 Hi, welcome to the All Things LGBTQ Interview Show, where we interview LGBTQ guests who are making important contributions to our communities. All Things LGBTQ is taped at Orca Media in Montpelier, Vermont, which we recognize as being unceded indigenous land. Thanks for joining us and enjoy the show. Hi, everybody. It's my pleasure to welcome to the show Phoebe Zorn, the newly appointed Executive Director of the Pride Center. Welcome, Phoebe. Thanks so much. I'm glad to be here. I'm delighted that you're joining us. And I'd like to share with our audience a little bit of your bio, if you don't mind. Zorn is a sixth generation Vermonter, having grown up in Montpelier and the Northeast Kingdom before moving to Burlington. Prior to her five years at Main Street Landing, let me pause and ask you what you did for those five years at Main Street Landing. I was the Performing Arts Center Coordinator. That sounds pretty exciting to me. It was. It was a fun job. And that's a great space, too. It is, yeah. So before that, your customer service and office manager at Arbor Trek Canopy Tours in Jeffersonville, Vermont. You've been involved with a great many projects and organizations since you arrived in Burlington, including volunteering as a band coach at a rock music camp for girls and gender-creative children. That sounds like fun. And also, fraught with drama, maybe, in every sense. You also served on the working board of Vermont's only grassroots abortion fund, Vermont Access to Reproductive Freedom. That's right. Again, you began your time at the Pride Center in November 2020 as the organization's first operation coordinator. Then in 2022, you were promoted to Director of Development and Communications, where you led internal and external communications, etc. What drew you to the Pride Center? Well, previously to working at Pride Center, I was working for Main Street Landing Performing Arts Center, which was a wonderful place to work and have the privilege of being one of the few performing arts centers that wasn't a nonprofit. It's owned by a larger company. And during that time, I was also serving on the board of Vermont Access to Reproductive Freedom. And I just felt so called to do more work during my like paid labor during the day that was in alignment with my values. Main Street Landing was a wonderful place to work. And we worked really closely with a lot of nonprofits and grassroots groups. And every time that I helped plan an event or an art show for one of those groups, I just felt so much more in alignment with my values and what I wanted to be doing to fill my cups. So I started looking for just very lightly looking for opportunities to move into the nonprofit world. And then COVID happened and working at a performing arts center was not really a thing anymore. And I was very fortunate to be kept on during that time by the company and was filling in other roles, helping out with things, doing what I could remotely. But we didn't know in early COVID days how long things were going to last, how long we were going to be working from home or when events would even be a safe thing to do again. So that really motivated me to look more actively for a new role. And at that exact same time, Pride Center opened up applications for their first ever operations coordinator position, which just felt like an absolutely perfect fit at the time for me. I had really diverse experience working for a lot of different companies that were all like small and growing. And though nonprofit work is a little bit different, it was a very similar situation of having outgrown things so that the program staff and program directors didn't have time to do their actual important work because they were doing so much admin work. So it really just felt like it was meant to be. And I applied and luckily got the role. There was a couple other folks I know that applied that would have also been great for it, but it was just the perfect timing and fit for me. So it felt like it was meant to be. That's great. I went on the website after a little bit of an absence and I saw a lot of changes, particularly a staff turnover. What happened? How come you seem to have had a really demonstrable staff turnover in the last year or so? Yeah, absolutely. And there's not really one thing that I can point to that has caused that everybody's situation is unique. I don't think that it was related to one thing or because people weren't happy here. Just a lot of folks' lives have shifted as we emerge into this new world post, the onset of COVID. And folks have had a lot of time to reassess during that time when we're all stuck working at home. And then things changed a lot coming out of that. The way we do groups and events has shifted so much and just the way we function as the center. So people were inspired to move on to different paths in life or take on new challenges. We've had folks who left because they went back to school and are now going into things like counseling or leadership roles at other organizations. So as unfortunate as to lose experienced staff, I think everybody that I can think of that's left in my time here has left because they've moved on to something else really exciting. And that makes me feel like we're supporting folks in our community that work for us, even if they're no longer working for us. Also, I learned that you had an interim ED. Who was the interim ED and how did that come about? We had a great interim ED. Their name was Chelsea Branham, and we were connected with them via a consulting firm called Think Again. So we initially contracted with Think Again prior to Mike Benson's departure to guide our staff through some racial justice work