 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. Welcome to All Things LGBTQ. I am guest hosting this evening. My name is Susan Moyn and I have with me here Kim Ward, who is a local poet and playwright. And we talked about this, I think I can call her a friend or somebody I know we can admit that we know. Okay, great. So tell us a little bit about yourself, Kim. Yeah, so I began as writing as a play as a poet, but I've always been interested in theater. And as I got older and realized that you could perform poetry on stage, that was sort of a natural progression for me. So I've written poetry and plays and even a musical. And I am the founder of Vermont Playwright Circle. I also work with a lot of local theaters and some people might recognize me because I have also substituted on All Things LGBTQ before. Yes, I got my letters. You did, you did. Yeah, that's great. And we've been on stage together, have we not? And I'm pretty sure I was in that musical. We can show a clip of it. Oh, oh, I don't know if we want. I'm not sure. I was gonna say that was maybe not one of my finer moments. Only because like the hat, the Elmer Fudd hat anyway, we could, yeah, that was, but that was, that was a lot of fun. And I, I appreciate what you were saying because I was thinking back on that and the kind of the creativity to be able to not just write things that are lyrical, you know, poetic, creating the lines, but then also setting things to music that blends in with the theme. So to take a very short play in that, in that case, that was a 10 minute play and be able to combine a narrative with the sound, put it all to music and have people dancing around with, you know, little guns and stuff. That's, that's a lot in a 10 into a 10 minute, you know, but it was very action packed now. Yeah, thanks. So tell me a little bit about your, your process, sort of your writing process, like how do you come up with ideas for either plays or or poetry? Plays in poetry tend to be different ways that I come up sometimes with ideas, but sometimes they overlap. Sometimes it can be an article in the newspaper or a funny headline. Actually, the musical I wrote, which was called Man vs. Squirrel, I wrote after hearing a clip on NPR about a guy who got upset because there were squirrels in his walls and he put firecrackers to get the squirrels out and he burnt his cabin down. So I thought, my God, that's got to be a comedy musical, right? Was that under one? No, it's a national public radio. I was going to say, but we could all see it happening in these functions. Some of my relatives. So sometimes it's that other times it can be conversations. I wrote a poetic play called Light and I wrote the play after having an argument with a roommate, a guy who was renting from me who kept saying, you girls leave the lights on it, the outside light on when you're gone and you're, you know, you're wasting electricity. And we had a long conversation about, for him, I was wasting electricity, but for us as women, we wanted the lights on when we came home because where I grew up, no light on was an invitation to get mugged or, you know, robbed. So he didn't understand that difference. And after that conversation, just poem poetic play just kind of came. So it depends. Interesting. And did life imitate art? Did he get the message? He got it. He was like, oh, I never thought of it that way because he was like an eight foot tall, not really eight, but he was over six feet tall man, you know, white man, I might add. So a lot of privilege and a lot of ability to just feel safe wherever he was. Interesting. And so was that something that you blended poetry with? Yeah, that was an ensemble piece I made. And it had a lot of poetic monologues mixed in with it. And so it was in poetic lines and imagery and metaphor that I might not put in a regular straight musical, straight play. Oh, interesting. Did you have props and things or was it more just? We had a bare stage and actually Moxie Productions produced it many years ago. So it was like a one act and we had a bare stage. And my image was that this was, it was set in this sort of museum of light, museum of the history of electrification. So the idea would be that if you did have money, you might have gadgets and G-Jaws to represent, you know, inventions of light, you know, and lamps and things, but it was pretty much a bare stage. That's cool. I was just, I was picturing like a bare, one bare light bulb. A bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling symbolizing, you know, being in the dark. Yes. What do you think is like one of the most important skills that a playwright should have? What are some of the skills that you think really? I think you have to have the ability to think about a story as it can be told through dialogue and action for sure. I think there's a very big difference between a fiction piece or a poem oftentimes and something that can stand alive on stage. And also the ability just to work with other people and realize the biggest difference is you're creating something that's not finished until the director and the actors and the producers all get their hands on it. Yeah. Well, actually that's one of my questions we're going to talk about that a little bit later. Yeah. What do you think makes a good play? What are some of the ingredients that you, I know you've done a lot of, and I've read a little bit as a reader for