This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:18] Iyvon Edebiri: Okay, hello, hello.

[0:21] Iyvon Edebiri: Hello, everyone.

[0:22] Iyvon Edebiri: Welcome to the Parsnip Ship.

[0:25] Iyvon Edebiri: I'm your host, Iyvon E.

[0:27] Iyvon Edebiri: Tonight we are hearing the fifth episode of our sixth season, which features queer playwrights.

[0:34] Iyvon Edebiri: This season, we will be bringing their dynamic, colorful, all-around universal stories to you.

[0:41] Iyvon Edebiri: We are recording live at the Mark O'Donnell Theater at the Entertainment Community Fund Art Center in downtown Brooklyn.

[0:48] Iyvon Edebiri: Tonight, we are hearing the play, Sadboy Hours.

[0:54] Iyvon Edebiri: This is a coping mechanism by Mary Harriman, directed by Anne Karyna Bakan, and our musician tonight is Shepup.

[1:09] Iyvon Edebiri: All right, okay, so before we begin our night, we love to ask our playwrights one question before we get to our first song. What would the world be missing if it didn't have this play?

[1:36] Iyvon Edebiri: Yes, I love the audience. Yes.

[1:40] Iyvon Edebiri: Well, with that great response, let's get started with our night with our first song by our musician, Shepup.

[1:40] ♪ Musical number: "Sadboy Hours" — performed by Shepup ♪

[4:03] Mary Harriman: Sadboy hours. This is a coping mechanism. By Amy Ackerman, Brynn Hambley, Addy Jenkins, Miranda Poett, and Erin Proctor. Additional contributions from Megan Cully and Lily Welsh. Directed by Anne Karyna Bakan. Sadboy hour. Noun. An artistic expression created as a response to going through it. A way to externalize things that feel too big to keep inside you. They do not have to be true stories, but they do have to come from a true place. Creation as self-care. Performance as catharsis.

[4:42] Iyvon Edebiri: The following play is just one iteration of a sad boy hour. I invite anyone who reads this play to use the prompts and write their own sad boy hours. Feel free to use the words in this version, but every performer, every director, everyone in the production should try to make their own response and incorporate it into the final performance.

[5:00] Iyvon Edebiri: You do not have to consider yourself a writer to write from truth.

[5:11] Iyvon Edebiri: Prompt. What are your coping mechanisms? Do they actually work?

[5:15] Iyvon Edebiri: Prompt. Do you talk to your parents about mental health? How would that conversation go?

[5:20] Iyvon Edebiri: Prompt. Write about how you'd talk with your friends.

[5:23] Iyvon Edebiri: Prompt. Write a scene without spoken words. What is said? What isn't?

[5:28] Iyvon Edebiri: Prompt. Write a dance party.

[5:31] Iyvon Edebiri: Prompt. Write a story that you shouldn't tell at parties.

[5:34] Iyvon Edebiri: Prompt. Write about your gender. Try to explain it to an adult.

[5:38] Iyvon Edebiri: Prompt. Middle school was bad. Write about it.

[5:41] Iyvon Edebiri: Prompt. Get angry. Write it down.

[5:44] Iyvon Edebiri: Prompt. Think of something that makes you incredibly uncomfortable. Say it enough times that you're not embarrassed by it anymore. What is still too uncomfortable to say? Write that.

[5:55] Iyvon Edebiri: Prompt. Go to a natural place. Find a ghost. Dance with the ghost. Say goodbye.

[6:01] Iyvon Edebiri: Prompt. How do you say I love you?

[6:05] Iyvon Edebiri: Prompt. What are your coping mechanisms? Do they actually work?

[6:09] Iyvon Edebiri: We see bodies in space. These are queer bodies, bodies on the margins, disabled bodies, fat bodies. They arrive and find presence, exploring the space in a slow and free manner, an open score of arriving, welcoming, acknowledging.

[6:26] Iyvon Edebiri: My coping mechanism is dance, finding aliveness and vibrancy in my body. Feeling liberated and free. Feeling the music inside of me. I dance, and there is only my body-mind, the awakening of expressing myself in this body, moving this body at home and safe in this body.

[6:53] Iyvon Edebiri: But there's so many ways of tapping in connections to ancestral knowledge of moving the body, finding movement with breath, all of that lives within this body, this sack of skin, radically transformed through movement. True authenticity. I didn't even know it was possible.

[7:13] Iyvon Edebiri: They say when you're on the verge of having an anxiety attack, you need to breathe. In a way, movement is also about breath, finding the spaciousness in the body through breath. When we breathe really deeply, we expand. We take all the space.

[7:30] Iyvon Edebiri: I was in a dance class once, and we just were instructed to breathe and then dance from that place. How could breath be the dance? And I discovered all of this expansion and contraction, and I felt so safe and at home in my body in a way that I never had before. Feeling into my fullness and in a dance studio of all places.

[7:53] Iyvon Edebiri: My coping mechanism is dance because when I dance, I embrace my body, find a way to tell my story through my movement, through the language of my body, holding myself and moving in ways that feel soft and delicious and delightful. Taking up space and moving boldly in this body.

[7:53] Iyvon Edebiri: When I dance, I live. Moving my body and owning my body, loving my body and empowered in my body, dancing through life like a force. And I know it works because it always feels so good afterwards. Okay, sometimes sore, but it always feels good.

[8:40] Iyvon Edebiri: And it works because it has connected me to so much community. Folks who are like on the other end of the dance spectrum of the roquettes. In a way, dance and disability culture has really found space in my practice.

[8:54] Iyvon Edebiri: Yesterday, I was dancing all over Roosevelt Island, a site of disability and exclusion and forced death, and we created movement pieces. Just slow, improvised pieces. It was one of the most beautiful things I've done in a long time.

[9:12] Iyvon Edebiri: I know it works because when I dance, I transform my body from a site of shame and embarrassment to a site of vibrancy.

[9:23] Iyvon Edebiri: They dance.

[9:38] Iyvon Edebiri: As I responded to the person on the other end, I slowly realized who he was talking to. I put my head down on the counter and started to quietly cry. I had failed the fall semester of math and had hidden it from my parents.

[9:51] Iyvon Edebiri: When our interim reports came out in October, I saw the failing grade on mine and couldn't bear to let my parents see it. I forged my mom's signature in the hope that I could raise the grade before finals. I failed and everything crashed down on me.

[10:07] Iyvon Edebiri: Several things led to this. I was seated in the back of the class with a few of my friends, and we did a bad job paying attention to our teacher as he taught pre-calc. Despite being naturally good at math, pre-calc was literally a different language, and I couldn't float by on my raw talent for numbers anymore.

[10:24] Iyvon Edebiri: It also didn't help that I had a previously undiagnosed disability. I have difficulty understanding words if there is any background noise, and if I am not able to follow the speaker's lip movements. By sitting at the back of the class of pubescent middle schoolers, I had almost no chance of catching any of the lessons or doing my homework successfully.

[10:44] Iyvon Edebiri: The school gave me a Saturday detention, and my parents stripped my room of anything that could distract me in the coming semester. This meant all of my books, my CDs, and worst of all, my guitar. Everything that kept me sane as I was struggling was suddenly gone. All of my coping mechanisms were gone.

[11:03] Iyvon Edebiri: My parents deeply regret this move now, but at the time it felt warranted. For a closeted queer eighth grader with no sense of self, it felt like the sky was falling. I never failed a class again. I have coping mechanisms. I think we all have coping mechanisms.

[11:21] Iyvon Edebiri: I vape, and that's bad. I mean, I'm told that it's bad. I also know it's bad. Vaping is like a baby vice.

[11:27] Iyvon Edebiri: What? A baby vice. Like, yeah, it's not good for you in the moment or in the long run.

[11:33] Iyvon Edebiri: But you're not shooting up heroin. Exactly, you're not shooting up heroin. And some people shoot up heroin to cope.

[11:38] Iyvon Edebiri: To cope! With the never-ending spin cycle stuck on a turbulence of icy cold to hot water. And you try to counteract it with detergent, but it's too much. Too much detergent!

[11:48] Iyvon Edebiri: Okay. Well, what is your coping mechanism?

[11:51] Unknown speaker: I tear up my skin.

[11:52] Iyvon Edebiri: What?

[11:53] Unknown speaker: Sometimes I want to tear at my skin until there's nothing left but exposed bone.

[11:58] Iyvon Edebiri: What?

[11:58] Unknown speaker: Like that episode of SpongeBob.

[12:00] Iyvon Edebiri: My parents wouldn't let me watch SpongeBob.