that we were interested in doing and some sort of general strategic planning and values work. And then when Mike announced their departure and moved on and we had a very slow executive director search, we wanted to really take time to sort of pause as they were leaving the role and reassess the position and make sure it was sustainable and something that we really didn't want to hire somebody great and then have them be unhappy because it's a huge role and it was really Mike had taken on more and more. So it was really unsustainable. So because we were already working with Think Again for other staff and interim services is another part of their offerings, they connected us with Chelsea so that we could have somebody fill that leadership role and give us time to breathe and restructure a little bit before making a permanent leadership choice. How long did Chelsea serve? I think somewhere in the range of eight months, there was a gap between when Mike left before we hired Chelsea where the program directors and myself all sort of stepped into co-leadership to get us through until we had an interim in place. How specifically are you restructuring? Nothing drastic at this point, but we've made lots of sort of small changes to roles, both the executive director role and other program-based roles just to sort of like shift the workload to make things more sustainable for everyone but also to be more aligned with the things we actually want to be doing that we hear the community asking for and be a little bit less completely structured based on grant requirements and more structured on the actual community needs in whatever ways we can based on our funding. Well, in your VPR interview, you mentioned wanting to pay more attention to queer elders and accessibility issues. You do have a group called Momentum that is kind of an inabeyance, but can you talk a little about both of those issues, queer elders and accessibility and how you plan to address those concerns? Yeah, for sure. As I said in my Vermont public interview, it's so important to me personally to focus on those two groups. I mean, among many other things, we've also been doing a lot of really important internal work on racial justice and trying to promote our Thrive program for queer and trans people of color. So those certainly aren't the only two things that I care about, but accessibility is a really important one to me. I've done a lot of access work in other roles and have some really influential folks in my life who have access needs. And I'm continuing to learn about how we can be better and really serve all parts of our community. In my previous roles in operations and then development, I was the lead organizer for the Pride Festival and Parade for the last two years. And I put a huge emphasis on accessibility for that. And that was sort of my inspiration to bring it organization-wide. A lot of Pride events and festivals are the opposite of accessible, like not just inaccessible, but anti-access in a lot of ways. And it's been so important to me to make Pride something that everybody in our community has a way to connect with and feel like they can either come celebrate or attend virtual events or have access stations or ASL interpreters. We're never going to be able to meet everybody's access needs, but actively thinking about it and working towards things being more accessible is just vital to us being a good community center because people with different access needs are part of our community and always have been. And what's your timeframe for hiring a new momentum director? We're hoping to start hiring for several positions in the spring, including that right now. We're focusing on hiring for a role in our safe space program and then I'm just focusing on getting my legs underneath me in this role and getting organized before we open up more hiring processes. But hopefully this spring to summer at the very latest, we'll be hiring either for just a momentum coordinator or possibly we've been discussing tentatively some sort of like access and outreach roles that would be comprised of a few different things like momentum and other smaller programs. Well, I'd love the coffee and conversation events that momentum hosted all around the state. So let us know when you get up and run. And I suppose it's kind of hard to drive around in the snow for these events. So spring might be a good time to restart it. Yeah, absolutely. It's just so important to me to not, you know, neglect LGBTQ plus elders. There's so many folks in Vermont who were fundamental in getting Pride Center and the community in general to where we are today. We can't, you know, let those folks down, even if they're maybe not coming out to the 10 p.m. events at a club like some of our younger community, which I'm also not going to to be clear. I know what you mean. And well, my next question is, what's your vision for the Pride Center? I mean, you mentioned queer elders and accessibility. What's your larger vision? I think, you know, my vision is important, but more than that, it's about what our community's vision is, what they need from Pride Center and also what the rest of the staff sees for Pride Center's future. So what I'm really focused on right now is just organization and structure and stabilization. During the easy interview process, somebody described to me as aggressively practical, which maybe a little bit of I don't think it was a backhanded compliment, but, you know, it was an intense compliment, but I'm leaning into it. That's really who I am. I am just obsessed with structure and organization and making things work well and smoothly. So my vision right now for the Pride Center is