Ali Stroker becomes first person in a wheelchair to win a Tony Award

Stroker rewarded for role in Oklahoma!

Ali Stroker accepts the Tony Award for best performance by an actress in a featured role in a musical at Radio City Music Hall on 9 June, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images for Tony Awards Productions)

Ali Stroker has become the first person in a wheelchair to ever win a Tony Award.

Stroker, 31, won the award for best featured actress in a musical on Sunday night for her role as Ado Annie in the acclaimed, edgy revival of Oklahoma!.

The performer is paralysed from the chest down due to a car crash when she was two.

She booked her first musical theatre gig at the age of seven, when she was cast as the title role in Annie in a friend’s backyard production in a New Jersey beach town.

When she sang, she says she “felt so free”.

After graduating from New York University, Stroker was in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey, as well as The Glee Project and Glee on TV.

Stroker made her Broadway debut in a revival of Spring Awakening in 2015, becoming the first Broadway actor who uses a wheelchair.

She dedicated her win on Sunday to every child who has a disability and has been waiting to see themselves represented in theatre.

The 31-year-old has said she believes it’s high time disabled people are represented on stages and sound stages authentically, noting that one in five Americans lives with a disability.

Additional reporting by agencies