This past Friday I had the honor of seeing the final preview performance of ‘Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress‘ as performed at the Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis.
I wrote about this play last week but seeing it performed was an amazing experience. Not only did I get to see the production, I also had a chance to meet and have a lovely conversation with the playwright, juliany taveras.
From the cast and creative team biographies:
juliany taveras (they/them/elle) is a storyteller from Ayití Bohio (Dominican Republic) by way of Lenapehoking (New York City). Their work, which centers the lives and liberation of the Afro/Indigenous and queer/trans diasporas, takes many forms, including playwriting, screenwriting, poetry, photography, graphic design, teaching artistry, and (perhaps most importantly) kinship.
We discussed the much needed representation of non-binary and gender non-conforming people in media, especially in material that is written for and intended for children. What kids have for representation is lightyears ahead of the “boys who wear girl clothes” are fetishists/gay/confused/comedy stereotypes that I saw during my formative years. I can’t imagine how positive portrayals of someone like myself would have impacted me growing up.
julinay is very much drawn towards telling stories about GNC people and we discussed some of their other projects about our community and different books that have gender queer/transgender representation in them.
After the play we discussed some of the subtle symbolism in the play and the very clear storytelling about how clothes can, and are, just clothes, and the only rules that a piece of clothing has are the ones we assign to them.
I want to thank juliany for their time and for their lovely work. Thank you to the Children’s Theatre Company and putting on such a wonderful production and for the invitation. Finally, a huge thank you to the cast and crew for their performance.
This play is only playing until November 19th and I encourage you to see it and support this work.
Love, Hannah
Hannah McKnight 
Hi Hanah
what a wonderful way to start the week!
thank you so much 🙃
🏳️🌈
bri
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Hi Hannah,
So nice to see a continued effort in the arts to highlight the importance of embracing diversity and the uniqueness that not just adults have, but start to form at a young age. We can only hope that future generations will remove blinders of conformity and appreciate everyone for who they are as a person, not on the clothes we wear, who we love, or what we look like.
Nadine
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Is that a boy or a girl? Looks like a girl…
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