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[0:15] Sarah Goodman: Hi, I'm Sarah. I'm a sound designer and professional lesbian theater geek. I'm a huge fan of all things Broadway, cabaret, and pop culture. I've got tattoos of Bernadette Peters and Liza Minelli. In my podcast, I'm looking at theater through a queer lens and discussing the intersection between the craft and the LGBTQ community. AKA, me, my friends, and my family. My guest today is Ana Mari de Quesada, and we are talking about the WILD PROJECT, an incredible theater on the Lower East Side that needs your help. This episode is being released on Giving Tuesday, and so I hope that my listeners can open up their hearts and wallets and give a couple bucks to WILD PROJECT. They are raising funds so that they can secure their building and stay on the Lower East Side, supporting incredible theater to uplift LGBTQ voices, BIPOC voices, and artists on the Lower East Side and beyond. And later, we're gonna talk more about "Fuck Seventh Grade," which I saw at WILD PROJECT. We're gonna decide how queer is it. But first, enjoy my conversation with Ana Mari de Quesada.

[1:30] Sarah Goodman: Since 2007, WILD PROJECT has presented and produced theater that enriches, educates, and unifies its East Village community in an environmentally responsible green space. They proudly devote specific initiatives towards female, LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC projects and the work of the local East Village artists to ensure nonprofit theater sustains its roots in the community. WILD PROJECT places the utmost importance on engendering a climate that supports emerging artists and cultivates artistic excellence, enriching the community and promoting social equity. Their staff takes pride in nurturing new and exciting work with a personal and intimate approach to theater. Today I'm talking with Ana Mari de Quesada, the Producing Artistic Director of the WILD PROJECT. Thank you so much for joining me.

[2:19] Ana Mari de Quesada: Oh, thank you. Thank you for inviting me.

[2:23] Sarah Goodman: So tell me a little bit about yourself. How did you become a theater person? When did that first come into your life?

[2:30] Ana Mari de Quesada: It's funny you asked that because it was a happy accident. I'm born and raised in Miami. Growing up, I was always interested in the arts, but I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do in the arts. In high school, I did like photography, I played music, I played the drums, I thought I wanted to be an actor. You know, after high school, I took some private acting classes, but I never had the nerve, the courage to go beyond my classroom of acting classes. And then I was just always very much into business and finance. So I, you know, my work was in retail, and I always moved very quickly in my positions that I had into management, which then led me to working through the non-existent Borders bookstore.

[3:18] Ana Mari de Quesada: Oh, I loved Borders. I spent so much time at Borders as a young person.

[3:24] Ana Mari de Quesada: Oh, I love Borders. So yeah, they have a music and video department. So I was a manager of music and video, and I always tended to work in retail, but into my interests. It was always music and video. Then it was one of those epiphany moments in life in Miami. I used to have to work, hang out with my friends, you know, my friends would play guitar and play music in the backyard. And then just one random night, I was like, you know what? There's something bigger in life out there. Like, I felt like there was something more in life for me to do, like some sort of calling. And my parents are Cuban, and it's very stereotypical for Hispanics to stay and not really move from where they're born. And my brother happened to have moved to New York because of his job. And I had never been to New York City.

[4:15] Ana Mari de Quesada: So I was like, I visited New York and I loved it for the first time in 1996. And I was like, you know what? Let me go back to New York, you know, and see, kind of like suss it out. Which I did, I fell in love. And then I have a stepbrother in LA. He's a musician. I visited LA. I was like, ah, this is too much like Miami. So I really wanted to change. So I transferred Borders Books from Coconut Grove, Miami, to New York City, Kipps Bay location. And a guy, I'm gonna shout out, Stuart Meltzer. I worked with him in Miami. He worked in the cafe, and he was in New York City getting his MFA in directing in theater. Back in the day, I used to smoke cigarettes. And I was in my smoke break, my 10-minute smoke break, and Stuart came to visit me at Borders here in New York.

And he's like, you know what? I know you've always wanted to do the arts, and you're so good in your management. I think it's a direct correlation. I think you'd be a great stage manager in theater. And I was like, what's a stage manager? I never thought about theater. It's just something that was never on my radar, you know?

[5:24] Ana Mari de Quesada: Yeah. And so he, in 10 minutes, he showed me what a stage manager does, showed me what blocking is and wrote, you know. And I was like, oh, I'll do that. And that was in 2000. So I was gonna do a gig that he hooked me up with a friend, and then 9/11 happened.