just to get us really organized and well funded and have things happening sort of very smoothly behind the scenes so that we can be in really good relationship with community and have a really happy, supported staff and see what Pride Center is going to grow into in the future. How are you doing outreach to the community to find out what their needs are? We're current. We mean, we do outreach in a lot of ways. We are, you know, at events. We have events happening here, but in a bigger picture way, we're actually just starting the process right now to plan another community needs assessment survey, which we did two years ago. We were lucky to work with a really great group of students from UVM Medical Center from the I think there are medical students, actually, and they as part of their study have to do like a big data aggregation project. And I think that we just got connected with another group who's interested in doing a similar thing and will hopefully be helping us do a big statewide outreach survey to assess all kinds of things. The last one asked questions like what's happening that you aren't interested in? What would you like to see Pride Center doing if there's things that you're interested in, but you haven't been part of them? What are the access needs are preventing you from doing that? And just a whole multitude of questions and then cross sections with folks self ID as far as their gender identity and sexual identity and anything else they want to share. So we can get like a really big comprehensive picture of who our community is that's interacting with Pride Center and what they need and want from us. How will you make sure it's statewide? Because those of us in other parts of the state. Yeah, so it's all very tentative. We would have just started talking about it this week, but our hope is to launch it in the spring to summer so that during Pride month as we're going around to all of those smaller statewide pride events that pop up all throughout June, we'll be able to have, you know, an iPad or something where people can do it right then. A QR code so people can scan it and do it on their own time and do like really active in person outreach, as well as of course utilizing all of our many social media and website tools that we already do. You know, and one thing that's been really exciting to me in the last few years, Pride parades and festivals have risen up everywhere in Vermont. It's so cool. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I just love seeing that. And it feels like every year there's new ones popping up in different corners of the state. And we've made a really active effort to support those to whatever level the folks organizing them want us to. And for some, that's, you know, a lot of support. First, we've been a donation partner partner for folks so people can donate to us and we pass it through all the way to just, you know, showing up with the table and our info and being there but not being connected in any way beyond that. So trying to, you know, give people, planning these things, the level of support they need so they don't feel like we're taking over or dictating how they should plan their pride but that we're supportive in there and happy that it's happening. Well, Phoebe, this has been very informative and very exciting. I can't wait to see how you begin to implement all your plans. We're drawing to a close, believe it or not. So let me ask you, what are your last words, your final comments to our audience? I just wanna say thanks so much for having me. It was a great conversation. And for, I think you said you're gonna provide my email address when this goes up. So, you know, I'm happy to hear from anybody that wants to reach out in the community good feedback and bad. I mean, obviously I prefer if you email me and say my interview was great but if you had have feedback about me or Pride Center or anything you wanna share, I'm really interested in hearing from folks and getting connected with people across the state as I grow into this new role. Phoebe Zorn, thank you for joining us. Hi, everybody. Welcome to All Things LGBTQ. My name is Susan Lloyd and I am your guest host tonight. And joining me here is Michael Halloran. He is a local music theater professional. Sounds impressive, Michael. He's been in Vermont for over 20 years. I feel like I should be saying he likes walks on the beach. He is a singer and a pianist. He's an actor. He's done some directing, yes. And more importantly, he's agreed to talk to me. So, welcome, Michael. Thanks for joining me. Thank you for having me. So, I'd like to ask, I mean, I can ask any number of questions but well, let's just start by how did you become involved in acting? I started acting in high school, like a lot of folks. And it was sort of strange because I was an introvert shy kid but I just felt like I could get on stage. And the nice thing is you get to be someone else. You don't necessarily have to be yourself. So at that age, it was like, oh yeah, let me try on these new characters and things. And I just, I fell in love with it. Seemed to have somewhat of an aptitude for it and been doing it really ever since. Yeah, so I shouldn't have just limited myself to saying acting because you're also a musician. And so, were you playing music and studying music and in the band or any of those things in addition to being in drama or what was your past? Yeah, I took piano lessons all through high school and actually at the age of almost 15 now I am retaking piano lessons with a great teacher and enjoying that very much, study voice and everything. But really the theatrical side was what kept drawing me back. You know, I went to