the playwright circle. When you're reading the submissions for folks that want to perform, say at 10 Fest, which is your annual summer festival that you do, what grabs you when you're reading a play as a reader? How do you know like, aha, this is a keeper? I think as soon as you hear a character that feels really real, and I think as an actor you probably get that too, you start to read the character and you're like, oh my god, this person is so fun and so real, I want to play them. And I want to see them on stage. Or I know somebody like this. You know people like that. I know people like that. And it's like somebody who's interesting and engaging and flawed. And also, as soon as the piece has something that tells me the audience member that I know what's going on, and I'm going to expect to be entertained, whether it be funny or serious or suspenseful. Does that make sense? Yeah, I mean I think people relate to things that they see in their life and when you feel like you're in the know, right? And it's sort of like, I've been doing a little bit of stand-up and it's like when people are leaning in for the punchline and you do callbacks, right? So when you're telling a story, if people say like, oh that was really funny when she said then I shut the door and then you circle back to that and people feel like they were part of that journey, right? Yeah and some of the 10, some of those, some of the 10 best plays, you have to do that pretty quickly. Like there's the introduce the characters, what's the action going to be, what's the conflict, what's the resolution and we're out. Like so you really have to do that in pretty rapid succession to get the curve and the arc of the story, right? Right, that classic, you know, three-act arc that we all learn about in English class, where's that punchline, you know, the pinnacle has to come in five minutes as opposed to the full play could be at intermission after 45 minutes. Right, yeah. Yeah, what do you think this is something that I know you thought a lot about? What is the difference between, we talked about this a little bit, but spoken word performances, say poetry readings or poetic plays and some of the things we've been talking about that are just sort of more standardized formats of narrative plays with, particularly in a condensed version, not a lot of room for action. You have to really have that quick arc and quick resolution. What, what is the difference, would you say, between the more poetic versions of plays versus more straight up narratives? Well, I think that the one thing you're using the word narrative, sometimes there's not narrative in a poetic piece at all, and it can still be engaging. Boy, if your regular, you know, Neil Simon play has no narrative, people aren't going to want to keep listening to that. It's just everyday people talking to themselves. But when you do spoken word, it's more condensed, it's more heightened, you're using metaphor and analogy and hyperbole, so much more than you do in everyday pieces. But there's a blended, right? Does that make it more challenging, do you think, for the audience to get it? Sometimes, sometimes it does, sometimes they're like, I don't want to sit through that. I often have a tendency also, because my master's degree is in performance poetry, so I was very much into setting poems to dance and movement, and people oftentimes would say to me, why do you need so much? Why do you need the poems and the movement? I can't follow it all. And, and so like having to adjust and find that fine line where there's just enough, I mean, in Shakespeare, as the person comes to mind, right? Very heightened language, but we clearly know that Macbeth is going to kill somebody. You know, there's like, there's a lot of that action that we want, but then all this heightened language is juxtaposed, so it can be really challenging not to say that I'm comparing myself to Shakespeare at all. No, no, but I mean, when you're, when you're using multimedia or different techniques, my, my worry is you have to really convince people to go along on that trip with you, because they may not get it, right? And so some people, some people are like, this is really interesting. I have no idea what I'm watching, but I'm going to stick with it because I want to see how it ends. You know, and I just, I imagine, I don't know that. Yeah. And I don't know the answer yet. I mean, I probably never will, maybe, but I think there, there is that fine line. And sometimes you find it when you do Hallelujah. And other times you go back to the drawing board, because you're like, people are saying there's too much. What do you do? You know, bring me in more like you're saying into the know. Do you, do you workshop some of these pieces that you're working on at the Vermont Playwright Circle? Yes, yep. You get back like you lost us in. Yes. Or like, oh my gosh, we totally get where you're going and then we lost you and then we picked you back. Like, I imagine that would be really helpful to have a venue to, to share your work and get feedback. For me, it is. And that's because I feel very much like I'm a collaborative writer, when especially when it comes to theater, I might sit down and write poetry on my own, but I still am used to bringing poetry to a workshop and having people go, love this metaphor, why doesn't it come earlier? But some, for some playwrights, that's just not the case. They