Theaters Unite for I Wanna F@#king Tear You Apart

Island City Stage is proud to present I Wanna F@#king Tear You Apart, a play about the nature of friendships in all its messed-up forms, with a special shout out to the kind of love that sometimes looks like rage.

Playing March 2-April 2, 2023, this production will be co-produced by Atlanta, Georgia’s Out Front Theatre Company.

“The Dramatists Guild, the national organization that works with theaters, playwrights, etc., put together a roundtable discussion in June 2020 of artistic directors of queer theaters from across the country,” Out Front Theatre Company’s Founder and Producing Artistic Director Paul Conroy says. “The artistic director of

National Queer Theater, which is in New York, and I met from that roundtable, and we stayed in touch. We thought this kind of connection should happen all the time.”

In January 2021, the pair founded the Queer Theater Alliance.

“That’s how we connected with Island City Stage,” Conroy explains. “My husband and I, along with some friends, would visit Wilton Manors once or twice a year, and we’ve been doing that since 2019. I connected with Andy Rogow, and we both really love this show. I said, you know, we’re close enough in proximity that it is feasible for us to do a co-production.”

I Wanna F@#king Tear You Apart will first be performed at Out Front Theatre Company, February 2-18, 2023. Written by Morgan Gould, the production follows best friends and roommates Samantha and Leo whose relationship comes into question after a new friend enters and upends their co-dependent world of mutual self-loathing and Grey’s Anatomy marathons.

“The show will close in Atlanta on February 18, and on February 19, everything will be struck and put into a truck, ready to be transported,” Conroy says. “Of the three actors, the two lead characters will travel down to Wilton Manors and perform the show at Island City Stage. So, it’s a co-production, but at the same time, I’m calling it like a two-theater tour.”

Atlanta-based actors Sofia Palmero and Matthew Busch will play Samantha and Leo, and according to the duo, they are ecstatic to be involved with this production.

“I am so unbelievably pumped,” Palermo exclaims. “It's rare that I get to play a character that is actually written as fat, rather than just bringing my own fatness to a character. I also tend to play very sweet and unassuming characters, so it's nice to get to play someone who is neither of those things.”

Busch adds, “To say I’m thrilled would be an understatement. I haven't been onstage in probably close to four or five years. Prior to COVID, I was flexing my directing muscles and directing productions in Atlanta for a while. It's exciting to re-work my acting muscles on stage with a script I fell in love with the instant I read it. I'm also a big fan of Out Front Theatre here in Atlanta; they serve a very specific purpose in both the theater community and the LGBTQIA+ community, and it feels like ‘coming home’ when I'm invited to play with the team again.”

Additionally, Palermo, who was born in Venezuela, moved to Florida when she was six and lived in the state until after graduating from college. She is looking forward to performing at Island City Stage, which she says is close to her hometown.

“I’ve been looking forward to this collaboration for months, and I am so excited that it’s happening. There's a real focus on creating community and connecting LGBTQIA+ people across disciplines and now across state lines!”

Busch agrees.

“I wasn't familiar with Island City Stage prior to joining the production, but I love and will always support a theater with a mission to tell queer stories. It's an important niche of both the theater world and the LGBTQIA+ world. This will be my first time taking a show on the road, and I'm excited to see how it translates to two separate, but similar audiences.”

According to Conroy, he hopes co-producing I Wanna F@#king Tear You Apart with Island City Stage is the beginning of more partnerships between queer theaters.

“We all have such unique missions, but our individual missions are similar enough where there’s programming that we can all do,” he says. “I believe these partnerships or co-productions, whatever you want to call them, it’s a new way to expose new works and new authors to audiences, and really elevate them. Normally, if we’re licensing a show, we fill out an online application, we get the script, and there’s never any contact with the author. You send your check off, pay for the rights, produce the show, and move on once it’s done. This way, it feels wonderful because this is a new play from an up-andcoming author, and we’re giving her the chance for her show to be shown twice. We’re building momentum for her and the show. When people start doing this show more in the future, they’ll see that we were two of the first companies to produce it.”

For more information and to purchase tickets for I Wanna F@#king Tear You Apart, visitIslandCityStage.org. Find out more about Out Front Theatre Company by visiting OutFrontTheatre.com, and connect with both Palmero (sofia_withanf) and Busch (itsmattbusch) by following them on Instagram.

Author: Denny Patterson | Photo Courtesy of Sydney Lee