When Ali Stroker became the first performer in a wheelchair to ever win a Tony Award on June 9, she was overjoyed that her years of perseverance were finally paying off.
She was also pleased that she was removing barriers for people with disabilities. Ali Stroker participated in the second season of The Glee Project before making a brief appearance on Glee in 2013.
For her performance in Oklahoma, she received the 2019 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical! In the 2015 production of Spring Awakening by the Deaf West Theatre, she portrayed Anna.
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Ali Stroker Paralyzed And Accident Details
When Ali Stroker was two years old, she and her brother were both injured in a car accident, which left Ali unable to move below the waist. She is unable to walk. Thus, she uses a wheelchair.
Stroker became the first actor to receive a Fine Arts degree from the Tisch Drama Department of New York University in 2009.
After graduating from high school, she joined NYU’s acting program, where she claimed to have found her passion despite the city’s occasionally extreme hostility toward people in wheelchairs.
When she was the first cast as Ado Annie in Oklahoma, a wheelchair user couldn’t enter the Circle in the Square theater.
She asserts that her partner, theater director, and actor David Perlow, had to carry her up the stairs and around the stage area to figure out how she would move around. However, she outperformed any challenges she encountered with her performance.
What Happened To Ali Stroker?
The bubbly Ali Stroker, a New Jersey native, is winning praise for her portrayal as flirty Ado Annie. She utilized a wheelchair in the revival of Rogers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! since a car accident left her paralyzed from the chest when she was two years old.
She credits her close-knit family for giving her a good childhood. However, there were inescapable physical limitations for recreational or sporting activity.
But when she was 7 years old, she learned that she could perform acting and singing just as well as everyone else. She remembers that her first on-stage appearance was in a backyard play produced by a close friend and neighbor.
2016’s Women Who Care awards dinner, which benefited United Cerebral Palsy of New York City, was co-chaired by Stroker. She is a founding member of the anti-bullying movement Be More Heroic, which annually engages with tens of thousands of children as it tours the country.
She went to South Africa with ARTS InsideOut, where she taught moms and kids who AIDS theater workshops and classes had afflicted.
Ali Stroker Husband
Ali Stroker and her husband, Perlow, exchanged wedding vows in July 2021.
While performing in “Spring Awakening” at the Deaf West Theater revival in 2015, the couple became acquainted for the first time. In college, they had already met. On Saturday, Ali Stroker and David Perlow announced the birth of their first child.
David Perlow was an associate and assistant director on Broadway shows such as Once On This Island, Blackbird, The Humans, and Casa Valentina. He has participated in the theatre versions of La Cage aux Folles and Wicked.
Perlow has worked with the theatrical programs at the University of Texas at Austin, the NYU Tisch School of the Arts, and other institutions in his capacity as a teacher. The Actor’s Gym and the Attention Theatre help actors with disabilities get onstage.