[5:43] Ana Mari de Quesada: Oh, geez.

[5:44] Ana Mari de Quesada: Yeah. That's some tough timing.

[5:46] Ana Mari de Quesada: Yes. But yeah, and then my friend who was working that I lived with at the time, she was working in the production office of The Sopranos, and she told me about some Yahoo gig list. And I randomly applied for a stage manager gig. No, no pay. I was like, that's okay, because I have no experience. And that's gotta start somewhere. Yeah, and that was at the Paradise Factory. And that's how I got into theater. Was just a friend suggested that I'd be great at it, and I did it, and I loved it because it's exactly what I wanted to do. Kind of like the management part of it, but in the arts. I found a position that was made perfectly for me in the theater world.

[6:27] Ana Mari de Quesada: And from there, just I got every job, you know, job experience. And then I, you know, I take pride in my work, and people always wanted to hire me back, and actors referred me to different directors. And that was in 2002, and then four years later, I was asked to run the WILD PROJECT.

[6:47] Sarah Goodman: So, how did the WILD PROJECT come to be?

[6:50] Ana Mari de Quesada: The original founder was actually an actor in my very first show I ever stage managed. Wow. She was able to secure the building and ran it as a bottle factory theater for a while, and then it kind of laid low for about a couple of years, and then she wanted to gut renovate the building and make it into proper theater, which is what we have now, the WILD PROJECT. So in 2006, she approached me to manage it. We opened in July 2007. And I've been running it since then. And it's, you know, it's gone through different incarnations. It was first a commercial space running as an LLC, and then I took it over officially on my own in 2016. I created the not-for-profit version of the WILD PROJECT.

[7:40] Sarah Goodman: Okay.

[7:41] Ana Mari de Quesada: And then, you know, took over and started renting the building in 2017.

[7:47] Sarah Goodman: Wow. And so tell me a little bit about how this is an eco-friendly building. It has a green roof. And tell me more about some of the details of that and whose decision, how did that all come to be?

[8:00] Ana Mari de Quesada: That was her founder. She's very interested in sustainable architecture. And this was like the first big project that she took on. And the whole idea was to gut the building, but keep its original, the original intact, like not add on artificial building materials. So everything you see is the original buildings, like stripped down. We have, you know, CMU walls and the floor is just regular, like kind of cement floors. And then all the wood, the audience risers is bamboo, which is a sustainable wood. And all on our roof is a green roof. So we have soil and plants and we have solar panels up there.

[8:41] Ana Mari de Quesada: Cool. And then all the materials we use: toilet paper, paper towels, our bar, cups, everything we use, trash bags, everything's, you know, from recycled materials. We really try to stay true to be as eco-friendly as possible. And obviously, with theater lighting, that's kind of tough, but slowly LED lights are becoming more, you know, more in use, and the designers are really able to design the shows how they want to. So we're slowly with capital grants have been transferring our lights to LED. So that's the last aspect of theater that was a little bit behind in that aspect of being green.

[9:22] Sarah Goodman: Yeah, you know, theater can be incredibly not sustainable, especially some of the older theaters, especially the Broadway model where everything comes in new every time and then they throw everything out at the end. And there's not a lot of place to store things. So things kind of come and go quite a lot. It's pretty amazing to have a theater company having sustainability at the forefront of their mind because we really all need to be pulling our weight more.

[9:42] Ana Mari de Quesada: Exactly. In regards to climate change, right?

[9:52] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[9:52] Ana Mari de Quesada: And that's what's great about organizations like Material for the Arts. We love that place. So if it's a lot of things after we do a show, we try to reach out in our immediate community. You know, we have a lot of residential buildings, so we just give things away for free. So that's our first thing we do is put things on the sidewalk with a free sign and let people take it, you know. And then other things, if it's like tenants that rent our space, when a company's striking and another one's coming in, we try to put them in touch with each other and be like, hey, can you use any of their stuff? You know?

[10:26] Ana Mari de Quesada: Yeah. So yeah, we try to reuse as much as possible.

[10:31] Sarah Goodman: That's really amazing. What do you think it is specifically about WILD PROJECT that gives you the ability to work towards these initiatives?

[10:43] Ana Mari de Quesada: Because it feels like, oh, that makes a lot of sense. These are all like really great ideas, but other theater companies really aren't doing this kind of stuff. This is one of the advantages and disadvantages of being a small company like us, an organization like this. The advantage is the flexibility, you know. And we don't, you know, to be frank, we're not a huge organization, you know. We're not the Public or, you know, even La MaMa, you know, our New York Theater Workshop. It's just me and two other people as regular staff. So we're able to be very malleable. And myself and my producing director Tom Escobar, we grew up in the early days of downtown theater where we did everything ourselves. Like we wore three million hats.