[12:02] Unknown speaker: Of course, your parents wouldn't let you watch SpongeBob. You give off the my parents wouldn't let me watch SpongeBob vibe.

[12:08] Iyvon Edebiri: How exactly?

[12:10] Unknown speaker: Okay! So in the episode of SpongeBob, it's the Halloween one.

[12:13] Iyvon Edebiri: From season one.

[12:14] Unknown speaker: Of course, season one. I'm scooping what you're pooping.

[12:17] Iyvon Edebiri: I am so confused.

[12:18] Unknown speaker: In that episode, Patrick.

[12:20] Iyvon Edebiri: He's the starfish.

[12:21] Unknown speaker: I know who Patrick is!

[12:22] Iyvon Edebiri: I thought you didn't watch SpongeBob.

[12:24] Unknown speaker: I know who Patrick is.

[12:25] Iyvon Edebiri: Well, Patrick cuts all the sponge off of SpongeBob until he's only a skeleton.

[12:29] Unknown speaker: Why?

[12:30] Iyvon Edebiri: So he can be more shaped like a ghost under a sheet for a Halloween party at the Krusty Krab. Before, kids were making fun of him and calling him the haunted mattress.

[12:38] Unknown speaker: What does SpongeBob have to do with your coping mechanism?

[12:41] Iyvon Edebiri: It's just something that I think about while I do it.

[12:43] Unknown speaker: Well, you do what?

[12:45] Iyvon Edebiri: Pick at my skin.

[12:46] Unknown speaker: My coping mechanism is that I pick at my skin.

[12:49] Iyvon Edebiri: When I find myself, when I find myself stressed or anxious. It's just something I do. Sometimes at night I'll perch atop the sink like a bird at a bath and tear at my face in the mirror till it bleeds.

[13:00] Unknown speaker: Why do you do this?

[13:01] Iyvon Edebiri: I expunge the poison from within.

[13:05] Unknown speaker: But there is no poison.

[13:07] Iyvon Edebiri: I know. It's just something I do. When the world gets to be too much, you vape.

[13:13] Unknown speaker: I expunge.

[13:15] Iyvon Edebiri: Expongebob.

[13:18] Unknown speaker: It does not help my situation, no, if that's what you're asking, but it's a thing I do to cope.

[13:24] Iyvon Edebiri: Exponge Bob.

[13:26] Unknown speaker: What's your coping mechanism?

[13:29] Iyvon Edebiri: I like to put Bluey on in the background when I get home from work.

[13:32] Unknown speaker: The Australian kid show about the dog?

[13:34] Mary Harriman: I wish Australians were real.

[13:36] Unknown speaker: They are real.

[13:38] Mary Harriman: You know what I mean.

[13:40] Unknown speaker: I don't think I do.

[13:41] Mary Harriman: I know what you mean.

[13:43] Mary Harriman: I know like three different Australians.

[13:46] Mary Harriman: Why do we have to cope?

[13:48] Mary Harriman: Why were we put on a world that requires one to cope?

[13:51] Mary Harriman: Perhaps when we were cave people, prehistoric human beings.

[13:55] Mary Harriman: Perhaps we were so busy all the time.

[13:58] Mary Harriman: So busy hunting or gathering or fighting off saber-toothed tigers like in the Ice Age.

[14:03] Mary Harriman: We were so busy doing all of that that we didn't have time to cope.

[14:08] Mary Harriman: And cope was something we had to figure out once we had more free time on our hands, because the free time made us think of our own mortality and existence.

[14:16] Mary Harriman: Which made us sad.

[14:17] Mary Harriman: Perhaps more so confused.

[14:20] Mary Harriman: Are you sad when you don't understand something?

[14:22] Unknown speaker: I'm confused.

[14:24] Mary Harriman: When your brain becomes too finky, you have to cope.

[14:24] Mary Harriman: You have to cope.

[14:28] Mary Harriman: You have to cope.

[14:31] Mary Harriman: Prompt.

[14:32] Mary Harriman: Do you talk to your parents about mental health?

[14:34] Mary Harriman: How would that conversation go?

[14:37] Mary Harriman: Lights up on two places.

[14:38] Mary Harriman: One a very messy college dorm room, the other the back of a suburban house.

[14:43] Mary Harriman: The dorm room is furnished with tapestries, third-wave feminist literature, a dying succulent, and other hippie liberal arts gay accoutrement.

[14:51] Mary Harriman: Attached to the back of the house is a stoop, and next to the stoop is a propane grill, a small garden with overgrown mint that has gone to seed, and a hydrangea plant that needs to be watered.

[15:01] Mary Harriman: In the dorm room, Mary is in a bucket chair on the phone, ugly crying.

[15:06] Mary Harriman: At the house, mom is wearing jewel-toned athleisure and sitting on the stoop.

[15:10] Mary Harriman: Sitting around her is a Wegmans bag full of corn, a plastic bucket with a coexist sticker full of husks, and a pot with shucked corn.

[15:17] Mary Harriman: She is holding a half-shucked ear of corn, speaking into the phone in the crook of her shoulder.

[15:22] Mary Harriman: Also ugly crying.

[15:24] Mom: Mary, she is a trained professional.

[15:27] Mom: I trust her judgment.

[15:28] Mom: If she says I need to see a specialist, then I think it would be a good idea to go.

[15:32] Mom: Look, there's even one in town.

[15:34] Mary Harriman: Mom, you're not listening to me.

[15:35] Mom: I never said you shouldn't trust her judgment.

[15:38] Mary Harriman: Yes, you did.

[15:38] Mary Harriman: You asked if she was a mental health care professional in a tone that implied you didn't trust her judgment.

[15:45] Mom: Well, I didn't mean it like that.

[15:46] Mary Harriman: Well, I heard it like that.

[15:47] Mom: All I'm saying is that it wouldn't hurt to ask.

[15:50] Mary Harriman: And I'm not arguing that point, but it doesn't work like that.

[15:53] Mary Harriman: You need to see your primary physician, and then you need a referral, and then I need to ask my insurance company if it will even cover a specialist out there.

[16:01] Mary Harriman: And that's not gonna happen in the next two weeks.

[16:03] Mom: Well, I didn't know that.

[16:04] Mary Harriman: She made it seem like I could just call and ask if my insurance would cover it.

[16:08] Mary Harriman: And I never said I wanted it to happen in the next two weeks, or even at all.

[16:12] Mary Harriman: I just said what she told me.

[16:15] Mom: Well, then what the hell do you want?

[16:18] Mary Harriman: I wanted to hear your voice.

[16:20] Mary Harriman: Sometimes when I tell you something, I don't want advice or for you to do anything about it.

[16:26] Mary Harriman: It felt like you didn't let me be sad first before jumping into solutions.

[16:31] Mom: I'm sorry.

[16:33] Mary Harriman: Well, then I don't really know what to say other than it sucks.

[16:37] Mom: Right now I hear a very distressed person, and I can't do anything else but tell you it sucks.

[16:45] Mom: I wish I was there to hug you.

[16:51] Mary Harriman: I wish you were here too.

[16:54] Mom: I love you.

[16:57] Mary Harriman: I love you too.

[16:59] Mary Harriman: Mom hears something behind her and starts talking to the screen door behind her.

[17:04] Mom: Hi, Gracie.

[17:05] Mom: You coming to say hi?

[17:07] Mom: Gracie, where's Mary?

[17:09] Mary Harriman: Mom puts the phone up to the screen door, and the screen door bends like it would if a cat rubbed up against it.

[17:14] Mary Harriman: Hiya, Gracie Lou Free Bush.

[17:17] Mary Harriman: Do you miss me?

[17:18] Mary Harriman: All the cats miss you.

[17:20] Mary Harriman: And the humans too.

[17:22] Mom: Well, just mail me some of the cat hair, and it'll be like I never left.

[17:26] Mary Harriman: What you doing right now?

[17:28] Mom: Uh, I have a bit of free time before I'm going to treat myself to dinner in town.

[17:32] Mary Harriman: Mom resumes chucking corn.

[17:34] Mom: That sounds like a good idea.

[17:36] Mom: Make sure you hug one of your buddies today and make some hot cocoa or something.

[17:39] Mary Harriman: I will.

[17:41] Mom: What are you up to?

[17:42] Mary Harriman: Oh, I'm just making dinner.

[17:44] Mom: What you making?

[17:45] Mary Harriman: Well, Blake and Zach are coming over for dinner, so we're having shteak and corn on the cob.

[17:49] Mom: Ooh, yay.

[17:50] Mom: That sounds great.

