You can’t live on joy, on applause. You can’t eat adoration. You can’t live in a concert hall. And my heart couldn’t bear losing another family after every gig. The universe did her best to keep me going. Who knows, maybe my big break was around the corner, and I just had to hang on a tiny bit longer, just one more audition. I guess I’ll never know.
Coming out was not about finally realizing who I was; it was about realizing that there were other people that did not feel the way that I did, that there was language to name how I felt, and that I was not alone.
When I am referred to as "she," I still feel excluded, invisible, misunderstood. This is a feeling that I do my best to transform into energy to educate would-be allies.
I have learned that there is a difference between my physical voice, and my voice in the broader sense. I have mastered my physical voice - all the nuances, the breaking points; learned the ways my voice likes to move and blossom. There is freedom and joy in the practise of using my voice in that way on stage. But I needed something more.
How do I embody a character fully, fall in love with the character, learn its idiosyncrasies, when that character must undergo torture daily on stage, sometimes multiple times, with increasing detail, depth, and dramatic timing? How do I rehearse trauma?
