There are no fantasy heroes in Mikki Gillette’s work. And hardly any glamour. “A person at a reading said, ‘I’m glad you aren’t just writing the noble transgender character,’” Gillette told the Mercury. “And inside I laughed out loud because that’s not what I would ever do.”
As a playwright, Gillette focuses on characters who are healing from transphobia. Sometimes they’re parsing microaggressions: daily, degrading insults born from both innocence and intention. In other moments, her characters reel from chilling, overt threats of sexual violence. But somehow, with Gillette behind the lines, the dialogue on stage flies quickly and with disarming candor.
Gillette’s first staged play, The Queers, is significant, not only for her skill and vision, but because it’s one of the only trans-written plays in Oregon that was also produced with an ensemble cast of transgender actors.