We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Maybe Stewart a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Maybe, thanks for joining us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?
I consider myself immensely lucky in that I have quite a few projects which come to mind, but I’ll go with the most recent. Back in 2018, The Bridge Initiative (TBI) approached me about creating a new work that focuses on the theme of gender expansiveness. I was thrilled by the prospect, and agreed to work with them on creating something new. Over the following year, that seed grew into a unique concept of a play (JUST BE) that threw aside both theatrical and gender norms, using the narrative of my trans journey as a jumping off point — an utterly horrifying concept for a playwright that prefers their roles to happen off screen.
This creative process, as with so many things birthed in 2018-2019, was met with unprecedented curve balls. The workshop we had been building toward for nearly a year was cancelled just as we were finalizing our cast list, and as with theatre and the rest of the world, everything was put on pause when the pandemic hit. While this was a disappointment, the first shut down of the pandemic gave me much needed time for further healing and self-discovery, and when it was time for us to hit the ground running once more, myself and the script were much stronger than that we initially started with.
As soon as theatre began its grand come back last year, discussions picked up anew over when JUST BE would have its first in-person workshop production. For those unfamiliar with the new works process, much of a play’s early life occurs in brief workshopping periods, usually resulting in a “staged reading” that allows for minimal staging and actors performing with script in hand so that the playwright can hear and address problem spots or rewrite sections as needed. However, as with everything on this play, our process looked a bit different.
Because I had so long to sit with the first drafts of JUST BE during the shut down, the script was in a place where it needed a more complete production for me to see where those changes were needed. So, it was decided that we would have a two month rehearsal period, resulting in a 1 week run of performances sharing a space with TBI’s mainstage production of A FEMININE ENDING at the Tempe Center for the Arts back in January of this year. It was my goal to put together a highly diverse, primarily queer cast of individuals, and auditions did not disappoint. Over the course of a few hours, I was able to put together the perfect cast for such a strange piece of theatre.
JUST BE, ultimately, is about acceptance and found family, and in our two months of rehearsals, that’s what we all discovered. A safe, brave space to just be, existing as ourselves, while telling a story that became a part of us all. While the show itself still has a great deal of development left before it’s ready for its full debut, the journey so far has been one of the most uplifting, wholesome, and healing I’ve ever experienced. I never planned to tell my story in such a public-facing way, much less be on stage to do it myself; but JUST BE has healed me in ways I didn’t know were possible. To be given not only the space and time I need, but also the power to tell my story in the way I see fit, and truly take ownership of it, is an incredible opportunity. To see my story then have a healing effect on others is the kind of happy “ending” I thought was only possible on the stage and screen.
Maybe, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
My name is Maybe Stewart, I use they/he pronouns, and I am a disabled, neurodivergent, trans, non-binary playwright, novelist, and multi-hyphenate theatre artist that regularly moonlights as a diversity and disability advocate and educator. Currently, I am working as a Covid Compliance Officer for The Phoenix Theatre Company, an artistic staff member for The Bridge Initiative, and a variety of other theatre contracts around the valley.
While most theatre artists find their passion and career early in life performing in middle or high school plays, it is a long running joke that theatre kidnapped me kicking and screaming — which isn’t all false. I’ve had a deep love of Shakespeare since I was only 10 or 12, and my wife often says the Bard raised me more than my parents did, but I didn’t find theatre until my sophomore year of undergrad. One of my professors happened to be one of the foremost Shakespearean scholars in the world at the time, and midway through the semester, he suggested I attend auditions for TWELFTH NIGHT at a local company.
Thinking it would earn me his favor (and nothing else), I showed up, made a fool of myself, emailed him I’d done it, and went home certain I’d never hear another thing about it. Two weeks later, I was at my first rehearsal, playing the role of Malvolio. It was a fun process, during which I met one of my closest friends to this day, and began to realize what love and support actually looked like, but I had no intention of continuing theatrical work. That is, until a couple cast mates showed up at the Starbucks where I was studying for finals and physically carried me to the theatre building for auditions across campus. There we met an additional friendly face, who had already filled out my audition form and informed me I was next in line. I haven’t looked back since, and I don’t know that I’d be here today if it wasn’t for that intervention.