[11:29] Ana Mari de Quesada: Yeah. So we're used to really being thrifty. He and I are just, we grew up in that way of theater here in New York City. So that leads us to be able to do all these things, you know, and think outside of the box because we always had to. We're used to producing on a shoestring budget, you know?

[11:46] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[11:46] Ana Mari de Quesada: Yeah, I love that. How some of it comes out of necessity, but also some of it comes out of like aspiration and care for the rest of humanity and this planet. Talk to me a little bit about your community involvement. It really feels like when you go to WILD PROJECT, it's this beautiful black box style theater right on the street, it's in a vibrant East Village neighborhood. Like, tell me about the community involvement and the connection between the theater and the neighborhood.

[12:18] Ana Mari de Quesada: I will say aesthetically, just technically the building, having that roll top garage window in itself is like step one of the community feeling because you could always look in our building and you could roll like Club Thumb does it a lot. They roll up the top garage so people could just float in and out off the street. But it's really keeping true of like, I always call us as we run it very mom and pop, like old school style of business of like, yes, technically we were a business, but we're about people too. If it's not, if we didn't have the people and the artists, we're just the building, right? Like we would just be a name, but it's really the people that help bring that community. And the East Village, I mean, it's not completely gentrified, thank God.

But there's still we still have that borderline of like the Latino community who have grown up there and lived there, and we've been there so long that we know a lot of the residents and the other small businesses on our little corner of Avenue B and East Third. We're all friends and we all have each other's emails, and we try to do as like we're kind of like the ambassador in a way, like the steward of East Third Street, because the pandemic, one of the good things that came out of it was in the summer of 2021, the city had the open culture program for us.

[13:41] Ana Mari de Quesada: That we were able to close off the streets and bring performance onto the street because we were still in our mandated closures, right? So that was a time for us to even get more connected with the community. Like we invited community artists to come and perform. We invited the small business owners to be a part of it because we were all like just trying to survive as small business owners. Um, and that kind of opened up our Halloween streets and really welcomed the families to come in. And since then, thankfully, we've been able to do that, like connect with the community and invite our small business owners. We just, you know, we're part of the DOT's trick or streets program.

[14:22] Sarah Goodman: Oh, fun.

[14:23] Ana Mari de Quesada: Um, and we had all the small business owners come out, and we had little, you know, different little things for the kids, like, you know, a candy wheel and stuff like that. So it's like we really want to like, we're not just a theater and performance space, but we want to kind of like bring in the community to have those connections and keep that like old school, you know, I don't know, if you know what I mean, just kind of like just want to be impactful somehow. And in the summer, we have a children's program with our local school PS140.

[14:56] Sarah Goodman: Um cool, I love that.

[14:58] Ana Mari de Quesada: Yeah, that the education alliance, you know, partnered us up with them. So we have Friday workshops with different disciplines of mentors. So, like we'll have a costume designer come in and work with the kids.

[15:10] Sarah Goodman: Oh, nice, and like um directing and acting.

[15:13] Ana Mari de Quesada: So every summer we bring another discipline in, and then they have a drama teacher that works with the kids, and they have an end-of-year, you know, performance for the parents, so we house their rehearsals and then they do the show at the end on our stage. So it's kind of like a oh, that's so cool, a fun way to welcome them into our space, you know, and teach them that there's more jobs in theater than acting and directing, you know.

[15:36] Sarah Goodman: Yes, I really love that, especially as a person who is I'm a sound designer. Um, and I never knew that job existed growing up. I wanted to be an actor too. It was kind of one of the only things I knew as a job because you have to see it to be it, right? I think that's a huge thing about representation. If you don't, if no one tells you, how are you supposed to know about those offstage jobs?

[15:57] Ana Mari de Quesada: Exactly.

[15:58] Ana Mari de Quesada: And this is just like we just started, um, we're hoping to grant right to expand it because my dream is to go one step further and have like do a appropriate show for the kids and have like them partner up with the director and actually go through what we normally do in real theater, you know, have rehearsals or director or a stage manager and have them partner with professionals and we all put up the show together in the end.

[16:26] Sarah Goodman: Oh, that's wonderful.