just want to get it all done. And then they might workshop it live and then they might tweak it themselves. So yeah, I have workshopped Man V. Squirrel. I brought it in. I don't know. I did change some stuff. The director said, hey, we need a new song, actually, you need to introduce this with a little bit of a song. And we added that. So yeah, definitely have done that. And my biggest piece that I did called Angel in the Fire, I have workshopped and then it was part of my thesis. So I have plenty of teachers, you know, giving me input to that. And then later, small workshop performances where we said, well, does this work this way? No, no. There's too much. They're talking too long. Yeah. All right. Well, I'm skipping ahead because that's a good segue into what do you do when a director or say, I don't know, a diva actor has a different interpretation. And you're sitting there as the playwright. You're in the audience or you're in the backstage saying, how do you, like, how does, you know, how does that handle that? How do you handle that? Yeah. When somebody disagrees, when you, you know, especially if it's something you're fairly passionate about and somebody is not getting the characterization right or they're not getting the, like, some of the nuance of what you're trying to build in the character. How do you manage that? The nice thing about a performance is it's a one live performance or a few live performances. And if, if someone interprets it differently, you can always go out and stage it again in a different way. So it's always changing. It's very ephemeral. But I would say I oftentimes, because I also direct would put on my director's hat and try to do some characterization and give them some background into why that character is like they are. And I have, at times, when I've directed said, when someone was really stubborn, because I said so, like I'm a parent, you know, I don't get that way so much. I haven't had to do that with playwriting because I think my stuff is pretty straightforward. But I try to be flexible because like I said, it's a group piece. So what if the diva actor or the director or someone has a different idea? Let them run with it because maybe it's something I never thought of. I might like it. So I tend to be a little more flexible about that than maybe some. I was just thinking about our friend, Jeannie Beckwith, who has always said over the years, once I hand that off, I, it's no longer my, it's no longer my baby anymore. I just have to kind of let somebody take that and run with it. So yeah, very adult of you. It's very adult. But I also think it's because I don't know everything. I know what I was thinking when I put it down. But what do you think that it's collaborative? And I think it comes from like literally doing theater since I was in fifth grade. And so seeing that process and having a high school teacher, by the way, drama teacher who was very much into collaborative theater. Yeah. I just, you know, speaking of poetry, I was just thinking I took a poetry class writing in college and I wrote this poem that, you know, my 20 year old punk self thought was pretty profound about the changing of the seasons. And I had to sit there while someone else read it and then critique it. And they said something to the effect of this person's obviously suicidal and, you know, they're, you know, really stressed. I was having a good day. Oh, wow. Yes. And I think it's so interesting when it happens because they're getting whatever they're getting from it and and it might not be what you wrote. But then, you know, it's just that that's a growth experience to go back and say what, what kind of language was I using that somebody would have that that type of interpretation stuck with me. Anyhow, what tell me a little bit about like what kinds of plays do you like what are some of your favorite plays or playwrights or authors? Yeah, I have a show and tell in that one of my the most influential playwrights I ever read was Entezaka Shange. She wrote this play for color girls who is considered suicide when the rainbow is a nut. And I love the fact that it's such a long title. And if anyone's never seen this, they just recently restaged it. It was written in the 60 late 60s early 70s. Wow. And it is an amazing ensemble piece of model and it's monologues all spoken. And there's very poetic language. And when I saw it and read it in college, I said, Oh my God, you can put poetry on stage. I know his name Tyler Perry is directed a movie version with which he worked with her just before. And the way he represents the colors of the rainbow in the play, the rainbow is you know, each woman is wearing a different color from the rainbow. And they tell their stories. And in the movie, he adds that color for that character throughout each of their scenes. It's just very well done. Wow. There's a film version is a film version and it's called just for color girls because in the movies, you can't talk that long people don't pay attention. And it's quite amazing. But you know, she wrote very heightened language. It was definitely poetic and it was something that struck me Oh, I can write stuff for the for the stage. So that's a huge thing. I grew up I have to say my biggest influence is growing up or Shakespeare and Rodgers and Hammerstein to totally different musicals, musicals, musicals, musicals, right. And, and Shakespeare. Beth the