[17:51] Mom: How are they?

[17:52] Mom: How's the teaching going?

[17:54] Mary Harriman: Prompt.

[17:55] Mary Harriman: Right, how you talk with your friends.

[17:57] Mary Harriman: Queer friends are walking through the woods around campus.

[18:00] Mary Harriman: This bridge is like high femme.

[18:03] Unknown speaker: Huh.

[18:06] Unknown speaker: Huh.

[18:07] Mary Harriman: What?

[18:09] Mary Harriman: I guess most bridges are stone butch.

[18:13] Unknown speaker: Yeah.

[18:14] Mary Harriman: I wonder what a footch bridge would look like.

[18:17] Unknown speaker: Oh, where do I stand?

[18:18] Mary Harriman: You're P butch, but not like V-butch.

[18:21] Unknown speaker: Yeah, somewhere in between soft butch and femi butch, but I wouldn't go so far as to say a true footch.

[18:27] Mary Harriman: I feel like we're ignoring a Z-axis.

[18:28] Unknown speaker: What's the Z-axis?

[18:29] Mary Harriman: Well, clown and goth.

[18:31] Unknown speaker: Oh, I see.

[18:32] Mary Harriman: I'm definitely high clown soft butch.

[18:36] Unknown speaker: I think I might be true Glown.

[18:38] Mary Harriman: Cloth?

[18:40] Unknown speaker: Oh, wait, but wait, what's the Y-axis?

[18:43] Mary Harriman: We can't have a Z-axis yet.

[18:44] Mary Harriman: Femme and Butcher on the X-axis, so what's the Y-axis?

[18:48] Unknown speaker: I think there's always an implied Y-axis of top and bottom.

[18:50] Mary Harriman: Oh, you're so right.

[18:54] Unknown speaker: I'm definitely a switch.

[18:57] Mary Harriman: Are you?

[18:59] Unknown speaker: Yeah.

[19:00] Mary Harriman: You sure?

[19:02] Unknown speaker: Oh no.

[19:03] Mary Harriman: What?

[19:04] Unknown speaker: Am I saying I'm a switch?

[19:06] Mary Harriman: Like how freshman year I said, I'm a femme.

[19:09] Unknown speaker: Yeah.

[19:10] Mary Harriman: God damn it.

[19:13] Unknown speaker: Did I tell you how I'm worried I keep attracting people with foot fetishes?

[19:19] Mary Harriman: No!

[19:20] Unknown speaker: It keeps happening!

[19:21] Unknown speaker: Either I'm attracted to people with foot fetishes, or I attract people with foot fetishes.

[19:28] Mary Harriman: Okay, give us an example.

[19:30] Unknown speaker: So my shitty ex, right?

[19:32] Unknown speaker: We were looking through her phone, and I found a tab open for, and I quote, Animefeet.com.

[19:39] Mary Harriman: Oh no.

[19:41] Unknown speaker: And then in my playwriting class, there was a guy that I liked, and in one of the scenes, a character tied another character's shoes, and the guy that I liked said, I loved that part.

[19:51] Mary Harriman: It was so intimate.

[19:52] Unknown speaker: And I had the thought, oh god, not again.

[19:56] Mary Harriman: Uh-huh.

[19:57] Unknown speaker: And then I was having lunch with this guy talking about tattoos, and I said I wanted a tattoo of a daisy on my toe because of a camp song, and I sang the camp song.

[20:06] Mary Harriman: Sing the camp song.

[20:07] Unknown speaker: Now?

[20:08] Mary Harriman: Yeah.

[20:09] Unknown speaker: There's a daisy on my toe.

[20:12] Unknown speaker: It is not real.

[20:14] Unknown speaker: It does not grow.

[20:15] Unknown speaker: It's just a tattoo of a flower.

[20:18] Unknown speaker: So while it meat, taking a shower, it's on the second toe of my left foot.

[20:24] Unknown speaker: Stem and flower, but there's no rip, because that wouldn't look good.

[20:29] Unknown speaker: Purdy daisy on my toe, my right foot loves my left foot so.

[20:35] Mary Harriman: Yeah.

[20:41] Unknown speaker: So I sang that to him, and he said, Oh, I would love to tattoo your feet.

[20:47] Mary Harriman: Oh god.

[20:47] Unknown speaker: That is like seventh base.

[20:50] Mary Harriman: What if?

[20:51] Unknown speaker: And hear me out.

[20:53] Unknown speaker: You have a foot fetish.

[21:08] Unknown speaker: So what I'm hearing is you have a foot fetish.

[21:12] Mary Harriman: No.

[21:14] Mary Harriman: I don't.

[21:14] Mary Harriman: I don't want to suck people's toes, but if another person wanted to suck my toes, I wouldn't be opposed.

[21:14] Mary Harriman: This isn't that isn't like exclusive defeat, though.

[21:17] Mary Harriman: If my partner was into something, I was like neutral.

[21:21] Mary Harriman: I'd be down to try it.

[21:23] Unknown speaker: So you're a bottom.

[21:28] Mary Harriman: Fuck!

[21:31] Unknown speaker: But I would tie someone up, but like to give them pleasure.

[21:36] Mary Harriman: So you're a service top.

[21:37] Unknown speaker: So I'm still technically a switch.

[21:39] Mary Harriman: Technically.

[21:43] Mary Harriman: Prompt.

[21:44] Mary Harriman: Write a scene without spoken words.

[21:46] Mary Harriman: What is said, what isn't.

[21:49] Mary Harriman: We see a cluttered yet quaint and lovely living room filled to the brim with small ceramic cat figurines.

[21:58] Mary Harriman: They are everywhere.

[22:00] Mary Harriman: On every surface, on the mantle, on the shelves, in display cases.

[22:06] Mary Harriman: Elaine enters stage left wearing a nightshirt that reads, It's wine o'clock.

[22:12] Mary Harriman: She looks exhausted and haggard.

[22:16] Mary Harriman: She plumps down on the sofa and immediately reacts to something sharp piercing her bottom.

[22:22] Mary Harriman: She audibly reacts and discovers a ceramic cat from underneath her.

[22:28] Mary Harriman: She looks at it, then chucks it against the wall, and it shatters.

[22:33] Mary Harriman: She immediately regrets it and runs to the wreckage.

[22:37] Mary Harriman: She tries desperately to put the pieces back together.

[22:41] Mary Harriman: After some time, she realizes this is not possible.

[22:46] Mary Harriman: She picks up the pieces and sweeps up the small shards.

[22:51] Mary Harriman: She holds a moment before going to the wastebasket.

[22:56] Mary Harriman: Finally, she slowly goes towards the trash and throws out the pieces.

[23:02] Mary Harriman: She looks around, taking her time looking at every fucking cat.

[23:10] Mary Harriman: It's almost too much, the emotions she feels.

[23:20] Mary Harriman: She switches off the light switch and exits.

[23:25] Mary Harriman: Prompt.

[23:26] Mary Harriman: Write a dance party.

[23:29] Mary Harriman: The queer chorus plays dress up in a shitty apartment.

[23:32] Mary Harriman: It is full of tapestries and Wegmans reusable bags full of target impulse buys.

[23:37] Mary Harriman: They cannot sit on the couches for fear of an avalanche of garbage.

[23:41] Mary Harriman: They go to a tiny kitchen and dance to weird indie internet funk blasting from a Bluetooth speaker that shuts off if the very broken phone moves more than 10 feet away from it.

[23:51] Mary Harriman: They perform for each other, lip syncing, dancing, pointing out little tidbits of cool bass lines or harmony or tasty chord progressions.

[24:00] Mary Harriman: They dance around with pride flags strewn around the living room.

[24:04] Mary Harriman: They occasionally pick at a small fancy cheese board and a plastic bag of red grapes.

[24:08] Mary Harriman: This goes on for a long, long, long time.

[24:16] Mary Harriman: Write a story that you shouldn't tell at parties.

[24:19] Mary Harriman: Party sounds, laughter, drinks clinking, low talking.

[24:22] Unknown speaker: Oh my god, that reminds me of the first time I got broken up with.

[24:25] Unknown speaker: Yeah, it's been awful.

[24:27] Unknown speaker: Yeah, I don't think I did anything but cry for like the first week.

[24:31] Unknown speaker: I think I've eaten my weight in ice cream.

[24:33] Unknown speaker: Good.

[24:34] Unknown speaker: That's a lot healthier than what I did.

[24:37] Unknown speaker: Eat your feelings, honey.

[24:38] Unknown speaker: Why?

[24:39] Unknown speaker: What did you do?

