‘It Gets Better,’ the Public Service Announcement from the Priscilla Cast and Crew

By PATRICK HEALY -

From left, Will Swenson, Nick Adams & Tony Sheldon in a spot for the It Gets Better Project.

The It Gets Better Project, an online video campaign to cheer up gay teenagers who have been victims of bullies, has joined with the stars of the new Broadway musical “Priscilla Queen of the Desert” to produce the project’s first public service announcement, which will begin airing on Tuesday on the CBS affiliate in the New York region.
In the 30-second spot, the actors Nick Adams, Tony Sheldon, and Will Swenson take turns offering encouraging words — “All the greats were ahead of their time,” Mr. Sheldon says — and urging viewers to sign on to a pledge on the project’s the website. The pledge asks people to spread the message that “everyone deserves to be respected for who they are” and promise to “speak up against hate and intolerance whenever I see it, at school and at work.”
“Priscilla,” which begins preview performances on Monday at Broadway’s Palace Theater, centers on two drag queens and a transsexual whose trek across Australia includes comical moments and performance numbers as well as encounters with prejudice and ignorance (which, for the most part, end on uplifting notes). The show, based on a 1994 film, has had popular runs in Sydney, London, and Toronto.
The marketing team for “Priscilla” proposed the idea of the public service announcement to CBS and the It Gets Better Project, which the writer Dan Savage and his partner Terry Miller began last year amid a spate of suicides by gay students who had faced bullying or harassment at school.
The endeavor includes thousands of videos, both homemade and professionally produced, featuring President Obama and other famous and average Americans telling young gay people that life will get better in adulthood. Dutton will be publishing a book next month containing transcripts of the videos, as well as essays by the writers David Sedaris, Michael Cunningham and others.
While actors and crew members in many Broadway shows have appeared in videos for the project, the “Priscilla” segment is the first public service announcement for It Gets Better, Mr. Savage said in a statement.
“We’ve been honored and humbled by the theater community’s commitment to standing up for tolerance and lending their voices to this vital cause,” he said. “The show ‘Priscilla’ could not be a better fit, thematically, with the message of the It Gets Better Project.”
Watch the spot below:


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