by Trevor Linn, who lately graduated together with his MA in Faith in Tradition from the College of Alabama.
During the last two years, theater children, arts bloggers, and influencers alike have been anticipating the soon-to-be-filmed six-time Tony-nominated, six-time Lawrence Olivier nominated, and winner of Greatest-Unique Rating (Music and Lyrics) on the 2022 Tony Awards, SIX. On July 1st, 2025, on the Vaudeville Theater, the unique West Finish solid will reprise their roles of King Henry VIII’s wives: Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anna of Cleves, Katherine Howard, and Catherine Parr for a proshot (a dwell filming of the on-stage present) that can then be out there to observe in theaters and stream world wide.
Like many award-winning musicals of the final decade, together with Hamilton, Come From Away, and Anastasia, SIX has used the stage to retell and reimagine a well-known story from historical past. On this London and Broadway smash hit, King Henry VIII’s six wives return to inform their sides of their tales, which they imagine have unfairly been diminished to the easy and well-known rhyme, “divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.” Alongside the best way, via iconic costumes and an prompt Billboard top-charting album, they not solely retell us this piece of historical past however reimagine their tales and identities via their very own strong-willed and female-empowered voices upon their chant that “historical past’s about to be overthrown!”[i]
Alt-text: SIX The Musical tony awards efficiency of Ex-Wives and Six mashup.
In SIX, our queens turn out to be the historians of their present—and their lives—and select to reinterpret the occasions and folks of their lives to go well with their very own targets. Thus, all through the queen’s eighty minutes on stage, the present’s plot does slightly rewriting of historical past—or, because the queens now check with it, as herstory—with a purpose to give a brand new voice to certainly one of historical past’s most well-known serial husbands. Nonetheless, their new interpretations increase the query: was their historical past not already rewritten and reinterpreted the primary time they had been recorded? Isn’t Henry’s tales of his wives already a reinterpretation of their lives? Reinterpretations of those girls’s lives appears to go all the best way again to their time on the throne. On the floor, SIX offers its viewers a enjoyable reinterpretation of a widely known historic second, however when checked out as a discursive software, it begins to inform us extra concerning the present socio-political and cultural attitudes of the viewers than it does of King Henry’s wives.
As historical past, SIX tells the tales of King Henry VIII’s wives by gathering the six wives collectively for a pop music competitors revolving round deciding who suffered essentially the most of their marriage to King Henry VIII. These depictions are heard in songs like “No Means,” “Don’t Lose Ur Head,” and “All You Wanna Do” wherein every queen explains her tragic story, similar to Catherine of Aragon not offering an inheritor and being advised she was going to be divorced and despatched to a convent, Anne Boleyn being pressured to dwell with divorcee Catherine of Aragon after which getting beheaded, and Katherine Howard being lonely and uncared for by King Henry after which additionally getting beheaded. This telling of the queen’s tales although is surrounded by the ideas, biases, and tradition of the recorders of the queen’s authentic histories, King Henry VIII. For them, residing in Tutor period England among the many royal and noble courses, their surrounding tradition was certainly one of royal lineage, and {that a} queen’s utmost responsibility is to supply an inheritor to the throne. Therefore, the tales of their lives had been written via the particular historic framing wherein their roles had been fastened right into a historical past wherein they weren’t the principle character—a realization which causes the characters to lastly reinterpret their tales and picture their lives past Henry. However, when considering deeper about SIX as a spot of historic discourse, a brand new manufacturing takes heart stage.
In desirous about how these queens overthrow their husbands’ story for his or her captive audiences, we will start to see the delicate floor of historical past and historic narratives—and it is a delicate floor that the queens haven’t any drawback shattering with their nonstop choreography. Students similar to Kucku von Stuckrad and Hayden White each handle the truth that historical past shouldn’t be one stable line of previous occasions that present historians recite in books, lecture rooms, or on stage and display. von Stuckrad states, “Historic that means is at all times ascribed and generated, a means of meaning-making,” [ii] and White agrees, “Each narrative, nevertheless seemingly ‘full,’ is constructed primarily based on a set of occasions that may have been included however had been unnoticed.”[iii] Thus, historical past turns into a discursive software to investigate our present second via investigations into the previous. Whereas SIX seems to ask us to step again into the 16th century to study these girls’s lives, it’s truly asking its viewers to mirror on their very own cultural second.
One of many most important causes this present grew to become such an prompt hit was that it didn’t simply retell a widely known piece of historical past, it did so in a approach that recentered the ladies. As girls right this moment proceed to battle in opposition to gender inequality within the office, authorized rights, and parental expectations, SIX ends with a narrative of ladies coming ahead to reclaim their very own narrative and to name out the unjust and unfair remedy of them by the tradition of Tutor period England and their ex-husband. Thus, SIX turns into not only a retelling, however a commentary and reflection of the viewers’s present socio-cultural place of ladies’s rights and gender equality, which has been a hot-button subject because the present was developed and produced in 2019.[iv] The writing of their tales showcases what essential historic students have defined concerning the historic file, which is that it’s at all times concerning the messages and beliefs that the writers of historical past see as vital.[v] Due to this fact, SIX, not like the queen’s ear-catching lyrics that specify that their aspect of the story will lastly be revealed, exhibits that it too is one other replica of present-day peoples and occasions wrapped within the lyrics of “the previous.” For herstory isn’t only a recitation of previous peoples and occasions however is at all times a reimaging of right this moment by our herstorians.
Picture Credit: Picture of SIX on the Lyric Theatre by Ottoch, Public Area
[i] Studio Forged Recording, “Ex-Wives,” 2018.
[ii] von Stuckrad, “Historic Discourse Evaluation,” 79.
[iii] White, “The Content material of Type,” 10.
[iv] Sudhakar, “SIX: The Musical: Feminist Assume Piece or Floor-Stage Enjoyable?”.
[v] von Stuckrad, “Historic Discourse Evaluation,” 77.
