New Theatre Magazine 1.1 // Autumn 2018 : Pilot Issue

1.1 // AUTUMN 2018 : PILOT ISSUE

An independent theatre magazine for a new era.

Th e No n- bin ar y Mo no lo gu es Pr oj ec t

ROU NDT ABL E: The Relevance of Ethnic Theat re

BOOK REVIEWS: Hag-Seed, The Magic of Light Overhea rd in the theatre sh ow us yo ur bo ot hs !

& MORE

PLAYS by Elaine Romero Micki Shelton Brian Dang Hannah Merrill Jasmine Lomax p. 33

Our Manifesto An independent theatre magazine for a new era.

New Theatre Magazine and Publishing uses the power of media and journalism to normalize inclusivity in theatre by bringing underrepresented and marginalized voices to the forefront of storytelling.

Our magazine is for theatre makers, artists, technicians, lovers, and goers.

Fun Facts

We seek artists who believe in magic.

New Theatre Magazine was founded on October 26, 2017

We believe theatre is among the most powerful art form

New Theatre Publishing became an entity on May 1, 2018

tools for social change, and seek creators who believe the same.

We seek storytellers who aim to examine, challenge, disrupt, and transform the status quo through their work, especially people of color, women, queer, trans, non-binary, neurodiverse, and disabled storytellers.

We believe authenticity is the only valid form of social currency.

We aim to illuminate the conversations and work happening in local and regional theatre spaces around the nation and the globe.

We want to hear personal stories about the transformative power of the performing arts.

“Hello Everyone! I’m a theatre

artist with a background in design and marketing.

I’m on a mission to create a brand new independent […] theatre magazine because I know so many folks with so many interesting and important stories to tell. I’m currently seeking submissions for a pilot issue […] email me if you’re interested! ” - Kathryn Lynn Morgen Facebook, October 26, 2017

C ov er P h o t o 1.1 // AUTUMN 2018 PILOT ISSUE

On the set of Dead Man’s Cell Phone Whidbey Island Center for the Arts October 2015

by Kathryn Lynn Morgen

S TA F F Publisher-in-Chief Kathryn Lynn Morgen Head Editor Julieta Vitullo Copy Editor Madison Parrotta Design Editor Morgan Bondelid

C O N T R IB U T O R S Rose Cano Grace Carmack Max Cole-Takanikos Anthony ‘CozCon’ Conover Valerie Curtis-Newton Brian Dang Merridawn Duckler Marcus Gorman Kathy Hsieh Hadley Kamminga-Peck Jasmine Lomax

“ …I can’t find my light.”

Hannah Merrill Michael Morgen Elaine Romero Micki Shelton Ayla Sullivan Brittany Alyse Willis Woodzick

©2018 New Theatre Publishing, LLC PO Box 2985 Bellingham, WA 98225 www.newtheatrepublishing.com @newtheatrepublishing @newtheatremagazine

Bellingham, WAshington Land Acknowledgement We acknowledge that we are operating our business on land that is the traditional territory of the Lummi and Nooksack Peoples. Their presence is imbued in these mountains, valleys, waterways, and shorelines. May we nurture our relationship with our Coast Salish neighbors, and the shared responsibilities to their homelands where we all reside today.

SPECIAL THANKS Robert & Catherine Brooks, Sue Taves Shawn Van Dyken, Lionel Thompson Celia Black, Island Shakespeare Festival Whidbey Children’s Theatre

ADVERTISING See page 76 SUBMISSIONS See page 77

3

EDITORS’ LETTER EDITORS’ LETTER What does it mean to invest in culture when the world trends seem to be singularly focused on maximizing profits at the expense of all life?

It all certainly seemed like an impossible dream when a year ago we embarked on this adventure: a new independent magazine for theatre artists to share their craft and their struggles; an outlet in which opening the doors to traditionally underrepresented voices isn’t an afterthought but a cornerstone; a community of artists whose creative process mirrors that of the collaborative discipline they are giving voice to; a space where equity, diversity and inclusion aren’t buzzwords to maintain an image in front of stakeholders, or boxes to be checked so that funding can be approved, but are the seeds to generate a better, richer, and perhaps more layered and interesting reality.

Our voices, our sounds and our scripts are our weapons against shortlived interactions and short attention spans. Our bodies, our colors, our textures, our lighting, our sets are our antidote to the crudities and cruelties, the amoralities and mediocrities of our times. Our stage becomes the even field of play from which our scripts morph an otherwise harsh reality into a refuge where—as the pieces in this volume have it—dancing, hot springs, handwritten notes, éclairs, and friends who are always there for us expand the limits of our imagined possibilities.

This magazine is the living place where all of these elements converge to make the world a better place.

Julieta Vitullo

Head Editor

&

Kathryn Lynn Morgen Publisher-in-Chief

Theatre

magazine 1.1 // AUTUMN 2018

PILOT ISSUE

Table of Con ten t s Overheard in the Theatre

7

BOOK REVIEW Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood

9

The NON-BINARY MONOLOGUES PROJECT Interviewing Woodzick Interviewing Writers

10

ROUNDTABLE 16 The Relevance of Producing Ethnic Theatre What’s in Your Rehearsal Bag? / Show Us Your Booths!

30

BOOK REVIEW The Magic of Light by Jean Rosenthal

31

P L AY S & P l ay w r i g h t s

33

Jitterbug by Micki Shelton

34

I Lost My Heart Searching for the Gooseman by Brian Dang

40

The Sign by Jasmine Lomax

48

Flowers in the Desert by Hannah Merrill

56

Our Bodies, Yourselves by Elaine Romero

66

BECHDEL TEST 74 Does a Latina Playwright Need Permission to Write about Women’s Bodies?

Advertising 76 Submissions 77 Contributors 78 Credits 79

5

PATH WITH ART

TRANSFORMS THE LIVES OF ADULTS RECOVERING FROM HOMELESSNESS, ADDICTION, AND OTHER TRAUMA

BY HARNESSING THE POWER OF CREATIVE ENGAGEMENT AS A BRIDGE TO COMMUNITY AND A PATH TO STABILITY.

WE ENVISION A WORLD WHERE THE POWER OF ARTS ENGAGEMENT IS AVAILABLE FOR ALL. FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT WWW.PATHWITHART.ORG 312 2ND AVE SOUTH SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

Want to use your artist identity to foster healing in your community ?

Become a First Aid Arts Responder or Group Facilitator by registering for an upcoming training today!

First Aid Arts trainings equip artists, lay care providers, and mental health professionals with the multimodal arts-based tools and education necessary to provide meaningful psychological and social support to communities impacted by trauma.

FIRST AID FOR THE HEART USING THE ARTS

JOIN US w w w. f i r s t a i d a r t s . o r g

The Inception of Shakespeare Review by Hadley Kamminga-Peck

How does one adapt Shakespeare’s most theatrical and meta-theatrical play to the page? Margaret Atwood answers the question admirably in Hag-Seed by writing a plot that centers on an unusual production of the play, mimicking it at the same time. The doubled and occasionally tripled employment of devices and characters from The Tempest makes for a novel rich in texture, meaning, and intrigue. Atwood moves the action of the play from an island in the Mediterranean to a forgotten corner of Canada; Prospero is now Felix Phillips, a deposed Artistic Director of the Makeshiweg Theatre Festival who exiles himself and is reborn as “Mr. Duke.” His one dream is to realize his aborted production of The Tempest, and as he grows in resentment, he seeks out the relationship between himself and Prospero, whom he would have played.

Felix is given his chance to enact revenge through a prison education program, a literal manifestation of Prospero’s island prison, which also provides an exploration of the play’s continued political applications.

Atwood fills the play with characters derived from The Tempest: Felix is haunted by the ghost of his daughter who died in childhood, Miranda, though she often functions as Ariel. Antonio manifests as Tony, the upstart assistant, while Lonnie Gordon, a benevolent Chair of the Board, fills Gonzalo’s shoes.

Felix himself seems to alternate between Prospero and Caliban, highlighting how much similarity exists between the two, and how “this thing of darkness” is as much within Prospero as Caliban.

The characters are revisited within the prison’s tenants, who also play them in the production, creating a telescopic and multi-faceted interpretation.

Where Atwood demonstrates her panache is in the self-awareness of her writing, embodying Shakespeare’s presence within his play. Towards the end of the story, one of the prisoners reminds Felix that he had said there was a prison in the play that the prisoners hadn’t yet found. Felix responds by pointing to the Epilogue, “But release me from my bands/With the help of your good hands…Let your indulgence set me free.” He points out “…the ninth prison is the play itself ” (282). Atwood writes a story that is a prison for the characters, she sets it in a prison, and explores the mental prisons we create for ourselves when we let the past haunt us. She uses the literal prisoners to examine and dispel the metaphorical prisons Shakespeare left unanswered in the play.

Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood | Hogarth Shakespeare Series, Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House. 2016

9

The NON-BINARY MONOLOGUES PROJECT Interviewing Woodzick Interviewing Writers with: Woodzick, Grace Carmack, Marcus Gorman, Ayla Sullivan, and Brittany Willis Introduction by Kathryn Lynn Morgen

W

hen i first met woodzick, in 2011, we were castmates in a production of Mary

Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses at Whidbey Island Center for the Arts in Langley, WA. It was the second rehearsal, and my first time joining the group. Back then, we went by the same name (which neither of us use now), so we had an immediate kinship despite having never met. Once it became clear the production team didn’t have it in mind to introduce me, Woodzick halted the table reading to make sure that I had a chance to introduce myself to everyone. I came to recognize that kind of fierce respect for and loyalty to artistic integrity and professionalism as the beacon shining from within Woodzick’s personal lighthouse. A beacon that never goes out, is carefully maintained, and if you’re seeking ground, will help lead you in. You can get your fair share of Woodzick’s bright, focused energy from the comfort of your own home by subscribing to their Theatrical Mustang podcast, which consists of interviews with regional theatre artists, where Woodzick’s theatrical sensibilities and community-oriented personality soars.

Since 2011, Woodzick and I have shared the stage in numerous productions, worked together on another handful, shared advice, mourned losses, and most of all, supported each other’s work. In October 2017, Woodzick began the Non-binary Monologues Project, an online directory of contemporary and adapted classical monologues for non-binary and trans actors. I reached out to Woodzick in January 2018 about the NBMP—what follows is our interview and their interviews with four of the writers featured on the site.

Kathryn: How have things changed for you as a theatre artist since we first met in 2011?

Woodzick: The biggest overall change is feeling

accomplished enough not to ask for permission. Whether it’s coming out as trans/changing my pronouns, starting a podcast, starting the Non-binary Monologues Project, deciding to submit my thesis script for a new play festival (even though there were only « gulp » 12 pages to submit), the most exciting change for me has been seeing myself as an expert. Too often, theatre simply doesn’t happen because folx don’t feel like they are “enough” of an authority to make something happen. don’t wait for someone to give you permission: make your art.

No one knows how to do that more authentically than you.

How have you observed the theatre community grow in response to and/or since the launch of NBMP?

Playwrights have reached out to me to share that actors have emailed them asking questions about the piece or telling them that they’ve used it in an audition and how well it went. Getting a cold call from PBS NewsHour Weekend asking to do a piece about the project was pretty flipping amazing. The co-writer of my thesis script, Ayla Sullivan, is competing in a national monologue competition and they are not only performing themself, but also have another contestant reading the monologue they wrote and we posted to NBMP. That’s incredible.

The overall takeaway from this endeavor so far is that it is a vital and necessary resource. The website has had nearly 7,000 pageviews since it launched in October.* We need to break our deeply entrenched habits of “typing” actors. Let them come to the table and bring their most authentic selves and magic will happen.

What are you most excited about right now on the horizon for NBMP?

We put out a special call for submissions that are all Comic-Con themed, because Denver Comic Con

and Page 23** invited us to perform this summer.

Theatre departments are starting to offer NBMP as a resource when students are looking for monologues.

There is a lot of excitement around publishing a print version of selected monologues. The project has incredible momentum and I cannot wait to find an organization or organizations with which we can partner to fund the project and make it sustainable.

Getting a little meta now… gender expression (vs. gender identity) is an inherently performative aspect of human life—how do your day-to-day routine and rituals compare to your preparations for a role or prior to a show?

I wake up every day and do a little check in: “Hmm… what’s my gender today?” Sometimes it’s a buttondown shirt, tie, suspenders, vintage blazer, and jeans and other days it’s a long, flowing dress and dark red lipstick. I think of my closet as my costume stock; each day is going to be a little different. I very much try to approach it like a toddler who is newly dressing themself for the first time: not everything may match, and it might come out looking like more of a Halloween costume than casual wear, but hey, who cares?

One of the most important things I have learned is that it is valid to live in those in-between spaces. The world often offers only two boxes when it comes to gender, but even that is rapidly changing.

When I prepare for a show, there’s a lot more ritual to it.

The costume is usually the same and it is my intention to treat it with reverence. With each stroke of makeup, each carefully curated song on my pre-show playlist, there is a transformation that happens. The ritual of getting ready to perform is the holiest thing I have ever experienced. We all have good shows and bad shows, but taking the time to carefully become your character in precisely the way in which you want to is a deeply personal form of self-love and self-care.

*At press time, the Non-binary Monologues Project website has had over 13,000 pageviews since it launched in October 2017.

**Page 23 is a Literary Conference presented at Denver ComicCon with a critical eye on comics and pop culture, including papers, panels, and roundtables on comics, gaming, television, anime, action figure studies, and other pop culture topics and issues.

11

As a writer and producer, where do you draw your inspiration from? What are your favorite go-tos in your creative process?

Inspiration is deeply connected to intuition for me.

It’s that aha! moment that hits me in my head, heart, and gut all at the same time: the light bulb turning on with all its brightness.

I think we can be timid as artists when it comes to exploring new ideas. Inner critics and impostor syndrome are both very alive and well. For me, it’s important to let the ridiculous creep in. That idea that you get, that “What if…?” follow that what if!

Don’t censor the idea even before it comes out.

Make sure to have a notebook within reach at all times.

Make the time to sit down with fellow creatives you admire and have values that align with your own.

People don’t sit down and just talk with each other as much anymore. Build it in your budget to take at least one of your favorite theatre people out to coffee/drinks once a month. You don’t have to pitch them or come with an agenda: sit down and see how they are, what they’re excited about, what their next project is… really listen and get a feel for them. We don’t do this enough.

We have a tendency in this industry to keep our cards close to our vest. We assume that someone else’s success is our failure. Not true. I’ve found that the more you come out to support other artists, the more you promote their events—it ends up only benefiting you and your artistic cultivation.

Also, give your brain time to rest. Be gentle with yourself.

Sometimes you have to do some pretty silly things in order to invite inspiration in.

What are your top 3 favorite roles to date? What are your top 3 desired roles at this time?

Pirelli in Sweeney Todd Little Red Riding Hood in Into the Woods Clown #2 in The 39 Steps Bucket list: Booth in Assassins Harold Hill in The Music Man Alison Bechdel in Fun Home

You’re hosting a queer + theatre dinner party—who are your top 7 guests?

Alok Vaid-Menon, Maria Bamford, Stephen Sondheim, Cameron Esposito, Rhea Butcher, Lin Manuel-Miranda, and Laverne Cox What’s in your rehearsal bag?

Lavender inhaler, notebook and pen, business cards, Minions USB drive, Anxiety meds, lipstick, chapstick, Tums, a book of crossword puzzles, and a sense of possibility.

I N T E RV I E W S BY WO ODZ IC K

GRACE CARMACK Monologue: Lazarus, from HATE HATE LOVE LOVE

Woodzick: Where is your favorite place in the world to write and why?

Grace: I come up with a lot of my ideas on the bus.

I usually carry pen and paper but sometimes end up throwing ideas into my phone for future mining. The bus is where I spend my morning and evening commute and it’s a long enough ride to ruminate and process. I’m a daydreamer and the lull of the trip helps. I also spent a lot of time in cars when I was younger, driving to step dancing competitions in the Midwest, so I’ve gotten used to compressing my creative thought process into those kinds of spaces. My actual writing usually occurs in the comfort of my living room. I have severe Social Anxiety Disorder as well as a number of other comorbid diagnoses that make my home feel safest. I’ve also spent a lot of time curating a home space that suits my creative needs.

Who/what inspires you the most?

Poetry is the most inspiring thing for all of my work.

There is something about the alchemy of poetry… about the process of pinning the intangible or conjuring the impossible that I find compelling. I can write an entire universe off of a single line. I can create whole characters out of three sentences.

What is a memorable theatrical moment that most shaped you as an artist?

