directing 

Black Trashbag Magic is a coming-of-age story based on my own adolescence. It comes from a place of looking back on the experiences I had before I became the fully-formed queer woman I am now, and reinterpretting those events with an analytical lens. I especially wanted to explore how trauma affects the way we remember and view past experiences-- even ones not directly related to the trauma. When I directed a production of it at the Tucson Fringe Festival, I knew I wanted part of the show to be devised. The actors and I collaborated to create transitions with otherworldly movement, music and poetry between each scene. I would play music and give them prompts, lines, or meditations to respond to until we built moments that bridged the gap between the magic that the characters are experimenting with and the real events occurring. Analyzing and reframing events that happened to me in a process that culminated in putting them on stage-- ultimately owning them-- was extremely empowering for me. I think it’s important when dealing with heavy topics to have moments of levity. This is why, when I found out that our performance space was frequently and randomly interrupted by loud nearby trains, rather than having my actors wait it out like many shows did, I decided to devise a scene specifically for when the trains came. I wrote a page of musings on trains, had my actors look at it briefly and then improvise a scene based on it. What they came up with was hilarious and different each time. One performance was interrupted by 3 separate trains, and they did 3 different versions of the scene throughout the show.