They/them

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45-54

Genderqueer

• White

I have an active TPS Membership

I have 4 professional stage credits (fully staged, non-academic, not self-produced)

Nonsinging audition

In my tiny town in Southern Oregon, at age 10, I was in advanced English in 4th grade and what that looked like was having a 5th-grade teacher take about 10 of us and perform a Shakespearean play.

The Oregon Shakespearean Festival was just down the road, so I already had a love of theater and wanted to be a performer. I memorized Steve Martin and Richard Pryor's comedy albums, strutted around like Danny Zuko, and of course, cut my lip trying to shave and lied about it.

We were doing Julius Caesar, I read the script found that Brutus had the most lines and was clearly the best part. So I read for Brutus, bracing against the teasing I had come to expect from years of striking out boys in our town’s Little League. I felt proud and terrified as I read, a lump stuck in my throat. I knew Brutus was mine and I was cast.

It was glorious. I memorized everyone's lines, the entire show, top to bottom, and i got to deliver an awesome soliloquy and kill my friend Sam, aka, Julius Caesar.

I never thought of myself as a boy and I knew I wasn't a girl. I was never so free as when I was Brutus. That 10-year-old queerdo knew who they were even when the world did not. Culture was telling me I was something I wasn't and the words and costumes handed to me did not fit. I had no way of touching my reality but theater, in those moments in 4th grade, helped me invent myself into existence.

So, I was Brutus and it was brilliant. And wanting to encourage my acting, my teacher quickly asked me to be the lead in some shorter scenes, one from Romeo & Juliet, the role of Juliet.

Even as she asked me I knew I could not do it. But I desperately wanted to perform. I initially said yes, but anxiety overtook me. I couldn't sleep or think about anything else until I finally told my teacher something...I honestly cannot remember what I told her except that I couldn’t do it.

I have made up reasons for many things I have said no to or that I have done differently, so I may well have made up a reason, but I also may have said something like I don't want to wear a dress. Which, honestly, was the least of my concerns.

I withdrew from the scenes and closed the door on acting. I mean, I slammed it shut. I can still feel the shame burn through me when I recall sitting in the darkened gym and listening to Sam & Laura recite the balcony scene.. How I wanted to be in the stage but not as Juliet.

I took an acting class my last year at Cal, but ran into the same issues...I was still not living my gender and the world around me was just starting to use the word queer positively. I have been a stand-up comic, a comic performer, and in a couple of productions of Hair as ensemble and a character actor. I have performed, but nit how I have wanted to.

At 45, after working with queer, trans, nonbinary young adults and youth for most of my life, I finally gave myself permission to be the queer gender I am.

Some hear this story and think, so what or well it’s different now.. Some feel pity, while some feel what I have.

And also, my life as a liminal being is what makes me so powerful, insightful, charismatic, empathic, connected, intuitive, and a master of systems, patterns, and how people play these things out. For this, I am grateful. And also, I grieve the performer I never was on stage but needed to be day to day.

Emotional truth is rarely singular. We feel things that seem at odds, gratitude & grief & fear & love & joy & anger & weariness & passion.

I wrote this a couple months ago and thought it worked as a bit of a bio.

www.linkedin.com/in/drjenself

linkedin.com

$15.00