Love Poem to My Heart, by JoJo Ruby

Oh heart, you steady drum. (beats)

Under your enduring rythm

I’m becoming undone.

I go into my being,

unwinding in timing and

stops

in- between.

I lay beauty on her back

so she can float down my bloodstream.

Oh heart, you poet.

I hold my pen like an artery, like a ripchord. I listen for you through the full bellied shout of my dreams, I fill pages with words groping for what you mean when you (beats) I hold onto your sound and hope to sing myself clean.

You ceaseless jester, how we have wrestled through the labyrinth of riddles my mind has built across my knowing. How I’ve toiled on this path in darkness despite all of your glowing. How I’ve masked you in conventions to keep my truth from showing.

Oh heart, it is you I am still learning to trust, untwisting these anxious guts, I am letting these breathes open you up, and with the you as my crux, I will rise again, despite these earthquakes shaking my sheepish limbs, and ever charging, changing winds, on the days I cannot bear to wear this skin, I go in. and for the thousandth time I start over, (beats)

always coming back softer,

but somehow stronger.

(beats)

Oh heart, You teacher, you bray truth into my make up when you break me. Through aches and pangs my faults are tumbled, composed for smooth and shining fumbles, Any test I have failed you have let me retake, so I’m stitching up my sleeves for smarter heartbreaks. Threading the lessons from every mistake.

You gardener, you rake the ground my pain walks on. Planting seeds within in the deep ravine, where Ive thrown the parts I don’t want seen. and when I find myself buried, you compost my tainted memories and turn me– over, push me on to greener pastures, on to blooming fields of laughter. Every season just another chapter. Another chance to make roots around what I am after, I’m sure,No matter what chaos come, an oasis grows under my sternum. (beats)

Oh heart, you curious magic, you are the universe between palms, invoking prayers unspoken. With every every wax and wane of moon you groom my dereliction. On my most haunted nights, your light is the cloak I wear for protection. and yet so many times I’ve accepted your gifts just to neglect them.

You are a house of many naked rooms, oh heart.

but I will make a home of you yet.

I will beat old resentments off the welcome mat

in my chest, and paint the walls with expressions repressed

I will let love in, with all it’s clever tools

to unhinge the doors blocking my talents and my jewels

I will sweep every dirty corner with tender introspection

and open up the windows, to shine on my perfect imperfections

I’ll tug these cobwebbed heartstrings,

to bring in worthy things.

I will fill these halls of never enough

with blessings.

….and if I ever become jaded

for fear I’ve felt to much,

if I grow sick and lonesome

on another persons touch.

If I loose the pulse in promises

and get swept up in past review.

I will put a saddle on my grief, oh heart,

and ride it home to you.

 

My Gender Is, by Seraphim Dibble

I am coming out as transgender.
Non-binary.
It isn’t past-tense. Its present and future tense.
I am coming out now, I will be coming out tomorrow.
I will be coming out to people
Who spit the word out like an insult
To strangers asking why I’m in a skirt
To people asking why I can’t just be “normal”
What is my gender, you ask? Let me tell you

My gender isn’t
Stationary.
Nor am I confused
I feel bound neither by the societal confines of being a man nor a woman

My gender is
Whatever the hell I want.
I know what I want
And what I want is to be happy in my body and my soul and my clothes

My gender isn’t
Weewee or hoohoo
Can’t you say the damn word for genitals?
And if you can, what does that have to do with who I am?

My gender is
Non-binary.
My pronouns are they, them, their, and fuck you
Fuck you if you misgender me on purpose because you’re too caught up in your own bigotry

My gender isn’t
Silence.
Nor will I be silent.
I exist in a society that tells me I am not valid, but I am valid no matter what they say.