The most memorable theatrical process I participate in is Freehold Theatre’s Engaged Theater Residency at Washington Corrections Center for Women. I am part of a team of theatre artists that assists incarcerated women in imagining, writing, creating, directing, and performing their own original play every Winter/ Spring. When I was young, I remember telling my mom, “I can’t.” And she would say, “Do it anyway.”

That is what these artists embody and it has fortified my belief that there is nothing more bold or worthwhile than accepting that something is unfathomable, especially under unimaginably difficult circumstances, and then trusting enough to go forward anyway.

Name up to five living playwrights that folx should add to their libraries.

Benjamin Benne, Stephanie Timm, Philip Dawkins, Hansol Jung, and MJ Kaufman.

You’re having a dinner party and can invite four artists and/or activists, living or dead. Who gets an invite?

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Angela Davis, Crystal Pite, and Anna Akhmatova.

MARCUS GORMAN Monologue: Tiger, from Deers

Woodzick: Where is your favorite place in the world to write and why?

Marcus: Café Racer, a bar, restaurant, and performance venue in Seattle’s University District that unfortunately closed this past October. I loved its eclectic nature, the tight-knit clientele, the living room workspace setup in the back, the allowance of dogs, the good breakfast bacon, and the on-site O.B.A.M.A. (The Official Bad Art Museum of Art).

Who/what inspires you the most?

Those who fight tooth and nail to become better people.

What is a memorable theatrical moment that most shaped you as an artist?

I absolutely love musicals, and my first real memory of an honest-to-god stage musical was a production of West Side Story my family saw in York, England when I was in second grade. It was both enchanting and bizarre, as the cast did the show in their Yorkshire accents.

Name up to five living playwrights that folx should add to their libraries.

Stephen Adly Guirgis, Annie Baker, Quiara Alegría Hudes, Tracy Letts, and Mary Zimmerman.

You’re having a dinner party and can invite four artists and/or activists, living or dead. Who gets an invite?

Steve Martin, Laurie Anderson, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Billy Wilder.

AYLA SULLIVAN Monologue: Adulting with You

Woodzick: Where is your favorite place in the world

you as an artist?

When I was a senior in high school, I directed, produced, and collaborated on a devised piece about queer and trans youth narratives through my own theatre company under the umbrella of the high school’s theatre department. Suddenly, our show was cancelled due to the school’s self proclaimed fears of how our “conservative community” would react. We immediately fought back: creating a social media campaign, gaining support from nationally recognized media outlets and theatrical coalitions, and drastically changed the role of theatre in our small community. It was the first time I was compelled to use theatre as a tool for activism and succeeded. Ever since, I refuse to believe the role of an artist is anything but an advocate for social justice.

Name up to five living playwrights that folx should add to their libraries.

Ntozake Shange, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Sarah Ruhl, Desiree Burch, and me in five years (I’m hopeful).

You’re having a dinner party and can invite four artists and/or activists, living or dead. Who gets an invite?

Assata Shakur, Solange Knowles, Marina Abramović, and just for fun, Andy Samberg.

BRITTANY ALYSE WILLIS Monologue: Writer, from paper backs

Woodzick: Where is your favorite place in the world to write and why?

Brittany: I’d like to say “in front of a large window in a private room on a train moving across country” but as I’ve never been in front of a large window in a private room on train moving across country, my little wood balcony table and chair have to do.

Who/what inspires you the most?

Ayla: An empty bathtub around 3pm. It’s just isolated

Feelings, right? It’s always just down to feelings, reactions.

Now how do I say that in a way that makes me sound incredibly smart and technically brilliant…

Who/what inspires you the most?

What is a memorable theatrical moment that most shaped you as an artist?

to write and why?

enough and at the best time of the day.

I am inspired by artists of all disciplines, namely my favorite people who made me the artist I am today and consistently push me to be better, which includes my Minor Disturbance Youth Slam teammates (Morgynne Tora, April Edwards, Max Huey, Abby Friesen-Johnson, Emery Vela, and Berellyn Alberca) and the OG collaborator and my best friend, Aleah Bradshaw. I am also in love with Solange Knowles, Gustav Klimt, and horrible 80s/90s dad comedies.

What is a memorable theatrical moment that most shaped

The first time I participated in a devised piece, I learned about the beauty and necessity of collaboration and input from folx with widely varying experiences.

I imagine that happens often with devised pieces. Or maybe not. It shaped me, at least.

Name up to five living playwrights that folx should add to their libraries.

Aditi Brennan Kapil, Abi Morgan, Taylor Mac, and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins.

13

You’re having a dinner party and can invite four artists and/or activists, living or dead. Who gets an invite?

Abbas Kiarostami, Reina Gossett, Maggie Nelson, and David Byrne. v

Visit nonbinarymonologues.wordpress.com for more info on the Non-binary Monologues Project, including the team of volunteers who work on the project, submission guidelines, how to produce a performance of monologues, and donation information. Search by name or monologue title (listed at the top of individual interview sections in this article) to read work by featured writers.

We’re here for you.

us :

877-565-8860 / c anada : 877-330-6366

Trans Lifeline is a national trans-led organization dedicated to improving the quality of trans lives by responding to the critical needs of our community with direct service, material support, advocacy, and education. Our vision is to fight the epidemic of trans suicide and improve overall life-outcomes of trans people by facilitating justice-oriented, collective community aid. www.translifeline.org

facebook

| twitter | instagram: @TransLifeline

ROUNDTABLE The Relevance of Producing Ethnic Theatre

with: Rose Cano, Valerie Curtis-Newton, Kathy Hsieh, Julieta Vitullo Devised by Valerie Curtis-Newton, Introduction by Julieta Vitullo Special thanks to Monica Cortes Viharo

F

or the last seven years,

four Seattle theatre groups have collaborated to bring to life Represent!, a multicultural playwrights festival featuring local authors and showcasing artists and stories from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. New to the Seattle theatre community, this year I’m co-organizing the festival on behalf of eSe Teatro and learning about the festival’s history and mission. In the Spring, I met with artists from each of the four groups to talk about the logistics of the event. Between scheduling arrangements, venue deliberations, and strategizing on how to draw people to the festival, our host Valerie Curtis-Newton, of Hansberry Project, asked a simple question that brought us all back to the beginning and sparked an important conversation: Why are we doing what we are doing? Her question led us to a bigger one, and we decided to meet again two weeks later to try to make sense of it: What is the relevance of ethnic theatre in the era of equity, diversity, and inclusion? We sat around Val’s dining table to look at the past and present of organizations like ours, take inventory of the relationships we have with our communities, understand the challenges that we face, and try to reimagine the future while we nibbled on strawberries and cheese.

This conversation features the following artists: Valerie Curtis-Newton of The Hansberry Project, which supports, represents, and celebrates the work of Black theatre artists; Kathy Hsieh of SiS, a production company that strives to create, develop, and produce quality works that involve Asian American women, their themes, and Asian American issues; and Rose Cano of eSe Teatro, a collective that seeks to empower local Latinx artists to create, produce, and present professional English, Spanish, bilingual, and Spanglish theatre. The festival is organized by those three groups as well as by Pratidhwani, an organization that empowers and enables South Asian artists, promoting and cultivating the performing arts of the Indian subcontinent.

julieta A little background to how this roundtable idea started: this came out of an informal conversation that we had the last time we met. We were talking about this year’s multicultural playwrights festival and the reason behind the festival and the relevance of ethnic theatre today in the year of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI). Valerie started talking more about these questions and suggested that we have a roundtable to discuss that.

So, my proposal is that we go back in time a little bit. What was the original purpose of this festival?

I believe, Val, you’re the oldest founding member, you’re the founding member. You started this.

valerie We were all there at the beginning.

The Hansberry Project was in residence at A Contemporary Theatre (ACT) and we had some space and we were gonna do a reading of a play.

I invited the other organizations to participate because we already had the space, so it wouldn’t cost anybody anything extra to do, and we’d be able to represent more communities.

My thinking was that each of us has a better finger on the pulse of our community than ACT Theatre did—and it doesn’t mean that they don’t have the heart for it, it’s that they weren’t in a relationship with our communities.

We could each individually produce a reading of a local playwright and a playwright maybe who’s more nationally known that speaks to the issues that were percolating in our individual communities, and maybe begin to give a better perspective about the world for people of color.

jv What year was that? rose 2012? I think 2012. kathy Prior to that Val and I went to see a

Mike Daisey performance at Seattle Rep about theatre in general. After that we had a whole conversation. They had a huge post-play panel— there were about 20 people on that stage, they’re talking about the state of theatre in Seattle—and every single person they invited to be on that panel was White. And a lot of them were men.

Val and I were talking, Remember the Group Theatre and the playwrights festival and how we would have these fabulous conversations about theatre with these nationally-renowned playwrights and directors and artists and they would come to Seattle and it was amazing. Where did that go? Especially now, 20 years later and we’re looking at this on stage!?

Then a few months later Val said, This is what I want to do.

17

jv Do you think there’s been a switch between that time and today? Things have changed in terms of political climate in the city. vcn The decision-makers largely across the city are mostly still White people. More White women, but they’re mostly still White people.

The other thing about that moment, is at the same time when we weren’t represented on that stage, the thing that still happens is we get the emails and the phone calls when they need to cast people of color because they didn’t have—don’t have—relationships with local artists of color.

rc Yeah, they don’t have access. kh That’s when they reach out to us. rc I want to add the other reach out. Let’s say they get

the casting solved, because they use everyone else’s casting directors—like you said, with a good heart, We want to make sure we listen to the community so I’m going to call Val or Kathy or whoever, and that’s listening to the community, the one, two phone calls, right? But, then, Okay, in our mission is diversity, so how do we get the Brown

butts in the chair, or the not-White butts in the chair. So the phone call, Help us do outreach. Which in the old days, I’d say 10-15 years ago it was limited, specifically talking about Spanish-speaking communities, translating a flier or two and then sending them to the 30 or so Latino service organizations. That was kind of it. So if we give you this in writing, then they should come, and Why don’t they come?

It was such a backwards kind of thing. There was no decision making in what stories—speaking of the larger and mid-size theatres—what stories they chose to tell, and was that of interest to the community, and in what language.

Being so after-the-fact, it makes you feel like you’re irrelevant. Maybe if you’re lucky you get invited to opening, maybe, and that’s about it.

kh Yeah. The institutional standard was the large White theatre would “partner” with us when they needed help with casting or outreach to our communities… rc Or getting the people of color in. kh …and never with an offer of, Normally we pay a

PR consultant this much money. They would always come to us thinking This is your mission, we’ ll give you some free tickets for preview, or Give you one night where you can sell the tickets and anything you make above the amount we need you can keep for yourselves. That was normally the relationship. You ended up feeling really used if you went with it. And most times you want to be supportive because here at least they’d do the August Wilson, or…

rc Your friends would be on stage. kh …they’d be doing the David Henry Hwang and

we wanted to support our community so often times we would do it pro bono but after a while you realize you’re spending more time.

All of us are grassroots, volunteer-run organizations, working to support them rather than ourselves.

vcn And then our work ends up in a grant that we aren’t even eligible to apply for.

rc That’s one of the reasons for starting eSe Teatro, kind of the demise of the Group Theatre, even though the Group Theatre was not a specifically Latino theatre, but because the founder Ruben Sierra held this sort of space, right? Even after he moved on. I thought, If we want to be the people deciding what stories we choose to tell—what plays—then we have tobe at the table from the beginning of the conversation, way two years prior.

I want to go back to that model, pro bono. I was hired by the Rep and I was paid as a consultant probably 15 years ago, for Living Out, that was [directed by] Sharon Ott, written by Lisa Loomer. Of course after auditioning my heart out I didn’t get cast as usual, but someone reached out to me. It was about domestics, living domestics The Journey of the Saint, photo courtesy eSe Teatro

in Los Angeles, living in, as opposed to Living Out. One [character] was from Honduras and trying to get her child to the United States, and one was from Mexico.

It was a Los Angeles story.

My work at that time with White Center Public Health was working with mostly all Mexicanas and mostly people that were either housecleaners or taking care of kids so I said, I work directly with this community, let’s do something beyond the translation of the fliers. And also, coinciding there was a translation of three of the scenes.

I mean literally, there was one time I just remember thinking, Wow! Seattle’s finally coming into its own. Both stages at the Seattle Rep had playwrights of color and the actors are all people of color. But that was like her last season before they let her go.

So, Seattle’s had its ups and downs. Now, actually the new paradigm that Seattle’s been going on for the last few years around EDI, is they are getting better about hiring some PR person who’s a person of color to do outreach—I mean 5th Avenue’s been doing this, Intiman

We make our work so the world knows the stories of our community. That we exist. That we love, that we fail each other, that we stand up for each other.

I organized child care in the rotunda area, which not very many people took advantage of, but it was there. Then I came with a group of women on the night that those three scenes were in Spanish and then we had a discussion and for that I was on stage with the other actors.

I felt good, about my work, but what am I doing to build my own theatre? Nothing. I mean I’m putting in my work, my ideas, and I remember Olga said, Oh good for the Rep! and I’m like, Not ‘good for the Rep’, good for Rose!

So, I want to invest in making our own theatres stronger.

Now this was 15 years ago, there’s a different way of working now.

kh I will say though, the Rep, Sharon Ott, [the Artistic Director of Seattle Rep in the mid-90s,] for whatever criticisms people had of her here—because she came from Berkeley Rep where they had already been doing more multicultural theatre and working with multicultural playwrights developing new work—she tried to bring that aesthetic here to Seattle. Her seasons were definitely much more diverse, and she did pay people of color to work as cultural consultants on all of her productions. rc She was artistic director for a long time, right?

Ten years?

kh No, five years. Because when she was up for renewal for her contract, the board told her they were not renewing her contract because they just didn’t think that her choice of shows was drawing in the right audience that really kind of supported the Rep’s aesthetic and bringing in enough money and resources for what they aspired to be. And that was why her contract was not renewed.

did this, Seattle Rep’s been doing this. The irony is Seattle Rep did two Asian American shows this last season, and the person they hired would always call me, Kathy, can you forward this out? So it still ends up being like, Why are you getting paid and I’m being asked to do it for free because I know all the Asian American people who like to go see theatre? There was still an irony to that.

vcn Also, getting more savvy about negotiating “partnerships” because everybody wants to partner with us now. Can you co-present this, can you co-present that?

We used to do it for pretty much nothing, and now we definitely need a night of the box office, we definitely need these things in fulfillment of the partnership. Some of the smaller theatres are stepping up to it. Intiman’s co-curator model at least gave me, with Hansberry, the opportunity to totally influence one of their seasons. I basically Artistic Directed the season two years ago. It was very successful, and a very diverse audience; the plays were all by African American women. We could begin to demonstrate that there is an appetite in the audience for these stories.

One of the obstacles is always getting people over the idea that because we do ethnically-specific theatre, if there isn’t a large ethnically-specific population, that the work is failing. We don’t get credit for amplifying and supporting the voices of the artists, the writers and the actors, and introducing audiences beyond our community to the stories of our community.

The idea is that the only benefit of ethnically-specific theatre is so that an ethnically-specific audience can see itself on stage, which is actually a very, very narrow part of why we do what we do. We make our work

19

Represent!

A Multicultural Playwrights Festival NOVEMBER 4-9, 2018

Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute | Seattle, WA

Sun Nov 4 | 7:00 pm

Locals Night

Mon Nov 5 | 7:30 pm

Hansberry Project Tue Nov 6 | 7:30 pm

SiS Productions Thu Nov 8 | 7:30 pm

Pratidhwani

Fri Nov 9 | 7:30 pm

eSe Teatro tickets

$9 online | $10 at the door $25 - all festival pass

www.pratidhwani.org / represent

so the world knows the stories of our community. That we exist. That we love, that we fail each other, that we stand up for each other. It’s not just about my doing it for a Black audience. I want a Black audience to know that it’s happening, and to have the right to choose, versus, when we don’t make the work at all there’s no possibility that you could choose to go see an Alice Childress or Lorraine Hansberry or August Wilson play, or any of the others who write in other styles.

That’s a point of misunderstanding, that we make our plays only for audiences that look like us. We make them for everybody, but we privilege the lens of our community, the priorities of our community, the issues of our specific communities.

That’s the precipice that we’re standing on right now, because everybody’s doing EDI stuff for the sake of doing EDI stuff, and if the metric is whether or not Black, Brown, or Asian bodies show up in the space, in this area it’s an unfair metric.

