Colored Museum Design Work

Colored Museum Design Work

 This is some design work I’ve done for another class. The play colored museum is about a metaphorical museum, each exhibit tackles different aspects of black identity and culture. This play aims to make audiences uncomfortable by confronting Black issues and ideas, treating them as relics that the cultures must both embrace and outgrow. Gospel According to Miss Roj features a drag queen who talks the audience through themes of survival, pain, and empowerment as a queer person. Attached is my design work for what her costume, makeup, and set would look like along with some inspiration photos.

↓ Below is the scene this design is based on ↓

If you can find the rest of the script I really recommend reading it!

What the Floor Remembers

The ball floor knows bodies by weight.

Some arrive already belonging.
Others learn the choreography of survival.

Under the lights: beauty, gender, joy, grief.
A boy in a blue shirt, thirteen or fourteen, already learning which bodies are safe.

Decades later, queer kids are still learning versions of the same lesson.

Some can move closer to normal.
Some can assimilate.
Race cannot be taken off at the door.

The floor holds all of it at once:
race, gender, class, sexuality, belonging.

And it remembers this most:

some people leave the room and disappear into the world.

Others have to keep dancing to be seen as fully human.

For the Ones Who Were Never the Problem

What would you say if I stopped being normal?

If I stopped making myself understandable.
If I stopped shrinking the strange parts, the soft parts, the changing parts.
If I let my body age without apology.
If I let love be complicated.
If I let my child become who they are without asking them to make it easier for the world.
If I stopped calling exhaustion responsibility and silence kindness.

Would you think I had lost something?

Or would you notice how much of me had been spent trying to be recognizable?

Maybe normal was never who I was.
Maybe it was just the price of belonging.

And maybe queering the norm is this:

choosing, finally, to belong to oneself.

Queer in Art - Rainbow

This is an art piece I made for my color theory class. It is a collection of items I own that cary significance to me. I took a series of pictures that all contained colors of the rainbow. 

 

Queering the Norm - Rainbows

 Lea Rainbow Lea Rainbow

my mom called and called 

a voice a melody of love

rainbow walls and laughter 

sowing the threads of life 

5, 

10, 

15,

I am older 

the threads keep weaving

can you guess what color they are

Normalish. . .

 The trouble with normal is,

there is no normal

we're all our own normal

"Wait, this is normal right?"

a fair question,

a valid rumbling

But there are so many things
worth chasing

like being kind & looking
Divine ♡

Uncertain Acceptance

 

Uncertain Acceptance

I told my dad this weekend I started HRT a month ago. I mentioned something about it in July and ever since there’s been this cloud of tension every time we talk. He broke the ice when I was about to drive back to Laramie, “We need to talk about this… hormone stuff” he rubs his palms and his leg is shaking. This is new to me. My dad was in the military and was raised on a ranch in North Dakota, there was a right and wrong way of doing things with no exceptions. He’s straight to the point and doesn’t put up with bullshit which in all fairness I respect him for. But seeing him so apprehensive was unnerving. I felt more scared of this than the accustomed screaming match I grew up with. “I’m already on it. I have been for a month now,” I quickly get it out of the way. I did this on purpose, if I was already taking the testosterone he couldn’t have tried to persuade me against it. “What do you want out of this? How are you going to change?” I know no matter what answer I give him it’ll frighten him. I tell him it’s going to help me be perceived more as a man, while this partially true it was more of a point to him that I am valid. He’s criticized me before “Why do you think you’ll be viewed as a male if you wear feminine stuff and put on makeup?” and it’s kind of hard to justify your choices to a person who only sees gender and sexuality and life in binaries. He just nods. God this is terrifying. “What about… relationships… friendships… and…yeah?” I know he’s really asking, “What are my family and friends going to think about this?” I explain it’s hard socially and that it’s like coming out all over again but more permanent. I tell him with a straight face that I feel guilty for ruining our father daughter relationship and I wish I wasn’t like this. I wish I could have been like my peers, content with my body. I’ve explained this more times than I would have liked in my lifetime, so this comes off cold. His eyes well up with tears and my mouth runs dry unable to form another word. I’m unable to decipher what I’m feeling or what I should feel. Am I sick for feeling relief? That finally something I say got through to him. Should I hug him or just stare? If I give any comfort, will it be used against me? “I love you and I’m so proud of who you have become.” This might be more intimidating than his antipathy. I apprehensively stood up and approached him and we hugged. For what felt like an entirety we held each other while my father wept. Once we let go of each other, he wiped his face off and said, “Well, it’s getting late you should probably start driving back home.” I nodded and that was that.