This story has been intertwined with my life for the better part of two years, as I lived in awe of playwright Abel Marquez’s vision and story development into the Piece you are about to see. At our table read I lamented that I was not entirely sure I was the man for the job, to Direct, but would give it every ounce of my being, to do it. About three weeks into rehearsals for My Brother’s Keeper, I began to awaken for the day with this deep sense of deep dread and anxiety as though my body was whispering to me, “you are in mortal danger; something is terribly wrong, do not venture further.” These pangs of unabated tension continued throughout the week and I navigated our rehearsals with professionalism, tact, and poise, but whenever I would leave the rehearsal space, this feeling came pounding back, even louder and more confrontational: “STOP. PLEASE,” it begged. Feeling these emotions were related to stresses of Directing, I did the requisite breathing exercises and meditation but-- it still wasn’t enough. So, leaning into our story, I began to journal, and one of the first fleeting thoughts I committed to paper was, “it feels hard to be me with this secret.” I was in shock. I have been an out Queer Latino for the past five years and have created a life I am proud of. However, on a subconscious level at some infinitesimal void, my body is still holding on to this perceived secret, in survival mode to maintain the illusion of being a straight-passing man.
There is a looming darkness and profound sense of dreaded solitude, at the geneses of the many lives of boys and young men who begin to understand they are different. It begins with a look, or a verbal correction. “Don’t walk that way,” “don’t talk that way,” “What’s the matter with you?” We’re often taught that this difference is malignant and detrimental, but most importantly, a phase, something to outgrow or escape from. We can never fully step into the space that was furnished for us, since our conception, the fundamental notion that, “I am queer.” We are then faced with a choice, live or die. And if we do choose to live with ourselves, do we enter the world, authentically, or foreclose and split from our truth, and live in that lonely world of suppressing and masking who we really are? My Brother’s Keeper, at its foundation, is a ghost story and a haunting of the echoes, whispers, and reverberations of the souls that begged to be loved and validated for their authentic selves, who each went on this same journey of authentication or fallacy.
In Aztec culture, the Nahuatl people would ask the names of strangers with the phrase, “que timotca?” or, “how were you planted?” The journey of life was getting back to the roots of your name and honoring its meaning and where you came from. This story is a Dickensian journey of that same