Most of my early career revolved around the classics, particularly Shakespeare, which is still a passion of mine. But these days, I feel most at home in the new works scene, and my focus has shifted to shows that highlight life on the margins of society. There’s nothing quite like the rejuvenating excitement in a workshop rehearsal space, and my shows are often built collaboratively from the ground up, thriving in that energy. The first play I co-wrote and produced was based off improvised devised movement developed during a month-long workshop, followed by two months of feverish writing with my creative partner, and capped by a month of rehearsals and a three week run of performances. My works tend to focus on trans, autistic, asexual or aromantic, and disabled storylines featuring highly diverse casts, digging into systematic oppression, found family, and misconceptions around gender, sexuality, mental illness, and disability.
What I am most proud of as an artist is what I believe makes my work different than that of many artists around me, and that is the ability to intentionally create a brave, safe, diverse space in which every artist feels they have a voice that will not only be heard, but advocated for. It is common on the first day of rehearsal for each member of the creative team to give a little talk and set expectations for the process, and I have always introduced myself first as an advocate, second as an artist. I strongly feel that every creative room benefits from a vast array of lived experience, and am committed to diversity in every aspect of how I work. Because of this, I have been able to cultivate a space where everyone on the team can confidently speak up when they are uncomfortable, which in turn allows my teams to be more vulnerable and honest both on and off stage.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
A few come to mind, but one in particular stands out — most likely because The Bridge Initiative just produced a workshop of JUST BE, the play I wrote about it.
Back about 6 years ago now, I was in a rough place. I was fairly fresh out of college, still dealing with the fallout of my family falling apart, struggling with my sexual and gender identity, and deep in the throws of severe PTSD. I was on my own, with most of my found family scattered around the country at various grad schools, fully estranged from my blood family, and suffering the worst downswing I’d ever experienced in my disabilities with no access to healthcare. I was in my wheelchair about 90% of the time, and unable to hold down a full time job. My dreams of acting had been crushed the year before by a rare brain malformation, and I was desperately trying to build a career in directing, writing, and stage management.
After losing my fourth job in as many months, the only reason I wasn’t sleeping in my car (or driving it off the nearest mountain, as I frequently fantasized) was the love and support of my fellow theatre artists. I was barely old enough to drink, and was homeless for the second time. My roommate and his family did their best to keep the roof over my head, while I drove Postmates from 4am to 2pm every day just to keep gas in the tank and my cellphone on, worked various theatre gigs in the evenings trying to scrabble together a career, and applied to every job I was remotely suited for (about 20 applications a day) in what downtime was left over. When I didn’t have the apartment to fall back on, I slept in a sleeping bag on the floor of a warehouse in downtown Phoenix, which at the time served as a performance space for Aside Theatre Company. I was serving as their Associate Artistic Director at the time after almost accidentally bringing the company back to life from a 3 year hiatus, where I was responsible for play selections, casting, hiring, marketing, and whatever else needed doing.
But as weeks turned to months turned to years of burning the candle at every end just to survive, something had to give. My roommate and his family were unable to continue their aid, and I had less than a month to find either a new roommate or a new place to stay — a difficult feat when I hadn’t had a stable job in over a year. Thankfully, I finally landed my first interview in a year of frantic applications, and landed a job writing SEO content 8 hours a day for a local web marketing company. It was a dream job: consistent hours that worked with theatre, a boss that was forgiving of my disabilities, and I got to write all day, even if it was about such mundane things as concrete and water damage remediation.
