Evil rights are a long-standing injustice of the musical

I grew up loving both Evil And The Wizard of Ozbut my love for the stage adaptation of has really blossomed Evil not too long after it opened on Broadway in 2003.

I immersed myself in this beautiful world and, being disabled myself, enjoyed the fact that my favorite musical, Nessarose, featured a character just like me.

What I realized much later is that while from the outside the musical is revolutionary because it has a disabled character in the lead role, they did themselves a disservice by missing a detail – a detail that that has become increasingly important these days: inaccurate casting.

In the 21 years that Evil has been playing on stages around the world, there has never been a disabled actor to play the one disabled character.

Of course, this applies until the film adaptation. For the first time in all his years Evil had cast Nessarose accurately by casting the incredibly talented Marissa Bode, an actress who is disabled and uses a wheelchair, similar to Nessarose’s character.

To so many, this may seem like a minor detail. How could the choice of casting make such a big difference in the portrayal of a character that has been handcrafted and portrayed in hundreds of ways around the world?

Well, if you’re lucky enough to be able to see both the stage show and the film, it all becomes startlingly clear to you. Rarely have I recognized the importance and necessity of casting in such a way that authentic narratives come through as clearly and as clearly as I did with Nessarose in the film adaptation.

Because who can portray us, disabled people, more authentically and accurately than disabled people themselves?

There were so many things in the film adaptation that deviated from the people of Oz’s perspective on disability in the best way possible – some were obvious, others were important to keep in mind.

But regardless of whether you were keeping a close eye on the differences, whether you were unintentionally aware of them, or whether you were unaware at all, the tone of conversations about disability had changed dramatically in some ways that I saw as a positive result .

One of the biggest noticeable differences was how the ensemble addressed the issue of disability. In a way that was very different from the stage production, there was a clear attempt to move away from the idea that being disabled meant being broken and that having a disability meant being something that needed to be fixed.

Something that was very close to my heart and that also seemed to be amplified a bit in the film adaptation was the focus on the infantilization and tokenization of Nessarose, two things that many disabled people are unfortunately very used to.

I know I felt deeply for Nessarose’s frustration when people focused on her instead of talking to her; when people asked questions about her to people who weren’t her.

It showed how stressful it is to be treated as inferior as a child just because of your differences. Evil manages to show this in two ways – with Nessarose and her disability, of course, but also with Elphaba and her greenness.

The message was loud and clear: your differences do not make you unworthy of being treated as a human being. That’s a message that needs to be heard more and more these days, whether you relate more to Nessarose, Elphaba, or even Glinda.

Evilthe character of Nessarose and the precise casting have the potential to be a game-changer for other disabled actors – people who have been rejected or pushed aside because disability and conformity on film sets are far too often viewed as “too much.”

While Nessarose’s previous portrayals have been brilliantly executed by such talented individuals, there is something so deeply real and raw about watching this character come to life by someone who probably empathizes with the character he is playing and can really recognize myself in her.

This realism, the honesty of this specific portrayal proves exactly why it’s high time disabled people were allowed to tell their own stories, and I really hope so Evil will simply be one of the first major blockbuster films of many to bring this movement and change to the forefront of the media and casting process.

It makes me so happy that this adaptation will hopefully draw attention to the importance of accurate casting that allows young children with disabilities to see themselves not only on screen but off screen as well.

We can be actors, writers, producers, directors. We can be anything we want to be and that is something truly magical. Evil proved exactly that.

After all, Marissa Bode said, “You don’t have to be fixed, but you can be powerful.”

Evil is now available in cinemas.