[16:27] Ana Mari de Quesada: Like even electricians, right? Lighting electricians, like you can make a career out of that, you know, and they're always in demand and needed.

[16:34] Sarah Goodman: Yeah, not only all the technical roles, the design roles, but also there's so many administrative roles in theater as well that people aren't aware of, you know, marketing, uh general management, uh, all kinds of different jobs that are still so vastly important to the functionality of of theater.

[16:52] Ana Mari de Quesada: Um, where you still get to be involved, but it's not necessarily the stuff that you hear about, the numerous stuff that people like to talk about.

[16:59] Sarah Goodman: Exactly.

[17:00] Ana Mari de Quesada: So that's kind of the thing we're hoping to expand on with the kids in our neighborhood, you know, like there's different you may not want to do the professional route be in the arts like a me. That's what happened to me, you know.

[17:10] Sarah Goodman: Mm-hmm.

[17:11] Ana Mari de Quesada: And I found my place in you know in the theater world and I love it.

[17:14] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[17:15] Ana Mari de Quesada: And I love that you come from a different background, you know. Um, your retail background, I think is kind of really useful to be looking at the business of theater from a different mindset.

[17:27] Sarah Goodman: And I also have to say, WILD PROJECT has really great merch.

[17:30] Ana Mari de Quesada: And I'm always saying shows need more merch.

[17:33] Sarah Goodman: Yes.

[17:34] Ana Mari de Quesada: Theaters need merch. We need more stuff to like get your brand out there.

[17:37] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[17:38] Ana Mari de Quesada: Get people repping your brand and get them to be aware of it, you know.

[17:42] Ana Mari de Quesada: Yeah, we're looking to design a tote bag now, being that we're eco-friendly.

[17:46] Sarah Goodman: I love that.

[17:47] Ana Mari de Quesada: Yeah.

[17:47] Ana Mari de Quesada: I love the tote. I love the trucker hat. I was on the site today. I saw the trucker hat.

[17:50] Sarah Goodman: That's a total me thing, by the way.

[17:53] Ana Mari de Quesada: My my he's really like my brother growing up. Um he has his own printing thing, and in the COVID, he's like, How can I help you? And I was like, to get some money. And I was like, okay. And he's like, show me two hats you like. And I showed him and he picked that out and designed it for me.

[18:12] Sarah Goodman: I love it.

[18:12] Ana Mari de Quesada: We'll be right back with more good show after this.

[18:16] Sarah Goodman: We're back with more good show. I actually have seen two shows at WILD PROJECT in the last year. I just saw Jill Silbiel's show, Fuck Seventh Grade, which I absolutely loved.

[18:27] Ana Mari de Quesada: It was so touching to me and so relatable.

[18:31] Sarah Goodman: We all have such a hard time in middle school. That show also had cool merch.

[18:35] Ana Mari de Quesada: Yes.

[18:36] Sarah Goodman: Love Jill's merch.

[18:37] Ana Mari de Quesada: Yeah, Jill had great merch. And then um the first show I saw at WILD PROJECT was Coach Coach over the summer, uh clubed thumb production that my friend Kelly McGandrew was in.

[18:46] Ana Mari de Quesada: And that show was phenomenal.

[18:48] Sarah Goodman: I was absolutely blown away. It was the first thing I saw at WILD PROJECT, and I was so impressed with how deep the production value was in this tiny little space. They had an incredibly beautiful set that was kind of like it was like upholstered, like every single thing on the stage was upholstered, and it was beautiful, absolutely beautiful in this tiny little room, and it was so magical.

[19:14] Ana Mari de Quesada: It's like my favorite thing about theater, where it's like you walk into this garage door into this cool, funky, kind of looks like a boutique or like a little cafe, the lobby, and then you go in the back and you're completely transformed.

[19:26] Ana Mari de Quesada: So I think it's such a special theater space.

[19:29] Sarah Goodman: Thank you.

[19:29] Ana Mari de Quesada: Yeah, Club Thumb does amazing scenic design.

[19:33] Sarah Goodman: They really did.

[19:34] Ana Mari de Quesada: They they're a proof of what you could do in our stage, you know, like the imagination.

[19:40] Sarah Goodman: Yes.

[19:41] Ana Mari de Quesada: Yeah, absolutely. So tell the listeners a little bit about this um situation that the WILD PROJECT is in.

[19:50] Sarah Goodman: So we're here today to talk about the theater and amplify it because it's an amazing place, but also y'all are in need of some financial help.