[24:40] Unknown speaker: Well, I scheduled my panic attacks every day.

[24:43] Unknown speaker: I had my dorm room to myself every day between Spanish class and environmental science.

[24:47] Unknown speaker: I later figured out that I think those were actually autistic meltdowns, but whatever.

[24:52] Unknown speaker: I sobbed like the world was ending every day at that time for like a month.

[24:56] Unknown speaker: Oh.

[24:57] Unknown speaker: Yeah.

[24:58] Unknown speaker: Luckily.

[25:00] Unknown speaker: Luckily, I had made a good friend or two at college already, so at least I had some support.

[25:04] Unknown speaker: Did I mention this was two weeks into my first semester of college, four hours away from my hometown, and the guy who had broken up with me was my first love and high school sweetheart?

[25:13] Unknown speaker: Yeah, I was crushed, and frankly, I did not do well.

[25:18] Unknown speaker: Obviously, because like the meltdowns and stuff, and my grades were like only decent.

[25:24] Unknown speaker: I never had to study in my life before ever, and I had no idea how to do it on top of all this shit.

[25:30] Unknown speaker: Oh, also the week after this dude broke up with me, my grandma died.

[25:34] Unknown speaker: That's awful.

[25:36] Unknown speaker: Yeah.

[25:37] Unknown speaker: So all this new change combined with a horrible breakup and grandparent death, I was not doing well.

[25:43] Unknown speaker: And I don't know how to ask for help.

[25:45] Unknown speaker: So I stepped in front of a bus coming back from Spanish class one day in October.

[25:51] Unknown speaker: I was fine though, don't worry.

[25:53] Unknown speaker: It was a school bus, and I was at a goddamn crosswalk, so it just stopped and like beeped at me.

[26:01] Unknown speaker: But the intent was there.

[26:03] Unknown speaker: Oh my god.

[26:04] Unknown speaker: Yeah, anyways, I developed a crush on one of my friends after that and finally admitted myself that I was bisexual despite the fact that my first crush ever was on a girl, and I fucking knew that.

[26:15] Unknown speaker: We kind of had a little flank thing.

[26:17] Unknown speaker: Then she met her college sweetheart, who turned out to be an abusive dick, and I met my husband.

[26:23] Unknown speaker: That's uh oh.

[26:27] Unknown speaker: Too much information?

[26:28] Unknown speaker: No, no.

[26:30] Unknown speaker: Uh, I'm gonna get a refill.

[26:37] Unknown speaker: God damn it.

[26:40] Unknown speaker: A different part of the party.

[26:42] Unknown speaker: Okay, so there was one day I was a freshman in undergrad.

[26:45] Unknown speaker: This was before I actually was like a real person, and I was more like still an amalgamation of the dumb ideas my parents and teachers put into my head growing up in a small but surprisingly big, I guess middle-sized, middle-class, conservative town.

[26:58] Unknown speaker: Uh, I was in rehearsal for a play, uh, the language archive, Bujillia Cho.

[27:02] Unknown speaker: Do you know it?

[27:03] Unknown speaker: Oh, it is a phenomenal play where this guy, George, is married to a woman, Mary.

[27:11] Mary Harriman: Anyway, so Mary leaves George because he can't process his emotions, you know, like men do. George is sad and can barely do his job at the language archive that he runs, where he and his assistant Emma record dying languages before the speakers of it are gone in order to preserve it. So the difficulty comes in when George and Emma have to work with this elderly couple, Alta and Reston. I played Reston, honestly, still one of my favorite roles to date. Alta and Reston are an old couple, and being like the classic old couple, they bicker and argue all the time. But the problem with that is they do that in English because their native tongue LOA has no words for hate because it is a language of love.

The whole story then revolves around George helping Alta and Reston with their marriage while they help him with his own dead marriage. Also, while Emma is secretly in love with George and has been like this whole time, and then they try to help her with that too. Oh, it's beautiful. It talks about love in all of the forms that it takes. You really should give it a read. What was I talking about? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The dark secret that I promised I would take to my grave, but I've always wanted to tell. I think the Statute of Limitations is passed, so like I can say it. No, no, it's not actually illegal. I was a good little shit. I was so afraid to break rules. Um anyway, so like we were in rehearsal for the language archive by Julia Cho.

Um and we were getting ready to like get back on stage after taking a small break. I think we were in tech or close to it at the time because we were rehearsing in the actual theater. So I'm walking down the aisle, and all throughout break, I was still struggling with this booger in my nose. And like I was trying to get rid of it. Why didn't you go to the bathroom? Get a tissue to blow my nose. You forget to account for the fact that public restrooms give me anxiety. Again, growing up, being a good little rule follower in grade school, going to the bathroom was where the bad kids hung out to miss class and would throw wet paper towels at the wall or make fun of you for sitting while you pee.

So I sat there. Booger in my nose the whole time. And then break ended. I walked down the aisle, and as I'm walking, I let out a bit of a breath from my nose. A kind of sigh, but also a bit of a sharp exhale. And upon doing that, I felt the booger drop from my nasal canal faster than fucking Felix Baumgartner. Uh that's the guy that jumped from space back in like 2012 or something. Really? You don't remember that? That was huge in my mind. But uh, okay, but yeah, the booger. So the booger, it fell, and I heard the slightest. And I realized that I had done it right next to the girl playing Alta, my character's wife. And I'm thinking, just play it cool, act like nothing happened, maybe no one noticed.

And I get to the end of the aisle and had just jumped onto the stage when I heard the crinkling of a plastic bag. The bag that had just had a green rock evicted at light speed from my nose and into its unfortunately open maw, and then I hear, is that a booger? And I'm thinking, play it cool, play it cool. She doesn't know it was you. How did a booger get in my bag? Thank God she definitely doesn't know it was me. So she was grossed the hell out, understandably so, and she got a tissue and grabbed it and tossed it and sanitized her hands, and we tried to move on with our rehearsal like the most traumatic thing didn't just happen. So yeah, I guess I'm sorry to my fictional wife from freshman year of college.

At yet a different part of the party. My uncle Chuck runs a cult in Costa Rica. They're called the Moon Jaguars. Apparently, when Chuck was 30, he was dating someone who thought it would be a good idea to buy property in Costa Rica. But after Chuck bought the property, he got dumped. So naturally he decided to build a colony in Costa Rica and invent a religion involving five elemental cyborg gods and a lot of naked people. He was briefly kicked out of Costa Rica, though, because he and his boyfriend dropped acid in a hotel and his boyfriend stole his computer. So Chuck reported it to the American embassy while still on acid. He's back in Costa Rica now, but unfortunately a rival cult called the Rainbow Collective keeps stealing his crops.

I was swimming in the ocean once when a man that was fishing nearby started screaming at me to get out of the water. I ran up to the beach in time to watch him reel in a mini shark. He shoved the shark into my arms and told me to hold it still while he got the hook out. So I was basically standing there holding a baby shark while some random old guy stuck his hand down its throat. I figured I'd never have this opportunity again, so why question it? He got the hook out, but said it was too late and that the air sacks deflated, so we should put it out of its misery. He then told me to hold the shark on the sand and he got scissors out of his fishing bag, then he cut off its head. So yeah, that happened.

I told this story to a friend my freshman year, and she said she kinda wanted to pour one out for the shark. Uh so we poured whiskey into our toilet. I went to fight club. Was it a dumbass decision? Yes. Did it make me feel alive while in the middle of conference week? Also, yes. My family has a feud with Phil Collins. When I was 13, I got into a 30-minute-long roast battle with a kid in my class. Like all good roast battles in the year 2013, it was 90% your mama jokes. He later got arrested our sophomore year of high school for catfishing a guy into meeting him and then beating him with a bat. Before my grandpa was married to my grandma, he was married to a woman named Mary Lou. They got married at 18.

They got divorced at 21 when Mary Lou stabbed him in the arm. Grandpa then ran off and started a rock band called We the People, where all the members were matching Hawaiian shirts. He and my grandma met when she went to one of his gigs on a date with my dad's biological father, which must have been awkward. My parents met at a party on New Year's Eve. Coincidentally, the party was thrown by my mom's boyfriend, and my dad was not invited. So my dad crashed the party, asked my mom out, she said no, and my dad proceeded to stay until four in the morning and drink all the booze. My mom broke up with that boyfriend, though, and then my parents met again at a bar on St. Patrick's Day. Coincidentally, the bar was owned by my mom's new boyfriend who was throwing a St. Patrick's Day party that my dad wasn't invited to.

