Katherine Rosman

He will slap his palm to his chest.

And in a voice that in real life can only be described as — actually, all the old “gravel” clichés don’t come close so let’s not try — he will growl: “I DON’T PLAY A WOMAN. I AM A WOMAN.”

Then he will sip his diet Coke and launch back into running lines for the monologue he wrote and will star in, about feminist New York lawyer and congresswoman Bella Abzug.

Late last month in a Manhattan Theater Club rehearsal room, he stood before a plywood approximation of the real set: a bathroom of the Summit Hotel in New York City, where, for some 85 minutes, Fierstein will channel Abzug, known for her quotable, take-no-prisoners manner, as she awaited election results from her 1976 bid to become the Democratic candidate for a U.S. Senate seat.

She would lose by less than 1% of the vote to Daniel Patrick Moynihan. (It’s a loss that Fierstein’s script blames on The New York Times. In politics and pop culture, what’s old is new again.)

In “Bella Bella,” which is now in previews and opens Oct. 22 at Manhattan Theater Club’s City Center Stage I, Fierstein speaks as Abzug. But he doesn’t dress the part. While the set is adorned by some makeup, a hanging dress and Abzug’s famous hat, the actor wears black pants and a black shirt.

Still, it’s not without risk for a production to present a male star in what is at its core a one-woman play. Especially one about a woman who had to bob and weave her way through the patriarchy in order to make what since have been regarded as historic civic contributions.

“I am not putting on makeup, I am not putting on a wig, I’m not even a woman pretending to be Bella,” he said in an interview. “What I have to say you can trust because I am not a person here in disguise.”

Facing the play’s director, Kimberly Senior, 46, he recited his lines, in-character as Bella.

“Women are simply more fluid,” he said, eyes wide, hands gesturing and intonation straight out of the Lower East Side. “We adjust. We consider not only the goal ahead but the reality of the ground below our feet. We’re not wedded to the policies of the past because, frankly, we had nothing to do with creating them. We see things men don’t seem to even notice because we aren’t wasting our time defending our masculinity.”

Fierstein, 65, adapted much of the language in the show from Abzug’s speeches and writing. He also interviewed and took editing advice from friends of Abzug’s like Gloria Steinem, who had dropped by rehearsal several days earlier.

In the play, Abzug, who died in 1998, recalls her career leading up to the vote count and thus offers a highlight (or lowlight) reel of mid-20th century American history: Jim Crow and McCarthyism, Kennedy and Nixon, Betty Friedan and Stonewall and beyond.

Fierstein and his director have kept the rehearsal room open to a revolving contingent of female visitors from various professions, generations and backgrounds. “We want to know what resonates with women of different ages,” said Senior, whose credits include directing the Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Disgraced” and, more recently, the campus-set “The Niceties.” “And we want to know what references younger women need to Google.”

Few writers or actors have challenged gender norms in theater like Fierstein, from his breakthrough in “Torch Song Trilogy,” about the offstage life of a gay drag performer, through the books he wrote for the smash musicals “Kinky Boots” and “La Cage Aux Folles.” Most famously, he donned a spangled dress and oversized wig to play the mother and wife Edna Turnblad in “Hairspray.” The role earned him his second acting Tony Award.

But Fierstein is playing Abzug without drag, while still trying to channel her particular brand of womanhood — a combination of intelligence, moxie, Yiddish humor and a savvy understanding of how to maneuver through a sexist power structure.

It was Bella’s daughter, Liz Abzug, who suggested that Fierstein create a play about her mother.

“They share the sense of humor, the intelligence, that ability to charm people,” said Liz, the founder and executive director of the Bella Abzug Leadership Institute. (She actually hoped he would write a musical, but that’s a whole other megillah.)

This was after Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. Fierstein saw an opportunity to highlight the role of a historical woman activist and politician.