musical, make Beth the musical is my favorite tragedy actually. But I loved it again, because it was theater with poetry, but it's Shakespeare, how could you not. And the first play I ever saw live was a lyric theater play. They did the musical Gigi and my mother brought me to this live show and I thought Oh, yeah, this is what I have to be doing. This is just amazing. But I there's a ton of people I love I like Carolyn Gage who's a lesbian poet. Paula Vogel who wrote the kiss. Tonya Barfield all three of those ladies are queer playwrights. I've heard of Tonya Barfield fiction as well. She may have written movies as well. Yeah, okay. I think. But she wrote Breck Half Life, which I directed for Pride one year. Two ladies their whole life, you know, sort of cycle of their relationship. Well, maybe that's why I'm remembering the name. Maybe that's why she's familiar. And there's just so many good playwrights out there. Jeannie Beckwith and Dvorah Zipkin, who's also a local playwright. Those are two of my favorite playwrights right there. If you get a chance to see their work do Jeannie is going to have actually, but this will be her third main stage show at Last Nation Theater this year during their season. It's called Sam and Jim and Hell and it's about Beckett and James Joyce. Oh, right. They did. Didn't they do a student version of that? Like they did an online workshop of it. Or NVU. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that was really interesting. That's cool. So those those gals alone are just two of my favorite playwrights. So yeah. All right. A couple more questions I had for you. Yeah. Speaking of people that we know in the theater industry, I've been pondering this and actually I was just talking to Dvorah because she called and said, I can't make it. Why do you think so I want you to solve the Vermont theater problem? Why do you think that we're not that we're not seeing more LGBTQ themed plays and productions here in Vermont? You know, we did Pride Theater for many years. It was very popular. That's a good question. I think one of the things you're seeing in theater right now is people certainly post pandemic are oftentimes being very conservative with what they choose. If we're going to do a show, we're probably going to do Annie because it's got a million kids. It's popular. It's a musical. We'll get people through the door to see what we do, for example. I think that's one thing right now. I think you know, I actually went to see Paula Vogels the kiss down at another theater company, which has gone right out of my head. It's a southern theater company. They produced it after after it won some awards on on Broadway and was popular enough that people would hear about it. And that's got a lesbian themed, you know, a couple of characters who are lesbian. But it is rare and I don't know, you know, if it's that people are worried people won't come because certainly like, you know, here in Montpelier, for example, at least it's a pretty liberal town and has been for a long time. But I think oftentimes the reason isn't like if it was a big Broadway hit, most of the time it's not going to be LGBTQ as soon as musical, right? Yeah, as soon as one Tony's it was being done across Vermont. So really that's the issue. How popular is it so that I can make tickets so that I can do more theater because it's really hard to get people in theater at all. Yeah, I mean, I, you know, as you know, I'm part of the Valley Players Theater and we struggle for exactly what you said. We try to do something that's going to help fund us to take to make more of those creative. Let's see, we'll do one kid's show and we'll earn enough money that we can take a risk and do something that's maybe not heard of or not well known or whatever, you know, whatever that might be. It's just, you know, it's always been a conundrum to me and I was, I was so grateful when we were doing the Pride Theater that we could at least have this chunk of time or something. This kind of, yeah, and in the end I was, I was excited and I don't know if you were aware, but I, they started up in Montpelier, this company Shakespeare. Yeah. And I was involved in that and it was a queer version of Romeo and Juliet and we sold out the Plainfield Opera House and then one of the cast members got COVID, you know. Well, you know, I heard about that and I wanted to see it and I was like, well, COVID. Yeah, but it's good that they're doing that because you get that opportunity. Just like on Broadway they're doing things like they did an all female cast for 1776. Let's see how that plays. Just trying to get more people the opportunity to do some of these amazing classic roles, right? Change the dynamic and the, and the intention. I was interested, you know, some people were uncomfortable. They made, you know, they, they asked, not the actors, obviously, but, you know, some people struggled because to see Shakespeare is such a, you know, such a highbrow thing for many people to see, you know, women playing male parts or non-binary folks or we had they's and them's and he's and she's and everything in between and non-binary folks. And I thought it was really liberating and I just, I hope that they do it again. But I always, but I'm also curious why we, like why we don't see more of that, say in Burlington or some of the larger populated areas. And maybe we need to, I was saying to DeVora, apparently we need to write something. We need to write some things. DeVora's writing something right now. I said that. I said, no pressure, DeVora, but get right on that so that we can. She's got a full length play she's working on that I'm dying to do a reading out, which I hope we do. And it's all, it's filled with lesbians. So it's, it's a great opportunity to do that. What I think is interesting is that you say people were uncomfortable with cross-gender casting and Shakespeare in which during his time, most art men played all the roles. Right. No, I thought that was my take. Like, what do you care? Right? Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, I'm still very highly interested in the idea of putting together more festivals and what I was about to say as we talked was, I think that's the key when you have someone dedicated to say, let's stage these pieces about this or from this community's point of view. That's how it gets done. Otherwise, it's all Annie and Fiddler on the roof. Yeah. And I agree. And I do remember several years ago, we did out of the closet. We did the series of LGBTQ 10 minute plays. I would love to do, I would love to do something like that again, just to kind of have a sampling rather than not that people shouldn't be exposed to plays. But you know, I loved the idea of that because it really made an effort to be inclusive. And some of the plays were about men and some were about transgender folks and some were about women. And I think we tried to be thoughtful about picking plays that might appeal to different members of the community. Yeah. I don't know. I've just been pondering this. Like, why? And I know it's not mainstream, blah, blah, blah, but we are Vermont, right? So it's a little more common in Vermont. And it's a little more accepted to be like, yeah, LGBTQ people are out there. And we have certainly have enough organizations out there advocating. It would be interesting to just put out a call and say, who's got a short play, you know, with an LGBTQ theme, or at least with LGBTQ characters, because I'm seeing more and more on television where characters just are gay or lesbian or bisexual. And there is not even an issue. It's just who they are. Which is something I've talked about on this show before, that discovery, Star Trek Discovery has the most queer characters of any Star Trek ever, ever, you know, and the doctor and his partner just happened to be gay and they happened to be on the on the spaceship, right? There's no question about who they are, for example. There's not a tragic backstory where one of them has to die or be disowned from their family. They're just like a that's this is, you know, my dream is to have healthy, healthy relationship. I mean, healthy and air quotes, because, you know, you need some, you need some conflict of some sort. You need some conflict, but, you know, people that are, you know, politically depressed or, you know, have to be killed off in the second scene. I'm wondering, did you ever read Vito Russo's book on the celluloid closet? No, but I did a movie version of that, right? Talking about it. Yeah, he wrote this book back in the 80s now a long time ago, but it was really compelling because he really talked about how gay characters were marginalized in Hollywood, you know, and, and he had these great photos. I recall that, you know, you're just looking at somebody's elbow and it's like, what is that? And it's like, that was the gay character. And just like to cut out the whole rest of the scene and all the, you know, stereotypes of the effeminate man or the butch woman or all those, those things and, you know, the Hayes commission and movies being censored and all that. So I mean, we have come a long, long, long way. It's, you know, I love the idea of just mainstream TV having characters even when they're, even if they're stock characters, at least not having to explain the, you know, their gayness, the gayness, the gay angle. It's just they were jerking back their card garbage can, but we're not going to have a 10 minute monologue coming out on their orientation or whatever. Yeah. So my other question or I'm going to read you a quote and I'm sort of related here. This, this came from Terrell Alvin McRaney who wrote Choir Boy musical and he said, if I don't continue to try and write down and pin down the conflicts, the loves, the hates, the things that we want most in and from our community, people can easily say we don't exist. And so the question is how, how do you think your identity identifying as you do infuses your writing or impacts who you are as both a poet and an actor and a playwright? How do you bring that into your writing and into your performances, Stephen? I think what's really interesting about that question is that for most of my life, in my poetry, it has come out very strongly because poetry, oftentimes you write when you're either in love, falling in or out of love, you know, and emotions around those conversations I have to write about. It's, you know, it's very important to me. In my playwriting, I have had a really hard time figuring out how to write about who I am, especially because I'm not either straight or gay, right? I am bisexual, pansexual if I'd known that word when I was younger, right? Oh, yes, it doesn't matter to me that whenever I have presented things, here's this character, people have said, this is too complicated, just make this