My gender is
Screaming.
Screaming out at a sudden crisis
A spontaneous fear that I’m not really trans, I just like cross-dressing.
A spontaneous existential crisis
That I’m not non-binary, I’m a woman and am just realizing it
A sudden fear
That I am just wanting to be seen as “cool” or fit in with a group

My gender is
Fitting in.
Not pretending or trying to fit in I’ve been there and there is hell.
My gender is
Fitting in with a group where I finally feel at home and I don’t have to pretend
That I don’t like skirts, pretty nails, and feeling a little feminine sometimes

My gender is
Fuck you.
It’s a middle finger to a toxic masculinity
One that I hid in for twenty five years, and have spent four more shedding

It’s a middle finger to patriarchy
Because what use is it if I’m not using it to oppose the very system that tells me
I don’t exist
I am not valid
I do not deserve happiness
That I should kill myself
It’s an ode to me being who I am and fuck you if you say anything otherwise

My gender is the realization that love is not finite
My gender is the realization that love is not scarce
My gender is the realization that love is for me, for you, for everybody
My gender is the realization that people deserve love, even me
My gender is the realization that it is okay to be mentally ill, and to break down at the smallest thing
My gender is my photography
My gender is marching side by side with me
My gender is hand-in-hand fighting for a better world
My gender is compassionate
My gender cares.
My gender is non-definition
My gender is non-stationary
My gender is non-binary

 

 

Of the Dark, by Tzula Propp

I remember the dark, it was the first thing there.

You think dark is smooth, but I know better. There are shapes, textures in the dark. In time, you would see them too.

The shapes gave me a boundary, the textures taught me to feel. There were silent voices in the dark, they showed me how to be.

It was like this for a long time. And it wasn’t bad, it was just all that was, all I knew.

But I knew one thing else, that this, it wasn’t me, wasn’t all that could be. Resist the dark, I told myself. Don’t let it in! Shut it out! I belong, just not here. I can be my own light!

Silent voices in the dark pleaded back at me, “Don’t go! Please, stay here, with me.”

But the silent voices needn’t have spoke, my struggle was as hopeless as an ocean wave, fighting to leave the sea. There was no direction that led away from the dark. I swirled and stormed against the only border, my border. Like the wave, I was smashed and renewed and smashed and renewed, inescapably. During that time, I became less of my form, and more of my forming—my boundary expanded. I was my escape, my prison, my home, my storm, my struggle, my voice, my dark, me.

All throughout, I expected mocking from the dark. But the silent voices understood, they were even sympathetic. This was just how it had to be, always. No one belonged anywhere, it would be death.

And this is how it stayed. My storm petered out, and again I was of the dark. I was rejoined with the walls of my prison, the first battleground of my rebellion, enveloping me like a lead blanket. And in time, I forgot why I had tried so hard to leave…

I was comfortable in the dark, and then, my eyes fluttered open, and there was light.

——————————

Playwright: Tzula Propp

Context: This piece has three major inspirations, which are also three different interpretations of the character.

The first inspiration is Brocksandra, a canonically trans character I created for a game of Dungeons and Dragons. She came to life for me more than I meant her to, I find myself returning to her often. She is a tragic outcast from a world of shadows who, despite her bardly demeanor, is deeply incompatible with the world of light around her (she is a Drow, if that means anything to you). I imagine her performing, taking on the role of Najm, the androgynous (and in my interpretation, non-binary) goddex of curiosity. The story is of Najm’s birth from the primordial chaos and rejection of nothingness, but has been made autobiographical in Brocksandra’s telling.

The second is the question, “What is a photon before it leaves an atom?” This question is one without a unique interpretation, and here I give mine.

The last inspiration is the adolescent experience of a non-binary child in a darkly and deeply repressive society. The omnipresent struggle, internalized, is the subject. The final self-coming out happens unexpectedly, following the deepest repressive phase they’ve ever experienced, almost forgetting who they are.

Note regarding the last line: in my original conception, it evoked a sense of divinely tragic irony, somewhere between almost-hope, loss of safety, and being lost. But now I’m not so sure, and encourage individual interpretation.

Contact: Tzula Propp is a grad student at the University of Oregon, where they study quantum information theory. They can be reached at spropp (at) uoregon (dot) edu

 

Woodzick, from Trans/Actions, by K. Woodzick and Ayla Sullivan

WOODZICK (they/them/theirs). I’ve always hated the term, “workaholic”. As if it was so bad to bring my work home with me. Or if there was something wrong with knowing what I want and doing what I have to in order to get there. When you love what you do, you have an intimacy with your craft. There is something sacred in the process and there is something holy about making your bed in your work and being committed to lying in it.