[19:58] Ana Mari de Quesada: Yes. Um, so even before the pandemic, we were talking to the the owners of the building. Um, thankfully, they've been super supportive of us and really wanted to stay as a a theater and art space and wants us specifically to stay there. And then the pandemic hit, so all the talks came to a halt. So when we came back on the camp campaign uh out of the COVID, we started our capital campaign again.

[20:23] Ana Mari de Quesada: And we were able to make some strides. Um we received um through the community funding requests we did through former Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney's office. So we did get um awarded through her a million dollars towards our acquisition. And then um we received recently 250,000 from State Senator Brian Kavanaugh's office.

[20:48] Sarah Goodman: Mm-hmm.

[20:49] Ana Mari de Quesada: Now here's the thing we're running out of time.

[20:52] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[20:52] Ana Mari de Quesada: So unfortunately, um February 2025, which is basically two months from now, we would need to raise another million dollars and able to close and you know, on the sale of the building and be able to afford a mortgage. And the reason why of the high costs is there's nothing built above us.

[21:16] Ana Mari de Quesada: So the building comes with developing rights, air rights. Um, which to those who don't know about New York City, buying the building comes with the air rights so that one day in the future we could build up and you know, build a little art center if we wanted to and all that. Right now we're just concentrating on existing.

[21:34] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[21:35] Ana Mari de Quesada: Um, so we would need a million dollars to secure and proceed to purchase the building that we know we can afford the mortgage. We need to be fiscally responsible at the same time.

[21:46] Sarah Goodman: Right.

[21:47] Ana Mari de Quesada: So this is our red alert to the world. We don't want to be another statistic, another news article, another thing of like, why didn't you tell us we could have helped you situation, you know?

[21:59] Ana Mari de Quesada: So we really wanted to, you know, send a red alert, do a press release, um, hoping that, you know, we get enough word out there that, you know, there's people out there that we may not know of philanthropists, other people who realize the importance of independent theater, how the ecosystem of downtown theater is withering away. You know, a lot of spaces have been closing recently, and it's all because of real estate issues.

[22:21] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[22:27] Ana Mari de Quesada: Whether they don't own their building and the rent is going up and they can't afford it, you know, the pandemic just exasperated everything that was already happening before. A lot of rehearsal spaces closed down coming out of the pandemic. So it's really just a red alert. We need the community's help. We need really to spread the word out to hopefully, you know, get some people who would want to be part of this and saving us and and realize the importance of the of what the wild project is in the independent theater ecosystem and the importance of that.

[23:02] Ana Mari de Quesada: The importance of independent artists not having a space. Space is everything in this city, you know? And um, there's so many independent artists that don't have companies, don't have the producing dollars to back up their work, and they rely on spaces like the WILD PROJECT to get free or subsidized space.

[23:21] Sarah Goodman: Um so yeah, so we're just you know, a million dollars sounds scary. And a friend of mine put it to a less scary way to think about it. If we get $4,250 donations, we would meet our goal. Like she broke it down, that's about $20 a month for a year.

[23:41] Ana Mari de Quesada: Yeah.

[23:42] Ana Mari de Quesada: Um, so that seems less daunting and more achievable when it's you know framed that way.

[23:47] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[23:48] Ana Mari de Quesada: Um, but yeah, it's just, you know, we don't want to go away. We've been here for a little over 17 years. And, you know, we house amazing resident companies like Club Thumb, who's been with us since 2013. They would lose a home and they would need to find a new home. Homes are dwindling, the choices are being limited. Connolly Theater just behind us had to close down because of the church.

[24:14] Sarah Goodman: You know, it's the their landlord being the Catholic church.

[24:17] Ana Mari de Quesada: Exactly. They started censoring work, you know. And um, so that's we don't want to be a second space within a block radius to have to close down, you know, because ultimately, if we cannot purchase it, the building's gonna go in the market to the highest bidder, and we all know a developer will come in and do another luxury apartment.

[24:37] Sarah Goodman: Yeah, which no one needs that.

[24:39] Ana Mari de Quesada: No.

[24:40] Ana Mari de Quesada: We don't need any more luxury apartments anywhere in America, truly. We have plenty, plenty of them. What we need more of is this kind of theater uh that supports marginalized communities, uplifts the community, is connected to people in the neighborhood, is perpetuating the future that we all want to see in the arts and in our lives.

[25:02] Sarah Goodman: You know, I really think um as an organization, it's important not only to be putting out good artistic work, but to be doing that in a manner that is at more aspirational, that is trying to change the industry a little bit, trying to change how how we do things.