college and believe it or not started as a Japanese language major. Yes. That is so random. I took a year of Japanese in high school, fell in love with it and did the thing where, oh theater's not going to be a career for you. You have to do something that will, in our capitalist society, make money. So I thought, okay, Japanese language. And I enjoyed it. I liked it a lot. But wow, that theater pull was so strong. I said, that's what I have to follow. That's what my... I just have to say, I don't think of capitalist society, Japanese language. I'm like, you know what, let's get rich by teaching Japanese. That's fascinating though. Oh, that's funny. So what was your favorite role in high school or college? Like what did you really have that aha moment? Like, this is it. I gotta make a living so I can do this to really feed my soul. That, boy, there are so many that were fun and great. But I have to say it was the first high school show that I got cast in. I was a freshman and we were doing Thornton Wilders, the matchmaker. For those who don't know, it's the basis of the music called Hello Dolly. And, you know, I had big dreams and I got cast in the smallest role in the show. And I thought, well, okay, I'm only a freshman. That's all right. And I was playing a waiter. And I decided, well, let's make him a little... So I was this sassy, queenie waiter. And the first time hearing an audience laugh at what I was doing, it was just like, oh, this is fun. So I really think the bug got me right away. That was actually, that was gonna be one of my questions is at what point, and maybe it's at all points because we're us, right? At what point did sort of the gay sensibility filter into your choices as an actor? It sounds like right out of the gate. It really did. Yeah. And, you know, at the time, I was what, 14, 15, and I hadn't come out yet. That was about a year later. But yeah, I think everything I've done, just who I am, I think that queer sensibility just informs everything that I do. And I honestly, at this point in my life, I wouldn't have it any other way. It's who I am. And I think it's a special part of me that I can bring that not everyone can. So I'm very happy to include it wherever it may be wanted or not, so. That's just the side rant. Did you ever read the celluloid closet? Oh, yes. So I always think of that when I hear people that, you know, had minor parts or bit parts or whatever, and they sort of fade it up or, you know, fend it up or whatever. And a lot of times that ended up on the cutting room floor. So the beauty of live theater is you get to be like, here I am. Cut that out. It sounds like cutting this out, you bastards. And it sounds like your director was okay with your enhancing the role. That was what was really nice. The director was very supportive and said, you know, it's funny, people are enjoying it. You're not going too much into a stereotype or anything. It's just the right amount of fade. So yeah. That's great. How important do you think it is to have LGBTQ plus characters in plays, particularly here in Vermont or just the state of theater here in Vermont and roles for people in our community? I think it's hugely important. We learn a lot through the stories that we are told and the stories we see. And if those stories are only including, you know, white cisgendered heterosexual people, yes, obviously they exist. And they are part of it. Yeah, they're everywhere. They're everywhere, Michael. They're everywhere. And we love you guys. We love you guys. We love them. But, well said, well said. But there's so much more wonderful human experience to be learned about through telling queer stories, black stories, any stories from marginalized communities who don't get the chance to be heard, I think is really valuable, especially for those of us who aren't members of those communities. It's like, what is that human experience like versus what I'm familiar with? And I think the more we learn that, that can only be to the good for all of us. How do you think, I mean, I've been in some shows with you, but how do you, as a director, how do you create that safe space for people that might be non-binary or more gender fluid or playing a role that doesn't match their physiological or biological sex? I mean, you heard Ashley and I were talking about our town, for example, like there's a bit of a risk to cast somebody that's a non-traditional cast member. I tell us a little bit about that. I thought that was such a cool thing to do. I, particularly for our town, I really wanted a cast as diverse as we could possibly get. And whether, you know, that meant actors of color, non-binary, queer actors, I wanted it all because, one, it's such a strong script. I think the play can benefit from seeing this traditional setting, American setting in a new diverse light. And I know other productions, particularly in the 21st century now, have really leaned into it and there will be a Broadway revival coming in the fall. I believe that's also going to make use of a very diverse cast. And I think the important thing to making actors who are playing outside of what they present in the everyday world is communication, is talking and saying, you know, what are you comfortable with? How, where do you wanna go? What do you wanna explore? What about this character speaks to you? And it's always hard for me to start thinking about a show in terms of staging and blocking before I have the cast. The cast is so important because I really want to build the show around them. I don't wanna slot people into some preconceived notion. So once I have the cast, it's like, okay, now where can we take this? So that's my approach to including folks