Last year, he and Liz started looking for a Bella. First, as a favor to Fierstein, Patti LuPone did a table reading. “She’s got the balls,” Liz Abzug said, joining Senior and Fierstein at the rehearsal space.

LuPone was headed to London to star in “Company,” however; trying to sign her on would prevent them from staging the play before late 2020. “I wanted to do the play now,” Fierstein said.

As he considered other actresses, he realized that Abzug already had begun to re-emerge in pop culture.

He called Bette Midler. She told him she was already playing Abzug in Julie Taymor’s film adaptation of Steinem’s memoir, “My Life on the Road.” He called Kathy Bates. She reminded him she had just played an Abzug-adjacent character in “On the Basis of Sex,” last year’s Ruth Bader Ginsburg biopic.

There was also Kathy Najimy. But she was helping to produce the play, “Gloria: A Life,” in which Abzug was a character.

Early this year, Fierstein turned to his agent, Chris Till of CAA, and asked him to organize two readings at the agency’s offices in the Chrysler Building, and to fill the room with producers, actors and writers.

“Have you been in their conference room?” he asked as he told the story. “When you go there, let me just tell you, steal the notepads. Such nice paper.”

Anyway. In the absence of an actress, Fierstein read the play as Bella.

Calls came in after the reading, with theater producers wanting to stage it if they cast an audience-grabbing female star. A few nonprofit theater producers chimed in and said they’d do it even without a big star.

But at CAA, the audience had responded to Harvey-as-Bella. And the more Fierstein considered playing the role, the more it made sense to him.

“I’m a male writer, writing about this woman, and if I take an actress and make her say my words, in a funny way I’m doing what so many men have done to so many women over the years, turning them into our puppets,” he explained.

But he knew he needed a woman to direct him, and he felt he needed a director who wasn’t already a colleague or a friend: “If I was going to write it and act it, I had to be challenged and have someone who will ask, ‘Is this truthful? Is this real? Is this necessary?’”

Fierstein’s agent set him up to meet Senior for lunch at the Knickerbocker Hotel. Over diet Cokes and Caesar salads, the two talked for hours.

“It was beshert,” he said. (Yiddish: meant to be.)

If he wanted to be challenged, he got his wish in rehearsals. Just days before the play would begin previews, Senior was still prodding him to adjust the script.

Shoeless in socks, standing near hat boxes, Fierstein’s Bella was working through a shpiel: “A year before Watergate, I was calling for the impeachment of Nixon. Without a fact to stand on, I knew this was not a man to be trusted.”

In character, he continued, “It’s hell being surrounded by people so mired in their own beliefs that they cannot admit that I am always right.”

Here, the director called a timeout. “I have a couple questions and thoughts and facts,” Senior said. “Is the writer available?”

Fierstein walked behind the plywood set, grabbed his soda and came back around. Senior explained that she was concerned about Abzug saying she acted in the absence of fact.

“It’s a direct quote,” Fierstein said.

“I don’t want anything in the play that discredits her,” the director answered. “Why does she have to say, ‘Without a fact to stand on?’ I’m listening with my 2019 ears. ‘Fact’ is now a very loaded word. Can you at least put less emphasis on ‘without a fact’?”

Fierstein raised an eyebrow. “Do you want to talk to the writer or do you want to talk to the actor? You can’t have it both ways.”

He changed the line. “Without a tape or a break-in,” it now goes, “I knew that this was not a man to be trusted.”

In the play, Abzug says, “Flexibility, the willingness to let go of a position that is no longer sustainable, is NOT an attribute found in male leadership.”

This article originally appeared in

NEW YORK — Should you meet Harvey Fierstein when he is taking a break from rehearsal of “Bella Bella,” his new one-person show, do not suggest he is playing a woman.