person straight or gay and you're like, okay. But I think the way it infuses, the way I think oftentimes comes through. And I've been trying to figure out how to write about it, like how am I going to write a play that's got queer characters, which is the weirdest thing to have to do when I'm, you know, totally accepting of this and I want it more. It's more in my directing and my casting, you'll hear me say all the time, I don't think it matters if it's a man or woman in this role and people are like, whoa, whoa, yes it does, you know. So it oftentimes in the production, the way I want to put a scene together will come out there or the way I want to direct and I'll say, no, I want to write, I want to direct this play, write Half Life, because it's about these two lesbian characters. So I'm just now trying to figure out how to fit it into the writing and make it not be. I never wanted to do, now I'll write a coming out play, I'll write a play about people getting kicked out of their house or having AIDS or someone's trying to beat them up. I couldn't figure out how to do it and make people not feel like I was putting too much into a play or, you know, so that's a new thing for me actually. Right, so how do you, how do you kind of get that message in there without being so overt that people are like, okay, we get it, the character's gay, you know, how do we represent without the sort of overkill and we do see that. I think we see that. Great playwrights can do it. I'm not sure I fall into that category. When it comes to we've also seen it done badly. We've also seen like here comes the gay character and there we go. Yeah, and there they go. Yeah. And I think it doesn't, even if you're not overtly writing about queer characters, who you are is going to come through and are you accepting of people around you, no matter whether they're LGBTQ, what's the racial cultural background, if you're aware to just try to make people three-dimensional, people can put, in my opinion, whoever they want in those parts and if it's all men or all women, more power to you, right? Or if it's all non-binary people, you know. Yeah, it's a tricky, it can be a tricky thing for me anyways. I didn't grow up in a time period where I was living within a really strong queer culture. And that's another whole episode that we could do with Keith about queer culture and how it kind of, we get acceptance and now we're kind of diffused into the culture. That's good, but where's the story? I know you guys talked recently about, I'm forgetting the long name, standing in this place, right? Standing in this place. What was, so what was it, the switching gears? Tell us a little bit, I know you talked about it in another show, but tell us a little bit about your involvement in that, because that was kind of a really cool piece that I thought was representative of our community in a lot of different ways, a lot of different people that had different life experiences. So many icons from our community were in that play and Mark Campbell is such a great writer, having, you know, hearing that she was going to put something together and interview us all and then put our own stories into this play. That was so exciting and to have a group of people who were just saying their truth on stage and not only that, but sort of representing the arc of, you know, becoming equal in Vermont, right? You had everybody who was anybody, you had Howie who started, started, you know, outright Vermont and you had Bill Lipper and it was just like this amazing cavalcade of people. It was a very powerful thing and I think we all really bonded in a different way than you would if you were just doing on Shakespeare and Annie, because it was a story we were able to tell our own stories and you're sharing so much of yourself that you really become close quickly. Yeah and it was cool from an audience perspective to see, you know, 20 odd people all in this big semi-circle on stage telling, as he said, telling their truth, but also sitting literally kind of shoulder to shoulder with people hearing their stories. It was very moving to hear all of the different experiences and it was really geared towards people having grown up here in Vermont, which in the day was not quite as open-minded as it is today and that could have been a lot more challenging for some of the more mature folks and then to also see like, you know, the Josh and the Grays and the folks that are younger generation also interesting, not just saying their own piece, but playing people who were younger in the 80s when some of that was evolving, you know, so to have people of the younger generation playing those I thought that was really interesting. Yeah, it was a good show. Yeah, we enjoyed it. And I think we have to do a shout out to DeVora, since she's not here, and talk a little bit about Table for One because that was my first, I think that was my first 10-fest experience, maybe, let's say. And I remember, and I know it had been performed before I was in it and it's been performed a couple times afterwards, I'm pretty sure. And I'm curious what your recollection is, but also just wanted to say that for me, that was right around the same time that I was getting involved with Pride. And I remember thinking, reading it, and like, oh my gosh, this is a lesbian, you know, and it reminded me of being, you know, like 12 years old, reading a book under the covers