who are playing against type and against maybe audience expectations for certain characters and roles. Yeah, that's well said. I was thinking, our town is such a classic and it's such a boy meets girl. You know, it's such a storyline that to kind of twist that a little bit on its head and to see, it would be fascinating to see folks from the BIPOC or other communities in some of those roles, I love that. And I'd love to hear what you think as both a director and an actor. This concept Ashley and I were talking about of casting, you know, being genderblind or colorblind or not having that enter into the decision because we were sharing some of our frustrations that not everybody is as open to this as you are. And it's difficult if you're somebody that doesn't present in a traditional cisgendered way to sometimes to get these parts. And I don't know, do you have any advice for directors that are kind of on the fence? I can, I'm not naming names, but I know there are people that get that really read the script and it says, you know, female age 20 to 40 or whatever and they really lock in on that. I mean, any advice for people to be more open to that? My advice is try and broaden your conceptions. I mean, we have so much, I love the classics, you know, Our Town, Last Masery both which I have recently directed, anything like that. But think of how many layers you can add. What happens to street car name desire when Blanche is played by a trans woman? There are layers, what happens to little shop of horrors if Audrey is played by a trans woman? If Seymour is played by a trans man? It just brings, and I don't think it's detracting from the script. I think you're adding nuance and layers and most importantly, visibility for again, people who don't get to see themselves represented nearly as often as the traditional readings of these classic scripts would suggest. What do you think about this was just kind of in the news, people getting up in arms, like if a so-called gay or queer role goes to a straight person or in the recent movie about Marvin Hamlisch, they cast somebody that was not Jewish and gave them a prosthetic nose and that felt obviously anti-semitic. I mean, do we sometimes go too far with my question? Like how do you balance representing the people in the community? I mean, it would be great if there were queer roles played by queer people, but then the reality is, directors don't always follow the script literally, right? Exactly, and I wish I had the answer for it, but it's... Text it, Mike. I will fix it right now. I will say again, communication is so important. I don't think it's an issue that can be solved per se. I think we have to keep talking about it and what's important about representation versus what's important about being an actor and stepping into someone else's world. You know, how far do you take it? Can Willie Lohman and Death of a Salesman only be played by a straight white cis actor who's been a salesman? You know, how far do you go with that? I think once you start setting limits in certain ways, others can creep in that we might not necessarily want. So I think for every... I think every production that gets done, whether it's professional on Broadway or local community theater here in Vermont, I think that has to be part of the conversation. Whether you can solve that or not, I can't say, but I think we definitely do need to keep talking about it and saying, you know, if we have actors from underrepresented communities that we can draw from, we should try and use them. And if we don't, then we have to be careful in the shows that we select to do. I think we have to be respectful if we're doing shows that have... And the subject we're talking about queer themes, if you only have straight cast and crew, I think you have to do a little more research and be respectful if you're going to do a show where you don't have life experience in that area. Yep. One of the things I always think about is doing the Pride Theater. There is this moment when you really... I mean, we all inhabit the characters, right? Ashley and I were talking about that. But there's something about playing a character that actually is your authentic self. That's really kind of cool. It's very liberating. And we were just watching a live streaming of Fun Home. They had a 10th anniversary concert last night. Oh, nice. You know, they were singing. So, you know, the medium, the medium, Allison was singing, changing my major to Joan, which of course, you know, and Ashley has sung many times. And I was really struck by that because so much of what we're exposed to in the media is straight, right? Romance and all that yuck, right? And so to have just a slice of life that you remember. And I sort of turned to Ashley and was like, this isn't... Ashley said, you know, they only dated for a few months. And I said, it's not about Joan. It's about that awakening, right? It's that first love being told in the first person from a queer perspective and how life affirming and really changing that is. It's not about, you know, not even about the act itself, although the song's hilarious, but it's more about like, and that's how I feel when I see a gay character, as you were saying earlier, represented whether it's on TV or whatever. You know, it's really, because I feel like we have such limited little slices of that in the media that we sort of... We kind of create it, right? We try to create it sometimes. Exactly. And I think that goes to the history, particularly for gay men of loving classic movie stars like Betty Davis and Joan Crawford and reading a camp queer sensibility into their performances that we can then claim as our own and say, yes, that's