[25:21] Ana Mari de Quesada: Yeah, it's and it's being human, right?

[25:24] Sarah Goodman: We're people like it's frustrating because things are about business, business decisions only.

[25:31] Ana Mari de Quesada: Instead of thinking about the people that we're trying to support, you know.

[25:35] Ana Mari de Quesada: And what we do with the WILD PROJECT is it's not about me, it's not about Tom Escobar, my producing director. It's about how do we support these artists? How do we support these organizations that are nomad and they don't have their own brick or mortar, you know?

[25:49] Ana Mari de Quesada: And it's about giving space for new and exciting work to happen and being like an incubator of new work so that they can move on, you know, um, to other spaces and you know, move on to hopefully Broadway, and a lot of people want to do. But and keeping like the history of the East Village, you know, like this was the cool place that exciting new work happened.

[26:13] Sarah Goodman: So it's keeping a little bit of history, but like you said, it's still moving forward. But I feel like in today today's society as a whole, like we're forgetting about the people.

[26:23] Ana Mari de Quesada: I agree completely.

[26:25] Ana Mari de Quesada: Especially sort of where we're moving culturally and politically as as um a country, you know, we're getting closer and closer to fascism, we're getting deeper and deeper into hypercapitalism. And I think humanity is really the only thing that can save us.

[26:42] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[26:43] Ana Mari de Quesada: Is connecting with other human beings. And I think also we really need to remember the importance of representation on stage. Um Wild Project is a place that gives a voice to people in the queer community, to uh people of color.

[26:59] Ana Mari de Quesada: And uh talk to me about what that representation means to you personally.

[27:03] Ana Mari de Quesada: Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because you know, I mentioned before my parents are Cuban. They came to this country for Cuban refugees for political asylum. And I was born and raised in Miami. I'm I identify lesbian. So I know, you know, being a Hispanic woman in the queer community. You know, I didn't realize until the pandemic how much we don't have a seat at the table, you know. And yeah, and coming from my stage management background and just moving forward and being in a position where I hire the staff and designers of our shows that we produce, it's always in my forefront. Like not only um like especially gender diversity, like really like getting women into designer roles and hiring amen.

You know, like I mean, look at fuck seventh grade. If you look at your our design team, right? That was incredible. It's like all women designers on that show, which never happens. I never see that anywhere. Yeah, so I'm fully aware, and I'll and being someone of, you know, from that community, I always want to support and elevate because you know what? I got to where I am because someone gave me an opportunity, and then it was up to me to take that opportunity and move forward and go somewhere. So I'm always one to pay forward because I wouldn't be here today if someone didn't give me a chance, you know.

[28:31] Ana Mari de Quesada: Yeah. So that's kind of how I live my life in general. And that's just kind of like what I do with the WAW project as well. And um growing up in the time where I grew up, I was super in the closet. Like I didn't come out to college. And I love to have work that I wish I had as a young person growing up. Yes. You know, coming out of the pandemic, lesbian movies and when I grew up were like just terrible. There was only like one or two that were good. So I jumped still not that many.

[29:04] Ana Mari de Quesada: Yeah. So I approached um Grand James Rargus. We were supposed to do his show in the theater, and then the pandemic happened. So, and his style of writing is so like natural and like really film, you know. And I told him, Hey, I've always wanted to do like a good lesbian movie, you know, like a good gay, queer movie. He's like, actually, I've been thinking about this series. So we wrote, well, he wrote and we produced um Way Down, which was a queer web series that we did, and we shot. Oh my god. We shot in the summer of 2021. So we it was all queer cast, pretty much all queer cast. Skeleton crew, because it was still pandemic. We did six episodes, it's in the vault right now, but I'm trying to get it out again to stream for free. Um oh my god, yeah, I'd love to see this.

[29:54] Ana Mari de Quesada: So I was like, and it was amazing. I was like, this is what I needed growing up. Like, and it wasn't about it wasn't a oh queer show. It was like people living their life and they all happen to be queer. You know, and it had music. It was about a band and stuff. So it was music and it was just people living life in the East Village that they all happen to be queer, you know.

[30:13] Ana Mari de Quesada: Mm-hmm. Um, so it's very much like things that I would have wanted to see growing up when I was young.