Trust Him: He's Definitely Her

She had signed up for Thursday’s 10 a.m. indoor-cycling fitness class when she learned that Stephen Ross, the chairman of Related Cos., whose principals own majority stakes in SoulCycle and the fitness club chain Equinox, was planning to host a fundraiser at his Hamptons home for President Donald Trump on Friday. Different levels of access will be offered to donors, including a photo with the president for $100,000.

Hall, a stay-at-home mom who lives in Brooklyn and nearby Sag Harbor, New York, is a regular SoulCycle customer who has found inspiration in the brand’s message of sweaty spirituality and community. But she is not a supporter of Trump’s and was alarmed to realize the money she spends at SoulCycle, where 45-minute classes held in the Hamptons cost $42, was profiting a Trump booster who would be hosting the president at his home Friday, just a few miles from her morning ride.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said as class was about to begin. “Part of me feels like a hypocrite for going.”

Briggs Coleman, who lives in West Palm Beach, Florida, and spends summers in the Hamptons, had no such concerns. “I don’t want to hear about politics while I’m working out,” she said. “There is a lack of respect. People should just respect the president,” she said, adding an expletive.

Amid a summer of division and dissent over treatment of migrants, political rhetoric and gun safety, the anger that has roiled 2020 campaign events and social media feeds has landed with a barbell’s thud on the fitness studios, where the well heeled pay for expensive club memberships and boutique classes to release tension and burn fat.

Political fundraisers hosted in the Hamptons by wealthy New Yorkers are an annual August rite. Yet news that Ross is supporting Trump’s reelection efforts was met with a swift outcry on social media, with indoor cyclers and club members vowing to boycott. Both companies have significant customer bases in liberal cities and promote themselves as havens for the LGBT community and stalwarts against bigotry.

Equinox, a fitness club with 100 locations in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada, and SoulCycle, which has 94 studio locations, released statements distancing themselves from Ross. “SoulCycle in no way endorses the political fundraising event being held later this week,” the company said. “Mr. Ross is a passive investor and is not involved in the management of SoulCycle.” Equinox’s statement also referred to Ross as “a passive investor.” It added, “We want to let you to know that Equinox and SoulCycle have nothing to do with the event and do not support it.”

Management is struggling to control the damage. On Wednesday, SoulCycle’s chief talent officer sent an email to instructors providing “talking points” to share with customers. They included, “At SoulCycle, we believe in diversity, inclusion, and equality. All souls are welcome” and “None of the money you spend at SoulCycle will go to this event.”

Meanwhile, people who work for the fitness company are organizing to register their anger. On Thursday, emails from an anonymous Gmail account went out to some Equinox employees calling for a strike. “If we do not show up to work, the clubs can not function,” the email read. “We are the cleaners, the managers, the trainers, the group fitness instructors, the sales reps, the shop salespeople, the spa professions and the gatekeepers. Our collective efforts will have results.”

Inside the 10 a.m. class at the Water Mill studio on Thursday, it was entirely perspiration and no politics. All but a handful of the nearly 70 bikes were occupied by ponytail-wagging, sports bra-wearing riders who had showed up for a workout led by Mireya D’Angelo, one of the company’s most popular instructors. As “Havana” by Camila Cabello and Eminem’s “The Real Slim Shady” blasted in the dark room, the mostly female cyclers swayed and bopped like dancers at a club exclusively for stationary bikers.

Toward the end of the class, the staffers who had been working at the check-in desk skipped in and sashayed across the studio, wielding flashlights and positive attitudes. Many bikers swung hand towels above their heads.

In the parking lot after class, the feel-good endorphins turned to agitated adrenaline as some riders realized a reporter was present. “Are you here to ruin people’s day?” shouted one woman wearing a baseball cap with the word “LOVE” written in rainbow letters. Her friend called out, “I love you, SoulCycle!”

Jared Epstein, who lives in New York City and Water Mill, was circumspect. “All Americans are entitled to their own opinions and their own political views,” he said, calling Ross “a great human being.

“What about the Democrats and the liberals?” he added. “More hate spews from them.”

