, the subtext of how she commands space in a room that doesn’t welcome her, those moments flatten. They lose power. They lose weight. You’re watching a show about supposed otherness without the performer having lived experience of what that means.

Lola’s power comes from the combination of race, queerness, and performance. From knowing what it means to be othered in multiple ways and still walking tall.

To be clear, this isn’t just about white versus Black. This is about making space for performers of color. About recognizing that this role was written to be performed by someone who knows what it’s like to be seen as too much before they even open their mouth.

BIPOC actors don’t need permission to be cast in roles like Lola. They need protection from being replaced when a production decides diversity is too hard or too inconvenient.

If your community doesn’t have any BIPOC actors to play Lola, you don’t lower the bar. You raise your outreach. You expand your network. You grow. Or, and this is a radical thought for some, maybe you choose a different show. One that doesn’t rely so heavily on a specific cultural identity to make its story sing.

Lola is not a costume. She is not an act. She is not a collection of fabulous one-liners and high notes. She’s a statement. A reclamation. A celebration of bold, beautiful, intersectional identity. And she was never meant to be white.

So Cyndi, Harvey, Please make it a requirement. Close the loophole. Respect the role. Lola belongs to BIPOC performers.