There are some days when I choose not to leave the apartment. Because if I don’t leave the apartment, I won’t get misgendered. My roommate isn’t going to do it, and her dog isn’t going to do it, and her boyfriend knows that he will get in trouble if he does it.

But then I remember what brings me home in the first place. It’s not always turning a key; sometimes it’s the audition room in itself, a callback without fear, a promise from a director. I have loved theatre for over twenty five years, since I saw Music Man and set up chairs in my living room to mimic a train. Home is made up of all the things we love the longest, isn’t it? And isn’t it also the place we hurt the most? The place that scars us as much as it loves us?

Theatre is an industry that is still very entrenched in the gender binary. There are male and female dressing rooms, character breakdowns that clearly read male and female, and you are told at an early age as an actor what your type is, in male and female terms.

When I was thirty one, I was cast in a production of The 39 Steps, where I played over sixteen male roles. And though I had played male roles before, it no longer felt like drag to me–instead, it was an extension of my gender identity. During that production, because of that production, I changed my pronouns from she, her, and hers to they, them and theirs. I lost friends because of it. I lost work because of it. It is the single hardest and best decision I have ever made.

Playwrights: K. Woodzick and Ayla Sullivan

Context: This monologue happens in the first scene of the play. Woodzick is reflecting on their relationship to gender and theatre

Website: www.woodzick.com

Contact: nonbinarymonologues (at) gmail (dot) com

Jitterbug, from The Earth Room, by Marge Buckley

1:

JITTERBUG (they/them/theirs)
no you
shut up.
are you aware of what your father and I survived to get you here?
four times in a row your father moved west in search of a job that would pay him a living wage
and when he finally did, he worked six days a week at that job with no vacation for nearly ten years.
i stood across the street from my childhood home and watched the United States government burn it to the ground to make way for a military base that lasted for fourteen months before it was abandoned.
has your childhood home ever been burned to the ground, Ari?
does it have a radioactive stream in the backyard?
and you
and all of your peers
you get to grow up here
away from all of that
you get to build a new world for yourselves.
i’m not saying that this one is perfect
not by any means
but
we have worked and worked and worked
to give you and your sister and your friends this chance to build something
from the ground up
and it absolutely breaks my heart
to see you squander it like this.

Context: Jitterbug and their husband George have just caught their daughter, Ari, using simulated heroin in a virtual reality chamber called The Earth Room. The intended use of The Earth Room is to allow Mars colonists the opportunity to walk around outside on Earth, since it is impossible to go outside on Mars and the real planet Earth has become nearly uninhabitable. This monologue comes at the end of a scene where Jitterbug and George are lecturing their daughter and is delivered to Ari.

2:

JITTERBUG
is my family “falling apart”?
I wouldn’t say that, per se.
don’t look at me like that.
you and your high horse, i swear to god.
no, at this exact moment
I do not know where one of my daughters is
in the grander sense
and I also do not happen to know where either my husband or my second daughter are
in the smaller-scale sense
but
that doesn’t mean
house, do you know where anybody in this family is right now?
okay, the house doesn’t seem to know either.
alright.
it is seven pm and I do not know where anybody in my family is.
but i am not going to panic.
that is not the kind of person that I am.
i am a person with a level head.
a person with their wits about them.
i am going to breathe.
i am going to live in the present moment
and i am going to wait,
because there is nothing I can control about this situation except for myself.

Context: This monologue comes towards the end of the play: Jitterbug’s daughter Ari has stowed away on a freighter back to Earth, daughter Malia has joined a protest group committed to severing all of Mars’ ties with planet Earth, and husband George is secretly participating in an extreme sport that involves racing down Mars’ sand dunes on surf boards. Jitterbug delivers this piece directly to the audience and the “house” is literally their house, which has artificial intelligence.

Playwright: Marge Buckley

Contact: margot.m.buckley (at) gmail (dot) com

 

Alex, from The 1st Annual Head-Shaving Olympics, by Sam Mauceri

ALEX. (they/them) Um, body-wise I don’t really feel any dysphoria. I mean, every now and then I’ll feel this weird separation from specific parts of my body, but usually I’m just more frustrated with how the rest of the world interprets my body. Like, the social aspect of it is where I feel dysphoria. I feel not like myself almost every time I’m “maam’ed” or “Miss’ed”. Every time a dude shouts at me on the street, because I know he’s harassing me because he thinks I’m a lady. Every time I’m in the doctor’s office and they call me by my full birth name, because I haven’t had the energy to change it. Every time I resign myself to not looking harder for a gender neutral bathroom. Every time I’m walking around and existing and knowing what people think they’re seeing, but knowing that they’re wrong, but also knowing that there’s no good way to tell them.