So my dad crashed the party, asked my mom out. She said yes, because she hates St. Patrick's Day parties, and my dad proceeded to steal the key to the bar's basement fridge and drank all the beer for free until four in the morning. I have a great uncle who murdered a guy in a bar fight and got cursed. So he lived the next few years of his life, dying by degrees in my great aunt Dory's attic. By dying by degrees, I mean first his fingers had to be amputated, then feet, hands, arms, et cetera, until he was just basically a torso. My mom broke into the World Trade Center when it was being constructed. She and some friends went up to a floor that was still under construction, and there weren't any glass in the windows yet.

The stairwell walked behind them, and they were stuck overnight. You would think that that would make him bad at soccer, but you would be very wrong. My dad started a barroom brawl so big that the bar it took place in is included on tour guides of coastal Maine. When my cousin Kelly got married, the entire family went down to this insanely small town of Castine in which there was only one bar. The Maritime Academy had also had their homecoming game, and the fleet was in. So the bar was full of football players, Navy sailors, the wedding party, plus all the locals, and no one was getting served until some asshole with a Long Island accent cut everyone in line. The next thing anyone knows, people are being thrown through windows.

My Uncle Buzz was vomiting on the steps of the mayor's office, and someone's car got driven off the dock. The last time we visited Maine, people kept coming up to my dad saying, Hey, you're that asshole.

[35:41] Mary Harriman: Prompt. Write about your gender. Try to explain it to an adult. Projected onto the back of the theater, you see a computer screen with a blank word document. Felicity the cat sits down on the keyboard. You see the word document glitch a couple times. The sticky keys pop up, a pop-up appears. And then the text. Wellness wellness coach's style is a mix between art mom and divorcee. Soft ponchos and neutral tones with a chunky accent piece of jewelry. I wrote this thing last night. Like as a wellness exercise? Sorta. Well, go ahead. Mary pulls out her laptop and reads from it. You hear things like, are you a trans guy because you were an ugly girl? And of course you say no, of course not. But a very small, insistent voice in the back of your head says, well, yeah, a little, but you never say that out loud.

You don't correct him by saying you're non-binary, he would just get angry at that. You don't say how you question if you're really non-binary or if you've just never felt like a girl because you didn't think you lived up to being one. Because you're not pretty, you're fat, you have a brain that doesn't work the same as the other kids. You're smart, yeah, but who really cares about that? Your parents didn't prepare you very well for the real world. They taught you not to care about your appearance. You buy low-rise jeans from the thrift store because it's the 2000s and that's all they have. You wear hand-me-down clothes from a neighbor that her shirts always felt a little too tight, and then you're in high school.

Then college, thrust into a world where you see other girls feel guilty if they don't wake up an hour early to put on their face and do their hair and wear clean clothes that fit. And you see the guy next to you in pants that have gone out of style, a faded grateful dead t-shirt a size too big, messy hair, and dirty feet and crumbling Birks. And of course, no concealer, foundation, blush, contour, highlight, brow pencil, eyeliner, mascara, primer, eyeshadow, or lift. Not even moisturizer or tinted sunscreen. Maybe, maybe chapstick. But it was like the kind he got for free from attending a res life event. You, of course, have all the same clothes in your wardrobe, but those are reserved for painting your house or gardening.

No one asks him if he's tired and you're jealous and you're angry. Why are you allowed to look bad? You don't find comfort in Instagram niceties about how stretch marks are lightning tattoos and acne scars are beautiful and armpit hair is hot. Of course they are, if it helps a small, fat, weird kid feel more comfortable in their skin. But you also wish that you could just be ugly and have it not be a thing. Or have it affect how people treat you, affect your employment, grow out your armpit and leg hair, a passive act, and not have the only two options be disgust or fetishization. Am I really non-binary? Am I just butch and realizing now that I don't need to care about how men think of me? Is this trans ideation or am I just tired of performing femininity?

Amen, sister. So what's non-binary again? Is Butch a slur? I still don't. I still don't understand pansexuality. So you and Blake both. Are you actually queer, or did you just want to join the community? Uh, so which one of you is uh t uh trans? You do literally care. So sassy. Why do we have to put a label on it? Elliot Page is not hot.

[39:56] Mary Harriman: Prompt. Middle school was bad. Write about it. Five queer adults that have turned up okay, despite it all. Top ten worst middle school moments. Go! Did I ever tell you about when I got my first period? I was on the middle school basketball team. No. Our away game uniforms were white, BT Dubs. It was an away game. I didn't know until the coach swapped me out and was like, hey, sweetie, let's uh get you to the locker room. I was so confused. Have you ever thrown up during your seventh grade choir concert? No, but I knew someone that did. And now you know another someone who did. In eighth grade, I got drunk in the band locker closet space thing. You were drinking in eighth grade? Yeah, it's really easy when your parents are alcoholics.

[40:39] Mary Harriman: In middle school? I used to write glee fanfiction.

[40:41] Unknown speaker: Glee fanfiction?

[40:43] Mary Harriman: I was a young and impressionable closeted baby gay, okay.

[40:48] Unknown speaker: Ryan Murphy owes you reparations.

[40:50] Mary Harriman: I think actually he owes the families of the true crime shows he makes reparations, but we're not gonna get into all that. In middle school, I had my first kiss. In middle school, I got boobs I didn't want. In middle school, I desperately wanted your boobs.

[41:07] Unknown speaker: You wanted my boobs?

[41:07] Mary Harriman: Not like your boobs, uh not like I want your boobs.

[41:13] Unknown speaker: You sound like Dracula.

[41:14] Mary Harriman: Ivan's your beautiful breast.

[41:17] Unknown speaker: No, uh what I mean is uh is that I wanted your boobs on me. I I wanted your boobs, I wanted boobs. Big Bahangadungas.

[41:29] Unknown speaker: Yeah.

[41:31] Mary Harriman: Going bra shopping with your dad at 12 is a nightmare.

[41:35] Unknown speaker: I can imagine.

[41:36] Mary Harriman: You're always welcome to still go bra shopping with my dad. If you asked him, I'm sure he'd take you up on the offer. I had braces in middle school.

[41:42] Unknown speaker: I wish I had braces in middle school.

[41:44] Mary Harriman: Why? Maybe now as an adult, my teeth would be less fucked up.

[41:50] Unknown speaker: I think braces are a scam by big dental.

[41:56] Mary Harriman: Why? British people don't wear braces.

[42:00] Unknown speaker: I'm sure orthodontia is a thing across the pond.

[42:04] Mary Harriman: Well, they're not very good at it if it is. I had terrible acne.

[42:08] Unknown speaker: I still have terrible acne.

[42:11] Mary Harriman: Does acne ever really go away? Are you supposed to stop having acne when you're an adult? I have a friend that went on Accutane and says it changed her life.

[42:20] Unknown speaker: There are parts of middle school that my memory has blacked out.

[42:23] Mary Harriman: Oh, same here. Would you ever want to do it again?

[42:26] Unknown speaker: Do what?

[42:27] Mary Harriman: Middle school? Like if you could go back in time with all the knowledge you know now and restart at age 12.

[42:34] Unknown speaker: I wouldn't wish that on my own worst enemy.

[42:38] Mary Harriman: You wouldn't make your own worst enemy relive the most harrowing but formative moments of their lives.

[42:44] Unknown speaker: I don't believe in cruel or unusual punishment.

[42:47] Mary Harriman: I would do it.

[42:48] Unknown speaker: Seriously?

[42:48] Mary Harriman: For real, for real.

[42:49] Unknown speaker: I could invest.

[42:50] Mary Harriman: You can't invest at 12. You can't even get a job.

[42:52] Unknown speaker: I mean, hey, they are rolling back child labor laws.

[42:56] Mary Harriman: Well, would you do it if it meant you had no memory of the rest of your life after 12?

[43:02] Unknown speaker: Oh god, no.

[43:03] Mary Harriman: Oh, good. For a second I thought you were really stupid.

[43:09] Unknown speaker: Three friends sit around a campfire. Maybe they're roasting marshmallows. Maybe they're a little drunk.

[43:14] Mary Harriman: They're definitely a little drunk. So then Angelina said she was never bullied in middle school.

[43:22] Unknown speaker: I'm sorry, what? How is that even possible?

[43:23] Mary Harriman: See, that's what I said. I feel like the only people who weren't bullied in middle school were the ones doing the bullying.

[43:29] Unknown speaker: Which, frankly, checks out for her.

[43:31] Mary Harriman: No, I I don't think.

[43:33] Unknown speaker: Okay, actually, yeah, you're probably right. Who was worse to you? The boys or the girls?

