Directing: How Can I Keep From Singing
Following the death of their parents, the four O’Connor siblings are struggling through their grief. When Aidan, the baby of the family, is publicly outed as a “Queer Catholic” in the local newspaper, the family unit splinters. Each one of them is trying to balance their identity, faith, family, and chosen community in their quest to find wholeness. Aidan, bolstered by the members of his campus LGBTQ+ group, struggles to discover his voice as he bridges the worlds of his faith, his family, and who he truly is. This vital new play was UP Theater’s first commissioned piece: written by queer playwright Claire Willett, who is a Portland native, former Catholic youth minister, and active member of the parish of St. Andrew’s. This production was sponsored through generous support from Kunal Nayyar.
Lezlie was honored with a KCACTF Meritorious Achievement Award for her work on this production.
From the Playwright
When Lezlie approached me about developing a new work at UP, we bounced around a couple different ideas, but nothing really felt quite right. Then one day she said to me, “we’re really excited to have your queer Catholic energy on campus,” and I had a little lightbulb moment and said, “well . . . what if I write about that? That’s something I’ve never done before.” I think about it a lot, of course, and I talk about it and tweet about it and once I even did a live storytelling event, but I’ve never really sat down and written about it with deep intention. None of my books or plays have ever addressed it directly. There’s queerness in some works and Catholicism in others, but I’d never really parked myself at that intersection for very long. It’s also become even more timely over the course of the year as I’ve been writing - both at UP, and on a broader level. People really want to talk about what’s going on at that intersection. And theater is a really powerful art form for tackling big, messy issues in a way that generates empathy. It felt like, if we did it right, this could be a way to serve the queer community - making audiences feel seen, giving actors the chance to play their own identities onstage in a way maybe they haven’t before, giving people from families who don’t accept them some new language to navigate those conversations - and also a way to serve the Catholic Church, by inviting them to think in new ways about how queer people make communities stronger and more beautiful, and creating a work which could go on to a future life on other campuses where these conversations haven't even begun yet. — Playwright Claire Willett
