When we begin, we begin again.
For those of us who rehearse theater, this practice is familiar. We constantly enter new spaces, enter new stories, enter new creative partnerships, practicing the act of beginning. As this practice becomes a life, it demands enormous trust and generosity at every entrance. For trans and queer artists, however, trust and generosity can become taxing; every time we enter the room and give ourselves to our creative partners, every time we newly trust our creative partners, we risk harassment, abuse, erasure.
Plot Points in Our Sexual Development joins a new frontier in theater, one which centers trans and queer experiences. When we begin these projects, we enter intending to be brave. This becomes our practice. In spite of the risk we face, we continue to begin and begin again, making space for a new story’s beginning.
Do you know what it is to be in the company of bravery?
Bravery takes many forms.
Every day I enter a room at LCT3 to support a compassionately brave company: a mix of queer, transgender, cisgender, and straight artists, all invested in delivering Miranda Rose Hall’s moving portrait of queer intimacy. It is this intimacy which fuels our bravery. The room of Plot Points... is not one that safely accommodates me; it is a room that bravely includes me. This is a room where we step forward, and are collectively accountable to our destination.
I wish I could say this wasn’t a rare thing; I wish I could say it wasn’t rare to enter and be seen. I wish I could say every production invited its artists to share their preferred pronouns, to sit down every day and meditate on our practice of listening, to offer personal memories in service of the text, to generously bring our whole self into the room. And yet, each of these elements has built a very rare creative process.
For the brave among us, we invest so much labor in painting our own visibility, in writing ourselves into being. Now consider the capacity of that labor to create. Consider the bravery of a room to match that labor and reinvest its capital in modeling a new artistic practice.
If you consider this, you see the future: the future where we begin, a plot point we bravely develop.
Come see. Join us and see the beginning.
Éamon Boylan is the Assistant Director of Plot Points in Our Sexual Development