You’re gonna have 40,000 people over the course of a run at the Rep and you’re expecting half of them to be people of color.

rc Yeah, that’s ridiculous. vcn It’s ridiculous. rc You’re talking about measures of success. They’re measured

differently, so you’re talking about this bigger level of regional theatres, large mainstream theatres.

vcn Even smaller theatres set up the idea that if they partner with eSe Teatro a certain percentage of their audience is going to be Latino. It’s just as important that you guys are present to authenticate what’s onstage for whoever comes. kh For whatever audience, yeah. vcn That’s the point, is to be able to say, We’re here and this

is what we think and this is how this group of people in this set of circumstances respond to their circumstances. It would be awful if there were never any people of color in the audience but the reverse metric that it be mostly people of color is an unfair bar in the Pacific Northwest.

jv I just wanted to go back for a second to the stories—the emphasis is on the stories and maybe that’s why the festival is a playwrights festival. Is this perhaps what the theatre establishment doesn’t get? That these are the stories of our communities and it starts with the stories?

vcn I do think it gets translated very quickly into a metric that will get me grant money.

kh Maybe a decade ago they would sometimes program in an August Wilson play or a David Henry Hwang play because there was diversity funding for that, to do something different and new, and for those large institutions that’s something different and new. But, it always came with the fact, for them, This means we can try to bring in other audience who’ve never been here before and open that up. Then there was a huge grant, The Wallace came here and had huge grant money, Here, for you theatres or organizations that have over a million dollar budgets, we’ ll give you this money to help you. How can

you diversify your audience? So again they were trying to find ways to diversify their audience and they often think, Well if we program in a Black play we’ ll be able to get more Black audience.

They found quickly that that metric doesn’t quite work, and as Val was saying that’s not necessarily the end game, the only reason why you should be doing an African American play. It’s about showing the fact that as humanity there are so many stories, and all of us people of color have always had to grow up in this country only seeing the stories of White people, everywhere.

If we really want to bring people together and get over this race issue that we have in our country, then we need to actually share the stories of all people, very specific stories, not generalized stories, but very specific stories so that everyone can understand more deeply all the humanity that all of us encompass—and yet each of us do have unique stories and that just broadens all of our awareness. In fact, sometimes it’s even more important that White people get to hear our stories, more than ourselves. We know our stories, it’s great to reflect that for audiences, but White audiences don’t have that exposure, that’s why there are all these divisions about people not understanding, because they never get to see those stories and understand different cultures that also exist in this country.

I did want to go back to something Val said in terms of that whole partnership model about how we’re reframing how to partner. That is a national discussion that I have a lot with Carmen Morgan who did a lot of the transformational work working with Oregon Shakespeare Festival to transform their focus on EDI and their manifesto around that. It’s really looking at how, instead of the practice that Rose and I were talking about 15-20 years ago where the White institutions basically just use us for our PR list and our artists, now, as POC-lead organizations we are trying to negotiate what works better for us.

Val had the wonderful experience at Intiman of being able to basically choose [Intiman’s] season and get the support to program the ideal season she’s always wanted to do and have the institution’s backing for that. SiS had a wonderful partnership with ArtsWest where the Interim Artistic Director came to us and wanted to partner on a show, Chinglish, by David Henry Hwang and we got to not only set where the show was going to be in the season, but we were actually able to negotiate 50% of the net profit, and it was the most successful non-musical show that ArtsWest had done at that time. It gave us both incentive, because they get 50% and we get 50% of the net, we wanted to make sure it did well. We all worked really hard, and all of the performances were really sold out.

vcn Hansberry also partnered with ArtsWest on Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop. kh That same season. vcn The Interim Artistic Director made a huge model-shift,

and it invited us in and we showed real results, measurable results that it could work, and that it could be mutually beneficial.

And that was an important moment, for the city actually.

17

jv When was that? kh 2015. vcn Yes. rc Three years ago.

I want to talk about our partnership with ACT. In 2010, a group of us got together to found eSe Teatro, Meg Savlov and me are the original members left. It was definitely thought out to be an ensemble, but I knew that we wanted to have a professional platform in a highly visible theatre.

I knew it would take some time.

We approached ACT in 2011, with a 5-step partnership idea. First, was one reading one night, then three nights. Then we did our gala benefit which was a huge tap in, because we sold out. It was called eSe Amor, Great Works of Love and it was based on all the literature

by Latin-American and Latinx U.S. authors written about love and romance—Pulitzer Prize winners, Nobel Prize winners. We were showing this very educated panoply of music and song. That was a real shift for people thinking, Oh I know Latinx theatre they’re gonna do work about the Barrio in the Bronx or East LA or wherever, but no, we did it all in evening gowns and tuxedos and that was kind of our entry into ACT, selling out. We did have a mostly Spanish-speaking audience. Yes, there is this educated middle-class, upper-middle-class audience that, my thinking was, if they’re gonna give their dollar to the Opera or to Seattle Rep, if they know that there’s something in it for them, their stories, then we could buy their loyalty too, in exchange for what? Good art.

The partnership was kind of incremental, so this year I feel like we finally attained full equal partnership with ACT. It’s also going to be a 50-50% split which it hasn’t in the past, this is our third mainstage there.

We did Don Quixote & Sancho Panza: Homeless in

Wine in the Wilderness, photo courtesy The Hansberry Project

Seattle; we were the highest selling in the ACTlab.

Then we did Bernie’s Apt. and we were also highest selling in the ACTlab; we did 90% of our goal.

Interesting comments from people on the board, for Don Quixote & Sancho Panza the main character was 100% Spanish-speaking and someone from the board came up to me and said You know what… and some audience members too …this was really hard, I never knew what he was saying. The way that I wrote it was that everything he said was translated poorly, but by Sancho Panza the comic sidekick, right, and then by everyone around them. But for some people, that is their thinking. So it takes a while to shift that thinking.

With Bernie’s Apt., which had much less Spanish—mostly by the grandma and one of the foster daughters—that same board member came up to me and said, Do you remember me from two years ago? That I couldn’t understand? This one I really got everything. I could understand. But, it had a lot less Spanish, so…

vcn It should be for me! It should be for me! jv Just put some flavor. kh The irony is, of course, everyone who’s in

this country whose first language is not English, this is our experience all the time.

rc That’s right! I said that was the point. kh And what White people don’t understand, this

actually gives you a taste of what a lot of people experience.

rc Yeah, you’re looking around seeing who else is laughing, What are the other expressions? Okay, that was good!

kh Because you have the privilege of never being in those shoes. You just don’t understand until you’re put in those shoes.

American Hwangap, photo courtesy SiS Productions

The Mountaintop, photo courtesy The Hansberry Project

kh I mean it was not, there were maybe a couple of words and the rest of the audience in the post was just talking, actually, about that.

jv It begs the question about translation. Is this linguistic translation, and cultural translation, that has to be done in a certain way so that the audience is comfortable with it? It’s just people who are not willing to be uncomfortable or confused or go with the flow…

kh The other audience in the post—what I loved about the ones who did stay—one woman especially, said, At first I was really struggling because I’d never been anywhere else in the U.S., but then I realized I was trying too hard to work at it. About 20 minutes in I realized if I just let go and kind of rode with it… I did and then everything opened up and it was amazing. But she said the first 20 minutes she was trying to control it with her mind, and I think that’s what a lot of White people do, they try to control it and then they can’t just experience it and go for the ride.

vcn The other component of this is that White institutions are not wrong, that for the most part our communities are ambivalent about theatre, about formal theatre as an entity. How much do I have to pay?

Where do I have to go? All of these things become really important in terms of opening the doors for an audience. vcn And the privilege extends. We got similar comments about Wedding Band. I didn’t understand the dialect, I didn’t know what they were saying.

kh Exactly. I know. vcn And I’m like… They were speaking English, and you

weren’t really trying to understand. There were all kinds of markers to help you.

This idea, It should be my way, the way I know it, is still very pervasive and it’s part of what makes the partnering so difficult. Our partners have to be willing to stand up in front of the detractors of diversity and say straight up, You’re actually being a little bit privileged… or …a little bit racist in what it is that you’re saying. Just so you know, that’s what I hear you saying, that these people’s experience is less important because you don’t get it.

kh The Book-It show right now, The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, amazing performance, and at the postplay following the matinee I attended this one woman got up at the very end, right when we were about to start the post-play, and stormed out, turned back and said, I just did not understand this play, I couldn’t understand your dialect, I couldn’t understand anything, I did not get it, I don’t know why I was put through that. rc What’s the dialect? jv The author is from the Dominican Republic.

I can sell out a 50-seat or 75-seat, but at 120 or 150 it’s much more difficult. The notion that, as a community, theatre-going is going to become a tradition overnight— because we’ve had generations of being locked out of that kind of storytelling—it requires that there be a kind of persistence continuing to show up for the community, even when they don’t always show up for us.

That’s the biggest frustration I have, is when we worked really hard on something, and I look out and there are only a handful of Brown faces, or Black faces. So I get why White institutions are frustrated, that they want to see more people of color in their institutions, but it requires more than just the work on the stage.

It requires really looking how the whole structure intersects with community and invites community in. So, it helps when, because we all work locally, it helps when the people in our shows are people who are connected to communities within Seattle.

rc Totally. We all come with our strings of people attached to us. That’s why some theatres may want to cast this person or that person; they know they come with constituency.

About our partnership with ACT, I feel like from the beginning we’ve always had a large amount of Spanish-speaking audiences follow us. So, I feel like we’ve really helped them increase their audience base, so I was always really careful that this felt equal, that we’re exchanging exposure.

23

vcn Has that shown up outside of ACTlab? Has there been programming that made its way to the main stage that provided the community you delivered to ACT an opportunity to see a $35,000 production that was inclusive in terms of language? When you have that Spanish-speaking audience follow you to ACT and it’s mostly work in ACTlab, has ACT actually presented that kind of work on their mainstage?

Now we’re doing a script that may need a little bit more or the playwright doesn’t have as much name visibility here.

So, we’re developing a new work. and when we get to casting all of the best actors are already in the other shows.

We have to use actors who are maybe a little bit greener and need a little more working with, so we have to find a teaching artist director. When our show is finally able to open we’re competing with the media because The Seattle

There are a lot of double standards that are put on artists of color that instituions don’t even realize they’ve made. rc Not enough for me. One or two actors, but it’s not likely I can help curate their season. Wouldn’t that be nice? Or from the beginning: I want equal partnership in this stake in like six years; I want to suggest these playwrights from the Latinx Theatre Commons.

kh When more and more of the larger theatre companies—and small to be honest—are doing more diverse works, and choosing often times the works of the playwrights that we introduce to Seattle, or even workshopped and developed work with, now we’re actually competing with even trying to get those plays, to have the opportunity to produce.

Because of course any playwright, as an artist, wants their piece seen by the most people with the biggest budgets and have the most visibility. If you can get your piece at ACT or at the Rep, you’re going to go with that option over small companies. So even though we’re trying to option a script when it’s still in workshop form, when it’s not even finalized, we know we’re not going to get the world premier because they want the New York or LA or Chicago premier, but then to also know that we’re going to have to wait to see if the Rep or Intiman or ACT is going to pick it first and only if they don’t, then we might have a chance to get those playwrights. That’s one issue.

Then there’s casting: if they end up with the show script that we really wanted, then they come to us for casting.

We help them get the best actors in town into their piece.

Then we have the one slot available, and the only reason we’re in the slot that might overlap with their run is because we don’t have our own spaces so we have to take whatever’s left over in terms of space, and then we have to choose our second or third choice because the ones that we wanted to do are now being done at the big theatres.

Times or The Stranger are going to go review the show at the Rep so we only get, if they have space available on their calendar, maybe near the end of our run.

vcn We have short runs, so by the time they get to us… kh It’ll be like the third or fourth week when we get

the reviews, sometimes the reviews don’t even come out until after our shows close. When they do come review it, sometimes the reality is we’re working with far less money, non-paid staff, to do the scripts that need more development, working with the actors that sometimes need a little more experience.

We do the best we can with the budget that we have and the time we have, but we know it’s not going to be necessarily the par excellence that even we would have even wanted and the reviews sometimes reflect that, not realizing there’s a huge disparity in resources—and everything we put into the bigger show, too, but we’re not getting credit for. We’re only getting credit for the, maybe, less-version, and the disparity becomes even greater.

Oh not to mention the audience—just to finish this out— audiences in the US: they say that the average is three shows a year, people who identify as theatre-going people, nationally. Therefore, if they’ve already seen the big shows at the big theatres, sometimes they’re like Oh, do I really have time to see about this, I just found out about it from The Times’ calendar… which no longer exists …there’s only two days left, I don’t know if I can squeeze that in, so then we don’t even get our own audiences.

rc We’re trying to take actions that make it equal, because there is such an uneven playing field.

Now about the grants: when you have two full time grant writers and eight interns that are basically students and

they want their name at the Rep or Seattle Children’s [Theatre], you have people with more time and means going after these grants. They are getting these diversity grants on top of having all of these other conditions.

That’s why some grants out there say your board has to be over 50% Latinx—NALAC, that’s the only one I know­— your board or your coordinating committee, or however you structure. We need more of those.

Mechanics of Love, photo courtesy SiS Productions

I’m reminded what August Wilson said in a radio interview, he was getting so much flack talking about who should write about Black peoples. Should White people write about Black people? No. Well, why not? Well, because they’re having this experience from outside, but when you’re a Black person living in a White world, you’re having both experiences. Then he talked about these bigger theatres, and this was 20 years ago, getting the money to be able to produce the one Black play or the one Latino play a year, back then probably the one Latino play a year, the one Asian play a year, taking away from these smaller regional theatres.

I think what we have to balance is this diversity movement, now that it’s in, how can we structure it so it’s not a detriment to these groups that are working the same way we always have? Have a plan, how we’re going to meet this critical mass moment where everyone’s looking at diversity, they’re doing the Art Equity training—that’s who Carmen Morgan is, the Director for Art Equity—they’re obligated to do these trainings, they’re spending all this money and they’re trying to diversify their boards, their staff, everything, from cleaning all the way to front desk.

jv This reminds me of something that Val was saying the last time we met, in this context that you’re describing, how do we make it so that groups like ours can still make art the priority. rc Affirmative Action. vcn We spent so much time doing all the other work… rc Load-bearing. vcn …in order to make space for the art to happen… jv Right. vcn That we don’t actually have time or energy to make

the art happen.

rc Yeah and then it comes out less… vcn …and then it’s not our best… rc …and we know that. vcn …and we know it’s not our best which is very

demoralizing, when you have higher expectations, even for yourself, than you are able to deliver in the circumstances that you exist in. And yet, the great thing about our communities and about our organizations is

that we keep showing up, because it would be really easy to stop showing up. I contemplated, as I’m sure you have.

kh Oh, we all have. vcn We contemplate every other year, Why are we still

here doing this like this? And it’s because, at least for me, every once in a while I teach at the University, or I teach undergraduates. Sometimes I teach the upward-bound students at the high school coming into college and I say, Tell me about the most impactful theatre experience you’ve ever had, and when these kids, not knowing who I am or what I do, mention a production that I put up, I saw that All My Sons that Intiman did and it impacted me so greatly, because they were these Black people… it makes you remember that it actually is sort of about one kid sitting in the dark, getting something.

And as long as we can stay focused on that very romantic goal, measure of success, we’ll keep doing it. But the other measures of success largely stay just outside of our reach. In terms of large numbers of people showing up, amazing donor-volunteers…

kh …every reviewer in town coming to review your show and giving it…

vcn …and getting first crack at scripts. SiS produced a reading of Lauren Yee’s work and she’s blowing up all over, everywhere. We did Dominique Morisseau, she’s blowing up everywhere, we did this work, all of us were doing this work before… rc …before they were so big. kh …like when they were just starting out.

25

Not that these writers might not continue to do it just because of us, but it’s because of a lot of culturallyspecific theatres around the country that were willing to take the risk on new playwrights that they sometimes got their first breaks to develop their work. That experience is a stepping stone for them being able to do the work they are doing now.

Same with actors and directors. Many of the actors that are now working at some of the larger theatres are ready because in-between the one August Wilson show a

people are like, Oh she turned into an actor.

We don’t have the resources, really, to do enough of that work, to get our folks up and running faster. And White institutions don’t make those kinds of investments in actors of color. That’s another reason why we’re so important to the ecosystem; we train people.

We also have to do the other part of training, which is to train them how to work inside White institutions because it will eat them up psychically if they’re not prepared to handle the subtle microaggressions that exist in the

There are a million ways to do theatre, and a million ways to mark success or excellence. year they got to do steady work from our companies.

Or for Asian American, Latinx, it was like the one production every five to ten years on the big mainstage.

They would be honing their skills on our stage.

