It really is a “big, Black and queer-ass American Broadway show,” and I’m heartbroken that it won’t get to play longer.

“I’m throwing them a few bones of facts and things to know. But I’m also calling them to a higher order. Luring them in with the pussy and then challenging them with postcolonial theory.”

“The Prom” is a new musical and it’s about lesbians and we need to talk about it right now.

“We deserve to have art that is by us and for us and is us being complicated and depicting all our lives as they are, without simplifying or reassuring.”

“There is nothing I love more than sharing a deafeningly silent, poignant moment with 300 other audience members; grinning wide through a rousing musical number that makes me want to stand and cheer; or tearing up at a matinee with the gray-haired woman seated beside me.”

Uzo Aduba drops from the heavens into our dreams. Queen Latifah releases her inner glam stud. A very green Ozian vogue ball makes us gag. And rising star, Shanice Williams, steals our feminist hearts.

We may all worship at the well-spoken altar of Andrea Gibson, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t more out there to love! Here are ten LGBTQ spoken word artists you should consider crushing on.

Let’s get real deep right now into some hard-core musical theater appreciation.

We thought this would be easier — the hardest part, we imagined, would be coming up with just ten. Surely if we thought really hard, wikipedia’ed (we expected a “lesbian characters in plays” list of some sort to appear … it did not), checked out the glbtq encyclopedia and googled some shit, we’d be rushing to narrow down the contenders by Sunday afternoon. I mean, there’s Maureen & Joanne from RENT, to start with. And then … um.