Ampersand Gazette #107

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Move Aside, Snowflake: ‘Theater Kid’ Is the New Go-To Political Insult

There’s a new go-to political put-down: Theater kid.

[It’s been tossed at Zohran Mamdani, Senator Alex Padilla, a list of prominent Democrats headed by Congressman Thomas Massie, and scores of others.]

You get the picture, which raises the question: What did theater kids do to attract so much scorn?

For Scott Jennings, a conservative CNN commentator, the increased use of the term is a result of “performance-based radicalism” on the left.  

Using “theater kids” pejoratively is a way of tagging opponents as dramatic and performative without having to use those words. Theater kids became an indelible part of the culture when television series and films like “Glee,” “High School Musical" and “Smash” hit the airwaves.

“We are a ton of energy and we can be chaotic, but I find that that’s not actually the qualities that people are pointing out when they talk about the theater kid,” said Zhailon Levingston, a director of the upcoming Broadway production of “Cats: The Jellicle Ball.” “What they’re talking about is the person who refuses to stay silent in the face of something that needs to be spoken to.”

‘Theater kid’ being the bullied party is a tale as old as time,” Tony-nominated Julia Knitel said. “We’ve always been the outsiders, the weirdos. It’s a quick cultural shorthand to treat us as the underdog.”

Not everyone minds the moniker. Theater kids, Ms. Knitel said, are emotionally intelligent, empathetic, communicative, charismatic and in touch with their feelings. Those qualities, she said, don’t align with the “current administration.”

“They don’t want us to be empathetic and they don’t want us to care about those around us,” she said, “and they don’t want us to be open to expanding our horizons and feeling things deeply, because then we’re not as easily going to fall in line.” 

Excerpted from an article by Sopan Deb in The New York Times
“Move Aside, Snowflake: ‘Theater Kid’ Is the New Go-To Political Insult”
December 21, 2025 

I probably don’t have to tell you that I was one of those theatre kids. I think I remember that I even had a button, which I wore proudly, that proclaimed those two words as witness. 

And now it’s a diss? Au contraire. 

I remember the first time I walked into a theatre, and the feeling of belonging that covered me in goosebumps. I can still get shivers in an empty theatre.  

My heart leaps at its possibilities—every single one having to do with imagination. One of my favorite paintings in the world is by Tommy Tune; it’s a self-portrait—with an empty stage where there is usually a brain. 

There’s also something awesome about standing in a long line of others on, say, the first day of rehearsal for the latest production of Rodgers’ and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!  Which, it is said, is never not in production somewhere in the world. 

And you know … it doesn’t matter if you’re in the local high school gymnasium with a stage tacked onto the far end, or the West End, or the Winter Garden on Broadway—Oklahoma! is Oklahoma! geography (and budgets) notwithstanding. 

And every person who’s played Laurey or Ado Annie has had their own realizations that allowed them to embody those characters. In fact, theatre is the one artform that allows anyone to be anyone they can conceive. Now, there’s a thought. 

But here’s a better one.  

All those Laureys had to use their imaginations. Ado Annies, too. And every audience member who witnessed them as well, because everyone in every audience knows that (unless we are, actually, in Oklahoma) we’re not in Oklahoma, and we all, together, collectively, agree that we are.  

Don’t you suppose that this is how futures are created? 

It is. No future is possible for anyone or anything anywhere without imagination. If you can imagine it, you can create it. It’s as difficult and as simple as that. 

Theatre kids unite! 

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The only thing that will make you happy
is being happy with who you are, and
not with who people think you are.
Goldie Hawn
MEInk 1.17.26 

The Question: 

How can I be happy? 

&mpersand Answers: 

Or, who you want people to think you are.  

Did you know that you have a self-image—you aren’t your self-image? You have it like you have, say, eyes, or feet. You aren’t your eyes or your feet, either. 

I’ve said this before, and it’s a theme I’ll return to again and again: humankind is so, so, so good at making happiness conditional, and it’s time we learned a new behavior to replace this one that is so obviously hurtful to the one feeling it, and to those around that one who have to deal with the resulting disappointment, anger, and fear. 

Happiness is an inside job, Belovèd. 

It’s time we learned that it’s merely a choice we get to make. Yes, that’s right, a choice. You can be happy even if you … don’t feel good, are hurting, can’t think, feel numb, witness sorrow, think the world is on its way to hell in a handbasket—anything—because nothing really stands in the way of our happiness but our own choices. 

Were you taught this as a child? I wasn’t, and God help me, I have a Gemini Moon, which means, in plain English, that as I grew up, life was either fabulous or it sucked, and there was no grey zone in between. (I did find one, but not permanently until I turned forty.) 

Imagine if I’d known then that happiness was a choice. I, and you, could practice happiness, even in the face of chicken pox! What a change that would make to our lived, mundane experience. Seriously 

The next time you find yourself wishing you were happy, stop. Bring to mind that happiness is a choice. Choose it, and then practice. Practice, as I’m sure you know, makes … well, not perfect … but, for sure, better. Uh, happier, really. 

