Brianna McDonnell takes the Hollywood Fringe Festival stage with a world premiere that’s equal parts bold, brilliant, and long overdue. And there are only two shows left.
If you’ve been following plus size media for any amount of time, Brianna McDonnell is not a new name. She’s the Los Angeles-based performer, creative producer, and founder of The B Word, the media company built on one very clear premise: fat people deserve to see themselves on screen, in editorial fashion, in stories, and on stage. Fully. Without apology.
And now, she’s taking that premise to its most personal and powerful form yet.
Big with a B is McDonnell’s one-woman show, and it is having its world premiere as part of the 2026 Hollywood Fringe Festival. The show is directed by Ken Sawyer, with music direction by Lindsay Aldana. It runs one hour and is rated for audiences ages 10 and up.
The audience has already spoken, and the verdict is unanimous: do not miss this one.
Who Is Brianna McDonnell?
If you need a quick refresher: Brianna McDonnell moved to Los Angeles to pursue musical theater. When she couldn’t find herself in the media she loved, she built her own. The B Word started as a plus size fashion blog and grew into a full media company, producing original content, fashion editorials, and short films covered by Cosmopolitan, Mic, Huffington Post, and yes, right here at The Curvy Fashionista.
We covered her stunning 1970s Laurel Canyon-inspired fashion film back in 2021, a tribute to Mama Cass that showcased exactly the kind of creator Brianna is: someone who doesn’t wait for a seat at the table. She builds the table. She sets it. And then she invites everyone in.
Big with a B is the next chapter. And it might be the most powerful one yet.
What Is Big with a B?
This is a solo musical theater experience, written around and performed entirely by McDonnell herself. Part cabaret, part autobiography, part cultural reckoning. The show traces her personal journey through life in a larger body, the weight the world assigns to the word “big,” and what it actually means to take up space on your own terms.
The origin of the show is as compelling as the show itself. In her own words, posted to Instagram just before the first preview:
“I have not performed on stage in ten years. Tomorrow is our first preview of ‘Big with a B’… I have had a dream of performing a one woman show, maybe my whole life, but I didn’t have it written? I have never done Fringe? I was immediately nervous and then excited about the challenge and electrified by the idea of facing my own fear.”
She closed the post with this:
“This is really a dream come true. Thank you for dreaming big with me. See you at the theatre!”
That context matters. This is not a polished star doing a victory lap. This is a creator who wrote the show, built the production, faced a decade-long absence from the stage, and showed up anyway. Every review in that room has been earned.
Certified reviewer Bellina Logan put it plainly: Brianna is bold, brilliant, and beautiful, praising the show as very fun, heartfelt, and clever, with thoughtful direction from Ken Sawyer.
Certified reviewer Azur Glynn laughed, cried multiple times, and called it a valuable play filled with well curated musical accompaniments. Her message to anyone on the fence? If you have ever felt too little, too much, too big, and had it made you feel small, do yourself a favor and see this play.
That is not polite applause. That is life recognition.
What Happens When You Put That Story on Stage
There is a specific kind of theater that does not just entertain you. It locates you. It finds the part of you that has been waiting to be seen and holds up a mirror. That is what Big with a B is doing to audiences right now, and the proof is in how people are talking about it afterward.
Certified reviewer Logan Allison called it the return to the stage of a fearless performer, saying the show is so earnest it makes you feel like you are sitting listening to a friend. That word, earnest, keeps coming up. Not polished. Not performed. Honest in the way that only someone who has lived the story can be.
The show moves through Brianna’s life chronologically, weaving original songs and familiar Broadway showstoppers into the narrative. Certified reviewer Elizabeth Herron described the experience of watching Ken Sawyer’s direction keep the story flowing beautifully, with the piano and songs working as a perfect mix intermingled with the story. The staging, she noted, uses red velvet curtains, a lighted makeup mirror, a piano, a video screen, and even a couple of candelabras to build Brianna’s world. It is specific. It is theatrical. And it lands.
What the show is actually about, underneath the cabaret staging and the music, is the weight of two words: fat and normal. Certified reviewer Elizabeth Herron said those two words carry so much weight, both literally and figuratively, and that Brianna delivers a heartwarming story of growing up surrounded by them, sharing her journey from childhood to the present, from the high numbers on the scale to her pursuit of acting and musical theater, all the way to a closing rendition of ABBA that had the audience in tears.
That last detail matters. This is a show that makes you laugh and then catches you off guard with how much it moves you. Certified reviewer Dona Rice called it a journey audiences were not expecting, one that brought laughs, tears, and relatability for days. And certified reviewer Jennifer Lynn said Brianna’s powerful stage presence, voice, and comedic timing make the show relatable to anyone who has ever felt less than, or been told they are too much.
That is the through line. Not just plus size women. Not just fat people. Anyone who has ever been made to feel like they were the wrong size, in any sense of that phrase.
Certified reviewer Julia Haimowitz, who saw the show as a musical theater lover, said her only critique was that she wished she could have heard the songs in full. The festival format required cuts. The audience wanted more. That is the best possible problem a show can have.
And certified reviewer Nathaniel Dolquist, who caught an early preview, said simply: it is amazing to see what a multi-hyphenate like Brianna can create for a festival like this.
A multi-hyphenate who wrote it, stars in it, and built the production company behind it. That is the part that does not get said enough. Brianna McDonnell did not wait for this show to be greenlit. She made it exist.
Why This Matters Right Now
We are in a cultural moment where plus size representation is simultaneously more visible and more under threat than it has ever been. There is more plus size presence in fashion campaigns than a decade ago. There is also a renewed cultural obsession with thinness, weight loss drugs marketed as solutions to the so-called problem of existing in a larger body, and an entertainment industry that still too often treats fat women as punchlines or cautionary tales.
Big with a B lands right in the middle of all of that and refuses to play along. This is a show rooted in the full experience of being a woman in a larger body navigating the world, the fashion industry, the entertainment industry, and her own identity. That is not a small thing to put on stage. That is an act of creative resistance dressed up as cabaret.
And the audience is feeling every second of it.
Two Shows Left. Get Your Tickets.
Big with a B plays its final two performances at The Cats Crawl (Main Space), 660 N Heliotrope Dr., Los Angeles, CA 90004.
Saturday, June 20, 2026 at 4:30 PM
Sunday, June 28, 2026 at 12:00 PM
Grab your tickets at hollywoodfringe.org/projects/13892 and learn more about Brianna McDonnell and The B Word at thebwordblog.com.
Two shows. One stage. Go.
