Personal Statement
I am thegaythespian. Not only is that my Internet screen-name, it is the simplest way to explain me at this point.
Yes, there is a stereotype (with a fair amount of truth to it) that many male actors are gay. But for me, my queerness and my passion for acting aren’t necessarily linked; they are simply two essential parts of who I am. Although I would love to live and breathe theatre 24/7, society’s pressures on me around being gay have also provided me with many opportunities for growth.
My life started in sixth grade. Before entering middle school, I had four surgeries, my parents divorced, and my grandmother died. All of these had the potential to be life-shattering experiences, but somehow I rolled with every punch life threw my way.
Then, in the space of one year, I fell in love with theatre, and realized I was attracted to other boys. Quite a busy year for a twelve year old, but one that jumpstarted my life, and set me on the road to becoming thegaythespian.
Had you talked to me that year, I would have raved about the plays I’d done, telling you all the inside jokes, including explanations of them all. I would have said nothing at all about boys infiltrating my fantasies. After all, I still fantasized about girls plenty, and that’s all that matters, right, being able to tell your friends (or enemies) which girls you like.
By the end of eighth grade, I had some idea of how important theatre would be in my life. I performed in every play put on by the middle school drama club, and had my first foray into community theatre as Friedrich in Sound of Music that spring. I knew I wanted to pursue theatre, but had yet to discover its real meaning in my life. And I still wouldn’t admit to being gay, even though my brain found it harder to deny every day.
My last attempt at denial was based on something I heard at a middle-school-is-over celebration with friends. It was a sleepover, and late that night the possibility that our host, asleep upstairs, was gay entered the conversation. In response, one guy said “Many guys go through a phase of liking other boys. I did, and I’m over it now.” Despite knowing full well that being gay was not a phase, especially not for me, I grabbed on to this as my last hope of escaping a life of secrecy and ridicule. Six months later, when I had experienced no change in my sexuality, I finally came out to myself, and began to face my fears, rather than basing my actions on them.
And so began high school, and my journey of shaping what it means to me to be gay and to be an actor. In ninth grade, I took what was probably the hardest step for me on that road. As the first part of accepting I was queer, I came out to my parents, although I sort of gave it away by bringing home a slew of queer fiction from the library for three months before actually telling them. The slew started with the book Rainbow Boys, the cover of which set my gaydar spinning from my peripheral vision. Too scared to take it home, I read it through the first time over two Saturdays spent in the library. Eventually, many queer-focused books did come home, and help to ease whatever shock there might have been for my parents.
Then, the summer before tenth grade, I had one of the most formative experiences of my acting career. I participated in a youth theatre conservatory program that performed the show Cabaret. During rehearsals, Chris Zinovitch, our director gave me some advice that made me realize theatre could be meaningful enough to make it the focus of my life. He said that he never undertakes a part unless: 1) the show has a relevant message that he believes the audience needs to hear right now, and 2) the part has a transformation, experience, or epiphany that he can benefit from experiencing first hand.
In school, tenth grade was the first year that I was able to be in the high school play production class, and to my great excitement, the play that year was Chicago. To me, being part of this production was a perfect chance to put Chris’s philosophy into action, and speak out against the exploitation of public figures by the media.
That was also the year my queerness snowballed into full bloom. It started with coming out to my best friend on Halloween night, then talking for two hours about which boys at school were hot. I went on to found a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) at my school, because I was tired of hearing gay used as synonymous with stupid. Then, that summer, I went to Camp Ten Trees, the melting pot of all queerness, and came back fully ready to leave my inhibitions behind and announce my sexuality to anyone who cared to listen.
Of course, I didn’t count on the return to school meaning the return of old habits. When I went back to school, I changed from my queertastic self, back to the inhibited, pseudo-straight man I had been the year before. Junior year was an exercise for me in guiding the change in my life. Over the course of that year, I applied myself wholeheartedly to the GSA, and wrote openly in multiple class assignments about being queer. By the end of the year, I was totally out of the closet, and comfortable with it.
And now, a third of my way through my senior year, I have already performed in two shows since school began, one community and one school show, am rehearsing for the school musical, (my 23rd acting performance since age four,) have auditioned for two more community shows, and am mentoring the new president of the GSA. All the while applying to colleges. Wherever I go from here, I will surely change, but I will always be queer, and I will always love theatre.
Diversity
When I first began to come out as queer, I said I was bisexual, or gay, depending on how I felt that day, or who I was talking to. In reality, neither of these felt right to me. I was primarily homosexual, but there was the occasional girl I was attracted to. Finally, in a panel of queer students who came to my health class, someone mentioned the term pansexual, defining it as someone who loves people, not based on gender, but on other physical, mental and emotional criteria. Immediately, I recognized this as the right term to describe me.
Even with that knowledge, I didn't understand the full range of possibilities on the spectrums of gender and sexuality until the summer before my junior year. That summer, my whole way of thinking was rearranged by what I experienced, learned, and absorbed at Camp Ten Trees, a camp for queer and allied youth. I knew about the classic alternative sexual and gender identities, but that one week at camp showed me that gender and sexual identity are on continuums.
In addition to the common sexual orientations – gay, lesbian, bisexual, straight – I met people who identified with a whole range of sexualities, often with very personal names and definitions for them, or who even didn't use any term to define their sexuality, simply letting it be what it was. Similarly with gender, along with the usual males, females, female-to-male trans men, and male-to-female trans women, I met people who were genderqueer, gender neutral, or identified as the genders third, and fourth.
The camp culture was very supportive of, and conducive to, the practice of seemingly out of the blue asking someone's sexual orientation, or gender identity. The more I did this, the more I began to dislike the habit that our society has of automatically assuming these things without ever asking the person how they think of themselves.
Although those learnings were related mainly to the diversity of the queer community, I have taken the concept further. I no longer categorize people based on my perceptions, lumping them into groups based on skin color, or perceived age, gender, and or sexual orientation. I ask. So often a person's identity is a very intricate and personal thing, and asking about it will give you much more insight into who they are than you would get from just making assumptions based on binary social constructs. I don’t claim to know the full list of options for any identifiers, but I’m always open to learning new ones.
A good friend once said that we queers like to complicate things. I disagree; I think it's the other way around. Society likes to simplify things.
Happy Ending
It’s a happy ending
time to move one
but first take time to remember
the wonderful places I’ve gone
the people I’ve met
the things they’ve taught me
the things I’ve done
the joy they’ve brought me
but most important
and most on my mind
all that’s been done for me
