#Me Too and SLU
Not the usual absurdity or reviews of SNL these last few weeks, nonexistent reader, but some vibes are not always valid. In true theatre-kid fashion, last week I wrote in mourning about Broadway’s extended closing, and this week I’ll be writing in soft grief about the extended delay of our show, #MeToo and SLU.
The program of spring 2020 was going to be spectacular. I might be biased (definitely am) but it’s not often that a headlining production was written completely in-house, within a single semester. Preparing a pre-written production for an audience is a difficult and stressful task for one semester. But to audition, cast, write, create, block, and design a production all within the same ten weeks (we were going to air before spring break) is truly spectacular. #MeToo and SLU has never been seen before, it is only known to those that brought it to life—and now the rest of you will have to wait.
As a cast, now disjointed and spread across continents and dependent on a good Zoom connection, we decided to pause the play. To elongate the wait and the reunion so that next year, in the 21/22 season we may be permitted to perform this on stage for you. As you may have gathered, #MeToo and SLU is not a calm play, it is not kind or remorseful—it was written to slap people in the face and reclaim things stolen. It was heartbreaking to write, and I will not be put back together until I can stand in the Blackbox theatre and unapologetically shout tragedies at you.
I am excited for our potential. I am excited to perform for you. But I already feel the void of cast members who are graduating this year. Who graduated last year. Of those who won’t be here next fall because of life or abroad. I yearn for the people who needed to see this show and worry about those who wouldn’t have come on their own accord, but fuck, did they need to. I am terrified of the new stories we’ll collect in a year, of the hurt and progress we may have to write in last minute. I have no idea how COVID has influenced our feelings and our cast, but I can only assume the chemistry will be stronger and the stage more powerful, because after more than a year of sitting on our stories I can’t imagine any of us will have time to remember our fear.
#MeToo and SLU will be performed when it most needs to be. Even if that is after a global pandemic and the student body we wrote it for is unrecognizable, evolved. You will need to hear this story. Even if you don’t think you do, and you consider yourself evolved, you will need to see this show and hear the words we have protected for so long. So in 2021, prepare yourself to be dragged into the Blackbox to listen to 16 performers shout.