like, under the covers, like looking for that, looking for the junkie bits where that, you know, the people are maybe going to kiss or something, you know, salacious or something going on. And I just remember having that moment where I read it and it was like, oh, thank God, somebody has finally written something that I can relate to, that I can actually potentially act in without having to like, you know, play straight. I'm sure you have a different experience because you've known D'Bora for a long time, but what, you know, what was your experience when you first read that? Well, my first experience for that actually is that she workshopped it with us. It came out of a Vermont Playwright Circles prompt, which was, let's all write something for Valentine's Day. And have her write that piece when I have seen the Valentine's Bandits hearts all over town. That was lovely. And I agree with you. It's so nice to see, like, that's one of those plays we're talking about where the two characters happen to be women, but it could be anybody in those roles. It's not about coming out or anything. It's just about how people feel where they're at with the relationships and Valentine's Day and how frustrating that can be. And so that was very refreshing when I read that piece. And I immediately said, oh, yeah, this is something that would be fun to do and how fun to get to do it several times. And we did it in two different, we did it for 10 Fest and for pride because we did the out of the closet shorts. And I just thought it was fun. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. And I guess for our Montpelier audience members shout out. Yeah, the Montpelier, the Valentine's Bandit, as everybody knows. And did they go on hiatus for a couple of years? I saw them last year. I don't know. At one point, the person who founded started that pass away. And the year that happened, some high school girls went around and said, oh, what do you mean? There's no bandit this year. And they started it up again. And I think maybe once during it seems like I did it all through the pandemic. I actually got to help out one year. I got secret envelopes to put on my window. So it was exciting. Yeah, it's a great tradition. Right. So and the premise of the play is that somebody is sort of anti Valentine's Day. And as you said, it wouldn't matter if they were gay or straight or anything in between or bi, but it just so happened that it was two women. And again, the idea I love what I appreciate about that play is it wasn't like mushy Valentine's ish. It was sort of turning that on its head. But there was sort of this understanding that we're all human, we're all people, and this is an experience that everybody shares. If you're not in a relationship, Valentine's Day is not a day that you look forward to. So I thought it was great. It was a sort of a reclaiming of Valentine's Day in a way. And I appreciated that piece. Yeah, definitely me too. And I'm always I'm always excited anytime DeVora comes out with a play because I know it's going to be fun and because she does write from her truth. So of course, she's going to write about two ladies in the play. And that's where it easily comes through in a good writer. And this new piece she's writing, which maybe I shouldn't reveal anything about, but it's I just keep nudging her to we're hoping to do a reading over the winter. So we'll let you know about it if we do it. Sounds great. Well, I did I did tell her that I will put in a plug to Ann and Linda and Keith to do a follow up interview. So that would be yeah, that would be a fun thing to do. You know, if she's looking for a forum to workshop that or to do that, we can certainly get get the word out. Yeah. Yeah, great. Is there is there anything else that you wanted to share? Well, I will be doing a reading. There's a new reading series going on at the front in Montpelier, which is a small gallery on the very street. It's founded by Bob and Joy. And it's it's a it's a they do two poets a month and Linda has read at this. And in May and May, I'll be reading at it. So I'm kind of excited to be going back to doing some poetry and doing it right. What is it near the the pizza place? Or is it um no it's in Montpelier if you go right across from the Shaw's is Berry Street and there's a laundry mat and then the front it's this little tiny gallery. Okay, so near the the burger place or wherever that yeah right right across from there. That's exciting. I know Linda's doing some sort of poetry reading coming up. Oh good. He did the front last month, which was lovely with another person and then she I'm sure she has more. So you get a chance to hear her read. She's a good poet. And are you working on any plays? No, I am actually currently writing and rewriting some poetry and also I've been writing more and more spoken word poetry stuff that I do at Poetry Slam. So it's going back to that root of liking to perform nice poetry. So that's what I'm doing right now. It's awesome. Maybe after this I'll end up trying to write something with a with a by character you never know for play. Hey, you know, why not? You know, yeah, you'll have to figure out is there a subtle way you know how do I how do I rent right the musical rent does a very good job of that. If anyone's ever seen that because Idina Menzel's character is by and she's with a woman and there's there's some great music around that. