production history
Blue Seal, Blue Sea (or, gay boy grieves death of gay-hating dad) is the third and final version of a project that began in 2019, after a fateful (and final) fight with my father. Each version of my show meditates on similar themes—being the only child of journalist parents, queerness, water, the fallacy of objective truth, what’s (not) recorded—but addresses these themes differently, both in content and form.
The first version, in 2019, was called no! i be seal ; it was staged Off-Off-Broadway at Dixon Place. I did this in the immediate aftermath of going no-contact with him my father.
The second version, in 2022, was remounted as SEAL, at Virginia Tech's Moss Arts Center, and produced by the Virginia Tech Graduate Arts Council, Institute for Creativity, Arts, & Innovation, and the Creativity and Innovation District. I did this years into estrangement with my father, with the hopes of telling a more complex story. This theater was a multi-million complex that featured all kinds of high-tech elements, including a massive cyclorama that served as teh canvas to my digitized home videos.
creator’s statement
from 2022 performance
In 2016, I set out to digitize my family’s home videos. I worried the impending decay of the Hi-8 tapes would signal the loss of something greater—what, I wasn’t sure. The twenty-four hours of footage I ultimately salvaged spans fifteen years: the sentimental early years (1990-2001) shot by my father, the tortured adolescent years (2001-2005) recorded by me. Since 2016, I have watched the tapes amid personal, familial, and political chaos. I started to realize what wasn’t recorded interested me as much as what was, for silence is its own story. And I began to surrender to the truth I have always been queer, even though I only started owning this identity well into my 20s, when the tapes reappeared. I now understand my panic over losing the tapes underpinned a deeper panic, over losing myself. Examining how my father saw me through the videos, and how I saw myself through the videos, have helped me consider how I want to be seen today, and in the future. SEAL pays homage to that journey.