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Here’s a universal affirmation. It works every time, for everyone, always and forever …  

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 So, the good Dr. Seuss, or his minions, has/have been singularly silent this week. I’m going to wait another week, and write to them again, and if I don’t hear from them, I’ll be going into the anapestic tetrameter business temporarily. 

You know, no matter what, upon encountering a no when it comes to my novels, I just use another kind of creativity to solve the problem. This must be why I like writing them so much. Each one is a challenge in its own right.  

I’m still thinking of starting this book off in a different way than I ever have before—on my YouTube Channel, reading a couple of chapters a week. No, not the perfect of an audiobook, instead the imperfect of a bedtime story read aloud. 

 The edits of the final book of The Subversive Lovelies, called Jaq Direct, are done! I’ve written to the cover designer, and a cover is on its way to me. We started to read it aloud a little over a week ago, and is it a romp! The series will be complete when I publish this last volume—the rest of Jaq’s story.  

As we’re reading, I’m so enjoying the voice I chose to write in for this series, and I’m deeply aware that I’m going to miss it when all’s said and done. I don’t know what that means for the future.  

Will I write more about the Lovelies? Their descendants? Or another speculative fiction series set in a linguistic different time from our current one. Creativity is its own marvel, and as I keep showing up at the page, as Julia Cameron would say, I’m sure it will be revealed. 

Please make this indie author happy. Choose one of my series, and read all of them. Then review all of them. That’s the way others find books. 

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Special Request: 

Send me your spiritual questions please. As of now, which I’m sure you’ve noticed, I’m posting &mpersand Answers twice a week. 

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Okay, so who is in need of a retreat to jump-start a writing project? This is one of the best methods I know to begin (and sustain, more importantly) the energy required to stay with a writing project. Even when you’re rabid about your subject matter, it’s still possible to need a little extra oomph to get over those speed bumps and back on the writing highway.  

FWIW, one time I got stuck in one spot in a book for eleven years! And it was via sessions with Tony Amato, editor and book-husband extraordinaire, who finally got me over what got me stuck in the first place. This was long before we were ever involved more than as editor and author, too. 

So a retreat is custom-designed to your project, and again and again, I’ve seen folks energized by the focus it allows them to put on their own work because someone they trust is putting his focus on it, too. For some authors, it can be really healing. Find Tony Amato, who has been attending and creating and hosting writers’ retreats for more than thirty years, here.  

If you’ve got a book or a poem, or a book of poems, or a radio program, or a novel, or a series, or a memoir, or any form of writing cooking for 2026, I know a guy who is an immeasurable help. Seriously, this is the guy. He’s edited my books for more than twenty years, so I ought to know. Find him here. Oh, and here’s his substack Subscribe here. 

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 As part of my Mex Mysteries research, I am reading Women of Will: Following the Feminine in Shakespeare's Plays by Tina Packer  

Here’s what the blurb says: 

“From one of the country’s foremost experts on Shakespeare and theatre arts, actor, director, and master teacher Tina Packer offers an exploration—fierce, funny, fearless—of the women of Shakespeare’s plays. A profound, and profoundly illuminating, book that gives us the playwright’s changing understanding of the feminine and reveals some of his deepest insights. Packer, with expert grasp and perception, constructs a radically different understanding of power, sexuality, and redemption.

“As Packer turns her attention to the extraordinary Juliet, the author perceives a large shift. Suddenly Shakespeare’s women have depth of character, motivation, understanding of life more than equal to that of the men; once Juliet has led the way, the plays are never the same again. And, wondering if Shakespeare himself fell in love, the author observes that from Juliet on, Shakespeare writes the women as if he were a woman, giving them desires, needs, ambition, insight.” 

Tina Packer died quite recently. Her obituary reminded me that I’d seen her perform Women of Will, and been intrigued by it then. I wondered what a book of the same information might offer. Gold, sheer 24 karat gold. 

Whether you like her chops or not, (and I didn’t) Tina Packer knows her Shakespeare, and especially knows his women. Her insights, gained over more than thirty years of work with the canon, prove their own worth. Brilliant, deeply moving, her prose left me wanting more. I was especially intrigued by the research she’d done into Aemilia Bassano, she who is alleged to be Will’s Dark Lady. It made me want to get to writing my next Mex: Shrew This! 

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Are you waiting for a sign?
How about this one? 

This is how I think of each soul on Earth.
An undiscovered rainbow of a book,
just awaiting my reading pleasure. 

Have you ever thought of yourself this way? 

A book,
full of interesting,
curious,
insightful,
amazing
feelings, ideas, and dreams. 

That are
UNIQUE
(and I really do mean this)
TO YOU. 

You may be a theatre kid,
or you may not,
it doesn’t matter,
but what does matter is
YOU,

that you’re here,
that we need you,
that you’re worth exploration and discovery. 

And both of those things
start
WITHIN. 

Open the magical book
of whom you are,
Belovèd,
and prepare to be astonished,
enchanted, and in love for life. 

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I am, without doubt, certain that And is the secret to all we desire.
Let’s commit to practicing And ever more diligently, shall we? 

Until next time,
Be Ampersand 

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