If it wasn’t for that groundwork of them being able to just even connect between big jobs, they would have left Seattle. That’s reality: without our existence, the ecosystem in Seattle would be impossible for the Rep or ACT or Intiman to be able to do these shows without having to bring in everybody from out of town, which they forget that they’ve had to in the past.

workplace, in theatre as a workplace, both as people of color and as women. I always have people call me up.

kh Same here. Half of our job is counseling artists of color in all the things that they have to negotiate and deal with working in White institutions. vcn Is this normal? I feel like I want to go off on them about… Does that makes sense? Am I crazy? Am I just being too sensitive? What do you do if… That’s another part of the job that we have as role models in our communities, as liaisons to the larger institutions.

formed because the investment of giving them chances to fail, to try something a little beyond their reach and maybe fail or maybe be successful, doesn’t actually come from the larger entities.

kh There are a lot of double standards that are put on artists of color that institutions don’t even realize they’ve made. If they’re doing an Irish play, like Dancing at Lughnasa, they’ll bring in a dialect coach, someone who is paid to come in and teach them the accents. They don’t ever expect White actors to come in and have a perfect Irish brogue, but when they cast a show that’s a Latinx show or Asian show that needs a specific dialect they expect that the actors can do it on their own, and then the actors—and they’re not even the same ethnicity—they’re like I don’t know how to do this accent.

My prime example used to be someone like Julia Roberts, who began and people laughed because she was so awful.

And then she was in it for about 12 years and she got to be not so awful, and the possibility that she could be really good actually existed, then she does Erin Brockovich and

kh As actors we want to be able to learn these things, but like I said with the Irish play they’ll bring in an Irish consultant to teach the White actors the Irish brogue, but they don’t do that say if it’s a Japanese play, they don’t necessarily bring in a Japanese consultant or they’ll see if someone in the cast can do it and then expect them to do it for everybody else without paying them extra for that work that they would pay a White person to do.

vcn The way that racism really works is that there are lots of really, really green White actors who are permitted to fail their way to experience, in a way that actors of color are not allowed to do. rc Yeah, that’s true. vcn Actors of color have to arrive pretty much fully

They get better working with us because we give them challenges they might not be able to handle, knowing that if we support them they stand a pretty good shot at it. In that way, it’s a lot like Hollywood. A lot of young Hollywood actors who suck get to make movie after movie until they suddenly don’t suck.

jv And that’s the thing, ethnicity is so vast in the Latinx world. There’s so much ignorance about what that world even is.

jv That’s such a telling example. rc We’ve talked a lot about mainstream and

traditional theatre spaces; I just wanted to talk about other markers of success. Half or more than half of what eSe Teatro does isn’t just measured by who and how many Spanish-speaking come, how many Latina people come to ACT or to the Pocket Theatre.

I think what our organizations do best, or at least what eSe Teatro does very strongly, is we have these community ties to be able to develop our work, in front of and with the community as almost co-creators, co-directors.

When we developed our dialogues on dignity and I was writing Don Quixote we went to five or six shelters over a period of three years. We’d be testing it with the community and then having post-play discussion. I would tell people, I consider you my co-authors. That’s gonna give you a lot more of a pull of the community.

We’ve continued that model. Even though it’s not me writing a play, we’ve done it with our other plays. We did it with MUD in English and in Spanish. We’ve also done staged readings at Harborview Hospital, for the Crime Victims Fund training, and for the Healthcare for the Homeless Coalition annual retreat.

for me, an important marker of success. It’s so easy to get demoralized by all of the conditions that we work under, to forget that one person in the room or that one moment in the post-show or whatever that is.

So I agree with you Rose, that it really is about deciding what’s important for you as an artist and for your organization to the community.

kh I know for SiS the things I’m actually most proud of are when we really look at the landscape, what are the stories that we don’t see and how do we make those happen? Two examples: this came out of the election and everyone going How did this happen? and We still don’t have a woman who’s ever been the head of state, and How did 52% of White women end up voting for someone who wasn’t a White woman? I was looking at the stories that we all grow up with as women, we started looking up these fairytales and realizing well, look at these fairytales, they’re horrific, this is what we all grow up with.

There are a million ways to do theatre, and a million ways to mark success or excellence.

Part of my battle is convincing actors this is a real gig.

I think we have to educate our actors—starting from Cornish and beyond—how you invest in your community and what the payoff will be in the long run. I lose actors all the time. We had a full paid-for trip to Princeton University to present there, we couldn’t get a third actor on board—and it’s one week, paid well—because they’re doing a six-week run here and there.

I think there’s a lot that we have been successful in that we should also melt into this conversation.

vcn I think that how we decide to measure our own success is important. Social justice is important to me but it’s not as important as art-making. When I can do both, I want to do both. It’s not that I would never make a show that would go to the prisons, it’s not the first thing on my list to do. I support people who want to do that work. I think it’s important work to do, but it’s not my work to do. I do think it’s important for everyone to figure out their own markers. When we do Every 28 Hours, or Hands Up or Facing Our Truth, with and for communities, it’s the same-similar kind of thing, but it sort of comes through a different door. Ultimately it ends up in the same room of wanting to change the work through performance, through modeling, through asking questions through the art, proposing solutions to be challenged through the art.

I think that our greatest success with Hansberry has been creating the idea that our stories deserve to be told and to do it consistently. To keep showing up is,

The Journey of the Saint, photo courtesy eSe Teatro

27

From Left to Right: Julieta Vitullo, Rose Cano, Kathy Hseh, Valerie Curtis-Newton

jv And you put up those plays, I saw them. kh So I put out a call, I said I want to do a festival

of short fairytales. I invited Asian American female playwrights, Write a short play that if you were able to create the fairytale, what would you want to tell young women?

So we did, we did a festival of Asian American fairytales.

They could use whatever inspiration they wanted to, and what came back were these fabulous fairytales where all of the characters are very real characters. They were not perfect, they were not good at school, and they were intergenerational. Almost all of them had multiple generations of women. Almost all of the roles, like 28 of the 30 roles I think were women roles, it was amazing.

We ended up deciding to cast every one of them individually. We ended up with 42 artists, mostly women and almost all people of color, doing this festival of new fairytales that really center a feminist perspective of what it means to grow up in this country as a woman of color. It was amazing. I was really proud.

And then we’ve been doing this series of theatrical tours of the International District. I love the International District but no one really goes there other than for food; so I decided to give real tours in the International District.

We were trying to expose the stories of the people who live and work there. The first year I commissioned Asian American playwrights and they interviewed people who live and work in the International District.

From the stories that the people shared we created plays. When we took people on the tour to a restaurant, the restaurant owner would come and talk, but it was actually an actor sharing a story of the restaurant owner.

We did that throughout the whole International District and every year since we have done different versions.

One year was about the women who protested in the International District to make that neighborhood what

it is today. When you read the history books you don’t see that, so we tell the stories of all the women who had such amazing leadership in the District. Stories in the newspapers were around their husbands as opposed to the women who actually drove those things.

The role I think we take is really trying to find stories that haven’t been shared in a visible way and make them more visible so that that everyone can benefit from knowing, and usually they are women and POC-centered.

jv This is wonderful. I think that we need to wrap up, but let’s have from each of you a closing sentence telling us, where would you like to see things in, let’s say 5 years.

vcn I’m thinking about the conversation we had about ways maybe to expand the number of organizations presenting in Represent!—we want to include more perspectives, and also find the balance not to dilute the specific focus of ethnically-specific theatres, but include more folks if we can.

Broadening the conversation is a great thing, and maybe evolving to a place where we don’t all commission consistently. Maybe there’s a way that we could work towards raising the money to actually make a consistent commission come out of the festival. The festival could present the commission award and then in two years present the actual reading of the play.

In terms of the Hansberry project, We’re moving back toward producing. We’ve been on a bit of a hiatus doing more work with development and less work producing; I think we’re going to move back towards doing some productions, not a gazillion of them, but a couple here and there, so I’m excited about that.

rc Neat. It’s interesting. When we first got together, and after I became Artistic Director I was thinking we want to move towards each year doing one more mainstage and then two, maybe three, now I’m thinking

backwards. What I see is kind of opposite of that. eSe is a partnering entity with an equal 50-50 partnership— whatever that means—with every major theatre in Seattle, and fringe theatres.

vcn I think we actually share a vision in that way, when I talk about moving back into producing, it’s not us solely producing, but to be in consistent partnership.

rc That’s what I see as a way of building our season so the brunt of the resources don’t fall on our small organization.

And then, in terms of in the field, I would like to see— locally, regionally, nationally—more grants offered to organizations of color that can verify they have either a board or an operating system of at least 50% people of color.

country is designed to separate communities from each other so that we can’t work together in solidarity.

The festival is a way of bringing us together to work in solidarity, that we are not the competitors of each other for audiences or resources but that together we can actually build more resources and more audiences and a collective way of working that actually helps us all try better together than apart.

jv

Wonderful. v

The Relevance of Ethnic Theatre was recorded in Washington State on May 4, 2018. The transcript has been edited for length.

kh It’s harder for me to think specifically about SiS. It’s broader than that. I really want to see, in Seattle, greater equity in terms of how theatre artists of color are able to thrive in our community. There’s a whole gamut there where the aspiration doesn’t have to be the measure of success. I hear so often, I’m finally doing a show at the Rep, that means I’ve made it.

vcn It only took me 23 years. kh I would really love doing a show at The Hansberry

Project or eSe Teatro or SiS Productions to feel like they’ve made it because they are able to get paid well for doing it—to do the work that they want to do in the space, and get to be where their full humanity is centered in the process, but they don’t have to sacrifice getting paid and audience to do it.

That means that systems and structures and the racial inequity in how theatres run have to change in order for culturally-specific theatres to be able to be at an even playing field. In order to be able to provide that for our artists, and for our artists to feel fulfilled because they’re able to not have to give up part of themselves to either work at the White institutions or give up some financial security in order to work at our institutions. We should be able as artists of color, to work in and out of any organization and feel like we can actually bring our full selves and be valued for what we bring to the table both monetarily and in terms of the artistic satisfaction of what we’re able to do.

vcn I want to be sure that I say how important it is that we operate as a kind of network, that we have each other as resources so that we’re not alone in the desert.

You know somebody’s gonna ride by on a camel with some water very shortly… rc It’s okay! kh I think that’s part of the reason why this festival

will be so important, because structural racism in this

29

SHOW US YOUR

BOOTHS!

I Hate Hamlet | Diana Knoepfle, Tech Director Roadrunner Theatre - Tucson, AZ

w h at ’s in y o u r

re he ar sa l ba g?

I’m currently working on Jesus Christ Superstar with an all-female cast: 1. My Bible, err, binder with all the info!

2. My “Kit” which has everything from cough drops, needle and thread, contact solution, throat spray, bobby pins and hair ties, to a mini-pharmacy and a mini-bar: a mini-bottle each of tequila, bourbon, and gin 3. Pencils 4. Post-its 5. Chapstick, at least 2 tubes 6. Snack Box—it has everything from RX Bars to gummy worms 7. Spike tape 8. iPad 9. Water bottle 10. A deck of cards

Lori Fowler, Stage Manager | San Francisco, CA

1. Music/Score 2. Laptop & charger 3. Pencils & blank paper 4. M&Ms in a Tupperware container, allowing me to mix dark chocolate, peanut, and peanut butter all together 5. Baton 6. Keys to the theatre/rehearsal hall 7. Water bottle 8. Battery-operated stand light 9. Hoodie for layering when the pit gets cold 10. Headphones

In the Heights (Strike) | Kim D’Agnese, Stage Mgr. Seacoast Repertory Theatre - Portsmouth, NH

The Giver | Cait Cassée, Stage Manager Whidbey Children’s Theatre - Langley, WA

Julie Danielson, Artistic Director & Resident Music Director Kansas City, KS 1. About 12 varieties of pins, ranging from jail-cell-bargrade to nanosurgery-grade.

2. 250 makeup brushes. For a cast of three. Just in case.

3. Tripod mirror with flexible LED arms, because this is the future.

4. Nothing with glitter. Unless drag or burlesque.

Then only glitter.

5. A small kit of tools (tape, needles, screwdriver, self-help books) for doing other people’s jobs.

6. Complete dental hygiene kit, because hearing performers tear a makeup artist to shreds over her halitosis is cringe-inducing.

7. Conspicuously absent from both jam-packed rolling train cases: the one thing I left at home thinking, “There’s no way I’ll need that…”

Jolie O’Dell, Wigmaster | San Francisco, CA

Review by Merridawn Duckler

Jean Rosenthal, the lighting designer, was only 57 when she died of cancer in 1969, but her impact on modern American theatre was inestimable. Historians say she practically invented the profession of “lighting designer,” a field that had been the domain of electricians and stagehands, mostly male. The way dance looks to us on stage today is directly a result of Rosenthal’s vision of what it means to light dance on stage. Her book, The Magic of Light is part memoir, part manual, and all brilliance. It traces her career through childhood classes at the legendary Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater, to Yale and into a dish-y, vibrant, and tumultuous pre- and post-war theatre world. She worked for everyone from Orson Welles (she claims he was “born bored” with a need to alleviate that boredom with as much personal and theatrical drama as possible) to John Houseman to everyone else. Martha Graham’s career would not have been possible without her.

The Magic of Light is indeed magical, not only for the wealth of information and history it contains—

dreamy, outdated light plots and focus charts fill the back pages—but for Rosenthal’s own delightful voice shining through the text. Contemporaries describe her as both serene and driven; a small, temperate encyclopedia of a woman who considered lighting an essential element of telling any story. She writes, “In show business we always speak of a theatre as a house. It is the ‘dwelling place’ where our lives are lived at their greatest intensity.”

Rosenthal’s book shows the fascinating inner working of that intensity. To read her is to sit by the bedside of a wry, articulate, charming, and legendary artist who left too soon. Sadly, the book is out of print—pristine copies go for as high as $700. If you see one, grab it. Her vision remains essential reading.

The Magic of Light: The Craft and Career of Jean Rosenthal, Pioneer in Lighting for the Modern Stage by Jean Rosenthal and Lael Wertenbaker, Illustrated by Marion Kinsella | Little, Brown and Company in association with Theater Arts Books.

1972 (Out-of-print)

31

P L AY S & P l ay w r i g h t s

Jitterbug A short play.

Micki Shelton

CHARACTERS

Dalia About 80, lifelong Jewish New Yorker Michael 19, Irish Catholic

Young Dalia 17, Jewish New Yorker SETTING

About 1953, New York City

As the set is arranged, music from the 1940s or 50s. Maybe it is Dean Martin singing “That’s Amore,” “It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing,” or “In the Mood.”

DALIA It’s not an issue anymore. Jewish. Irish. Who cares? Orthodox rabbis? Yes. Conservative rabbis? Maybe. Not mine. Not my rabbi. Bring home a black lover. In some houses, it matters.

Not mine. Not anyone I know. A Muslim maybe. Maybe. Who cares? Some people yeah, but I don’t care to hang out with them. Them, them—those to whom it matters—those are not my kind of people. But once, once—it mattered. It did. Back then. (Beat.) “You don’t look Jewish.”

I’ve heard that a thousand times. Especially when I was young, with all that blond hair. And every time, every time it takes me back. Sometimes, for just a moment, a teeny-tiny moment; sometimes, like tonight—they played that music—and it took me back. Took me right back.

Scene shifts to an alleyway in New York City in the early 1950s. There is Michael’s handmade “staircase” of three or four steps made of scrap wood or actual stairs of an apartment. Michael is practicing learning to dance as a 1940s or 50s tune plays loudly on a circa 1953 transistor radio.

Sometimes he attempts dancing up the stairs, not too badly. Young Dalia turns a corner and sees him. The loud music blocks out the sound of her footsteps. She stands and watches him unseen for a few moments.

YOUNG DALIA You like to dance.

MICHAEL (Stopping and suddenly turning.) I, uh, didn’t know anyone was around.

(Nervous, turns the dial in the wrong direction; the music gets louder until he turns it the right way and it turns off. ) I was— YOUNG DALIA I like to dance too.

MICHAEL There aren’t a lot of places ter, ter, um, practice. It’s daft anyway, I guess.

Wanting to dance.

YOUNG DALIA I don’t think so. Most girls don’t think so. Me, anyway. I don’t think so.

Are you really going to dance up those stairs?

MICHAEL Maybe. You don’t think its rubbish? Me da thinks so. I mean my dad, Pop… well… and he’s a musician so you’d think he’d… But anyway, he does. Think it’s daft.

YOUNG DALIA Wants you to be a doctor.

MICHAEL (Laughing.) Well not anything that highfalutin, as if I had the brains, or could.

But something, something respectable. (Suddenly struck.) You have beautiful eyes.

35

DALIA They were blue. Are blue, I mean. And I’ve always liked them. Not to be proud. But I was, I guess. They set me apart. Not set me apart from my schoolmates, set me apart from my relatives. Except Bubbe Rose. She had my blue eyes. Bubbe Rose and me. We shared that.

Those blue eyes. But no one had ever called them beautiful before—not until Michael that day in the alleyway. I guess that’s why I sought him out again—or he sought me out. I can’t remember which.

