Intended Audience
Free Event - to make reservations, email the Theater Box Office boxoffice@smcm.edu
St. Mary's College of Maryland Performing Arts Program is proud to present Chosen Family Values directed by Amy Steiger
We interlock with those before and after us in mutually strengthening connections. There is no clear line from one to another, instead we crisscross and weave creating living breathing networks of knowing constantly moving in and out of each other's lives like a kaleidoscope. That interwoven, interlocking nature of our community feels like security. – from an interview with a member of the community.
Four queer characters in Southern Maryland – Lauren Ipsum, a librarian, Q Smith-Smith, a stage manager, Old Bae, a drag performer, and Stormy, an activist – can’t agree on the best approach to an event to build LGBTQIA connections in the face of ongoing struggles. Should it be a lecture and panel discussion, a play, a party, or a protest? As they engage in conversations with and learn more about members of their local community, they take us on a kaleidoscopic journey that constantly changes time, place, persona, and perspective to weave a theatrical net of protection made stronger by their differences.
Drawing on verbatim interviews with members of LGBTQIA2S+ communities in Southern Maryland and on SMCM’s campus, students devised and wrote this play in a course on Community-Based Theater – which is theater created in, with, for, and about particular local communities to explore issues of concern to them - at St. Mary’s College of Maryland in Fall 2023.