The emotion and the passion was very evident as I walked through the doors of Valencia College Black Box Theater. I hadn't planned on going to the theaters on Friday night else I would have dressed up more, but there was no regrets as soon as the show ended. A friend of my fiance and I had bought us tickets because he wanted us to see this show with him. This show as a whole was brought together beautifully and was written by the director (John DiDonna) who had conducted interviews with the people the characters are based off of. The beautiful thing is that the characters were played by those in the LGBTQ+ community and alot of the cast matched the characters in their identity.
This play was set to educate the public about the Transgender community. The terms used were from the "Transgender Umbrella". The terms are used as titles of their "identities". For example of the image below, one of the characters was a "Male to Female Transgender". The characters quickly became your friends in explaining what is going through their head about certain topics. The set portrayed the characters as if we were all sitting in a group of friends and they were explaining their story. We heard from a lot of those under the "Transgender Umbrella". The actors/actresses were well versed in their character because they had met who the characters were based off.
The reason why I said and will continue to say characters is because the characters themselves do not have names to protect the privacy of those who were interviewed. I also will not be saying the names of the actors/actresses because they have asked me to keep their names hidden. There are no words to quite describe the feeling that was felt during the play because a lot of the audience members were new to knowing about the community. The actors/actresses themselves were playing with the identity of the character and some had to do the research behind the identity that they were playing. When they would tell the horror stories about what happens to those in the community, it would make me want to hug my fiance even closer in fear. I am not going to give away too much because all of you need to go watch this play!
When I talked to the actors/actresses, I felt an incredible vibe from all of them. They told me that this play had given them a new circle of friends that feels like family. This play also allowed them to find out more about themselves because of the educational aspect of the play. With the stories being based off of real people, its obvious that they would find some aspect of themselves in the characters they are portraying. I found out that one of the actresses came more out of her shell because of this play. I find that to be incredibility beautiful.
I was not planning to write this review when I walked into the door, but after seeing this play, I had too. I feel like everyone needs to see this play because the education aspect of this show is so strong that even the couple of seniors sitting in the audience was able to understand. I could sense people were uncomfortable because this topic is so fresh in the media that it isn't where it should be. I could sense that people leaving the theater were educated. The LGBTQ+ community came to support this play because of obvious reasons.
This play was put on the Valencia College East Campus in Orlando, Florida. If you are in the area, this show is worth the 12$ ticket for non-students.