Days later in the same alleyway. Michael and Young Dalia are kissing, sweetly and gently, not making out. Michael pulls away, swinging her as he does.

MICHAEL So, do you want to try it?

YOUNG DALIA I guess so. But I won’t know how… I mean, you’re going to have to teach me.

I’ll probably step on your toes.

MICHAEL I can’t think of nicer feet to have on me own.

YOUNG DALIA Okay. (Michael takes her hand to begin.) Um wait. Remember when I said that most girls like to dance. Well, um, they do. I do. I mean, I will. But I’ve never danced with a boy before. Only in my bedroom. Pretending to… (Then, embarrassed.)

MICHAEL Have a man— YOUNG DALIA —take my hand, take me— MICHAEL —in his arms? (She nods shyly.) Well, let’s go.

Actors ad lib as Michael tries to teach Young Dalia to do some easy, beginning jitterbug steps.

DALIA I wasn’t too bad a student. Or he wasn’t too bad a teacher. Not that it mattered because it was just being there with Michael that I loved. Maybe that’s why I got so good at it.

Michael and Young Dalia enter the alleyway. He carries his radio, sets it down.

MICHAEL Okay, are you ready?

YOUNG DALIA Yep! Michael turns on the radio. He dials it—the tunes, radio voices, and volume varying—until he finds a station playing a jitterbug song.

MICHAEL Okay. I think we got something here.

As music plays, they do a great jitterbug. He has taught her well.

DALIA If anyone was ready for the prom that year, it was Michael and me. I hadn’t seen him dance up stairs yet, but I figured he’d been practicing. And there were stairs—a spiral staircase in fact—at that ballroom. And in my mind, he was going to dance me right up those stairs, take me in his arms and kiss me right there in front of everyone.

Same alleyway in New York. Michael and Young Dalia enter from opposite sides.

MICKI SHELTON

MICHAEL (By way of explaining.) I mean, you just don’t look Jewish.

YOUNG DALIA What?

MICHAEL I mean, I just never guessed. Look, it doesn’t matter to me. Believe me. It doesn’t matter to me at all. Nothing like that matters. Nothing like that. I don’t care. I don’t bloody care. Say something. Say something.

YOUNG DALIA I can’t… I can’t…

MICHAEL Dalia. Please talk to me. Dalia. Please.

YOUNG DALIA I thought when I mentioned my rabbi that that would be a clue! And what does that mean: “You don’t look Jewish.” I’m tired of it. I’ve heard it. I’m tired of it. I’ve heard it, okay. Can I help my appearance?

MICHAEL Please don’t help your appearance. I love your appearance.

YOUNG DALIA Then take me to the prom Michael!

MICHAEL I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.

YOUNG DALIA Why? I thought I was the one who had to call it off!

MICHAEL What? You can’t go with me? Why? YOUNG DALIA Does it matter? You just told me you can’t go.

MICHAEL Because me da won’t let me take a Jewish girl to the prom.

YOUNG DALIA I know that. You told me that!

MICHAEL I don’t know how he found out, but if he could see you. If he could meet you.

I think it would all be different.

YOUNG DALIA Because I have blue eyes and blond hair?

MICHAEL Not just that.

YOUNG DALIA I hope not!

MICHAEL Because of who you are—inside.

YOUNG DALIA So defy him! Lie to him. Do something!

MICHAEL I can’t.

YOUNG DALIA Why? MICHAEL Because after me mum died there’s just me da and me. I can’t defy him. Won’t.

He’s me da, in’ he? And I’m fek’in confused. Were you calling it off? (She nods.) Why? YOUNG DALIA My parents. “No Irish need apply.” Not for their precious daughter.

Jitterbug 37

MICHAEL But you— YOUNG DALIA I would have lied to them! I would have told them you were, I don’t know, English or something.

MICHAEL And when I came to your door to pick you up—ding dong—with this Irish accent, would you tell ‘em then?

YOUNG DALIA I don’t know. I don’t know. I just want you to be a man about it. And lie.

MICHAEL I can’t. And it wouldn’t work. This is who I am, and this is how I talk. They aren’t going to let their daughter go out with someone they haven’t met, someone who doesn’t pick her up at the door. And they shouldn’t. (Beat.) So—can we still meet, and dance? You know…

YOUNG DALIA No. No. We can’t. It hurts too much.

She exits. For a moment he stands, then exits.

DALIA First loves. You’re not prepared. (Beat.) Last week was my 60th reunion. High school.

(Beat.) Andrew. Ah, Andrew. Has it been five years already you’re gone? We had a good life, you and me. As husbands go, you were one of the good ones. Nope. One of the really good ones. Three kids. A nice apartment. A good rabbi. Times have changed. What do I have to complain about? It’s just that I’d been hoping, really hoping that, you know, Michael would be there. At the reunion. But life is good. Life is good. And I remember that day in the alleyway like it was yesterday, like it was just yesterday.

Jitterbug music up as Michael, still young, appears and takes Dalia’s hand. They dance a vigorous dance like Michael and Young Dalia did earlier, and in this case it may be even more vigorous and accomplished. The music begins softly, gets louder, gets softer again. Finally, it fades out.

END OF PLAY

MICKI SHELTON

I Lost My Heart Searching for the Gooseman Excerpt from a play in one act.

BRIAN DANG

CHARACTERS

Jake 16, male. Asian. Hopeless romantic.

Lynn 16, female. Asian. She’s on the debate team and thinks she has logic in the bag.

Waitress 25, female. Any race. She’s just trying to make it through a day in the city.

PLAYWRIGHT’S NOTE

It can sometimes be alienating to be an Asian American in love. I’ve struggled with the concept and

I’ve wrestled with its importance in my life. I’m never fully sure if I am ready to love anyone. However, throughout my tumultuous existential crises, I always have a friend waiting to support me.

FORMATING NOTES

A hyphen ( - ) denotes an abrupt stop, and interruption of the next line.

An ellipses (…) denotes a trailing off of thoughts and speech.

A slash (/) denotes where the next line should start and interrupt. The original line should be finished.

SUMMARY OF PLAY

Jake and Lynn, best friends, enter a diner right before closing to the closing waitress’s chagrin. Jake and

Lynn start talking about love and their crushes, and secret desires come to the surface and threaten to break their friendship.

JAKE I DON’T LOVE RYAN FOR SUPERFICIAL REASONS. LYNN Ryan is twenty years older than you and you haven’t even met him.

JAKE Yes. I know that. And he’s straight. And he’s with Eva Mendes… But that doesn’t mean I can’t fall in love with him. I feel like I really know him. I’ve listened to him tell stories.

I’ve heard that one about his Turkish massage like four times. I don’t know! I look at him and for some reason I feel happier.

LYNN Explain.

JAKE Oh, so now I have to explain my emotions to you. That’s typical.

LYNN HE’S AN ACTOR. YOU DON’T KNOW HIM. JAKE I’ve watched every single movie of his and I’ve watched hundreds of his interviews.

I KNOW ENOUGH TO LOVE HIM. LYNN He will never meet you. And there is no chance that he will fall in love with you. And there’s no chance that I will condone a relationship between a 40-year-old and a 16-year-old.

JAKE … You don’t… know that. I mean, YOU’VE loved a celebrity. You had a K-POP phase.

LYNN Completely irrelevant! It’s not even close to what love is. But this is some messed up fantasy of yours.

41

JAKE It is love for me! How is Ryan different than any other man in my life?

LYNN Uh, you can like, talk to Jim, I guess?

JAKE Sure, I could talk to Jim. But is he going to really talk to me? Ryan talks to me. He talks to me through all of his characters. Like, Lars, because I have never felt more love for someone than when he was Lars. And I never felt more sympathy for anyone so flawed than when he was the Driver. And maybe a lot of it is superficial, and I think his hair is wonderfully blonde and falls perfectly and just shines like some kind of beacon for my irrational love, and yes, I love his fucking eyes and his smile and my god his voice is so comforting. EVEN IF I won’t ever meet him, and my love for him is forever unrequited, immoral, and completely unfounded, I have as much of a chance with Ryan goddamn motherfucking Gosling as Jim from our fucking Calculus class. Because what is the difference between me, going to see La La Land for the third time to let him break my heart and let me pine after him and his wonderful, wonderful personality and ME, sitting in the stands next to the baseball fields pretending to do my homework by secretly staring at Jim, goddamn motherfucking Jim from Calculus in his cute baseball cap and his cute uniform who will never notice me in the way that I notice him because he’s NOT GAY. LYNN Is that what you do in the stands?

JAKE Wha – no – it was just a sli – it was just hypothetical!

LYNN I didn’t know Jim was on the baseball team! So you DO have a crush on Jim. Is that why you have that HAT? JAKE I love Ryan Gosling.

LYNN Okay, I think you’re using that word a little too fucking liberally.

JAKE I don’t see why you have such a big problem with me saying I love Ryan Gosling.

LYNN Do you not have standards?

JAKE Standards? Ryan Gosling is as high as it gets.

LYNN A person you don’t even know? That’s the highest standard that you have? What do you mean when you say you love someone else?

JAKE I don’t think I really love anyone else – LYNN How can you EVER equate that with how I LOVE YOU? JAKE … What?

LYNN Fucking shit.

Waitress enters and sets their water down on the table.

WAITRESS Are you going to finish your pie?

JAKE …yeah, we’ll be on our way out soon.

BRIAN DANG

LYNN No. JAKE No? WAITRESS NO?!

LYNN We have things to sort out.

WAITRESS Can’t you do that somewhere else?

LYNN NO! WE HAVE TO DO IT RIGHT NOW. I LOVE HIM. And he just goes and loves RYAN GOSLING. I am LOSING TO SOMEONE HE HASN’T EVEN MET. WAITRESS Didn’t you say he was gay?

LYNN SO? Waitress in disbelief. Jake buries his face into his hands.

WAITRESS Look, honey. He’s never gonna be able to get it up for you.

LYNN I don’t love him for his dick!

JAKE I’m right here!

LYNN Can’t you just close your eyes and pretend you’re listening to a man?

JAKE Your voice isn’t that low.

WAITRESS (to Jake) Can I kiss you?

JAKE Um. WAITRESS C’mon. Just let me do it. I’m not going to do anything to you – it’s just a test.

JAKE A test? Uh. WAITRESS I’m not going to bite you.

JAKE Uh… okay?

LYNN WHAT? WAITRESS (to Lynn) This is for you.

Waitress sits down next to Jake and kisses him. Both Jake and Lynn are aghast. They spend more time in silence and switching their staring gaze towards one another.

WAITRESS Well?

JAKE Well what?

WAITRESS How was that?

JAKE I don’t know what you want me to say.

I Lost My Heart Searching for the Gooseman 43

WAITRESS I’m just asking you if you felt anything.

JAKE Like… it was nice? I don’t know? It’s not like I got an erection or anything if that’s what you wanted.

WAITRESS What? No. Do you normally get instant boners when you get kissed? Okay.

Well, I tried. Usually guys are just horny messes.

Waitress exits. Lynn and Jake sit in silence for a moment. The seats squeak and they mess with their utensils. They take a drink of their water.

LYNN Just because I like you doesn’t mean I want to fucking… have sex… or whatever. Like…

I SUPPOSE the same way you like Ryan Gosling. You don’t want to fuck him, do you?

JAKE What?? NO! Besides, how do you like me? Why didn’t you tell me this before?

LYNN It didn’t seem relevant.

JAKE NOT relevant? In what world is this not relevant?

LYNN Can you listen to yourself for a moment? What did you expect me to do?

JAKE Tell me? Talk about it?

LYNN Talk about what? Ryan Gosling?

JAKE At this point you’re just making fun of me.

LYNN You’re gay and that’s the end of the discussion.

JAKE Why would you tell me that if you don’t want to talk about it?

LYNN I don’t know. Catharsis?

JAKE That is so unfair.

LYNN Unfair?

JAKE It’s like you’re blaming me for not being able to like you back that way.

LYNN Maybe I am.

JAKE What the hell?

LYNN I don’t find it unreasonable for me to like you if you have all these feelings for Ryan.

JAKE That has nothing to do with this.

LYNN I thought, “let’s just wait it out and we’ll see if he’s bi or some shit!”

JAKE You know it doesn’t work that way.

LYNN What way does it work, then, huh? Mr. “Ryan Gosling” is my sexuality?

BRIAN DANG

JAKE He means a lot more to me than you’re giving him credit for.

LYNN He’s just a hot, white guy who occasionally tells good jokes.

JAKE “Occasionally”? You’re delusional. He’s a comedic genius.

LYNN Whatever. What has he done for you that I haven’t?

JAKE LYNN, YOU’RE A GIRL. LYNN Is that what defines your love? Genitalia?

JAKE What the fuck, you know it’s more complicated than that…

LYNN What if I cut my hair short, dyed it blonde, gained a bunch of muscle, got plastic surgery – JAKE What are you saying?

LYNN I could strap a fucking dildo on if you – JAKE STOP! You’re treating me like one of your shitty debate topics.

LYNN Well, if it was, I WOULD BE WINNING. JAKE WINNING?! I AM NOT SOME KIND OF PRIZE FOR YOU TO WIN. You spend most of your time at debate and now you come barging in saying you like me or whatever to – LYNN Do you want to spend more time together? Would you love me then? I can’t believe you feel more sympathy for a movie character than me.

JAKE Do you know how hard it has been for me?

LYNN WELL, SAME. JAKE What?

LYNN Guys like you just want white girls, white men, white whatever the fuck, and Rudy is just another white piece of shit that probably has an Asian fetish – JAKE Maybe I want WHITE MEN BUT YOU DON’T BELONG TO ANY GROUP OF MEN ANYWAY. LYNN Why do I like you? Men like you are fucking stupid. You’re the type of guy who has an Asian fetish. In fact, you have a white guy fetish.

JAKE I don’t deserve this.

LYNN What do you deserve?

JAKE Ryan wouldn’t do this to me.

Lynn throws her water into Jake’s face.

I Lost My Heart Searching for the Gooseman 45

LYNN RYAN WOULDN’T DO SHIT FOR YOU. Waitress enters.

WAITRESS CAN YOU TWO CALM DOWN. YOU’RE CAUSING A DISTURBANCE. LYNN THERE’S NOBODY ELSE HERE! WAITRESS I’M HERE! AND I’VE HEARD EVERYTHING! GET USED TO IT! Lynn runs out to the bathroom.

WAITRESS (to Jake) Can you, like, leave?

JAKE Yeah. I can. And she can take her self-righteous ass onto a midnight bus ride. I mean…

I can totally do that. Should I do that?

WAITRESS It sounded like you two broke up. So, yeah, do it.

JAKE We DIDN’T BREAK UP… We were NEVER TOGETHER. WAITRESS It certainly seemed like it. You don’t fight that… passionately if you don’t care about each other. But life will go on.

JAKE I don’t feel like life is going on.

WAITRESS Excuse me?

JAKE We’re still here, aren’t we?

WAITRESS Then finish your pie and leave.

JAKE I don’t feel like eating this. I always imagined I would eat this on my first date. Mysterious man I can’t envision on the other side of the booth.

WAITRESS STOP WHINING AND LEAVE. Can you get your friend out of the bathroom, please?

JAKE I don’t want to bother her!

Waitress slams her hands onto the table.

WAITRESS LOOK, BUDDY. I’ve been here since 6 am and I am ready to leave. I don’t care about your “mysterious man you can’t envision on the other side of the booth” or whatever, but if you’re not going to finish your pie, then you leave. Nobody is going to care if you bought a cardboard cut-out of Ryan Gosling and made out with it in your bathroom, and it’s not going to be the end of the world if you never see her again. She just sounds clingy and you don’t want to love her. Her loss. Get a new girlfriend.

JAKE SHE’S NOT MY GIRLFRIEND. She’s my friend. I would lose something too. And it’s not like I don’t want to love her!

WAITRESS I don’t understand you two. Girlfriends, boyfriends, friends, lovers, broken-up,

BRIAN DANG

something. You stop seeing each other. The end. I haven’t kept in contact with any of my high school sweethearts.

JAKE Your shitty life doesn’t have to define ours.

WAITRESS MY shitty life? You don’t get to come in here right before closing and then say my life is shitty when you are screaming at each other about a celebrity. Maybe my life IS shitty because I’m here busing YOUR table but you have no idea what the rest of my life is nor do you – Lynn bursts in, holding scissors and inches of her hair, cut from her own head.

LYNN WOULD RYAN DO THIS FOR YOU? WAITRESS Holy shit.

JAKE WHAT DID YOU DO? LYNN THIS WAS AN ACT OF LOVE. JAKE THAT’S NOT LOVE!!!

Lynn runs up to Jake and throws the hair at him.

