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I grew up in Evansville Indiana and I was
6 feet tall at a very very young age
and I just felt displaced.
I think in terms of myself, and I knew I was gay from a very young age.
So, there was an otherness from the very beginning.
"See that wasn't so bad." "I'm embarrassed." "Don't be embarrassed, that's your fortune."
"You paid for it. Now, open it."
When I was in grade school, I had a really wonderful-she was a homeroom-teacher of mine,
One day, she said, "Do you wanna audition for the Vaudeville Revue?"
"And, would you play one of the Marx Brothers, Chico Marx?"
And there was something that aligned with me, and I felt like this woman
saw me-like somebody saw me-for the very first time.
And that performance of that, I felt like
I rose up inside of myself for the first time and felt me.
And felt expanded and felt like this is what I want to do for the rest of my life.
"What I'm telling you is this, you can come down here, eat a couple of po'boys"
"Listen to some cajun music. But you go back to wherever you came from."
"After Katrina, people flocked here to tell us how to live and be. Where are they now?"
I feel so incredibly privileged to be a part of
any theatrical endeavor, where
I get to be a representative of the other,
of characters that are
infrequently seen on the stage
and silenced a lot in our society.
I'm really drawn to stories about class
and gender and social relevance and social consciousness and social justice.
I think that theater
is incredibly evocative and really powerful. And, I've been privileged to be a part of
shows that, I think, speak to the humanity in all of us
and challenge us.