[43:37] Mary Harriman: All of the above. One time I had this online boyfriend. You know, back when I still thought I liked men.

[43:46] Unknown speaker: Well, boys.

[43:48] Mary Harriman: Anywho, we met through MySpace. It was very romantic. We would send these stupid little quizzes back and forth to each other.

[43:56] Unknown speaker: Absolutely.

[43:57] Mary Harriman: And then I found out like two months in that it was a couple girls from the grade above me just fucking with me for the shits and giggles.

[44:05] Unknown speaker: God, teenage girls were the absolute worst.

[44:08] Mary Harriman: Well, that's not very feministly sound.

[44:09] Unknown speaker: Yeah, but am I wrong?

[44:11] Mary Harriman: No, not even a little bit. My nickname in sixth grade was Bump Bump Jiggle Jiggle.

[44:17] Unknown speaker: Oh, for fuck's sake.

[44:18] Mary Harriman: Because I needed a bra and had actual fucking thighs before anyone else in my class, it also didn't help that I was consistently the last person to finish the mile.

[44:26] Unknown speaker: Oh, not the mile. I still have nightmares about that.

[44:29] Mary Harriman: Like, why do we subject children to that monstrosity? All it ever did was turn half your class into extras from Lord of the Flies.

[44:37] Unknown speaker: And the teachers were just as bad.

[44:39] Mary Harriman: Honestly, I feel like I was bullied by the adults in my life more than my shitty classmates.

[44:44] Unknown speaker: Maybe because I never talked to anyone my age.

[44:46] Mary Harriman: Well, maybe they never really talked to me, but like talk about deep-seated sources of anxiety. Like, how are you gonna mock a 13-year-old for not understanding algebra?

[44:55] Unknown speaker: No wonder you're such a fucking people pleaser.

[44:58] Mary Harriman: Rude.

[44:59] Unknown speaker: Yeah, but are they wrong?

[45:01] Mary Harriman: Touche. Oh, whatever. We're all fucked up.

[45:04] Unknown speaker: But I like our brand of fucked up.

[45:07] Mary Harriman: I do too. It's a nice, well-rounded fucked up. Are we saying we're thankful for the trauma?

[45:14] Unknown speaker: Oh, absolutely not.

[45:17] Mary Harriman: Anyone want another marshmallow? I was a really good student, honestly.

[45:25] Unknown speaker: Like in college, our script analysis teacher had this thing where if you picked one of his favorite movies and submitted an analysis, he'd give you 10 points of extra credit.

[45:35] Mary Harriman: And there were probably 50 movies on this list. I don't think he ever thought he'd have a problem where a student couldn't pick, so they just did all of them.

[45:46] Unknown speaker: Oops.

[45:48] Mary Harriman: He made me choose which 10 movies I got credit for, which, let me be clear, was not part of the original agreement. I'm one of those people who was a massive reader in elementary school, but like has barely touched a book in the last 15 years.

[46:04] Unknown speaker: I read plays for a living, so like it's not like I haven't consumed words in that time, but it's not all enjoyable and not all good.

[46:19] Mary Harriman: This is a tangent, but I recently saw a TikTok about how we never talk about Valley Girl vernacular anymore. So people think it's gone, but it's actually that we've just absorbed it into modern English instead.

[46:30] Unknown speaker: There are three different ways to use the word like in a sentence that weren't grammatically correct 20 years ago, and I just used all of them in that last paragraph.

[46:40] Mary Harriman: Anyway, I was talking about how great I am at student. In seventh grade, you know, peak puberty, boobs at a maximum for age 12. My locker was across the hall from this one teacher, Mrs. Shear or something, uh, sharer? Chef? Honestly, maybe it's a power move that I don't remember her name.

[47:04] Unknown speaker: And she used to always come after me because the style at the time, solid 2004 vibes. Bright pink camisoles with the built-in bras, covered by Ed Hardy Wannabe zip-up hoodies, unzipped because you're cool, meant that my 12-year-old boobs were a little more on display than what Limited 2 had in mind when they made the stuff.

[47:26] Mary Harriman: Mrs., I forget her name would stop me every time I came to my locker and tell me to zip up my hoodie all the way to the top to cover up my supposedly offending 12-year-old tits, which were like an A and a half cup at best. And then she'd come find me later in the day to make sure I hadn't unzipped it the moment I passed into a different hallway.

[47:47] Unknown speaker: I got a few lunch detentions from that.

[47:50] Mary Harriman: Then one day, I grab all my books for the second half of the day, and I just make the decision to not go to my locker between periods that day. And this teacher, I shit you not, gives me a detention for avoiding her.

[48:08] Unknown speaker: She was a fourth grade teacher at a different school.

[48:11] Mary Harriman: And turns out she bought my clothes because I was, what was it again? That's right, 12. Mrs. Who Even Cares got an earful from my mother.

[48:22] Unknown speaker: I remember thinking, wow, she's so big.

[48:36] Mary Harriman: That year we went to St. Thomas for vacation, an all-inclusive resort situation that I remember had a Cartier and a White House Black Market in the lobby. I felt very bougie. Not that I knew what bougie meant yet. I wore lots of turquoise and pink, and my mom wore a bathing suit she't remember what we did on that vacation, but I remember my mom's squishy bathing suit boobs, and I remember Cartier.

[49:10] Unknown speaker: And now I'm realizing my mom wasn't mad at Mrs. What's her name because she was mad I wasn't getting to wear the clothes she'd bought me.

[49:18] Mary Harriman: She was mad because my 12-year-old boobs were under attack at the same time hers were. And my massive mom was being chipped away at without her consent. And instead of all the books I was carrying to my locker and reading between classes.

[49:41] Unknown speaker: Prompt. Get angry. Write it down.

[49:45] Mary Harriman: Mary is sitting, playing on her phone or something. She adjusts her position and notices something poking her side. She finds a tag she forgot to take off. She rips it off, examines it closely, and eats it. I am not a means to an end. I am more than a way to your wants. I am not a person. I am an omen, and I predict your downfall like the collapse of Rome.

[50:13] Unknown speaker: I watch you stalk about like a prince in a stolen castle, and I imagine your teeth in my knuckles like rings. You are not as big as you believe. And you are not a gentleman. You are a plague. No more than a flea on a rat. I should have expected as much from the servant of a jealous god.

[50:36] Mary Harriman: You with your jokes and your nerdisms and your assurances of safety. You should have known better than to betray a fucking writer. And now you'll be in a cage made of my words forever. Fuck your safety. Fuck your niceties. Fuck your disgusting fucking lies. Fuck the world that created you. And fuck the church that allows you and fucking it's a good thing. Fuck the capitalism that enables you still. I am a grudge holder and you are tight in my fists.

[51:04] Unknown speaker: Cray one day I let you go. Or snake like I will swallow you whole. Sss.

[51:16] Mary Harriman: Prompt. Think of something that makes you incredibly uncomfortable. Say it enough times that you're not embarrassed by any more. What is still too uncomfortable to say? Write that. Mary is washing period stains out of her granny panties. They're big. Like shallow how big. She washes them in cold water and live soap in a clear plastic tub, just like her mom taught her.

[51:41] Unknown speaker: I feel like when people look at me, they're looking at my waste products. Sweat. Dandruff. Sebum. Blood. Scabs, discharge, stray pubes, flatulence, and other odors. Do I wipe thoroughly? Can people smell my vagina? Is it okay to wear these yoga pants twice in a row? Can people see the crumbs on the side of my mouth from the chocolate muffin? Would they judge me less if it was kale in my teeth?

[52:04] Mary Harriman: I saw a fat woman get a personal pizza on the train, and I thought, oh, I could never do that. Then I saw a woman who had been crying get a large meal for herself at McDonald's. I thought, I could never do that in public. And I hate that I think that about other women. And I hate that when I see XXL clothes on at Walmart, my mom's voice pops in my head saying, Well, at least you're not that bad.

[52:30] Unknown speaker: I eat salads. I weigh over 200 pounds. I used to be a medium. Now I'm a large. Sometimes extra large.

[52:38] Mary Harriman: I scroll Instagram and see formerly big friends get bitten by the gym bug and start going on keto and post the inspirations. I go to Target and cry in the dressing room. I cry in the old Navy dressing room, the JC Penny's dressing room, the Dick's dressing room. I cry in the Java Frappe I just got at the Starbucks inside the Barnes and Noble.

[53:00] Unknown speaker: My mom side-eyes the frappe and says, Well, maybe if you lost weight, you might feel better. You might fit into more cute clothes. You could say, starting tomorrow, I'm gonna start tracking my food and getting more active.