LYNN WHAT THE SHIT! LYNN I HATE YOU. I’VE SPENT 12 YEARS WITH YOU AND YOU CARE ABOUT RYAN GOSLING MORE THAN ME. I’m just… disposable to you, you don’t care at all about how I feel towards you…

Lynn starts hyperventilating and gasping in between her fits of passion.

YOU’RE JUST LIKE RUDY. And I know you’d leave me for Ryan. You’d take the first chance out of here on your fucking love train because you gave up on yourself before trying as if nobody will ever love you. What am I to you? WHAT AM I? There’s a lull. And then the Waitress notices that Lynn is still pointing the scissors at Jake.

WAITRESS GIVE ME THE GODDAMN SCISSORS! WHERE DID YOU EVEN GET THEM? END OF EXCERPT

I Lost My Heart Searching for the Gooseman 47

The Sign Jasmine Lomax

CHARACTERS Woman 20-30’s, been homeless for quite some time. Street smart.

Man 25-35, newly homeless in a town he doesn’t know. Injury on leg.

Crew 3 to 4 stagehands adorned with a sweater or beanie when present on stage, used as filler, no text/speech.

SETTING Outskirts of large metropolitan city, USA. SCENE ONE

Lights up on a man, he carries a large pack on his back. His stride looks painful, long, and weary. It is raining. He shivers until he finds himself under a large neon sign that is sheltering him, there is a girl there. She pulls out a wet pack of cigarettes and struggles to light one, eventually getting so frustrated she throws it.

WOMAN Think anything could get any worse?

MAN Do you think it can get any better?

He pulls out his pack and hands her a cigarette. She shakes pretty violently as she lights it.

WOMAN The only things I can think of to make this any better is a hit and some good dick.

MAN You holding?

WOMAN You a cop?

MAN With how your night is going, would you be surprised?

WOMAN (Smiles.) Oh… kind and funny…

MAN Still charming even with all this scruff?

WOMAN (Sarcastically.) If you were a cop, you definitely would have fooled me.

MAN (He lights a cigarette of his own.) Where are you from?

WOMAN Nowhere.

MAN What are you doing here?

WOMAN Nothing.

MAN Where is your – WOMAN Do you always ask this many questions?

MAN I just find it amazing that we are conveniently in the same situation…

WOMAN Heh, and what is so convenient about it? Is there something so convenient about being stuck in the rain? Freezing to death? Listening to nothing but the sounds of the rain and my stomach growling?

MAN I didn’t mean to –

49

WOMAN Enough.

She gets up and starts rounding up her things.

MAN I know you – WOMAN Yeah and so well after only five minutes.

MAN I am just trying to figure out my way around here – WOMAN We are all trying to find our way…

MAN Is there anyway, anyway you could just – WOMAN What?

MAN Just talk with me for just a little longer…

WOMAN How many people have you passed on the street tonight? How many?

MAN A dozen, easy.

WOMAN Well, welcome, we are an invisible people. I have a hard enough time getting my own life together, I don’t have time to fix yours.

MAN Maybe we can help each other.

WOMAN Yeah? Well here is a few tips, the clinic on 51st gives out clean needles every third Wednesday and Saint Vincent’s on 2nd has vouchers and laundry units. Unemployment, Disability, or anything else like that will take forever – you may just die before you will ever see that money.

She turns and walks out into the rain. Gone.

Man looks around and sees that Woman has left something behind, a small velvet pouch. It seems full.

He doesn’t bother looking at it, and takes off limping after her.

MAN Hey! WOMAN God, can you take a hint?!

She keeps walking.

MAN Please! You left something! C’mon… Stop!

WOMAN Do you harass all females or am I just a lucky victim today?

MAN Are you always this vicious to people trying to help you?

WOMAN (Stops abruptly.) Look, I am not sucking your dick for that smoke back there.

MAN Is sex all you think about?

WOMAN Is it not something you think about?

JASMINE LOMAX

MAN (Holds out the pouch.) You left this.

WOMAN (Takes it from him, turns to leave.) Well, I see your detective skills are poor, guess it’s probably best you aren’t a cop.

MAN A thank you couldn’t hurt.

WOMAN Fuck off. (Pointing in the direction of SL.) Men’s shelter is on 37th.

She is gone.

Alone on stage, Man looks at street sign – turns and walks the opposite way.

Exits.

Blackout.

SCENE TWO

As the lights return, we start a new day. We see Man sitting on the corner outside of a grocery store holding a cup out to people passing on the street – use Crew. He has been at it for hours with little success.

MAN Please… your change? Ma’am, do you have a spare dollar? Sir, some change for some food?

We hear him continue to ask, and we hear some loud yelling off SR. Suddenly Woman enters running—she is dressed extremely different than we saw her in the beginning, even down to a wig.

She trips over a leg Man has out on the ground. She crashes pretty hard, with bread and other food flying out of her arms.

Come on! (He attempts to help pick up some of the dropped food.) Hey… you – Woman scurrying to pick up food. Woman shushes Man, drops a lot of her food in frenzy, loses wig.

Crew enter, re-enter as the shop owner and worker.

(Starting to rise.) Look brother, you got the wrong guy… (They inch closer.) Seriously Man! (They inch closer still.) Back off, Man! (They tackle Man to the ground, harming his injured leg more.)

FUCKKKK. C’mon man, I said it wasn’t me.

Crew persist. Lights begin to fade. We hear Man make sounds of pain and sounds of resistance until…

Blackout.

SCENE THREE

Lights up. We can see Man limping—which has gotten extremely worse—past Crew on the street.

We see Woman nestled in with them, she sees Man and immediately tries to walk away from him.

Again, her appearance drastically different from the other times we have seen her on stage.

The Sign 51

MAN HEY! What the hell?

WOMAN Excuse me.

MAN No more pretending like you don’t know me!

WOMAN I don’t know you! Please, move…

MAN I spent hours, loading inventory for that store! Hours!

Woman still attempts to push past him.

(Grabs her, pulls out wig.) I see you got a new hair do. I suppose you won’t wanna use this one again? I bet you have a million lined up!

WOMAN Let go of me!

MAN Who is gonna help you here? (Looks at Crew, they look away, exit.) They think I am your pimp, your dealer… maybe even your father!

Woman spits in his face.

MAN Listen bitch…

WOMAN (She backs away.) Now you sound like my father…

MAN I am starting to sound like mine too.

WOMAN Conveniently?

He is stunned. Woman shuffles around him, leaving him alone on stage. Crew disburse.

Man sits and looks up to the sky, he notices that he is sitting under the same neon sign. It flickers out to show the sun is up. We see the man start unpacking his satchel, pulling out a cardboard sign­ – it states “I was human once”, blankets, food. Crew take turns walking past, Man attempts to interact with them, they treat him as though they don’t see him. Tempo accelerates to show time passing, after the montage the Neon light flickers.

The sun sets on him as he curls up under his blanket.

Blackout.

SCENE FOUR

We hear noise, like yelling, Crew appear. They bring in a very dangerous energy. They run up to Man and start trashing his set up – kicking his belongings, ransacking his satchel, there is a break out brawl, Crew beat Man. Woman appears and is in shock. Crew grab what they can and scurry off, leaving man groaning in pain.

WOMAN (Frantically.) There’s so much blood. How can I help you?

MAN (Wiping lip.) Haven’t you helped enough?

JASMINE LOMAX

WOMAN I am sorry, I am so sorry. I didn’t know – MAN You didn’t know?

WOMAN I didn’t. I swear it.

She helps man off the ground, he attempts to stand, his bad leg giving out, Man winces in pain and collapses.

WOMAN They hurt your leg?

MAN My leg is fine, it’s fine – She rips his pant leg, and gasps.

WOMAN How long has this been this way? The night we met, your limping, was that from this?

MAN The night I came into town, I had hopped a train, caught a piece of scrap metal with my leg.

WOMAN That was days ago.

MAN A week.

WOMAN The flesh looks like it is rotting.

MAN I’ve been cleaning it, it will heal.

WOMAN You need medicine.

MAN How would you know what I need? You have been nothing but trouble for me since I have gotten here!

WOMAN Let me help you, I can get medicine.

MAN Now you want to help me?

WOMAN Maybe we can help each other…

MAN Yeah, you have definitely done enough…

Man attempts to stand again, we hear a snapping, he collapses.

A searing high-pitched noise is played. Sirens. Crew as cops appear, grab Woman. Commotion.

The lights grow to an intensity that reminds me of what happens when someone knocks out. Blinding.

As the lights start to fade we hear beeping, like a pulse/vital monitor. We are in a hospital. Man lays in bed. We see Woman sitting next to him.

MAN (Groggy.) I thought I would never be so happy to see you.

WOMAN I guess I get lucky being the only person you know, huh?

MAN Oh… look at that, kind and funny.

The Sign 53

WOMAN Guess I deserved that.

Look, I wanted to apologize…

MAN Oh, so you do have manners?

WOMAN I just wanted you to know that, and I wanted to have peace of mind knowing you were going to wake up.

MAN …and if I didn’t?

WOMAN I wanted you to know that I see you. You’re not invisible.

MAN And I see you.

Crew appears as a nurse at the door.

WOMAN (Gathering her things.) Good to know… Guess my job is done.

She goes to leave.

MAN Wait, don’t go, you never told me your name…

WOMAN (Smirks.) I hope you learn to find comfort in the unknown.

Exits.

The Nurse picks up the empty tray. While the man lays, he breathes. She hands him a note that was left behind. Man opens the note, his deep breaths turn into laughter.

MAN Jordan, huh?

Blackout.

END OF PLAY

JASMINE LOMAX

photos

by Rya n

Maxwe ll

Photog

raphy

Flower in the Desert A one-act play.

Hannah Merrill

CHARACTERS

Lily Female, 40s, any ethnicity.

Roxanne Female, 40s, any ethnicity.

SETTING

Outside a café in Seattle, Washington.

TIME

A summer night.

NOTE

A / mark in the middle of a sentence indicates that the next character to speak should begin her line, interrupting and overlapping the remainder of the previous line.

Night. Lily is sitting at an outdoor café table with a coffee cup, an éclair on a plate, and an extra chair, absorbed in a book of folktales. She’s wearing pearl earrings. Loud crashes. Lily jumps and looks up. Roxanne stumbles in, drunk, wearing battered jeans and a leather jacket. She trips and falls, her back to Lily.

ROXANNE Okay! That was, like, whoa.

LILY Roxanne?

Roxanne turns.

ROXANNE Lily.

Brief eye contact.

LILY Are you alright?

ROXANNE That trash can. I beat the shit out of that trash can.

Lily stands and peers into the distance.

LILY You tore a trash can to pieces.

ROXANNE With my teeth.

She crawls over to the table.

Can I maybe sit here?

LILY Um. Sure?

Lily sits and goes back to her book. Roxanne drags herself up onto the other chair.

ROXANNE Nice place. Is that an éclair?

57

LILY Oh. Yes. They’re very good, you should try / one— ROXANNE Éclairs are a conspiracy.

LILY Sorry?

ROXANNE Éclairs. They’re a conspiracy. You know what an éclair really is?

LILY No… ROXANNE A cream pastry. But nope, they’re called éclairs ‘cause that means they’re French and the bakery can tack an extra dollar onto the price.

LILY I don’t think that’s how it works.

ROXANNE What’s so great about being French anyway?

LILY Well… isn’t French supposed to be the language of love?

ROXANNE Fuck that. It’s the language of lots of letters you don’t actually pronounce. Yeah, my last girlfriend said that shit. “French is the language of love.” She left me for a garbage collector. I ask you.

LILY Our society couldn’t exactly function without them.

ROXANNE Yeah. You’re right. That’s what every society needs to thrive. A water source, bureaucracy, and garbage collectors who go down on other peoples’ girlfriends.

LILY Is that why you destroyed the trash can?

ROXANNE No. It was just in my way.

LILY Look, Roxanne, you showed me what the door is for, so / stop— ROXANNE/LILY Stop rubbing salt in the wound.

ROXANNE I’ll shut up now.

Lily goes back to her book. Roxanne examines the éclair closely.

Yeah. It’s a cream pastry.

LILY Will you stop breathing on my éclair?

ROXANNE I’m not sick.

LILY No, you’re drunk as hell!

ROXANNE It’s prom night.

LILY You’re a couple of decades too old for prom. Can I read my book now?

ROXANNE What is it?

HANNAH MERRILL

LILY Folktales. The Little Snow Maiden.

ROXANNE If it’s not a Disney movie, I’ve never heard of it.

LILY Well, you’ve gone downhill.

ROXANNE What’s that supposed to mean?

LILY Nothing important.

ROXANNE You think I’ve turned into an alcoholic vandal who’s gonna give her kid some kind of complex.

LILY (An obvious lie.) No, I don’t.

ROXANNE Oh, you do. Thanks for that. Thanks for sitting on your café chair like it’s a fucking throne with your Little Snow Maiden and fancy-ass pearl earrings and goddamn cream pastry.

I salute you, Your Majesty.

LILY Oh my God. ROXANNE ‘Cause you know what? You’re right. I’m an alcoholic vandal, and Julia’s probably gonna get teen-pregnant ‘cause of me. So, my humble respects to the royal family, who always floss their teeth and use condoms— LILY Shut up. Just shut up.

ROXANNE A toast!

She grabs the coffee cup.

A toast to teen girls who don’t get pregnant. May their days be long upon this earth!

She takes a swallow of coffee. Lily grabs the cup from her and slams it on the table.

LILY Charlotte had a baby six months ago, you bitch!

Pause.

And no, she didn’t use a condom, and neither of us floss our teeth anymore, and I’m not the queen of anywhere, so just leave me alone.

She goes back to her book. Pause.

ROXANNE Hey, uh. I’m—I’m sorry.

LILY Fuck you.

ROXANNE I’ll buy you another coffee.

LILY Don’t bother. I still hate coffee.

ROXANNE What? Then why were you drinking it?

Flower in the Desert 59

Lily shuts her book. Drops it on the table.

LILY Because that’s what normal people do. They drink coffee and eat pastries and read great literature in cafés. They know when their daughters are sleeping with college guys and they give them the perfect sex talk because they read the perfect book that told them how.

ROXANNE If it makes you feel any better, by the time I gave Julia the sex talk, she’d been reading online erotica for years.

Pause.

LILY Did I totally fuck Charlotte up?

ROXANNE Why are you asking the alcoholic vandal?

LILY Because if I asked the moms whose kids play the violin and play soccer and got full rides to three colleges… they’d say, no, sweetie, of course you didn’t fuck your daughter up. But I’d know they were lying.

ROXANNE You’re not gonna believe anyone. Doesn’t matter a bit if I tell you that, if you can’t tell it to yourself.

She picks up the book and looks through it.

The Little Snow Maiden, huh? I remember that one.

LILY You said you didn’t.

ROXANNE I was being a total bitch. It’s the one with the man and woman who want a child, so they build a daughter out of snow, right? And she comes alive.

LILY Yes. ROXANNE I forgot the end. (She starts reading aloud.) “But even as the wife held her ever so tightly, the little snow maiden began to melt in her arms. And finally there was nothing left of the girl but a pool of water by the stove. And the husband and wife never saw their snow daughter anymore.”

Pause.

That sucks.

LILY It feels real.

Pause.

ROXANNE Fuck snow. Who wants snow?

LILY Still a desert girl?

ROXANNE Yeah.

LILY Did you ever get to the Southwest?

HANNAH MERRILL

ROXANNE Nope. Julia’s college fund needs it more. Doesn’t mean I don’t wanna go, though.

LILY Know any new cacti names?

ROXANNE Beavertail. Strawberry hedgehog. Pincushion. Fish hook barrel. Horse crippler.

Prickly pear.

LILY Horse crippler. Got to love it.

ROXANNE I found out the fringe-toed lizard swims through sand.

LILY I’m not sure whether to believe you.

ROXANNE No, no, no, no, no. It’s totally real. Like the honey pot ants.

LILY Honey pot ants?

ROXANNE See, they gather nectar from flowers and bring it to the storage ants, and they eat it all. And then during the dry season, whenever anyone needs to eat, the storage ants vomit up the nectar to feed them.

Pause.

Yeah… you probably could’ve gone happily through your life without knowing that.

LILY It’s interesting. You know, until we—we met—I thought it never rained in the desert.

ROXANNE (Laughing.) You were shocked as hell to hear there are flash floods in the desert sometimes.

LILY Like me.

ROXANNE Huh? LILY I’m a flash flood these days. I don’t show up much, and when I do, I make a mess.

ROXANNE Show up where?

LILY At Charlotte’s place.

ROXANNE Charlotte has her own place now?

LILY I made her. Since she had the baby.

ROXANNE Wait, you—?

LILY Yes. I threw her out.