Evan Johnson, a rising senior at Cornell University who grew up in Sag Harbor and worked as a desk attendant at SoulCycle two summers ago, got out of her mother’s car and asked if she could share her perspective on a SoulCycle investor’s role in a Trump fundraiser. “I’m very upset,” she said. “I feel like it goes against everything they tell people to work toward and all the values they say they promote. I think Mr. Ross should consider his constituency and the base which supports his business.”

Ross, the man whose political fundraising is at the center of this tempest, is a billionaire who owns the Miami Dolphins and has a wide range of business interests anchored by Related Cos., one of the most powerful real estate interests in New York. (Related Cos. retains a majority stake in Equinox, of which SoulCycle is a subsidiary — the holding is divided among the firm’s partners, of which Ross is only one, making him a minority investor.)

Ross issued a statement Wednesday noting that he had known Trump for 40 years. He said he agreed with him on some issues, but “strongly disagreed” on others. He also said he has always “been an active participant in the democratic process.”

Ross has primarily been a donor to Republicans, though he has given to Democrats as well over the years, including Sens. Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Mark Warner of Virginia, as well as Rep. Lois Frankel of Florida.

In 2019, Ross has contributed $150,000, topped by $50,000 to the Republican National Committee and $33,600 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee. In the 2018 midterms, Ross’ largest contributions were $155,000 to the political committees of then-Speaker Paul Ryan and $150,000 to the RNC.

For one anonymous SoulCycler, though, Ross’ political contributions weren’t the only problem. The rider took issue with how the fitness companies responded to the uproar by trying to diminish Ross’ influence.

The cycler attended class because he had paid for it, and thought a boycott would hurt the company employees more than its wealthy investors. “I think they need to get on top of this big time,” said the customer, who declined to be named. “I’ve already paid for a big package of classes, but I’m waiting to see what they do next before I pay for more.”

Boutique fitness classes, perhaps more than other ways people could spend $45 of disposable income on a Thursday morning, are closely tied to people’s identity and sense of community. The routine becomes a part of their lives.

“You’re going to hear people say, ‘Keep politics out of business, keep politics out of exercise.’ But all politics is is principles, and it is values,” said Anne Mahlum, chief executive of Solidcore, a D.C.-based fitness chain that offers Pilates-inspired classes. “So what you are asking people to do is to set aside their values in certain situations, and that’s a tough ask.”

In 2017, Mahlum faced intense criticism after she requested a meeting with Ivanka Trump, who had attended a class using an alias. Mahlum said she wanted to register her concern about Donald Trump’s policies and Ivanka Trump’s involvement in them.

“Discovering something about a company, it's like discovering your boyfriend has been cheating on you for three years,” Mahlum said. “If people didn't know Ross was a Trump supporter, and are now finding out, they have an opportunity to decide how to respond to the new information. If they say ‘This is not OK,’ that's their right. If they say, ‘This doesn't bother me,’ then that's great, too.”

And if customers do decide it’s not OK, New York-area cardio enthusiasts will have an affordable alternative this weekend. The chief executive of the New York Sports Club fitness chain announced his facilities will waive fees for people switching gyms.

Hall, who had struggled with the decision over whether to attend the SoulCycle class, wished afterward that she hadn’t. “I was annoyed no one said anything in the class about what is going on,” she said.

“SoulCycle for me was something that made me feel good. But I think, for the time being, I am done.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/08/us/politics/soulcycle-equinox-boycott.html" id="e87311d5-88bc-3ce5-ad1f-fec67e1719b2">The New York Times</a>.

They Paid $42 for a SoulCycle Ride, Not for Trump

WATER MILL, N.Y. — Dressed in workout clothes, Lulu Hall hovered by the front door of the SoulCycle while fighting back tears.

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Katherine Rosman

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Trust Him: He's Definitely Her

They Paid $42 for a SoulCycle Ride, Not for Trump