Broadway’s Having a Great Year for BIPOC Representation. So What Happened with “Beaches”?

by Chris Peterson

Later this month, Beaches: A New Musical begins previews at the Majestic Theatre, with an official opening set for April.

With the full Broadway cast announced, looking at the list, there’s a detail that is hard to unsee once you clock it. Zurin Villanueva (who has appeared on our podcast here) appears to be the only BIPOC performer in the announced company.

And it’s not just the cast.

If you scroll past the headshots and into the people steering the ship, the creative team and producing slate, as publicly credited, reads as overwhelmingly white as well. Again, I’m not doing identity forensics off of photos. I’m talking about the picture the production is presenting on paper.

So here’s my question, asked with care… but also with my eyebrow fully raised.

Are we okay with that?

Because Beaches is one of those titles where you can’t even hide behind the usual theatre excuses. This is a story about friendship over decades. About messy, human life. That is not a world that demands a near-monochrome stage. If anything, it’s a world that practically begs for expansive casting.

And that’s what makes this so confusing, and it’s not because I think Broadway is suddenly sprinting backwards as a trend.

We’re seeing other productions this same season put forward companies that actually look like the world - Titaníque, Schmigadoon!, and The Lost Boys, among others.

So no, I’m not writing this as some “Broadway is doomed” prophecy. Broadway is obviously capable of doing better. We’re watching it happen in real time, which is exactly why Beaches lands with a thud.

Because if this isn’t the industry’s direction, then… what happened here?

And I want to say this next part plainly, because it’s the part that tends to get minimized by people who have never had to live it:

I’m Korean-American. I have been the only BIPOC person in a cast.

And yes, sometimes everyone is kind and supportive. Sometimes it’s “fine.”

But being the only one still changes the air in the room. It can be lonely in this quiet, constant way where you’re doing social math that nobody else has to do.

Who’s going to have my back if a comment gets weird?

Who’s going to notice the little thing that lands wrong and not brush it off as “you’re being sensitive”?

Who are my allies when the room is full of people who have never had to think about allies in the first place?

And there’s another piece people don’t like to talk about: when you’re the only BIPOC person, you can feel like you’re carrying the symbolic weight of “diversity” while also being expected to act like it’s totally normal and not worth mentioning. Like you should be grateful for the seat at the table, and also pretend you don’t notice that you’re eating alone.

So when I look at the Beaches cast list, and it’s essentially “and then there’s Zurin,” I don’t just think, Wow, that’s not great optics. I think about the lived reality of that rehearsal room.

Now, here’s where the theatre defense team usually jumps in.

“They cast the best people.”

Okay. Sure. Broadway casts talented people. That’s not the point.

The point is: who got in the room? Who got imagined for these roles? Who got seen as “right for the world”? Because casting isn’t a neutral, holy process that descends from Mount Sondheim.

Casting is taste. Casting is habit. Casting is networking. Casting is often too comfortable.

And when the result looks like this in 2026—especially on a show that so easily could have cast expansively—it’s fair to ask if we’re defaulting back to old settings the second no one forces the issue.

So I’ll ask again, this time directly to the audience, because audiences have more power than they think:

Are you okay with this?

Are you okay with the possibility that the last decade of progress was real… but conditional? Like, we only do it when it’s trendy, or convenient, or when the title isn’t “classic” enough to make people nervous?

Because that’s what this feels like: a choice. A very normal, very familiar choice.

And if we’re not okay with it, what do we do besides mumble about it and move on?

Maybe it’s as simple as asking questions publicly, calmly, and repeatedly. Maybe it’s theatre media treating this like a real conversation instead of a footnote under a casting announcement.

I don’t want Beaches to fail. I want it to be good. I want it to soar (with wind beneath its wings).

I just don’t want us to clap like trained seals every time a big title arrives, even when the room it’s building looks like it hasn’t learned a single thing from the last ten years.

So, yeah. What happened with Beaches?