Is 2024 the year of the theatre kid?

Have you ever known someone who would’ve committed manslaughter to play the lead in their high school musical? Or someone who turns pub karaoke into their own personal audition to the Juilliard? Theatre kids – commonly referred to as drama kids, drama nerds or theatre geeks – have existed for centuries and have been ridiculed since their genesis (famously, High School Musical’s Troy Bolton couldn’t bear the thought of his basketball team finding out he was auditioning for the titular school musical, despite having the singing and dancing chops to carry an entire production). However, theatre kids no longer have to hide in wings of what the culture deems cool – in 2024, they’re taking centre stage, as loud and obtrusively as possible.

Theatre kids have historically pulled the short straw of societal acceptance. I’m reluctant to admit this, but I myself have theatre kid traits; a lust for the limelight, a penchant for listening to musical soundtracks at the gym. This is an admission truly so mortifying it makes my coming out post on Facebook in 2017 seem like child’s play. In terms of popular culture, Ryan Murphy’s Glee probably paints the most unflinching portrait of the theatre kid archetype. Protagonist Lea Michele’s Rachel Berry is type-A and a mercilessly cut-throat theatre kid, with a zeal for the art form that compels her to commit ruthless acts, like sending her main competitor to a crack house instead of an audition hall. Despite her relentlessness, she’s also a talented performer with a genuine adoration for the arts. Characters like Rachel have always been ridiculed, as they symbolise a collective aversion to musicals or theatre culture; an easy punching bag.

Another figure who is flying the theatre kid flag high is Reneé Rapp. The lesbian pop star/ new wave Regina George won a Jimmy Award in 2018 (the US High School Musical Awards) before starring as the Mean Girls character on Broadway and its film adaptation. In a TikTok interview with Time magazine, Rapp describes herself as a type of theatre kid who’s “matcha (drinking), sweatpants, and never off-book” (off-book refers to knowing your lines without a script).

Sabrina Carpenter also played Regina George briefly on Broadway, and is an alumna of the Disney machine. Carpenter has just achieved her first No. 1 single with earworm song-of-the-summer “Espresso”, and has now moved through the lanes of niche pop girl to household name. The music video looks like a Disney Channel original Teen Beach Movie, directed by Michael Bay. The song is great, if a little too familiar, but Carpenter’s rise to fame, and subsequent positioning as a public figure, is beginning to feel like she’s a character pulled straight out of Grease, or Betty Boop with a Marc Jacobs bag.

There are also the male theatre kids, whose sex appeal fits snugly into our collective desire for ‘babygirl’ boys. At the end of Luca Guadagnino’s new film Challengers, Mike Faist jumps above the tennis net to serve his final racket swing. He leaps convincingly in slow-motion like a tennis player, but thanks to his illustrious career in musical theatre, you can feel the melodrama of his last leap, akin to a danseur – almost like it had to have been learnt within the halls of a performing arts high school.

After Challengers’ release, Faist has sparked a white-boy-of-the-month Twitter fascination, unearthing footage of his roles in Newsies on Broadway or Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story. His emergence into the Loewe boy coven and A-lister circles is justified; he’s a true triple threat. But the internet’s reaction to footage of his step-ball-changes or jètes is just another example of our inclination towards theatrical leading men. On the topic, Timothée Chalamet’s turn in Wonka late last year saw him singing and dancing as he built his chocolate empire. The film contained some of the most jauntily deranged scenes of his career, but it was such a success it led to the actor signing a multi-year, multi-picture first-look deal with Warner Bros as both an actor and producer. Leading men no longer have to throw themselves off moving cars or have glistening 24-packs to be seen as stars – they just need jazz hands. 

It might seem I’m painting a picture of theatre kids being solely at fault for this era of sexual reservedness. But really, they are simply striking while the iron is not hot. When Gen Z are perhaps unfairly being lauded as a sexless generation, the masses do seem to find comfort in a type of star that’s hard-working, classically Hollywood, and with an inoffensive, unthreatening sex appeal. But what happens when the closest we’re getting to something truly shocking is a pop star rhyming “Told that boy go faster, now I’m all sore” during Sabrina Carpenter’s live performance of “Nonsense”? Where’s the drama? The mess? The dirt? I just hope that, in time, the show won’t go on, and the unpredictability, explicitness and fun of our previous cultural icons will get their chance back in the spotlight.