[30:19] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[30:21] Sarah Goodman: I really think that is so important and often creates some of the best work. You know, they'd say that like the more specific that you can get in a piece that actually the more universal it ends up being. Because people relate to authenticity. So even if your audience isn't all queer people, it's still going to, you know, make them feel something, make them relate to something.

[30:44] Ana Mari de Quesada: Well, and exactly to your point, fuck seventh grade.

[30:47] Ana Mari de Quesada: Yes. Right. Like that show, the audience was like a dream audience for me as a producer.

[30:54] Ana Mari de Quesada: Hmm. Every age, gender, race, sexual orientation was in that audience and they all loved it because they didn't need to be queer to understand Jill's story. Like everyone's felt like a misfit or out of place in life for one reason or another.

[31:11] Ana Mari de Quesada: Mm-hmm. And Jill's so relatable, her story. Like and everyone loved it. And it was really interesting to see like the reach that that show did in the audience.

[31:23] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[31:24] Sarah Goodman: You could really feel people, their enthusiasm. Cause it it's a little bit of a theatricalized concert in some ways.

[31:32] Sarah Goodman: So sometimes there's like a little bit of not necessarily audience participation, but there is some feet audience feedback that you would get.

[31:39] Ana Mari de Quesada: Yeah.

[31:39] Ana Mari de Quesada: Not necessarily that you would get like in a play, but more of a concert setting, which is really cool because I think it kind of gives people more freedom to like be a part of it.

[31:47] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[31:48] Sarah Goodman: Yep.

[31:48] Sarah Goodman: I really loved that. It was a wonderful show.

[31:52] Sarah Goodman: What can people do to help? How can people donate? Are there other ways that people can help support?

[31:59] Ana Mari de Quesada: Yeah. So on our website, the wildproject.org is a direct link to a little bit more information about our campaign that's called Root Us in the LES, LES being Lori's side. Um, and that has a direct donation link on it. And then on our Instagram page, our handle is at wildproject nyc. If you're on Instagram, sharing posts that we've been doing, a lot of artists have been sharing stories and their little messages of what WILD PROJECT has meant to them as an artist. Um, helping elevate and amplify this red alert. So it's really if you're in a position to donate, please donate every little bit counts. If you're not, I totally understand everyone. This is really tough times. Just spreading the word, resharing on social media or in private emails to friends that you think might be interested in supporting the arts and think this is important, like we do.

Um, but really it's amplifying. We're hoping to get this out there with the larger maybe press outlet, you know, get the news out there that'll help us amplify to people who may not know the wild project, but really think arts is important.

[33:13] Sarah Goodman: Absolutely.

[33:14] Sarah Goodman: What do you think is important about theater specifically in this moment in time?

[33:21] Ana Mari de Quesada: Many things.

[33:24] Ana Mari de Quesada: Twofold. One, it's a way for artists to express themselves in this moment in time, a direct reflection of society. Two, an example of fuck seventh grade, sometimes we need an escape from what's going on in society. So I think both are true and both are needed. Sometimes we need a little escape. And other times we need to put a mirror in front of my face. You know what I mean? So, and I think both are needed in this world today. Uh, because it's all about keeping mental health, right?

[34:01] Sarah Goodman: Yeah, I really love that.

[34:02] Sarah Goodman: So succinct way to put that.

[34:04] Sarah Goodman: I really appreciate that.

[34:06] Sarah Goodman: And what do you think makes a good show?

[34:09] Ana Mari de Quesada: To be honest, I'm more about the people and the creating process of the show. Process is the most important thing to me, and what means the most to me is being supportive and helping an artist with their process and sharing their story to an audience. It's really up to the audience viewer and how they receive it and whether they think it's a good show.

[34:32] Sarah Goodman: Yeah, I like that.

[34:34] Sarah Goodman: What's coming up next at The Wild Project?

[34:37] Ana Mari de Quesada: So we have the end of this calendar year, we have a lot of like one-niner kind of stuff, but the next main stage production we're doing is in February. It's uh another musical concert kind of show, similar style as um Joe Sylbial. It's called Bitchcraft.

[34:52] Ana Mari de Quesada: Awesome. Um, it's I don't know if you know the musician, musician Bitch.

[34:57] Sarah Goodman: Yes.

[34:58] Ana Mari de Quesada: Yes.

[34:58] Ana Mari de Quesada: So it's her show, One Woman Show about her life. Um amazing.

[35:03] Ana Mari de Quesada: So it's gonna be super cool. I'll be there. I'm excited to see that one.

[35:07] Ana Mari de Quesada: So that's gonna um it'll be up all of um February. Um, so yeah, so fingers crossed, that's not our last show.