[53:13] Mary Harriman: I walk into the kitchen to have lunch and she says, Are you actually hungry or just bored? Have some water first. Maybe you're just thirsty. I come crying home to her, and you know, she says that hurts me the most and gets defensive and says, It's about health. Diabetes and heart disease run in the family, you know.

[53:29] Unknown speaker: She says, Well, I'm sorry you feel that way, but you shouldn't be bigger than me.

[53:34] Mary Harriman: What I hear is I hate my body. The world hates our bodies. And I don't understand why you're trying to love yours. People mask their big bigotry in science or morality, or just combine the two.

[53:53] Unknown speaker: You ever notice how when a fat woman walks into a room, suddenly everybody becomes a cardiologist?

[53:59] Mary Harriman: A person will light a cigarette in front of a fat person and say, Are you sure you should be eating that? It's pretty unhealthy. I saw a person on Twitter say. Fat people need to just stop eating and go to the gym.

[54:12] Mary Harriman: They say tough love and shame are the only ways to get them to be healthier. Tough love doesn't make me want to lose weight. It makes me feel like shit. I feel like the ugly stepsister in Shrek 3. I wanted to be Penny Pingleton, but I was always going to be a Tracy Turnblad. No, an Edna Turnblad. More of an Enid Hoops than an Elle Woods, more of a Mother Abbess than Maria. More of a Nana, the dog than a Wendy Darling. Whenever people say, don't take the extra cookie. Refrain from the extra morsel. Say, oh, what a shame, but I shan't. Say things like, I'm gonna gain so much weight. I need to go running after this. I feel like they're staring directly at the way my thighs touch, or how my arms sag, or my jeans are high-waisted and my belly doesn't quite flop over.

I just want to say to them, I know how afraid you are to look like me. Prompt. Go to a natural place. Find a ghost, dance with the ghost, say goodbye. A lush, overgrown hillside in California, overlooking a deep valley. The sounds of a nearby highway can be seen through the wisps of wind through the brush, interspersed with the chirping of crickets waking from their naps as the sun sets over the mountains. There are two gravestones sitting on the hill, covered in weeds and littered with bird and deer shit. A small handmade bench sits in front of the graves. The brush is so high, if you didn't know this place was there, you'd probably miss it. From the distance we hear rustling and the sounds of frustration as Miranda battles her way through the weeds like some knockoff Indiana Jones.

She emerges a little worse for the wear and takes a seat at the bench. Hi, Mom. Hi, Aunt Sue. I brought you something. She pulls at a bottle of vodka and places it between the stones. Thought you might be bored. I should have brought a speaker. We could have had a party. Something shifts. The sounds of the highway morph. The cricket chirps turn to a melody, and suddenly purple rain is on the wind. I understand for copyright purposes that we cannot use purple rain. Play whatever the hell you want, but just know that in my heart of hearts, the song that's playing is purple fucking rain. Miranda, somehow unperturbed by this odd turn of events, stands and begins to sway to the music. As if like rain, silk scarves and torn pages of romance novels and chicken soup for the soul begin drifting down from the sky.

Miranda dances. The smell of Papa vodka and Capri Menthols drifts in on the music that is the breeze. Miranda picks up the fallen scarf, wraps it around her head, blows a kiss to the stones, and starts back the way she came. Thanks, guys. I really needed this. I love you. She fights her way through the weeds, which have somehow gotten denser, and the sounds of crickets and the nearby highway fill the space. A movie is playing. Their faces are lit by the glow of the TV. It's probably either Sister Act Two, Back in the Habit, A Walk to Remember, or Erin Brockovich. They burp and fart whenever they need to. Occasionally they'll walk on a creaky living room floor into a laminate kitchen off stage.

And from that direction, you can hear the sound of them peeing with the door open, or the sound of one of them squeezing the last drops of wine from the bag that they pulled out of the box. Mom drops some herbed goat cheese on her bare feet. She takes a cracker and scrapes it off. After a time, Mom falls asleep and starts to snore loudly. Mary ignores this for a while. Then she gets up, gingerly takes the almost spilling wine mug and the remote out of Mom's hands and places them on the coffee table. She turns the TV off. She shakes Mom on her thigh, then her shoulder. I will. You're just gonna fall back asleep. What? You're just gonna fall back asleep. You should go upstairs. I will in a bit.

Mary leans into her mom and heads up the creaky stairs. Motza, good night. Good night, sweetie. Don't forget to brush your teeth. Mom stares at the TV for a bit and then slowly falls back asleep, snoring loudly. Lights dim. End of play.

[59:41] ♪ Musical number: "Honey Barge" — performed by Mary Harriman ♪

[1:01:52] Mary Harriman: All right. Deep breath, huh? Ooh, group meditation time. That's the prompt. Um. Okay, so before we get into our interview with our wonderful playwright and I guess actor, Moss, I want to give a beautiful round of applause to our wonderful cast. Wonderful work, y'all. Um, okay, so let's get into it. Moss, how are you feeling?

[1:02:25] Moss: Great.

[1:02:28] Mary Harriman: That was convincing. That was convincing. I loved it. So you know, just positivity, you know. Um, what inspired you to write this play?

[1:02:44] Moss: So in my playwriting class in college, we would write from prompts, and this is the first time that writing was easy, that it came easily to me. I struggled so much in high school trying to get myself to write, and when I wrote from prompts, it just flowed out of me. Um, and then I realized that I had written the same things over and over again in my playwriting class about like cheese boards and moms, and I just decided to compile it and put it into a play. And then I thought my friend coined the term theater of self-care, and I was like, I'm gonna use that. And so I thought, why not invite people to, once they listen to this, or whoever in the future produces this play, use my words if you want, but I think it'd be very cool if they use their own.

[1:03:38] Mary Harriman: Yeah. That's beautiful. And you touched upon this a little bit, but this is essentially like a devised piece, right? So it's meant to be different and also specific to the cast themselves. And I know, um, I think for this process, we've never actually done a devised audio play for Parsnip. So I know that this must have had to be a different kind of approach. And so I'm just wondering if you could talk to us about how you developed, you know, what we just heard. I know that your director Anne was involved, and of course, there is some specificity and personalization from you and the cast. So can you talk us through that a little bit?

[1:04:24] Moss: Yes, this was an accidental 24-hour drama in the way that this was scheduled, because we're all just like completely busy people. We scheduled a couple writing sessions outside of this, but we only got to do one. And then we retrofitted our six-hour rehearsal that our in-person rehearsal that we do for this. The first three hours we wrote, and then the next three hours we rehearsed. But that took over that time process was about 72 hours. From we kept about 30 pages of my original writing, and then over the course of the three hours doing writing from prompts with the group, we ended up with 80 pages.

[1:05:08] Mary Harriman: Wow, yeah.

[1:05:09] Moss: Um, so that was exciting. And then we had like a bit of like a 24-hour turnaround until we had to compile all of that into a usable script. I even had time in that to like play like an hour and a half of D&D. And then the next day we printed, and then the next day we rehearsed with scripts in hand. That was crazy. But we did it.

[1:05:31] Mary Harriman: And how was that writing process? Like, how did you and Anne lead the cast through it?

[1:05:38] Moss: Um, so it was a fantastic process of leading people. I mean, the prompts make it easy. We gave them 30-minute chunks with which to write. We started the day with bagels and dancing.

[1:05:51] Mary Harriman: Oh, yeah.

[1:05:52] Moss: And then we had half-hour writing sessions, we would regroup, we would share the work. Uh, and there was a moment in there I was like, oh, this is working. This can be a thing. I'm gonna continue to do this because this is great.

[1:06:08] Mary Harriman: Yes.

[1:06:08] Moss: Um, and where did these prompts come from?

[1:06:12] Mary Harriman: So to peek a little bit backstage, some of these I wrote the prompt after I wrote the scene and kind of retrofitted the prompt to the scene. Uh, because again, I wrote these all in like writing class, and our prompt was our prompts and those were basically like read a play and then try to write something in that style. Um, with these, the prompts, I read a thing, I read each of the stuff that I had written and compiled, and then made these prompts. Um, like specifically, and I had thought about this for like a year before I even did this, a lot of what my Instagram actually is is I would think about like as a coping mechanism practice to think of stuff that is so uncomfortable to say, and why am I so uncomfortable with it? I should just say it, and then people can see that they're not alone. And so I would continue to do that, and so I just retrofitted that onto a piece that worked for it.

