Creating the world of i'm going to eat you alive is a daunting task. For a play involving self-cannibalism, hallucinatory lead poisoning trips, a working van, transphobia and hyper slasher-level violence, all while balancing genuine humor and a full-fledged dream ballet, was a difficult ask to make of this company to immerse themselves in the world.

​

This particular piece fluctuates between absurdism, experimentalism, and grounded moments of reality, with an unreliable narrator navigating us through his memory play contextualized through the national landmarks of his literal road trip. The real road trip that Roach, a nonbinary geologist, is taking us down, however, is his relationships with his sibling, EZ, and his childhood ex, August, who reenters his life after serving ten years in prison and hijacks his journey. Ten years ago, which we see at the very beginning of the play, Roach and EZ lost their mother to a terrible tragedy, a tragedy, and its origins, that has haunted Roach well into adulthood.

​

To me the uncertainty in the piece's narrative lies in the hallucinogenic trips of Roach's faltering memory. The more rocks he eats, the sicker (physically, and mentally) he becomes. Drinking his own blood, killing (and eating) a tarantula, and eventually realizing the title of the play itself, Roach is not to be trusted by the audience or the other characters. What starts as a charismatic deconstruction of a rock-obsessed geologist twists into Roach's larger representation of the American Dream itself. I was called to mind the intense tragedy of Gabby Petito, who herself was living her own idea of the self-made woman, a social media star trekking across America in a van with her abusive boyfriend. This play will certainly conjure up her memory and the visually striking images on the beautiful rock formations of America that she was last seen posting. Roach consumes everything he can get his hands on, the way that we as Americans consume content and dehumanize ourselves and destroy opportunities of genuine connection through our disturbing obsession with branding ourselves. In this case, we as humans are the leading destroyers of nature, and there is dramatic irony in Roach's field being a natural science, but him directly destroying and consuming it at the same time. Underlying narrative around Roach's dead name, Rowan, being that of trees, and their choice to change their name to Roach, the eater of worlds (and of dead things), the bugs that will exist until the end of time, adding onto this theme, coupled with August's own destructive desire to maim, destroy, and consume trees himself. 

​

I took an approach to i'm going to eat you alive living in a fractured spiral, where pieces of information remain hidden, and red herrings lead to different branching pathways of interpretation. This play could very well exist in Roach's mind, or all of it could be real, or maybe there's a blend of both. I was interested in telling a story about a nonbinary, assigned male at birth protagonist, of which there are very few nonbinary AMAB roles in American theatre, who was grappling with identity with it being just an asset to the story rather than consuming the story with identity. I wanted to tell a story where nonbinary people are messy, and I was gifted with three incredibly talented nonbinary actors in Pearle, Charlie, and Nico. Pearle's EZ was a rigid, structured, and delicate individual, colored by hurt, grief, but also warm in self-acceptance. Pearle found layers to EZ's guilt complex that were fascinating and complex. I discovered as the process went along, more empathy and humanity for the character of August, played with sensitivity and gentleness by Nico Galloway, really lifted and supported the exploration of toxic masculinity in the piece exhibited by both Charlie and Nico's performances. Alex's bold, explorative, and abstract direction perfectly displayed this play's complex narrative. Alex's notes particularly shaped the piece into a coherent but still delightfully fun, exciting and naughty performance. 

​

The American Dream tells us to be self-made, to come from nothing, to be in a nuclear family, to be societal's expectations of masculinity and femininity, and that anyone can be anything in this country if they just dream it and break your back and sacrifice literally everything in the pursuit of that "everything", no matter how great the cost. This is a concept I examine also in IVORIES, in the fractured and broken portrait of masculinity in Gwyn. I've been fascinated with the rise of queer social media influencers who also so quickly meet their downfall, such as Shane Dawson and Jeffree Star, and their intersections with transphobia (amongst other bigotry and bad behavior) and profiting off of their also queer fanbase. I'm fascinated in the toxic male manipulator, and performative queer identity that is ever-evolving and ever present. In this play we have two, well, sort of. We have teenaged orphaned EZ and Roach, who both come into themselves in their own ways, or Roach, who recreated themself entirely, and we have August, trying to find himself again after prison time in all the wrong ways. We also have an August who's lost 10 years of time and American culture, especially the shifting culture around queer representation and rights, and is struggling greatly to understand the roles he and Roach play in their own relationship. We find August desiring a heteronormative-based relationship with Roach, where they fall into traditional roles of "husband and wife", a misguided and cruel attempt to understand Roach's burgeoning nonbinary identity in all the wrong ways. At the same time, we see Roach reject modernity and the expectations of the appearance of queerness, the same way EZ, their closest sibling also of similar stature, but their fractured ideas of self outside of queer identity that they are unable to reconcile. Queer love in all forms, be it sibling, be it friendship, or romantic, is at the heart of this play, as is queer family and how we define it, beyond blood. This play also takes that a few steps further, but that would be spoiler territory.

​

Capitalism asks us to sacrifice sentimentality for materialism, to consume "content" as currency, for profit (in all forms) to be our leading motivation in relating to other people, and enables us to choose greed over our own self-service. In i'm going to eat you alive, the concept of price, including the value of life in all forms, is a high stake for human connection. In some cases, this is deadly for these characters. A structured American staple of culture, we have been taught conflicting ways to "have it all", to be "self-made", and varying and conflicting and often profit-driven, exploitative treatments for mental health crises, and false prophets for a multitude of causes, including reversing climate change. At the end of the day, i'm going to eat you alive presents a world where capitalism has extended into toxic masculinity, and where people believe they are above the laws we've bound ourselves to in search of being seen. For queer people, this can also be dangerous. How far would you go to be validated by the people you want to see you? And who is your audience? 

​

In many ways, i'm going to eat you alive is the ugly stepsister of IVORIES, another three person horror play I consider my magnum opus, about nonbinary identity, toxic masculinity and a burning house thrown in the midst of it. In many way these plays are in conversation with each other (one day, I would love to see them cycle in repertoire), and I've overlapped collaborators on both. IVORIES is the grounded version of this story, supernatural yet more realistic, while i'm going to eat you alive is an idealistic nightmare of depravity. The crime of the characters in IVORIES is love. The love of the characters in i'm going to eat you alive is criminal. 

​

Alex and I are still currently developing i'm going to eat you alive, with the intentions of a longer run within the 24-25 season. As we've said before, the bugs will be back. 

​