"WE ARE": A UCI LGBTQ+ Drama

Written By Al Snow

Al Snow is a second-year Applied Physics major at UCI. Al is an active member of the LGBTQ+ community, and identifies as non-binary. Thank you to Al for being a guest writer and writing this informative article!

On the weekend of November 17, 2018, an LGBTQ+ theatre piece titled “WE ARE” filled up all of the seats in a small room in the Nixon Theatre. Directed by Kayla Kearney, this piece highlighted practically every aspect of the life of a queer person - whether it be coming out, freely expressing yourself, dealing with past trauma, or living your life despite your family’s conservative culture. The piece, which touched many hearts (including my own), was put together by the director and cast in only 3 weeks, as a response to the recent unrest felt in the LGBTQ+ community around the globe/across the nation/here on UCI campus.

A note from the assistant director Elijah Punzal reads,

“We as trans and queer people have existed for millennia... we have suffered under silence and suppression, yet we have always persisted... Against all odds, we are still here. And that’s something definitely worth celebrating.”

This underlying theme of shared suffering among the LGBTQ+ community resonated deeply with those in the audience, whether they were members or allies. The actors did an incredible job in captivating the crowd with their emotional expressions; there were moments where spirits were lifted, and moments were tears were shed.

The performance covered many aspects of the queer experience, in which I will outline below.

False Assumptions of Sexuality

A unique characteristic of the show was that each person told their own story about their LGBTQ+ experience. In many of the stories, the actors talk about dealing with false assumptions about their sexuality, which often stem from ignorance, close-mindedness, and lack of education. For example, bisexual/pansexual/fluid people are judged to be simply lustful or horny, when that is simply not true. Additionally, aexual “ace” and aromantic “aro” people are told that what they feel is not real, or that the identity does not exist, when in reality, ace and aro people have existed as long as anyone else. The words might be new, but the people are not.

Discomfort Within Ourselves

The performance also touched upon topics that relate to appearance, relating to the hate crime that recently occurred on our campus. A common queer experience is discomfort with being ourselves due to discomfort from our loved ones when we try and be ourselves. The freedom to dress the way you want and the freedom to act the way you do and wear your hair in whatever way you please is not a freedom that many of us have. Our closest friends and family, who say they support us and love us no matter what, don’t understand why we want to, for example, dye our hair blue and cut it short when we know it sounds “excessive” and we will be “rubbing it in everyone’s face.” They miss when we used to be conforming, out of fear that by being non-conforming, we will be putting ourselves in danger of harassment or attack. What our loved ones don’t realize is that by “worrying” about us in this way, they make us feel like we’re the problem — that we are the reason we get assaulted and killed, for simply wanting to be ourselves. The fact of the matter is, if a queer person is assaulted based on their appearance (or, more specifically, perceived gender), it is the fault of the attacker, not the queer person.

Gender Euphoria/Dysphoria

There was also the discussion of gender euphoria/dysphoria. Simply put, gender dysphoria is the discomfort that one feels regarding their (perceived) gender. This can include body discomfort, clothing, or even pronouns. Gender euphoria on the other hand, is the comfort one feels when they feel comfortable in their body, their clothes, or their preferred pronouns. In one scene, one of the afab (assigned female at birth) actresses receives their first chest binder in the mail. They try it on, and they’re overjoyed with who they see in the mirror. The feeling of putting on a chest binder and seeing yourself in the mirror for who you want to be seen as was euphoric.

Is Non-Binary Even a Thing?

The existence of non-binary people is still being heavily debated to this day. (Non-binary: not belonging strictly to either binary gender, e.g. man and woman, male and female.) There’s the argument that the pronouns “they/them” are plural and therefore shouldn’t be used to describe a single person, the argument that genitals = gender, and many, many more that try and dispute the existence of non-binary people. “WE ARE” highlighted how it is especially difficult to try and exist as a non-binary minority. One of the actors expressed their own frustrations of living in a Spanish speaking home, because Spanish is a romance language where every single word is gendered. There’s latino and latina, but many still don’t accept the use of the word latinx, a non-gendered combination of the words latino and latina.