part of me. And I think, you know, to be able then to continue on and see actual queer stories being told and those moments like that fun home moment where the awakening, like, this is who I am. That is so... And it's okay. We need to see those. We need to see those for ourselves. We need to see those for LGBTQ youth. It's just really important that these stories get told and we have visibility. Harvey Fierstein used to say visibility at any price. And I have to agree with him. We need to be seen to start being understood and accepted by those who view us as outsiders. Yeah. What has been your favorite show to direct? What do you think? Oh, that's... I mean, I hear others give this answer, but it's almost always the one I'm currently working on. That's what I did. But I have also learned, as I've grown older and hopefully more mature, that where I want to spend my time, particularly as a director, isn't shows that have meaning to me. So doing shows like Our Town and Glass Menagerie, I love those shows. And both of which were written by gay men. So I want to do shows that speak to me and that I think have something to say to audiences still at this time. There are plenty of old shows that have gone by the wayside and kind of deserve their obscurity, but there are plenty of them that still have so much to talk to us about in our current state of the world. Glass Menagerie was fabulous. And what I love about, you're welcome, what I love about Tennessee Williams is, when you read the play, it really screams off the page, right? I'm thinking about like Canada hot tin roof and you're like, oh my gosh, this poor guy is gay and I'm picturing Liz Taylor. It's like, the play feels a little more subtle as you're watching to me like Glass Menagerie. Like you know what's going on if you've read these plays in school, but there's so many different ways to present that, you know, that sort of closeted sensibility that he had that just runs through everything. You know, you just fear the angst of him not really ever being able to be his true authentic self in the theater world and having to have at least couched expressions. And you know, I wonder, you know, if you were writing that today via who? You know, he had access to, you know, to really speak his mind and not have to have code switching and all the rest of it, you know? Yeah. How about now that, go ahead. Oh, I was gonna say, we explored that in Glass Menagerie, particularly because it is probably his most obviously autobiographical play. You know, he's really, it's not completely the events of his life, but the character of Tom really is Tennessee Williams and Tennessee Williams real first name was Tom. So he didn't really hide it that much. So Matthew Grant Winston, who was wonderful in the role, we discussed that because this is so autobiographical, it's most likely that Tom in the play is gay. Yeah. And he says at moments, you know, there's so many things in my heart that I can't tell to you. And I think if the actor has that underlying knowledge of this secret that just can't be revealed, I think that just can only add to the performance and give more layers for the actor to explore. If you don't consider that, if you just read the play and you can read that play and not pick up that Tom might be gay, I think you're missing out on a wonderful opportunity to enrich the whole story. Yeah. He has those moments where he's like, I'm going to the movies and every gay person in the room is like, sure you are. You're all thinking he's going to hook up with somebody on the stage. Like, and that's that sort of, and Ashley and I were talking about this a little bit, that sort of the other ring of being in this community is that sometimes because you can't often openly say what you're actually doing or thinking or feeling, there is this, you know, and that character Tom was, you could tell, really frustrated, like stuck. He was in this stuck place, right? Yeah. He didn't necessarily want to be having to take care of his mother and his sister and he just didn't know quite what to do and he wasn't in a situation where it was acceptable to really live his true life. So, yeah. How about you've done a bunch of stuff, Michael. What are some of your favorite things that you've acted in? So we're moving on from high school. I'll just say before you answer, I still, every time I look, not every time I look at you, but every so often I look at you, let's just picture you on that lazy Susan doing the forbidden broth. Was it Les Mis? Was it Les Mis? Yes, it was the Les Mis parody. Anyway, so you, then you're an actor? Go ahead. Oh, I was just gonna say, I love the fact that you registered that we were on this lazy Susan when in fact we were all just kind of stepping side to side to make everyone think that. We did it cheaply, but I think we did it really effectively. Wow, that was impressive. That was impressive. So you sing and you act and you direct and you can dance a little, I've seen them stuff. What is, what do you, what's your passion? If you had to pick one, I always say this to people because I like to do like improv and stand up and whatever, or maybe how would you rank? You know, singing, acting, directing, teaching, being a pianist. I think- What's your passion? I think my passion is storytelling. And I think acting, directing, singing, even playing the piano with no words, you're communicating to an audience. And each of us has something we can share that no one else on this planet had. And I think that's really special. And I think it's really important that we all get the opportunity to do that. So I really, I love each of the things that I do, you know, that I feel that I do