Context: This monologue is from the 20-minute comedy The 1st Annual Head-Shaving Olympics. Alex is a non-binary person who is comfortable with their femininity, but sick of being misgendered as a woman. In an attempt to become more visible, they decide to shave their head and imagine themself training for the Head-Shaving Olympics. In this monologue, Alex is at the Non-Binary Qualifiers, trying to convince the judges that they are non-binary enough.

More information: 

Email: samlmauceri@gmail.com

New Play Exchange: https://newplayexchange.org/users/16881/sam-mauceri

Pasquale, from Couples Costume, by Sam Mauceri

PASQUALE (they/them). If you don’t end this relationship now, you’re going to get trapped in the Holiday Barricade. Think about it. Right now it’s October and you’re committed to a couples costume. Once the planning happens, there’s no way to bust out of that one without looking like a complete jerkwad. Think you’re free after that? Nope! Then it’s Thanksgiving, when you’ll have to meet the parents. Next is Christmas-slash-Hanukkah-slash-Kwanzaa. You’re going to buy each other gifts and you have no way of knowing if they’ve already gotten you a gift so you CAN’T break up. Then it’s New Year’s Eve and who have you made plans to smooch when the ball drops? Dominique. Next you run up against Valentine’s Day which has the same gift conundrum as your preferred winter holiday. There is simply no way out before that one. It’s either now or February 15th.

Context: This monologue is from the 10-minute comedy Couples Costume, which features 4 non-binary teenage characters. Pasquale is trying to help their friend Charlie rally the courage to end their relationship with Dominique.

More information: 

Email: samlmauceri@gmail.com

New Play Exchange: https://newplayexchange.org/users/16881/sam-mauceri

ADULTING WITH YOU, by Ayla Sullivan

WADE. Honey, listen, I know I haven’t been the most, like, available person to you these past few months. My depression naps aren’t even naps anymore, they’re just me pretending that sleeping for sixteen hours at a time is something I can get away with; the neighbors keep threatening to call social services because they think we’re neglecting a screaming baby every time I have, like, a gentle, I mean really mild, panic attack when the dishwasher makes the, you know, the (inhuman screeching buzz no dishwasher would ever make) sound; and you know I see you give me those pity eyes, which I know you don’t mean to look like that and I’m not saying I don’t appreciate you being so supportive because you are my purpose and my muse and all that shit, which is to say I think you would be really proud of me today.

For one, I took a shower. I know. It’s basic, but I took a shower at 9 AM. Which you know means I naturally woke up at 8 and grumbled to the stillness of our apartment about existence and, like, if anything I do even matters and if I can mentally prepare myself for Jeff to call me his “Golden Girl of espresso sales” no matter how many fucking times I tell him to stop calling me something so patronizing and gross and when I got out of the shower and I saw myself I didn’t disassociate and wish I saw something better. I just saw me and I saw someone who lives somewhere they are loved and where the shower water is the perfect temperature.

And then, Babe, I listened to three podcasts today. Different ones! On the way to work, on the way home, fucking just casually when I was walking around Target. Yeah, I fucking went to Target today too. I looked in—not just the dollar section—I went to the motherload. I went to every home and bath decoration section because I was thinking about us. And thinking like how great it would be if I could get us those gold terrarium things with the succulents and like antlers for some reason because every nice catalogue home has those gold antlers for some reason and, and, and, what I really want to say is that I’m like a real fucking person because of you. Like, holy shit, you’ve got me…domesticated.

