Pickerington North senior Christian Strong had to do a lot more than just learn his lines for his role as drag performer Lola in Kinky Boots. He also spent countless hours listening to the show tunes on repeat, learning to walk in heels, practicing the choreography and learning how to apply drag-style makeup.
Christian Strong headshot
Christian Strong, a senior at Pickerington North
The entire North theater department’s hard work paid off. The team took home the 2022-23 CAPA Marquee Award for Best Musical Production for Kinky Boots, North theater director Allen DeCarlo-Boyd received the award for Best Direction and Strong’s classmate Bennett Ladowitz won Best Actor in a Supporting Role. Thanks to his dedication to the role, Strong received the 2023 CAPA Marquee Award for best leading actor, a surreal experience for the young actor.
“I was so happy that I made my friends proud and I did my school proud. So yeah, it was just very life-changing experience and it’s something I will never forget,” he says.
Strong was also nominated for The National High School Musical Theatre Awards (NHSMTA), otherwise known as the Jimmy Awards, for 2023 best performing actor.
After his nomination, Strong spent a week in New York being mentored by Broadway performers until the awards ceremony performance at the Minskoff Theatre in Times Square. There he placed eighth out of nearly 100 other nominees from across the country.
Starting Strong
Strong started his high school theater career in eighth grade with North’s production of Once on This Island, inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid.
“It really just made everything pretty much click in my head that that’s what I wanted to do,” Strong says.
When Strong was cast as Lola in Kinky Boots as a junior, he started studying the role religiously. Like any good actor, he wanted to find a way to relate to his character so that jumping into the mindset of Lola would be smoother. Thankfully, Strong found it easy to find similarities with the character.
“I really wanted to focus on not only her essence but her place of vulnerability and it was so great that I got to play a role that I connected so deeply with,” Strong says.
As someone who hasn’t always felt accepted, Strong says he was able to connect to Lola using his own experiences and personality. Like Lola, Strong says he finds confidence through performing. Lola is a loud and eccentric character, which Strong says he sees in himself when he’s comfortable, but when Lola is out of drag as Simon, confidence is harder to come by.
“There are a lot of experiences that I’ve had in my life where I don’t always feel accepted and loved,” Strong says. “Lola, she comes out very confident, but on the inside, she’s not as confident … when she isn’t in drag, when she’s Simon, she is very insecure, she doesn’t feel safe.”
Respect and Representation
As a gay Black man, Strong says he doesn’t always feel accepted for who he is. He says the directors at North go out of their way to give him space to thrive and be himself.
“They also know me, they know who I am. I don’t have to try as hard, I don’t have to be someone I’m not. I can just be my authentic self,” Strong says.
Even so, Strong says the lack of proper representation in theater weighs on him. Strong feels that an actor who doesn’t have the lived experience as a member of the LGBTQ+ community or being a Black man can’t always do the character justice, and may rely on stereotypes and tropes.
Christian Strong as Lola pickerington North ss
Strong performing as Lola, a role that won him a Marquee award for best actor.
“It’s really offensive to me when there are people who played those kinds of roles and they play as a stereotypical gay man. It’s frustrating for me because that’s not who we are, there’s so much more complexities,” he says.
Being a minority, many people may not understand his identity or unique perspective, but Strong says he won’t let it dictate how he carries himself and the decisions he makes.
“I am my own person, I get to decide who I am and the boundaries that people have put on the queer community and the Black community,” Strong says. “It’s not something that I’m going to live with it, it’s not something that I’m going to do; I’m going to be my own person at the end of the day.”
Funding For the Future
Strong plans to continue his theater career after graduating from North by earning a theater degree. He hopes that one day high school theater programs will be just as popular and financially supported as the athletic programs.
“But at the end of the day, it’s hard because we’re our own organization, we only have each other – which is great, because we are very formidable,” Strong says. “But at the same time, theater, we need support, and the arts need support.”
Maisie Fitzmaurice is an assistant editor at CityScene Media Group. Feedback welcome at feedback@cityscenemediagroup.com.