Pause.

ROXANNE What were you thinking?

LILY I don’t know. That it would make her grow up, I guess.

Flower in the Desert 61

ROXANNE Has it?

LILY No. It’s turned her into a kid again.

Pause.

I thought she’d pull herself together. But I keep having to cover her bills, because all she does is take care of the baby and make pearl jewelry.

ROXANNE I didn’t know she liked pearls. I know you do, but I didn’t know she / did— LILY She makes them because I like them. (Pointing to her earrings.) I got these from her.

Last time I visited. And the time before that, I got a potato necklace, and the time before that, I got teardrop earrings, and the time before that, I got a flat square bracelet.

ROXANNE Wait, wait, wait. Potato? Teardrop? Flat square?

LILY Oh… the jewelry’s made from mollusk pearls.

ROXANNE Mollusk—?

LILY Freshwater mollusks. They’re shellfish too. Kind of like oysters, but it’s easier to farm them.

And you don’t have to make the pearls round. You can make them shaped like teardrops or flat squares… or potatoes.

ROXANNE People make pearls shaped like potatoes?

LILY They’re a lot smaller. But they really look like potatoes.

ROXANNE Why don’t they just make them all round?

LILY Now that we can farm them, round pearls are common. People want something different.

Something imperfect.

ROXANNE And Charlotte makes this jewelry for you?

LILY It’s like—like she’s trying to bribe me to love her.

ROXANNE Don’t you? Love her, I mean?

LILY Of course I do! That’s why I sent her away. It’s for her own good.

ROXANNE That’s the shittiest excuse ever.

LILY It’s why you broke up with me. For my own good.

ROXANNE That’s how I know it’s a shitty excuse.

LILY Wait, you think you shouldn’t have—?

ROXANNE We shouldn’t talk about this. But Charlotte—you need to / help— LILY Please. Just don’t.

HANNAH MERRILL

Roxanne looks at the book.

ROXANNE Is Snow White and Rose Red in here?

LILY You remember that one too?

ROXANNE Yeah. Far as I recall, the ending was a damn sight better. The girls marry the princes, right?

LILY Mm-hm. And the mother goes with them to live in the palace, and she brings white roses and red roses with her.

ROXANNE You still grow roses?

LILY Yes. ROXANNE I’d think I’d know that even if I’d never seen them. You just have a very… rose-like air to you. You emanate a sense of rose-ness. You bloom out like a rose.

Pause. Their eyes meet. They look away.

LILY I think I’m more of a desert flower.

ROXANNE That’s nothing to be down about. You think you’re a Mexican gold poppy, or a blue lupine, or a red-spiked owl clover?

LILY It doesn’t matter. If what you told me is true, they don’t bloom for much of the year.

As soon as it stops raining, they wilt. (Pause.) I’m a desert flower. Not enough rain for my own daughter.

ROXANNE If you threw her out for her own good, you could take her back for her own good.

Box up that cream pastry and take it over to wherever she’s staying and tell her she can come home.

LILY I don’t know how.

ROXANNE Come on, Lily.

LILY Stop telling me what to do! You’re the one who’s an alcoholic now!

ROXANNE I’ll listen to Julia and go to my AA meetings if you listen to Charlotte and take her back.

LILY Fat chance. You’re drunk on prom night. I bet you didn’t even take Julia’s photo.

ROXANNE I’ll take twenty prom photos and send them to you if you take Charlotte back.

LILY You’re the one who vandalized a trash can!

ROXANNE Actually, I didn’t.

LILY I saw you rip it up.

Flower in the Desert 63

ROXANNE Yeah, but I paid for it first.

LILY You did?

ROXANNE It was all dented up anyway. Owner was happy to get ten bucks for it.

Pause.

Let’s make up a new ending for the Little Snow Maiden.

LILY Will you leave me alone if I do?

ROXANNE Yep. I’ll blow this joint.

Pause.

LILY So the little snow maiden melts into a puddle on the floor. And the spring comes, and the man and the woman are lonely again. And then summer comes, and then fall, and then winter.

ROXANNE Yeah?

LILY And… they hear a silvery laugh outside their door. It sounds just like their little snow maiden. And they open the door, and they see her, with her ice dress glittering like diamonds and frost on her eyelashes and moonlight in her hair. She’s come home for the winter, and she comes back every year. She’s gone for spring and summer and fall, but every year she comes back for winter. (Pause.) Are you going to blow this joint now?

ROXANNE No. LILY You said you would!

ROXANNE I won’t go to those AA meetings if you don’t go take Charlotte back. If I get drunk someday and wander in front of a car and die, it’ll be your fault.

LILY Now you’re just being blatantly manipulative.

ROXANNE Yep. LILY Why?!

ROXANNE ‘Cause I can’t see you lose your daughter. I love you too much.

Pause.

LILY You—love me? Still?

ROXANNE I never stopped.

LILY I don’t deserve to be loved.

ROXANNE Being loved isn’t about what you deserve.

She picks up the plate and hands it to Lily.

HANNAH MERRILL

Now, box up this éclair.

LILY I thought it was a cream pastry.

ROXANNE They’re cream pastries for us. They’re éclairs for our daughters.

Lily turns and exits into the café, without taking the plate. Roxanne sags and drops the plate on the table. She sits for a moment. Then she pulls out her phone and chooses a number.

Hi, Julia, honey. How’s prom?

Pause.

Good. Listen. When Brandon drops you off, invite him in, okay?

Pause.

‘Cause I didn’t get your photo beforehand. I’d like to.

Pause.

No. No, I won’t be at the bar.

Pause.

Yeah, I had that coming. But I won’t be.

Pause.

You’ll see. I’ll be home.

Roxanne puts her phone away. Lily comes out of the café with two boxes.

You’re gonna… ?

LILY Try. (Pause.) I might fuck it up.

ROXANNE We all might.

Lily puts one of the boxes in front of Roxanne.

LILY It’s an éclair.

She leaves. Roxanne looks after her. Lights down.

END OF PLAY

Flower in the Desert 65

Our Bodies, Yourselves Our Bodies, Yourselves was commissioned

by Broken Nose Theatre in Chicago for bechdel fest 4: the boiling point

Elaine Romero

CHARACTERS Theresa Clothing optional stance. Any race.

Camilla Nudist only stance. Latina, native New Mexican and all that means.

Ana I ’ve got kids in the car stance. From California with local DNA. Descended from native New Mexicans and all that means.

TIME Present PLACE A hot spring.

LOCATION New Mexico, USA.

Theresa and Camilla soak in a hot spring. They look across at the rock formations.

CAMILLA I see Apaches. Dancing.

THERESA You’re just trying to be all local. Brag about your DNA. …

I see peacocks.

CAMILLA Where?

She leans into Theresa.

THERESA Right beneath the Mesa. Next to the lone pine.

CAMILLA That pine is protected by that rock in front of it. From the wind. No mystery about that.

Theresa tries to see it from Camilla’s view.

THERESA I want to see what you see.

CAMILLA It takes a lifetime to learn to read rock formations.

THERESA Oh, I thought you were going to say it’s in the blood.

CAMILLA You covet my blood.

(Continuing) Where I come from, envy can cause fatal disease.

THERESA Let me be clear, I’m not a Republican.

C’mon. It’s a ridiculous position. For a person like you.

That takes a second to hit.

67

CAMILLA What kind of person is that?

THERESA I don’t want to be you.

CAMILLA But there are things. Native things. That attract you. You want those parts of me.

THERESA You invited me because I behaved at the sweat.

CAMILLA You did. And today, you sit in this hot spring, naked as the day you were born, because you know my family has always done it that way.

THERESA It’s nice to sit here and not worry about a suit. I mean, really, who is it for? Trying to cover this or that. Trying not to pop out here or there or shave just so. Screw it!

CAMILLA It was about being in this place. On this land. With the view. Of the Apache dancers. Our ancestors.

THERESA You’re family saw them, too?

CAMILLA Those who have eyes see them.

Familial ghosts.

Etched in rock.

Theresa leans in to look.

THERESA I see them now.

Camilla looks at her doubtfully.

CAMILLA Prove it.

THERESA If you are accusing me of cultural appropriation, I can get my suit out of the car.

CAMILLA You are the world’s worst nudist.

THERESA Is that what you call me?

CAMILLA You called me a Republican.

THERESA You work at their headquarters on Central Avenue.

CAMILLA And that proves, what?

THERESA When you’re alone in the booth, it’s just between you and your ballot.

CAMILLA You romanticize democracy while you trivialize the Trail of Tears. …

Our elders told us to never reveal this location. So when tourists asked, we would send them in the wrong direction. But when I started working in town, I changed. If you hold onto this earth too hard, she slips through your fingers.

ELAINE ROMERO

Ana enters, barging in, a bag of Goldfish in a hand, wearing a designer bathing suit with an attracttive sarong.

ANA Is this the San Antonio Hot Springs?

Camilla and Theresa look at each other. Ana whips out her map, a paper napkin with pen marks, turning it in all directions.

CAMILLA Is that what you call it?

Ana starts picking through their stuff.

THERESA What are you doing?

ANA You two need bathing suits.

THERESA Oh, we do?

ANA I have three children in the car.

CAMILLA I hope you rolled the windows down. Heat deaths.

ANA I’m bringing them up the hill any minute. And I would appreciate it if— CAMILLA …

THERESA This place is nudist.

ANA Thirty minutes tops.

CAMILLA Was that the punchline?

ANA Not a second longer.

THERESA In exchange for what?

ANA You’re extorting money out of me to cover your tits?

THERESA We could turn our backs to you. Get our necks all twisted up. Have to spring for a $100 massage when we get back to ‘Querque.

CAMILLA They should know what adult bodies look like—your children.

Ana’s voice shifts as if she is on the verge of a startling revelation.

ANA I drove 120 miles to get here.

CAMILLA …

It’s always been clothing optional, naked first. And we all just knew that you would come here, not looking anyone below the face and sit and soak in meditation, talk occasionally. But then one day, someone said, “No, I have a kid. They can’t see adult shapes. Adult shapes are “obscene,” and they started insisting that we cover up to protect their children, from what?

From adult breasts and genitals, as if their mere presence was going to undermine their

Our Bodies, Yourselves 69

carefully instilled morality, as if their moral codes were that fragile. If you want your kids to see the San Antonio Hot Springs, as you call it, bring them here. Let them soak.

Let them stare at the rocks and see the truth.

ANA I have snacks.

THERESA Do you have Goldfish and the pretzels with the peanut butter inside?

Camilla looks at Theresa as in, “Don’t encourage her.”

ANA Is that a problem?

CAMILLA Remember to pick up after yourselves. Trash fines from the Forest Service are steep.

Ana just stands there, staring at their faces. She’s boiling.

ANA It’s not fair. You live here, right? You can come here anytime. I want to come here and soak and be alone!

THERESA With your three kids.

ANA With my three kids.

CAMILLA Well, it’s not the Four Seasons. We don’t take reservations.

ANA Share share share. At the gym. In the cafe. Share share share. The parking lot is always full. I can’t head into a space without facing off another human being. When do we get something that’s just ours?

THERESA When you buy your own hot spring.

CAMILLA Or go to the Bath House in town. Private tub. A curtain and a bathrobe when you’re done with your dirty deed.

ANA Look, I just want to provide a nature experience. Something that is not being piped in on a screen. Something not curated by someone else.

CAMILLA That’s what’s wrong with the so-called San Antonio Hot Springs, they’re curated

by Native Americans. New Mexicans. Whatever.

THERESA Where you from?

ANA California, but my ancestors were from here.

CAMILLA You’re native New Mexican. Really?

ANA By blood, yes. That’s all I know. Though my grandmother used to sing to us in an Indian language that was not Spanish. Weird.

CAMILLA And they don’t skinny dip in California?

ANA Public nudity became… unsustainable.

ELAINE ROMERO

CAMILLA It’s human bodies, not carbon fuel.

ANA Look, it was men and women, and children. It got super messy. Tits and dicks. Perverts.

Child molesters!

CAMILLA Woah!!

ANA People with genitals swinging when they got in and out of the pool. Pubic hair.

THERESA May I weigh in because I’m on the verge of a very inappropriate Clarence Thomas joke and she’s employed as a Republican?

Ana looks at Camilla.

ANA At least we have something in common.

CAMILLA You mean you’re employed as a Republican?

ANA We’ve both got local blood.

My mom says her great-grandmother used to make bread in this outdoor adobe oven thing.

THERESA An horno?

ANA And she used to trade with the Indians by the river, but she was the only Spanish person who did that.

THERESA …

ANA I don’t know anything about it, really. And, I wanted to come and see.

CAMILLA What did you expect?

ANA Not this.

Camilla points at her chest.

CAMILLA These are just breasts. B cups, but they mammogram the fuck out of them.

They took a little piece of the left one years ago, just to see, but it was nothing.

THERESA So, clothe your kiddies. No one will die. Really.

ANA I just want to go— CAMILLA These were nudist springs way before the 60’s or the Hippies or any of them, before the Beatniks even.

You should want to expose your children to that.

ANA Expose my children. You want me to expose my children. What are you, like, kiddie predators?

THERESA That’s kind of a big leap.

Our Bodies, Yourselves 71

ANA Cover your damn breasts!

THERESA Stop being a helicopter parent!

CAMILLA You can’t protect them from everything!

ANA Can’t you two just go with the flow?

CAMILLA I mean if you’re going to protect them from something. Protect them from a real threat. My breasts are no threat! And neither is my pubic hair.

THERESA You’re just going to make me sit on that Clarence Thomas joke like a big shit in a public restroom.

ANA Are you a parent? Because if you were a parent, you would understand.

Theresa and Camilla get quiet. Ana is high and mighty.

I’m just saying, if you were a parent— Theresa glares at Ana, eyes full of no. Ana sees it but rejects the cue.

Y’all think that you can just do what you want and then you expect us to take care of the children and protect them from— THERESA (to Ana) Stop.

But it’s too late.

CAMILLA Was a parent.

Ana opens her mouth to respond, but finds no words. Camilla gets up. Ana looks at Camilla’s naked body parts, the way you’re not supposed to at a nudist hot spring.

I don’t want to see your children. In suits or out of suits. You win. Because seeing children of yours would give me no hope, and I need hope right now. I need hope that children with our DNA will know something of the past but you’re so busy whitewashing their psyches that I can’t bear to look. So, you win. The hot spring is yours. Have some time to yourself. To soak.

ANA You’re not wearing anything!

THERESA Shut up. Shut up. Shut up! She’s not wearing anything. She’s at a fucking hot springs where her ancestors, where your ancestors used to roam. No one wore anything.

Get over it! Everybody was naked. Get over it! Stop hating yourself. Stop with the seeing yourself through the eyes of others. You’ve got fucking local DNA. Fucking precious local DNA. You are Native and Latino and that means something here, but you’ve got to own it.

You’re from here.

Take that designer shit off. I dare you. Get in that spring the way you were meant to. It’s yours.

Theresa stares her off. Camilla watches, impressed. Ana takes a sec, removes her sarong, her suit.

It becomes clear why she was making such a big deal about the suit. A tampon string hangs

ELAINE ROMERO

between her legs. They notice. Ana gets in the hot spring.

ANA I don’t have children in the car. I started bleeding back in Cruces and it won’t stop.

Theresa looks at the bag of Goldfish.

My kids spend summers out east with their father’s dysfunctional family. It’s effing complicated with a capital “E.” Goldfish make me think of them.

DNA is only good as the stories that come with it. Truth is, my DNA’s like a broken GPS. I had to try to find us, to find something. And I thought—I thought —I don’t know, coming back to Jemez—I might find it. But some jokester sent me walking in the wrong direction.

Like I was some kind of surfer girl with bleached blonde hair. Like I really belonged in Corona del Mar. Which I do not! I assure you. I do not. I got lost. For hours. Waiting for my DNA to speak, but It was silent on the subject of us. Of me. Of why. Maybe it boils angry because my ancestors left. Who knows? Maybe a person with thousands of years of local blood isn’t worth a thing next to a real local.

CAMILLA See, those rock formations over there. They say if you stare at them long enough— ANA You see the truth?

She was listening.

CAMILLA What do you see?

Ana stares at the formations.

ANA You’re going to think it’s dumb, and maybe it’s just because I’m here­­—I mean, back.

I see Apaches.

Dancing.

(Suddenly insecure.) Is that right?

CAMILLA …

That’s right.

Camilla puts her arm around Ana, offering a knowing nod. Two women bound by blood as Theresa looks over to see if there’s a way inside this club.

END OF PLAY

Our Bodies, Yourselves 73

BECHDEL TEST Does a Latina Playwright Need Permission to Write about Women’s Bodies?

