New Site, Who Dis?

Hi, everyone!

Brand new website, brand new format. Cleaner format, I’d say - but maybe you disagree? Oh well.

I was encouraged by a colleague to change websites and I figured post-pandemic (we’re not really post-pandemic yet, I argue - not until the world is protected from this rampant virus despite our privilege of receiving vaccines and complying earlier than everyone else), it was time for a massive change.

Shortly before the pandemic that shut down everything when it began in March of 2019, I decided to go on a self-imposed artistic break. I was growing unhappy with doing theatre. Production reviews were disappointing. Younger queer folx were blown by my work; older cis-white-men/women lashed out against me with harsh words. Staged readings and residencies fell through. Artistic directors quashed my dramaturgical efforts, despite my best intentions. I’d legitimately hurt collaborators and friends in the rehearsal room. And thus, the words exited my mouth during therapy: “I think I’m going to leave theatre.”

It was drama, I tell you.

Luckily, one of my mentors, Megan Gogerty, called me and talked me off that creative ledge. Sure, she compared me to Taylor Swift, but I didn’t have to be Taylor Swift. Ultimately, you’re an artist no matter who, what, when, where, why and how you decide to go. Yeah… “how you decide to go” sounds a little morbid, but don’t worry - this ends sorta well.

My New Year’s Resolution was to take one solid break from theatre. Unless I had a pre-scheduled gig or work being developed (like Take Care at Teatro Vivo), I decided: No new works. No submissions. No dramaturgical gigs. A solid break to pursue other things - things like learning guitar, songwriting, novel writing, video games, learning to sing new songs for karaoke. No. Theatre. No touchy.

And then, of course, the pandemic hit. And suddenly, nearly every theatre artist was taking a break, but not of their own volition. And stuck on the Nets, we started seeing shifts - protests, call-outs, revelations, educations, such shifts that I hope to see grow as we come out of the pandemic and demand better of America that aren’t lip service or power plays back to “the way things were”. Because fuck the ways things were. They weren’t working.

And I realized the way I was working was unsustainable. Sure, I hustled, but to what end? So people could like me? To fit my art into something palatable for white audiences? To submit myself to institutions who wouldn’t truly honor the weird, yet difficult work I was doing? To impress folx and compete with my own peers on social media platforms? Sell my soul to the devils wanting the biggest, baddest, bestest, hottest playwright around? No. I resolved to do my art in my own way this time around. I learned to put worth in what I was doing. Sure, my playwriting is strange. Ambitious. Impossible, even. But it’s what I do. It’s the challenge I want to work out with my collaborators and make a play a world an audience may have never seen. Maybe a play belongs on Zoom. Maybe entirely on stage. Maybe a mix - I like the idea of hybrid staging model. Heck, it’s the theatre work I was raised on - theatre by all impossible standards. Lorca, Beckett, Churchill, Fornés - we laud them, revere the worlds of them, but God forbid any other playwright attempt what they do. (And my professor, Dare Clubb, was right: Art is always in a state of failure. We can never truly succeed in capturing the world as it is, or as it wants to be. That’s the beauty of Beckett, and it’s the beauty of theatre - of any creative art, really.)

It also turned out there was way more going on with my body than I thought. Now that I was working remotely, I had time to attend doctor’s appointments I’d neglected, finding revelations that I make no secrets about. I was formally diagnosed with Bipolar (II) Disorder and am now managing my medications. My medications, of course, have made me lose my memory; once photograph-sharp, now a continuous loss for words and keys that I take multivitamins to resolve, if only partially. I thought I was going deaf during the pandemic; it was hard to focus on what folx were saying and I misinterpreted much. Turns out I wasn’t deaf, but I discovered that I had an auditory processing disorder requiring me to return to my five-year-old self: Taking a notebook with me wherever I go to notate instructions or capture ideas. I also have to make sure no other sounds or overwhelming stimuli distract my brain from receiving information from someone. Naturally, it makes conversations at bars and crowded spaces very difficult. But compared to the other health concerns everyone else was experiencing? I was lucky.

And lucky I was with all the time the pandemic gave me. I wrote six chapters of a novel, just for funsies. They weren’t bad, I thought. I’ll revisit them soon. I have ideas for a new play and a new solo work. I’m still writing more songs that I hope to record with better production resources. I’ve grown into a job that I really like. I’ve cemented a chosen family here in Chicago. And all that focus on myself begot opportunities out of the blue. I got to rewrite a play that I loved and didn’t quite have the maturity or time in grad school, and I got to develop it with a company I’ve always loved (The New Colony) with collaborators I’ve always dreamed of working with and the one director who’s always had my back and has been my telepath in a rehearsal room (Marina Bergenstock). I accepted a paid gig out of Phoenix, Arizona to dramaturg a play about gay-Latinx relationship issues that I personally related to and felt the need to bring out the best as much as I could with a playwright who’s a real talent. These and more, and all opportunities within my interests and accepted without need to do so, but tremendous desire to do so. I’m not doing it for the connections, though they’re great and always appreciated. I’m doing it for the work. I’m doing it because I love theatre - not for the business or the schmoozing or the institutional Grey’s Anatomy “pick me, choose me, love me” desperation that constructs fame that so often lets us down in the middle. But to create great fucking art with people I love and respect.

Oh: And I adopted a cat.

His name is Lewis.

Scared of thunderstorms, loves hiding under blankets, repeated sinus infections, a vocal communicator, a cuddler. He is very much my cat-son.