All art, at its best, gives us the ability to transport ourselves and see the world from a new vantage point. The trouble is that sometimes the views we have access to are limited by the privilege of only certain voices being shared. Enter the rare opportunity of Tears and Glitter and Mimetic Desire, two plays by award-winning playwright Mikki Gillette. Produced by Salt and Sage and directed by long-time collaborator Asae Dean, the shows graciously offer viewers a chance to step outside of themselves and into a raw portrayal of the trans community.
Of the 13 roles, across both productions, 11 are trans characters played by trans actors. These actors are, of course, not their characters, but the effect of this casting and writing resolves itself to roles that have a lived-in, lived-through quality, whether it’s expressed in built tension or sharp, playful banter.
In a political landscape that increasingly seeks to vilify and erase queer and trans people, Gillette’s plays offer the rare opportunity to support art made by and within queer community at a time where it’s more urgent than ever.
Set in an unnamed red state in 2023, Tears and Glitter centers a group of friends planning a Pride event while navigating rising tensions as white nationalists and anti-trans legislation knot around them.
Despite the timestamp, the backdrop is one that feels all too familiar, capturing the reality of the experience at the margins and how that pressure cooker can shape connection. The play follows exes Tara (Billie Jean Dawson) and Dita (Juliet Mylan), two transwomen navigating messy interpersonal dynamics, while also trying to maintain some semblance of community. The cast of characters that surrounds them are all wrestling with their own reactions to stress: activists processing their trauma in increasingly destructive ways, a young and impressionable people pleaser trying to keep the peace, a boyfriend caught in the tension of a community he’s not exactly at home in.
During set changes, the play is blocked to create hybrid moments of both function and narrative—stage lights dim to half, allowing the viewer to simultaneously watch the mechanics of the set being reconstructed, while actors maintain their roles and share silent moments, like pacing around an apartment or meeting in a brief embrace. The choreography of these interstitials turns what could be dead air into moments of gentle reprieve, amidst a play where the pressure continues to steadily rise.
Tonally, Mimetic Desire takes us in the opposite direction. It's a wry comedy about a group of college-age queer friends stumbling through understanding themselves, and each other, in what one character refers to as “trans Days of Our Lives” fashion.
Mimetic borrows its name from a psychological theory, which suggests that desire doesn’t inherently come from within; we mimic what we see others desire, making the objects of our affection more valuable through collective attention. Where does that leave our lovers and friends? In increasingly fraught and tense interconnected dynamics, as they gossip about, date, break-up with, and sometimes betray one another.
Maddy (Ethan Feider) and Danny (Cosmo Reynolds) are dating but repeatedly clash over unmet—and perhaps unvoiced—needs. Alec (Damian Luis) repeatedly pursues his friends' partners, masking an insecurity that bubbles below a puffed-up bravado. After a hookup, Mia (Hazel O'Brien) attempts to chisel through the demeanor of a closed-off, controlling Corin (Maryellen Wood). Sam (Tea Johnson) and Landon (Lennox Blodgett) are at sharp odds, their antagonism belying what might be an odd similarity to one another.
If this sounds a bit chaotic, that’s kind of the point. Young love is complicated enough, without the pressure cooker of dating in a small, insular community, navigating non-monogamy, and becoming yourself in a world that can be hostile to that realization. And while some of the drama might be satirically super-sized, there’s a knowingness rooted in each entanglement that queer people might recognize as comically (and maybe a little embarrassingly) accurate.
Paired together, Gillette’s plays offer a portal to a place where trans and queer lives aren’t represented as singular, sanitized tokens, but instead humanized as the complex, nuanced, and comedic realities they can be. These plays invite the viewer to step inside, be a fly on the wall, and stay for a while.
Tears and Glitter and Memetic Desire play at the Back Door Theater, 4321 SE Hawthorne, through Sat June 21, tickets and schedule here.