Commissioned by New Theatre Magazine Written by Elaine Romero

the invitation for the commission came in early 2016. It was for a Chicago storefront

theatre’s Bechdel Fest. I liked the idea of having my work be a part of an evening of plays that intentionally met the Bechdel Test. The interpretation of the Bechdel Test was fairly streamlined. Our plays were to focus on scenes between women about something other than a man. I assumed, erroneously, that we would all be writing feminist plays. I mean, we writing in the spirit of Alison Bechdel, right?

Feminism felt on a positive uptick in early 2016. There was a woman running for president, and we were in a different place in our conversation about white feminism and women of color. We seemed on our way to a different future—a future that felt it would free us, and make us defy the obvious odds we live with daily, the fight for gender parity in a given theatre season, or the make-up of the Senate, or the Supreme Court. We learned it was true.

We were on our way to a different future. It just wasn’t the different future we’d prognosticated.

Timing is everything when it comes to plays and life.

I dreamed of this play during a moment in time and that moment quickly found itself eclipsed by another. We live in a time of eclipsing conversations. We can barely grasp one concept of Russian collusion when a new affinity group lands under the onslaught of a presidential Tweet.

We run to the rescue, and we find ourselves, again, eclipsed, undone by our own good intentions. We never see the eclipses coming, but they blacken out our light every time.

It was later, I realized that my play was interpreted as demanding too much of actors, asking them to give something for nothing. I’d have a director attached for a few hours, or I’d have a new person read it, and I would hear the following. “I just feel really bad about my body right now.” “I just don’t feel good about my weight.”

Or, “I would not be willing to do this play myself. I can’t ask actors to do it.” Oh, and it’s a good play. It was as if I, a Latina playwright, was really Darrell Cox, using real women’s bodies to deviant ends.

The Bechdel play was to be written for a scrappy, now award-winning, company. We’d have a development timeline, a dramaturg, and a guaranteed production in Chicago. We would float characters, a premise, and begin our discussion with a dramaturg (a male). It’s a bit of a Hollywood structure for my taste, but I decided it would be worth it to get another play out of a process, and I love having my work produced in Chicago, and I really liked the idea of being part of a feminist festival.

What could go wrong?

I’d asked for a woman director. The team, of course, agreed. For some reason, that was getting hard as well.

I fought harder for the play than I should have. I used every contact I had. I went to the most daring companies I could find (ones that did nudity regularly), and they’d be interested for a minute, and then they’d bail.

Ultimately, the answer was always the same. Because of what had happened with Cox, nobody would work on the play. Nobody would even start to explore this play that takes place inside of a hot spring. Nude women. No. No. No. At that moment in Chicago, women’s bodies would be tone deaf because of what men had done.

I decided to write something body positive. Perhaps society had felt like it was shifting away from women being at home in their bodies and I wanted to show that in a different light. I wanted to challenge what I saw as a step backwards in our relationship to our bodies. When I first realized that there would be three nude women of color in the play, I consulted my dramaturg. He assured me that the theatre was 100% supportive about me writing what I wanted to write. I really adored him and I felt empowered to keep working. Sure, it might be hard to find people to work on this show, but I still believed that for an event called the Bechdel Fest, there would be women artists wanting to collaborate with me. The dramaturg and I continued a protracted process of development without hearing the script, without asking any questions, and without realizing we were about to be eclipsed.

That June, a story broke in the Chicago Reader.* It was an early precursor of the Me Too Movement. The article focused on Artistic Director, Darrell Cox, and the abuse he had perpetrated at his award-winning theatre over two decades. The article not only raised a question about Chicago’s love for gritty realism, but it’s entire storefront scene, built on the backs of, let’s face it, non-equity, unprotected actors. The revelations around Cox led to the end of that theatre, and it led to other stories of abuse in other theatres. The revelation of one theatre’s dark past revealed another and another. And somewhere in there was my play, Our Bodies, Yourselves, a play which dared feature nude women of color.

On a very dark day, I fetched a play out of my computer called, Kissing Fire. I tweaked it to meet the Bechdel Test. Kissing Fire was directed by a man and presented as a staged-reading amidst fully produced shows. The director had the actors light matches at the beginning of the play. The play featured fireflies who had fallen in love with water droplets. Their destiny was to be extinguished. And in the end, as I saw my actors managing their matches, water glasses, and scripts, I thought about Our Bodies, Yourselves. I thought about how people weigh in on what we can do, or not do, with our bodies. I thought about how I’d been weighed in on as a Latina artist. I thought about how when we ignite something strong, it can still easily be extinguished or eclipsed by the forward thrust of collective action.

As a result, Our Bodies, Yourselves has never been performed. v

By the time summer was over, I began to realize we were having a hard time securing a director. Everyone said casting would be a problem. I honestly thought they were telling me they could not find three Latinx actors. *Read At Profiles the Drama—and Abuse—is Real, the Chicago Reader article by Aimee Levitt, here: https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/ profiles-theatre-theater-abuse-investigation/Content?oid=22415861.

75

Advertising with New Theatre Magazine

www.newtheatrepublishing.com/advertising Non-profit Advertising Lottery

New Theatre Magazines offers free advertising space to a number of non-profit organizations in each issue.

Interested organizations and volunteer-run groups must fill out the lottery form found at the URL above.

There is no cost to enter the lottery. Entries will be assigned a number and winners will be chosen via random number generator; advertisement placement is also determined via random number generator.

General Advertising

New Theatre Magazine offers advertising on a single-issue basis. We do not offer continual advertising contracts at this time. Rates may vary per issue.

Advertising Requirements & Specifications

Please be prepared to adhere to the following advertising requirements and specifications. Advertisers who fail to comply with these regulations are not guaranteed inclusion in the magazine.

Requirements:

— no hate speech, no threatening, abusive, slanderous, insulting language —n o racism, sexism, ableism, ageism, classism, homophobia, transphobia, fatphobia, religious intolerance, or otherwise discriminatory language.

— no frontal, below-the-waist nudity — must not infringe on the intellectual property rights of a third party — must directly relate to your organization and/or products — must not be misleading, false, or fraudulent

Specifications:

— Full Page Ad dimensions: 8” x 10” [ with additional .125” bleed (if applicable) ] — Half Page Ad: by special request.

— CMYK color (we will convert to RGB for digital editions) — at least 240 dpi, 300 preferred — accepted formats: .jpg, flattened .pdf or .psd, packaged .indd

Relevant Info:

— Please see our manifesto, regarding our ethos when considering your investment in advertising —W e recommend an advertisement promoting your organization in general / your mission, as opposed to time-specific/sensitive content, due to unknowns in our production process and releases.

— Placement of advertisements will be chosen at random. ­— All paid advertisements will be assigned placement once non-profit advertisers have been placed.

— All advertisers will be automatically added to our newsletter mailing list.

Purchasing Advertising

Email your interest in advertising to: contact@newtheatremagazine.com with subject: Advertising Inquiry In the body of your email: please include an introduction about why you’re interested in our publication with relevant links & info on your business.

Please feel free to contact us with any questions at contact@newtheatremagazine.com

SUBMISSIONS INFORMATION

www.newtheatrepublishing.com/submissions Contributors

People of color, women, queer, trans, non-binary, neurodiverse and disabled writers and contributors are especially encouraged to submit their work. We welcome submissions from anyone, anywhere in the world.

Contributors must be age 13+.

What kind of content?

Submissions must be theatre-related. Submissions can be literary or visual. Submissions can take on traditional or non-traditional formats. We accept works in translation provided that translators have obtained confirmation from the original copyright holder that the translation rights are available. We especially appreciate written pieces with multiple voices represented—be it in the form of an interview, dual writing prompt, a conversation, or some other form authors may devise.

Additional Guidelines

Submissions must be previously unpublished in print or online, and, if accepted, must not be published anywhere else before they are published in New Theatre Magazine.

We request First International Print Rights but rights revert back to the author once a piece is published with us. Please mention that your piece was published by New Theatre Magazine first if submitting it elsewhere at a later date. Simultaneous submissions are fine, but let us know right away if accepted elsewhere.

Acceptance

Submissions are approved for inclusion at the discretion of the editorial team. The editorial team may decide to reach out about a piece submitted for inclusion in a future issue.

Categories • • • • • • • • • • •

Short Plays, Play Excerpts Artist Profile Company / Organization Profile Theatre Book Reviews: 300 - 400 words Overheard in the Theatre - absurd quotes from the rehearsal and production process Show Us Your Booths - photographs of tech booths What’s in Your Rehearsal Bag - a list of up to ten items Process Piece - visual essays of the design process (set, light, sound, costume, prop, etc.)

Art, Photography, Illustration, Comics Suggestions - someone to interview, roundtable idea Something we haven’t thought of yet!

Technical Guidelines

Accepted File Formats: packaged .indd .psd .pdf .txt .doc .docx .jpg .png Email your submissions or inquiries to: contact@newtheatremagazine.com with subject: NTM Submission

Theater Breaking Through Barriers is the only Off-Broadway theater, and one of the few professional theaters in the country, dedicated to advancing actors and writers with disabilities and changing the image of people with disabilities.

web: www.tbtb.org

facebook: @TheaterBreakingThroughBarriers

instagram: @tbtbtheater

contributor BIOS EDITORIAL Rose Cano is co-founder/Artistic Director of eSe Teatro: Seattle Latinos Take Stage since 2010. She is a bilingual actor, playwright, director, lyricist and translator. Rose has spent the last 30 years promoting the breadth, depth and diversity of our cultures, bringing over 50 indigenous and Afro-Latino artists from South America and the Caribbean.

Brittany Alyse Willis is a DC-based playwright, performer, and designer who has written plays produced in Chicago, DC, Massachusetts, and Texas. They like theatre that winks at you from behind the curtain. Catch Brittany tweeting about process and thunder thighs @feelingfickle and see their work at brittanyawillis.com and NPX.

Grace Carmack is a Seattle-based performer and writer whose personal work focuses on queerness, trauma, and the various ways love manifests in our lives. Grace graduated from Cornish College of the Arts in 2014 with a BFA in Theater. Prior to Cornish, their training consisted of ballet, jazz, tap, modern dance, and step dancing

K. Woodzick is an educator and theatre artist. Woodzick holds a BA in Theatre/Dance from Luther College, an MFA in Contemporary Perfowrmance from Naropa University and is currently a Theatre and Performance Studies PhD student at University of Colorado Boulder. They are the founder of The Non-Binary Monologues Project. www.woodzick.com

Currently the Head of Directing at the University of Washington School of Drama, Valerie Curtis-Newton serves as the Founding Artistic Director for Seattle’s Hansberry Project. She has worked with theatres across the country including: Actors’ Theatre of Louisville, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Intiman Theatre, Seattle Children’s Theatre, The Mark Taper Forum, New York Theatre Workshop Merridawn Duckler INTERSTATE, Dancing Girl Press.

Adaptations: Brecht, Kafka, Khayyam. 356 Women Project. Productions: Fertile Ground, IPOP, Playwrights Forum Festival, Manhattan Shakespeare Project, OCT. Libretto: C’Opera, Board Meeting Oratorio. Fellowships: Yaddo, Last Frontier, Southampton Theater Conference with Annie Baker, Norman Mailer Center with Paul Carter Harrison. Drama editor, Narrative Magazine.

Marcus Gorman is the writer of Deers, Natural, The Fantastic Misadventures of Twisty Shakes (written with the Libertinis) and Peggy: The Plumber Who Saved the Galaxy (co-written with Jacob Farley) and the novels Triceratops and Sky Masterson: Private Detective. He is a film programmer for the Seattle International Film Festival.

Kathy Hsieh is an award-winning actor, writer and director, most recently receiving the 2017 Gregory A. Falls Sustained Achievement Award in theatre. She is an Executive Co-Producer for SiS Productions, an Asian American women-centered theatre company, and works by day at the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture.

Hadley Kamminga-Peck completed her PhD in Theatre History and Criticism at the University of Colorado Boulder in 2015. She is currently the Assistant Professor of Theatre History and Head of Directing at Western Illinois University. She has worked for the Guthrie Theater, the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, and the Colorado Shakespeare Festival.

Ayla Sullivan is a Black and Vietnamese non-binary playwright, actor, and activist. They are currently Denver’s Second Youth Poet Laureate and pursuing a BFA in Performance and a minor in Education at the University of Colorado Boulder.

PLAYS Brian Dang is a junior majoring in English and Drama at the University of Washington. He is passionate about the power of stories and the intersection between creative and critical writing. He is an avid theatre artist with focuses in playwriting and theatrical design.

Jasmine Lomax is an actor, playwright, and director who is in her senior year at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, WA. She majors in Original Works, and she is absolutely thrilled to have her first original piece in New Theatre Magazine.

Hannah Merrill is a Seattle-based writer who enjoys pondering questions of morality, family, gender, and imagination. Her workshopped plays include Triceratops Love Song, The Orchid and the Skull, Crocodile Plays the Drum, Magpie and Marita, and Crooked Grace. She is a proud member of Parley Productions.

Award-winning playwright Elaine Romero has had her plays presented across the U.S. and abroad. The U.S. at War trilogy plays, Graveyard of Empires and A Work of Art premiered in Chicago. She recently had work on the O’Neill Playwrights Conference and Seven Devils Playwrights Conference. She is an Associate Professor at the University of Arizona.

Micki Shelton Former member SCR’s Professional Conservatory, Micki’s plays include Medea’s Ghost (Theatre Artists Studio, 2010); Fred and Mary (Arizona Centennial Production, 2012); and Amici Recast (Herberger Theater’s Kax Stage, 2018). Other full-lengths include Cheap Food and Sex and Discovery, probing the effect of the lost Gospel of Judas. www.mickishelton.com STAFF Kathryn Lynn Morgen is a theatre artist and graphic designer residing in Bellingham, WA. They formerly served as Artistic Director of Whidbey Children’s Theatre (2016-17) and co-founded Queer Pride on Whidbey in 2014. Kathryn founded New Theatre Magazine and Publishing in October 2017. www.klmxyz.com

STAFF cont.

Julieta Vitullo is a Seattle-based bilingual writer born and raised in Argentina. She holds an MA in English and a PhD in Latin American Literature from Rutgers.

Her writing has appeared in journals worldwide.

Two of her full-lengths were taken to the stage with Parley, a Seattle Playwrights’ Group. She’s the Literary Manager of eSe Teatro.

Maddie Parrotta has a BA in English and Theatre from Rider University. She was an administrative apprentice with Theater Breaking Through Barriers, is the assistant managing editor of the theatre and disability section of The Theatre Times, a fiction editor for The Bookends Review, and a volunteer editor for Includas Publishing.

Morgan Bondelid is a deep generalist/multipotentialite, graphic designer, stage & voice actor, researcher & advocate, wordsmith, and knitter. She earned her BA at Principia College with a self-directed, interdisciplinary focus on how creativity makes us more human (and vice versa), and has spent the years since continuing to investigate that question.

ARTWORK Max Cole-Takanikos Anthony ‘CozCo’ Conover is a California-based artist addressing cultural narratives spanning from queer life in America to blackness in the visual culture of fashion through the use of traditional mediums such as illustration and photography. Anthony’s work aims to join the candy of pop with the deceptive substance of social satire.

Michael Morgen is a theatre actor, director and educator in Bellingham, WA. His mind is made of flapjacks and broken glass, and he loves how strange you are when you’re being yourself.

adD’l ARTWORK CREDITS

Magazine Layout & Design Kathryn Lynn Morgen Design Editor Morgan Bondelid (ms. morgan graphic design)

3 comic: Michael Morgen 9 original photos: Annie Spratt, Mervyn Chan - Unsplash 10 graphic artwork: Kathryn Lynn Morgen 16 photo: Nicolas Comte - Unsplash 30 illustrations: Kathryn Lynn Morgen 31 photo: Karen Aslop - Unsplash 33 graphic artwork: Max Cole-Takanikos 34-38 photo: Jack Delano - Wikimedia 40-47 photo: Josh Peterson - Unsplash 48-54 photo: Cory Woodward - Unsplash 56-65 photo: Thomas Carters - Unsplash 66-73 photo: Brandon Young - Unsplash 74-75 photo: Cody Davis - Unsplash BC photo and edit: Kathryn Lynn Morgen

donations If you appreciate our work, please consider making a contribution to our success.

New Theatre Magazine is a publication of New Theatre Publishing, a limited liability company. Your gift is not tax-deductible.

73

Sarah Mosher, Shannon O’Phelan & Glen and ZoÍ Eisenbrey, Justin Scribner To those who have made financial contributions toward the success of New Theatre Magazine: Thank you for your generosity and dedication to independent theatre journalism.

If you appreciate our work, please consider making a contribution.

New Theatre Publishing is a limited liability company.

Your gift is not tax-deductible.