[1:07:06] Mary Harriman: Nice. Amazing process. And you touched upon this a bit in your response at the top of the recording about theater and the uncomfortability, I guess, around mental health. And I just wanted to ask like, why do you think that is, and specifically, what do you want to challenge American theater with when it comes to the topic of writing and the portrayal of mental health?

[1:07:36] Moss: Absolutely. A thing I like I was watching it and reading a lot of theater, a lot of it I feel is very not complacent, but people go to a theater and they think that they have participated by going to see a progressive show, and then they can go home and pat themselves on the back that they did their like liberal due diligence and then their activism stops there.

[1:08:02] Mary Harriman: And I wanted to work into the fabric of this play that it needs to be interactive and it needs to invite people to write about things that are unpalatable, and write things that people don't want to talk about because it might make them complicit and might make them culpable for why these systems still exist.

[1:08:26] Unknown speaker: Yeah.

[1:08:28] Mary Harriman: And um, and I and on that, that's just a really striking thing. I guess uh why how do you see that vulnerability, I guess, um continuing to shift and change, I guess as you know, we have more writers like you who are broaching this. How do you hope that shifts over the next few years? Especially we're in these generations that are more open about talking about mental health.

[1:08:56] Mary Harriman: Yeah, absolutely. I think uh I think it will get better by just being able to not just better. I don't want to be like, again, you did the progressive thing and your activism stops there, or like you I don't I don't wanna make it seem like you do mental health for the purposes of feeling better in a shitty time. Um because it's like there's only so much that ProZac can do when you're like when you're living in capitalism. Um sometimes the ProZac don't be hit. Um but I do want to make it a uh I think that giving people the ability and letting people know that like seeing me on stage, seeing people who look like me on stage, doing the thing that is unpalatable, like um uh like a freak show, like stuff that people don't want to see and don't want to hear in that uncomfortability. I think we need to be more. I think we need to make audiences more uncomfortable because that inspires them to change.

[1:10:06] Unknown speaker: Yeah.

[1:10:07] Mary Harriman: Yeah. I love making audiences uncomfortable. Um I guess on that note, like what are what are the prompts that feel most that I guess evoke that response within you? What what are like the most personal prompts or what are the prompts that you have yet to respond to?

[1:10:28] Mary Harriman: Oh my God! Yes! Give me that response. Ooh, that's a great question. Um I think, yeah, some of the most personal ones were definitely like write about your gender. Because how do you even write about that? Um it's and explaining it to someone that doesn't get it. Because I and it I do that every day. And I've I've kind of given up on doing like the PowerPoint presentation of explaining all the labels and stuff like that. I've just settled on the word queer because I like it.

[1:11:04] Unknown speaker: Yeah.

[1:11:05] Mary Harriman: All encompassing. Yeah, it's all an umbrella term, and it also pisses people off, which I enjoy. But I guess uh I'm gonna I want to continue to do this. I want to continue to invite people to be uncomfortable. And I I like the I like the experience of this as stepping back and facilitating that for other people. But that's a good question of like what more can I do to share vulnerability on stage? And like how do I do that balancing the line of not just like self-flagellation?

[1:11:36] Unknown speaker: Right.

[1:11:37] Mary Harriman: Uh, because I I did write a piece called uh I'm pretty mean to myself. I should probably work on that. And I am not gonna show it because it I don't want to produce it because it got to the point where I had this character liar that I kept using it it with again, a coping mechanism. It worked for a time to write about all the things that I lie to myself about, things that I'm in denial of. But at a certain point I just use that as another way to self-harm. So how do you balance that line of being vulnerable without just again self-flagellation for the purposes of showing other people? That feels very like, I don't know, um, I'm gonna quote Godspell. Uh like that I pray two times a week. Like that kind of thing.

[1:12:26] Unknown speaker: Yeah, to show other people like look at how much I'm working to show how vulnerable I am.

[1:12:31] Mary Harriman: I don't want to turn into that.

[1:12:32] Unknown speaker: Yeah, you don't want to perform vulnerability.

[1:12:35] Mary Harriman: Yeah. Yeah.

[1:12:36] Unknown speaker: We're not, you know, Gwyneth Paltrow.

[1:12:42] Mary Harriman: Speaking of shallow howl, Gwyneth Caltron Fat Suit. Yikes.

[1:12:44] Unknown speaker: Correct.

[1:12:45] Mary Harriman: Correct. Um if if you uh this is a fun one. If you could assign everyone in the world a prompt that they had to answer in order to be an adult. This is a very specific scenario I was thinking of. I was like, oh, if you had to answer a question when when you turned 18 in order to be certified adult, what is the prompt you would want?

[1:13:13] Mary Harriman: Ooh, I think I'm gonna make people try to describe their gender. Because like this for a while, uh my parents thought cis was a pejorative term because I always used it pejoratively. Um I wonder why. But I really want people to do the work of not thinking of cis as the default. I want them to just I want them to describe their gender and think not just that it is, but why it is. I want people to do that uh before they turn 18.

[1:13:45] Unknown speaker: I love that.

[1:13:46] Mary Harriman: I love that.

[1:13:47] Unknown speaker: Do that and then you can vote.

[1:13:48] Mary Harriman: Yes. Correct. Correct. Okay. So you can drink capital. Correct, exactly. That is the steps. That is one, two, three, all in one when you turn 18. Um, okay, so we're gonna start to wrap up. I have my last couple of questions for you. Um, this is a question we're asking all of our season six playwrights, and it is what does queerness mean to you? Um, personally, artistically, privately, public um privately, publicly. What does it mean to you, Moss?

[1:14:19] Unknown speaker: Yes.

[1:14:20] Mary Harriman: So, speaking of my name, Moss, uh, this is what happens when you have uh season of career playwrights and then you wait three years. Names can change. Correct. Whole world change, darn the panty, and quoted names. Love it. Yes. Um so yeah, queerness means change. Queerness means embracing change and uh I saw this thing on Twitter of like transness is holy because you are you are participating in the act of creation. You are recreating yourself constantly and recognizing that these things can and should change to make yourself feel more yourself.

[1:15:04] Unknown speaker: I love that.

[1:15:05] Mary Harriman: And um this is an easy last question. What did you have for breakfast this morning?

[1:15:12] Unknown speaker: I I had like I made like a really good grain bowl situation.

[1:15:16] Mary Harriman: Oh, okay. Uh, like this past week as I knew I wouldn't be able to prepare meals. Uh, and I had that with Peter Bread, and it was delicious.

[1:15:23] Unknown speaker: Amazing.

[1:15:23] Mary Harriman: Yeah, that sounds really good.

[1:15:24] Unknown speaker: Yeah.

[1:15:25] Mary Harriman: Listen, someone in the audience is so supported.

[1:15:27] Unknown speaker: Nice.

[1:15:28] Mary Harriman: It's it's my dad.

[1:15:31] Unknown speaker: Yes!

[1:15:33] Mary Harriman: Get that balanced breakfast.

[1:15:37] Unknown speaker: Amazing.

[1:15:38] Mary Harriman: Thank you so much, Moss. Um, so we have some thank yous for all of our artistic collaborators who were part of this episode. So, again, to our wonderful cast tonight. Amy Ackerman, Brynn Hambley, Addy Jenkins, Miranda Poett, Erin Proctor, and Moss Harriman.

[1:16:07] Unknown speaker: Thank you to our director and Karina back in.

[1:16:14] Mary Harriman: And our musician, Shepup. Sadboy Hours, this is a coping mechanism was written by Moss Harriman. And thank you to our sound engineer tonight, Fernando Castillo. Thank you to our TPS team and producer, Business Lunch Productions. BLP is a leading creative agency based in New York City. And thanks to the Mark O'Donnell Theater at the Entertainment Community Fund Art Center for having us in their space in downtown Brooklyn.

[1:16:59] Mary Harriman: Before we get to hear our last song from Shepup to close the night, we want to remind you all to please follow us on Facebook and Instagram at the Parsnip Ship NY. You can help TPS reach new audiences by sharing your experience and favorite episodes across social media platforms. You can listen to all of our past seasons on iTunes, Spotify, Broadway Podcast Network, and anywhere you hear your podcast. Join us in person next month on June 12th for the presentation of work from our Radio Roots fellow Jesse J Woon with his audio play 12 Chairs. And on June 26th, for our next episode of season six, MLM is for murder. Or your side hustle is killing us by John Bavoso. This episode was produced by the Parsnip Ship and Business Lunch Productions. New plays, new music. And to turn it over back to Shepup. Thank you all for joining us tonight.

[1:18:49] ♪ Musical number: "Things to Patch Up" — performed by Shepup ♪