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good one. We'll see. All right, and then summer. You're going to be involved in 10 Fest. Do you want to Yes, this summer right circle or 16 10 Fest is coming up this summer in August 16. Technically, we did one of them online during the pandemic. So it was more of a conference, but we did a little bit of 10 minute plays. We are also working to produce finally and get out onto podcast. Some of the plays that you were involved in recording, we did some audio recordings. Yeah. So you wanted I could send you the link to our podcast because that actually has the play that you and Cynthia were in. And I'm editing mine, which was the just as long a title as this other play how to extirpate from your yeah, preserve. So we're working on getting some of those out. So we're always looking for playwrights or actors. So that's what I would say. Have you put out your request for submissions yet? Or is that coming up? That's coming up shortly. We're right now wrapping up the request for submissions, which is going out in the next week or so. So we're calling we have a call for scripts out. We have a theme again this year, which is right about an aha moment. And that could be like Eureka. I just came up with something aha. It could be represented in the text. It could even be something as simple as a light coming on on stage. It's a moment is the theme this year. So 10 minute plays. If people are interested, how do they get a hold of the playwright? The best way to do it that to tell you online is to go to vtplays.com. And that's our website and our email is on there, which is a little longer drawn out. But go to vtplays.com. The the call should be up there within the next week or two. And so people just people that aren't familiar with the process, you can submit a 10 minute play and you have a group of readers that will read it to make sure it fits within the time constraints. And then the top 10 plays are chosen. And the authors will be notified. And then you have the pleasure of watching your production staged in the summer. This is the third week of August. And maybe more. We're working on that. But it's a great opportunity for I always say to folks, if people are listening and saying, I need to get on stage and play and in a person of indeterminate gender sexuality orientation and ethnicity, I need to do this. I need to embrace all those letters. Your auditions are typically in June. Is that correct? Yep, usually in June at the Valley players. We love them. They have hosted us for all this time and it's been a great venue to use. Yeah. And yeah, and I'll put out a plug for aspiring writers. Check out the Vermont Playwrights. And you heard it from me. Please, people continue to write for our community. I mean, we can, you know, as Kim said, we can turn anything into a queer and we often have. Yes. We've done a bunch, haven't we, where it's like, I remember, remember Susan, shout out to Susan Buckner. She wrote that lovely play about the two elderly people. And then we flip one of the. We made that into a lesbian couple, yeah. We're like congratulations, they're lesbians. So that happens. And that's kind of fun. And I appreciate the flexibility of the Playwrights folks. And, you know, when people audition, you can be in more than one play, for example. And so I know that there've been seasons where like you're a man, you're an eight-year-old boy and you're a woman, you're gay. And it's just a great opportunity. So I would highly recommend it to folks. Yeah. And also, if you haven't done a lot of acting or for a while, it's short. You can do one and you don't have that. I went off on this. But that's what I was getting at. We have folks that have done shows with us at the Valley Players and they've said I can't, you know, I can't commit to doing another full-length play, you know, they may have, you know, obligations or whatever. And I've said to a bunch of people, you need to check out the 10 Fest because, you know, it's a 10-minute play. And, you know, so the rehearsal schedule is somewhat, you know, truncated. You know, you're only rehearsing for what, four to six weeks or something at the max. And it's only an hour at a time. And it's a great way to get your feet wet, if you haven't, as you said, acted in a while. A lot of people, I think, come and come to the Valley Players as well and say like, I was in a play in high school. Yeah. Other in their 40s and you're like, come on down. And that's a great way to build community, I think. So. Definitely. Yeah. Cool. Well, thank you so much. I feel like we had a trip down memory lane. Yeah. Well, thanks for thinking of doing this. And I hope the more of these kinds of interviews, it's really fun. Whenever you guys, all things LGBTQ, interview the community for whatever reason. Yeah. So, yeah, I want to, on behalf of all things LGBTQ, you know, Heath and Anne and Linda, thanks for trusting me with the mic and the video. Hopefully, I didn't blow anything up. And I want to thank my guest, Kim Ward. Thank you so much for spending some time with me. And we will definitely circle back and talk to some of your colleagues. And I eagerly await the shows that are going to be in 10 bests. And maybe, maybe we'll just write something and submit it. I love it. It's a challenge to all of us. All right. Thanks so much. Thank you for joining us. And until next time, remember, resist.