More information: aylaxc.sullivan (at) gmail (dot) com

 

Maddox, from Just The Way It Is, by Rory Starkman

MADDOX: Ugh. What am I doing? Okay. Dear Mom. I’m writing this letter to tell you something very important that’s going on in my life that you might not understand. To be fair, a lot of the time I don’t understand myself, but I know we haven’t been close and you want to know about my life. So, here goes. Do you remember when I was younger and I wanted to be a boy? Sure, you indulged me by shopping in the boys section every now and then, but you never really gave up on seeing me as your beautiful little girl. I was always forced to wear a skirt or a dress at fancy occasions and you always bought me tight pink shirts that I hated. But I thought you’d love and accept me more if I maintained a certain degree of femininity. I know it’s not your fault; it’s the social construction of the gender binary. Let me explain. The gender binary says you can be one of two things only; male or female, boy or girl. But it’s a social construct. We made it up! It isn’t real, but we don’t think to question it! You didn’t and I didn’t either. So I’m not blaming you. I understand that we are all just humans working with what we’re shown, how we learn, and our experiences. So Mom, what I really want to say is that I’m not a boy or a girl. I’m not your daughter. I’m just your kid and I don’t want to be gendered as a female anymore. I’m also changing my name to Maddox now and I would appreciate it if you would start calling me that. This has been slow to change and very hard for me, but the process has certainly begun and I know now that it will never end. Love you. (to Maggie) There. Now what do you have to say for yourself?

Context: Maddox is a non-binary trans identified person who spends the whole play recounting their life as assigned female at birth; trying to be a girl named “Maggie”, while discovering their own gender identity in all of its complexity. In the play, Maggie is another character and is present during this monologue to argue with Maddox’s points. The letter is equally to Maddox’s mother as well as their past self, Maggie. The monologue occurs in the show as Maddox realizes the moment when they began to have control over the body that they share with Maggie.

More information:  rorystrongman (at) gmail (dot) com

 

Luna and Zodiac, from The Interrobangers and the Mystery of the Foggy Bluffs Monster, by Sloth Levine

LUNA: I’m learning that there’s an interplay between being queer and believing in magic. In monsters, aliens, ghosts. Look, I’m real. I’m not a girl and I’m not a boy, which people don’t believe. But I live in, I am, this in-between space. Everything’s built on the facts of gender. But I am my own proof that those rules mean nothing unless you want them to. It’s a secret I get to keep to myself. But I feel like I’m a goblin inhabiting a human body. And sometimes that starts to hurt, and sometimes the world feels like it’s falling apart. I’m the opposite of those crazy people in rubber costumes, the ones we investigate. They dress up like horrors to scare people away or feel powerful, but underneath it’s always a human committing a crime. I’m a human, but not in the same way. Or maybe exactly the same way. But I know that there is more to being a human than being a boy or girl, or straight or just gay. And that’s a kind of magic. So if I exist, then who is to say that some monsters aren’t just costumes? Maybe all the way through, there are animals that aren’t human, that aren’t strictly flesh and blood.

Context: Playing off of tropes from tv series like The X Files, Scooby Doo, and Twin Peaks, 4 teenagers and a dog investigate a monster that may or may not have kidnapped one of them six years earlier.

Luna is a non binary person who has relied on science and reason to make it through high school. They are the valedictorian, but not well liked by their classmates until Zodiac moves back into town. Zodiac introduces his study of aliens and the supernatural to Luna, and they bond over their uncertain queer identities.

*****

ZODIAC: It feels like I’m not here. I can hear you but it feels like you’re on the other side of a window holding a walkie talkie. Like when you’re looking through binoculars and you suddenly become aware of the sides of the lenses. And you’re not holding them right up to your eyes. But you can still kind of see through the glass. I think it’s the aliens. It’s like. Sometimes they check in on me. And they push me out of the way a little bit. You know, I think they just wanted to study human beings. And for some reason they chose me. But they chose wrong. Because I’m not a human being. I’m just not quite there. And it’s their fault. Maybe I was a human being until they decided to look at me. If they didn’t do this, I could, I could probably just. Be alive. And not feel like I was trapped inside of this.

Context: Zodiac was abducted when he was 12. The police insist he was abused by a man who worked as a janitor at his school. Zodiac is now 18 and believes he was actually abducted by aliens and dealing with a government conspiracy. In this monologue he experiences dissociation as his friends try to help him find his lost dog, the one constant in his life since the abduction.

More information: slothlevine (at) gmail (dot) com