well, acting, directing, singing, playing the piano. Do not consider myself a dancer. So, but I do- You said, I've seen you stuff. I do, I'm maybe trying to just get across the stage. Maybe it was just your exit. I own my goofiness. So maybe that's it. There you go, there you go. But I think each of those is a wonderful opportunity to tell, if not necessarily your own story, the character's story, you know, who is singing this song, who is acting this role. And I guess as a director, I particularly love it because in a way, it allows me to have a hand in shaping every role in the show. You're a puppet master. Yeah, yeah. But you're also really collaborative. Like you, you know, you will sit with people and say, what's the backstory? Like what is this character's motivation? What's going on right now? Yeah, I mean, and I might have an idea that, hey, I'm really, I'm really going ho for this. Let's try this. But I also, if something doesn't work for an actor, I don't want to keep, you know, forcing it upon them. I want to find a way where we can get to an effective performance that fits the story being told. You know, and I was thinking when you were talking about our town earlier, one of the things that was, I think, really special about that was the complete lack of set and limited blocking and I kept walking through the horse. Like how do you, like as a director, to be looking literally at a blank stage and saying to people, like, walk five steps to the left and then turn and sort of miming things and improvising, like that's a whole nother level of acting, right? Cause you've, it's just you, you have to bring yourself because you can't hide behind a prop or a gimmick or whatever, that's the thing about our town. It's just, it's you with a couple of other people in a, in a card table. Exactly. There's a certain vulnerability in that as an actor, I think, right? Oh, definitely. And fortunately, I think we had a cast that was willing to go there. And, you know, be exposed. But the wonderful thing about it too is if you want to have a moment, if we want a certain prop or something, well, then you just mime it. And you can add whatever props you need through mime and that's great. And, you know, I carried that a bit over into Glassman Azure because it's, Tennessee Williams says, this is a memory play. Things aren't always realistic. So I thought, oh, of course, we have little gaps in our memory. So maybe certain props we're not going to see, others we will. But I think it's, it's, I think it's a challenge for an actor. And I think it's also freeing for an actor in a way. Yeah. What's up next for you? What are you, are you working on something? Are you working on something right now? I am actually. And it's, I'm really excited about it. I am in Oscar Wilde's, another wonderful gay forefather. Gay. Gay. Oscar Wilde's the importance of being earnest at Barn Arts in Barnard. It is a show that, this will be my fourth production of the show that I've done in my career. And this is the first time that I will be playing the role I've really wanted to play, which is Lady Bracknell. Yay. And when does this go up? It's soon, right? It is. We will open the 9th of February and we run for two weekends. There are two Sunday matinees. I think it's the 9th through the 18th. And you can look up information at barnarts.org and find info on the show and where to get tickets. This is my first experience with Barn Arts. I haven't worked with them before. So all the people are new to me. And I'm really enjoying it. It's a great group and I'm looking forward. Great. It's going to be really fun. And lastly, do you have any sum plans? You know, just another plug, just a reminder, Michael, we're doing Spamalot at the Valley Players in Watesfield. We would love to have you. Oh, and I would love to audition. The only conflict is my dad and stepmother are both turning 80 this year. Oh my gosh. And they are having a joint birthday party at the end of June. So I will be in Wisconsin when the show opens. Can't they move their birthday? How rude of them. Right? Well, you can come and cheer us on. I'm really, I got my eye on a corpse. You know, just, it's going to be fun. All right, anything else that you'd like to share with our audience? This has been fun. This has been great. Thank you. Can't think of anything. Yeah. Well, you are an inspiration to our community. And Ashley and I were talking about how it really does make a difference as a queer actor to know, you know, even if it's not overt, like high gay person, but to know that you understand at, you know, what it's like, right? To be sometimes to feel like you're an outsider and you're inhabiting this character that truly isn't yourself. And it's so easy to just do typecasting. So, you know, it's really, it's great when there are directors out there like you that are open to the possibilities and the diversity of casting. So that's why we were having that love fest and talking about you a couple of weeks ago. So you're a hero. And we miss you, you need to, hopefully you'll come to Cabin Fever Follies, right? You can come to Cabin Follies. And I'm hoping, if he's watching, I hope you're hoping Doug will ask me to play piano again for them. So. Yes, I mean, I have an in with Doug. I'm doing a play right now and Doug's our director. So I will mention that to him. Yes. And yeah, cool. Well, thank you so much for your time. Thank you. I'm gonna stop the recording, but we can say goodbye. Let me just, I can't walk and chew gum at the same time as the problem. Thank you everybody for joining us. We hope you've enjoyed this talk and signing off. Thank you for joining us. And until next time, remember, resist.