Books, Essays etc.
BOOKs
Essays
“Non-Actors deconstruct the idea that there is a truth to be told.” Detail from Laura Stinger’s pictorial essay on Trainers.
High Winds is an artist’s book I created with graphic designer Jessica Fleischmann. The book follows High Winds, a trans guy with insomnia who embarks on a hallucinatory road trip to find his estranged brother. Told in an associative, elliptical style, it's a dreamlike western that borrows the form of a pillow book. From X Artists' Books.
Trainers is a queer love story set against a second American Civil War. Inspired by the life and loves of Montaigne and also Trainers. See here for more info.
A Pictorial Essay by Laura Stinger on Sylvan Oswald’s Trainers [with additional text by Sylvan] - Artist Laura Stinger and I held a series of conversations in response to LA performance magazine Riting’s “Embedded Writing” series. Stinger turned out a series of stunning image-theory-text pieces reflecting upon issues that came up in workshopping my text: working with non-actors, transness, queerness, and training itself.
Cut Piece - I wrote a big new essay about the history of play publishing for Rachel Kauder Nalebuff, the editorial mind behind the new play publishing project 3-Hole Press. It covers the history of Play A Journal of Plays, Paula Vogel’s teaching, Bonnie Marranca’s publishing at PAJ, John Cage, Gertrude Stein, Fluxus, and actors living in pageant wagons. Photo of Play A Journal of Plays #2 by still-room.
Riting - LA's vital online magazine for performance writing. I have written on Brian Getnick's Moonchops; Marike Splint's Among Us; and on The Plumbing Tree by Medium Judith (Amanda Horowitz and Bully Fae Collins).
An Index to Index - Yelena Gluzman, Steven Chodoriwsky, and I discuss the polyphonic worlds of performance inside Gluzman's Emergency Index from Ugly Duckling Presse. Our conversation appeared in the photography magazine Osmos.
Two Kinds of Writing - What's the difference between writing a play and writing a performance text? I try to describe the distinction in PAJ 100, edited by Bonnie Marranca and featuring inspiring reflections on life as an artist from Anne Bogart, Liz LeCompte, Mac Wellman, and many other heroes.
let's get punk rock about this - Paper, scissors, ROCK. A proposal for promoting emerging artists to seasoned audiences. In TCG's Audience Revolutions, edited by Caridad Svich.
CreatiVe
Trainers excerpt - in Moon Missives, Summer. A steamy section from my theatrical essay.
Last Resort - in scholar Daniel Sack's endlessly fascinating project Imagined Theaters. Posted for Austin's Fusebox Festival. And check out their ongoing journal.
The Clinic - in Emergency Index 5. A description of a performance about an insomnia-diagnosis-clinic. This project eventually led to High Winds.
Little Thing - a micro-play that later became my play Profanity was published in 15 Second Plays by The Debate Society and then selected by Daniel Handler for The Best American Non-Required Reading 2014.
Play A Journal of Plays - Issues 1-4. Published and Co-edited with Jordan Harrison 2003-2011. See our site for back issues and more info on this influential indie play-publishing venture!
Interviews/
Roundtables
50 Playwrights on Their Craft edited by Caroline Jester and Caridad Svich.
Sex Takes a Stage "The act of stating a character’s gender has never been simple." Roundtable [2013] with Annie Sprinkle, Chisa Hutchinson, Winter Miller, and Thomas Bradshaw, moderated by Caridad Svich. Available in libraries.
Oh Gender, Up Yours! Podcast / Article Mashuq Deen, Basil Kreimendahl, and I discuss our experiences as transmasculine playwrights working in the theater.
I Interview Playwrights # 386 / Adam Symkowitz blog
Five Questions / Culturebot