A Year Ago, She Was Leaving the Business. Now She’s Starring in ‘Six’ on Broadway
How the role of Anne Boleyn changed Andrea Macasaet’s life
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Six is presented as a concert-cum-competition during which each spouse sings about her suffering, with the most tormented queen crowned the group’s lead singer. Considering their fates—“divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived”—they’ve got a lot to croon about. The score features powerful group numbers alongside showstopping solos, with the characters evoking a constellation of pop stars. Beyoncé, Adele, Ariana Grande and Nicki Minaj are some of the divas reflected in the songs and aesthetics.
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Macasaet’s Anne Boleyn shares her story of woe through the cheekily titled number “Don’t Lose Ur Head.” With each chorus of “sorry, not sorry,” she recalls the chaos that ensued after Henry left his first wife and broke with the Catholic Church to marry her; just three years later he accused Anne Boleyn of treason and had her beheaded.
Since Anne Boleyn has been the subject of numerous films and books, she’s arguably Henry’s highest profile wife. Macasaet loves that the way the character is written in Six challenges preexisting notions.
“She is the queen that everybody knows, and there’s this expectation of who she might be,” Macasaet says. “She’s this big historical figure and she was made out to be a witch and manipulative, and we wanted to take all of that and flip the narrative. What if it wasn’t like that? What if Anne was just go with the flow and kind of landed where she was? What does that look like from a woman’s perspective, being open to opportunities and then being judged a certain way because she was so bold and outgoing?”
While studying Anne Boleyn, Macasaet grew to appreciate the depth of her personality, her cunning and her strength. “She was well educated, she learned about fashion, she knew about music,” Macasaet says. “She was smart and she was quirky, and she knew how to carry conversation. When she clocked that Henry wasn’t happy with her anymore, she tried to cover her bases. In protecting herself, it ended badly for her—but you do that now [stand up for yourself] as a woman and it’s life-changing. We get to showcase her in a light that celebrates her fierceness and boldness.”
Audiences, especially young ones, are clearly enthralled by all the girl power on stage. In addition to being tagged in fan art and emulated in TikTok videos, Macasaet often spies cosplayers dressed as her character. At one performance at American Repertory Theater in Massachusetts, she saw three different Anne Boleyns in the house.
“They go crazy, and it’s so fun,” she says. “I love what these people come up with. It’s mind-blowing.”
She suspects part of the appeal is Six‘s diverse cast: a half dozen women of various backgrounds and body types. “You have queens of different sizes and shapes and heights and colors,” Macasaet says, so fans can “find themselves represented in each of us. I think that’s what’s inspiring about this queendom—there isn’t just one type of person who can play a queen. We’re every woman.”
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Carey Purcell writes about pop culture and politics for Vanity Fair, Politico and other publications, and blogs at CareyPurcell.com. She recently published her first book: From Aphra Behn to Fun Home: A Cultural History of Feminist Theater.
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Carey Purcell writes about pop culture and politics for Vanity Fair, Politico and other publications. In 2019, she published her first book: From Aphra Behn to Fun Home: A Cultural History of Feminist Theater.