There, I met a friend we’ll call Adam. He was a pre-transition trans man working on the sales floor who picked me out as non-binary almost before I did, and we quickly became fast friends. We were in similar places in our lives, and only a month after I met him, he found himself in a very similar housing situation to myself. When I discovered he had been sleeping on a park bench for three nights, I immediately told him of my own desperate need for a roommate. He moved in a week later, and for about a month, it looked like things had finally turned a corner for the better.
Then, his best friend from high school ODed. He was set to travel to Portland for the week of the funeral, and loop down to San Diego after to see his dying mother for another week before coming home. This was in 2019, when we were seeing the largest uptick in trans murders in recent history, with over 20 happening in a single month. And as those 20 murders were being reported, one for nearly every day, Adam went missing the day he was set to take a Greyhound home, and no one heard from him for 35 days. By the time I finally received a text from him, I was fully expecting a call any day informing me they’d found his body in the desert somewhere between Phoenix and San Diego. His story had a happier ending than that I’d been bracing for, but not by much — he’d been in the hospital following a suicide attempt after his ex-fiance (from before he came out as trans) accosted him at the bus station, and hadn’t had access to his phone.
On day 20 of Adam’s disappearance, I came out publicly as trans, and I have been a loud advocate for my community ever since. As a writer and artist, and someone that grew up deep in the white supremacist brand of Christianity, I know in my bones that art can change people’s perspectives more effectively than nearly any other forum, because that’s what it did for me. Now, I want my works to bridge that gap for others. My goal is always to foster safety through empathy and understanding, which is why my plays focus on what life is really like for marginalized identities. This experience helped crystalize that philosophy for me, and I now hope that when you leave a performance of one of my works, you walk out with newfound empathy for people with different lived experience than you.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
I am constantly unlearning lessons from my youth, and I’d like to think that unlearning gets more intentional with every passing year. My father was a “non-denominational” (read: undercover evangelical) pastor for the first 15 years of my life, during which the family lived in 12 different houses scattered through 6 states spanning from the west coast to the east. I was homeschooled during that time, and essentially left on my own to keep track of my education and that of my two younger siblings, who I all but raised.
While Christianity in general has a poor track record when it comes to matters of systematic oppression, my family was part of a family of churches that was once an American empire, before it toppled under the weight of a class-action law suit due to rampant instances of sexual abuse that were swept under the rug by leadership, which multiple members of my small family were victims of. My father’s final assignment was at a small, 99% white church in Ohio, which I would now classify as an actual cult. My entire childhood and early adulthood, I was surrounded by so much white privilege, ignorance, and not-so-internalized racism and homophobia that I truly didn’t know anything else. I was surrounded by an echo chamber of similar experiences and thoughts, with no exposure or access to people and knowledge beyond it. To this day, it terrifies me how close I came to becoming the very people I now fear.
It is only thanks to my found family in theatre that my eyes were opened to how privileged and ignorant I was (and sometimes still am), even to my own suppressed queerness. I have dedicated the last 6 years of my life to learning as much as I can about cultures and experiences different from my own, understanding my white privilege and how it affects the people around me, and learning how to better advocate for those around me. I firmly believe that educating myself on the deeply intrenched systemic oppression of our country will be an ongoing task for the rest of my life, I am a much kinder, safer, and understanding person now than I once was, and I count myself beyond blessed that theatre dragged me here kicking and screaming.
My journey of educating myself on matters of equality and diversity continues, but I consider it my greatest honor that marginalized identities of all kinds in my community now consider me not only a safe person to work with, but an advocate they can depend on.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.maybestewartartist.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maybestewartartist/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/maybestewartartist
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkxPgdAkPKQtT_Zyo-UdoZA
- Other: Read about my worlds: https://www.worldanvil.com/w/outspoken-maybestewartartist Check out my plays: https://newplayexchange.org/users/32505/maybe-stewart Support The Bridge Initiative: https://www.bridgeinit.org/ Stream JUST BE: https://www.bridgeinit.org/justbe/
Image Credits
Reg Madison Photography, Laura Durant Creative, Brianna Fallon, Maybe Stewart