[35:15] Sarah Goodman: Yeah, for sure.

[35:17] Sarah Goodman: Everybody go to wildproject.org and donate and uh get the word out to save this incredible theater. This is a really wonderful part of the theater community, really important, amplifying voices, doing the work, like really talking the talk and walking the walk.

[35:35] Ana Mari de Quesada: Thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciated your time.

[35:38] Ana Mari de Quesada: Thank you so much. It was great to be here. Nice to meet you.

[35:41] Sarah Goodman: Nice meeting you too.

[35:43] Sarah Goodman: Thank you again to Ana Mari de Quesada for joining me to talk about the WILD PROJECT.

[35:50] Sarah Goodman: I loved seeing Fuck Seventh Grade, the Jill Sobul musical at the WILD PROJECT.

[35:57] Sarah Goodman: It was such a fun show. I just wanted to revisit it since interviewing Jill a couple episodes ago.

[36:05] Sarah Goodman: Um, and talk about the show on the good show queer scale.

[36:10] Sarah Goodman: So fuck seventh grade is a beautiful sort of a memoir about Jill Sobul's life, and it focuses on her experience as a young person who feels like an outcast, who is queer, who um is grappling with her identity and how to fit in at school, and then sort of a blossoming of herself a little bit later in life.

[36:43] Sarah Goodman: Um it's full of incredible music, a really awesome band.

[36:48] Sarah Goodman: It was set on a really cool unit set that looked like sort of floor-to-ceiling lockers, just like lockers going all the way up.

[36:58] Sarah Goodman: And um a band set up with like different risers for the drummer, and there was a bassist who played multiple instruments, and then a keyboardist who played multiple instruments.

[37:11] Sarah Goodman: It was an all-female design team, which is something you very, very rarely, rarely see.

[37:20] Sarah Goodman: Oh, if anyone out there is interested in the gender breakdown for designers, there's a great Instagram account called the Agnes Index that will post every show, plays and musicals opening um on and off Broadway, and sort of break down the creatives roles uh by gender, which is really, really interesting to see.

[37:50] Sarah Goodman: Anyway, I got a little sidetracked there.

[37:54] Sarah Goodman: We are going to talk about fuck seventh grade on the good show queer scale.

[38:01] Sarah Goodman: We're gonna figure out how queer is it.

[38:05] Sarah Goodman: Okay, let's review the scale steps.

[38:08] Sarah Goodman: There are six different degrees on the queer scale. Starting with the lowest low-key queer, that is fruity, aka aka. You hear my Midwestern accent there? And and perfectly, perfectly in sync for this category because it is aka Pete Buddha Judge.

[38:29] Sarah Goodman: Two on the queer scale is Love is Love, a very palatable version of queerness.

[38:35] Sarah Goodman: Three is hella gay.

[38:38] Sarah Goodman: Okay. Pretty self-explanatory.

[38:41] Sarah Goodman: Four, Slays for Days.

[38:43] Sarah Goodman: All right, we're going beyond that. We're just like, whoo, you really, it sticks with you. You know what I mean?

[38:49] Sarah Goodman: Five is queer as fuck or queer as in fuck fascism.

[38:55] Sarah Goodman: And then six is the most intense queerness.

[38:58] Sarah Goodman: It is, are we gonna get in trouble for this?

[39:01] Sarah Goodman: And I think that Jill Sobiel's fuck seventh grade is queer as fuck, aka queer as in fuck fascism.

[39:10] Sarah Goodman: Jill Sobiel is like a very political artist, and she makes a lot of amazing satirical political work.

[39:20] Sarah Goodman: Check out her YouTube page. Queer as fuck, aka queers and fuck fascism. We loved it. We love to see it.

[39:28] Sarah Goodman: Please support the WILD PROJECT. Go to the WILD PROJECT.org to donate.

[39:34] Sarah Goodman: And um, you know, every little bit counts.

[39:36] Sarah Goodman: And tell your friends to donate as well.

[39:39] Sarah Goodman: Thanks again for listening to Good Show.

[39:43] Sarah Goodman: This is Sarah Goodman. Goodbye.

[39:51] Sarah Goodman: Thanks for listening. Follow good show on TikTok and Instagram at good showpodcast.

[39:56] Sarah Goodman: Good show is available at BPN.fm slash good show on the Broadway Podcast Network and everywhere.

[40:04] Sarah Goodman: Podcasts are found.