Theatre Askew Youth Performance Experience presents

WHAT'S IN A NAME

Wednesday to Saturday May 23 - 26 at 8 pm

Friday May 25 & Sunday May 27 at 5 pm

Tickets at the door
Adults: $10
Youth 23 & Under: FREE

The 2012 TAYPE Ensemble is: Nikki Boyajian, Sherri Daniels, Tommy Kis, Gail Lenore, Raquel Napolitano, & Patrick Preston Seymour

Lights: Haejin Han
Sound and original music: Matty Pritchard
Assistant Director: Dennis Yueh-Yeh, Li

What's in a name? Shakespeare's Juliet struggled with that question as she was coming to terms with her forbidden love for Romeo, a man who was her family's enemy. This year the Theatre Askew Youth Performance Experience (TAYPE) program invited ten young people representing the entire spectrum of the LGBTQA community to ponder that same question. For some, who they love or how they express their gender is no big deal. For others, the struggle to gain acceptance is as fraught as the one faced by Shakespeare's young lovers. But for all of them, the quest to define who they are, to NAME themselves, is an ongoing project.

We opened up our initial question to include all sorts of other questions: How does the straight world label or stereotype us? How do LGBT people do the same thing? What does it mean to affix a label to another person? If you could have any name, what would it be? Where does your name come from? Where is it going?

Through improvisations, physical exercises, writing assignments, and visual art, the TAYPE ensemble explored these questions and others. Out of all of these emerged the play.

What's in a name? We've learned that the answer is more than we ever could have imagined. TAYPE invites you to share what Alexa, Gail, Joe, Max, Nikki, Patrick, Raquel, Shaquoya, Sherri, and Tommy discovered together: A play by any other name is a community.