AFT News

What a year it’s been, friends, and the year is only half over! We at About Face have been taking some time recently to care for ourselves and our loved ones and to reflect on what’s been happening around us.

First, we want to celebrate what an amazing season we just closed. Throughout this season of revolutionary new queer plays, we continually felt the love and support of everyone who helped make our return to live, in-person theatre a triumph. We couldn’t do this work presenting new LGBTQ+ stories on stage without you. From the bottom of our hearts, we thank you for being part of our community.

We also could not be prouder of the stories we helped tell this past year, from Sam Mueller’s Laced, which presented a powerful message about community resilience and collective healing; to Terry Guest’s The Magnolia Ballet, which melded dance, poetry, and spectacle to explore the complicated intersection of masculinity, racism, and queerness; to About Face Youth Theatre’s Gayme Changers, which presented a hilarious examination of reality television, influencers, and the need for climate justice. The passion, dedication, and talent of everyone involved in this season was unmatched.

We also have to acknowledge that this Pride Month was a difficult mix of emotions for many people. What is usually a month filled with celebration and pride in our identities and our community was mixed with anxiety, anger, and despair stemming from the continued attacks on trans people, the vile accusations being leveled against queer educators and our allies, and the recent decision by the Supreme Court to invalidate a half-century of precedent surrounding bodily autonomy. Let us be direct: the ability to control our own bodies is one of our most fundamental rights. It is interlinked with queer rights such as marriage equality, gender expression, gender-affirming health care, and so much more. These are difficult times.

We encourage everyone to do what you need to do to take care of yourselves in this strenuous time. Seek solace with friends and community, find those who support you and lift you up, take time to unplug from the news. And when you are ready, come back fortified. Let us not forget that we walk in the footsteps of inspiring queer activists like Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Bayard Rustin, Frank Kameny, Harvey Milk, and so many more—who inspire us to fight for ourselves, for what is right. Our rights and our very lives are being regularly targeted by right-wing politicians and media. We will rise up to meet these challenges forcefully and queerly, as we always do. We will not go backwards. We are here, we are queer, and we are here to stay.

As an organization, we at About Face Theatre are continuing to find ways that we can amplify queer artists and queer stories, as well as support our community and our movement. We encourage you to do the same. We’ll have an announcement about our 2022-2023 season coming soon. Until then, if you can, we encourage you to:

• Tell your stories! On social media and in public. Make queer lives and abortion stories more visible;
• Donate! To About Face (of course), but also your local abortion clinics and abortion support systems, and to local queer organizations, especially those supporting queer youth, trans people, and queer people of color;
• Turn up the pressure on elected officials! Use phone calls and letter-writing campaigns to encourage officials to push back against those who would deny us our rights. Join get-out-the-vote efforts such as phone banking and postcard sending to motivate voters to the polls in November.

We are one beautiful queer community and we are in this together. Never forget that you are beautiful, that you deserve love, and that your story matters. Thank you for being part of the AFT family.