Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Artemis Montague. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Artemis, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

I’ve known that I was interested in music since I was 5-6 years old because I wanted to be a singer like Britney Spears, Monica, and Brandy, icons of 90s popular music. loved singing, dancing (poorly), and eventually writing. I wrote my first song “My Way” when I was in 3rd grade and thought I was starting a girl group called “HFM”. I also wrote short scenes in the mid-90s at my birthday parties. I mean, I always knew I wanted to be a part of that world, and what music would mean to me hasn’t ever changed, but my interactions with it have. I lost my way several times.

Before committing to music writing in and out of theatre, I wanted to go to McGill University to study human rights law and get a PhD in Medical Sociology. In addition, I never got over my painful stage fright and still struggle with feeling competent enough since certain opportunities to learn music theory and how to play an instrument missed me. I also got disillusioned with the structural –isms (racism, misogynoir and transphobia, fatphobia, ableism, etc.) that affected my experiences with music and theatre.

Therefore, I knew I wanted to be in music my whole life, but I only thought I could eventually make a career of this stuff since April 2021 when I met mentors like Julianne Merrill and Brian Usifer as well as collaborators through MUSE and MAESTRA, organizations dedicated to help musicians of Color and women and nonbinary musicians in musical theatre. They validated my experiences and my way of writing and helped me learn skills to better communicate musically.

I will say that I’m still trying to work on my audition and personal performance skills. Baby steps!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My mentors have told me to call myself a “multihyphenate” because I do a lot of things, but I say “musical multihyphenate” because you can be good at anything and hyphenate them, such as “scientist-artist-philosopher”. That is still a multihyphenate.

Anyway, I am a Black, mixed, queer, and nonbinary composer, lyricist, performer, director, producer, top-liner, and so on. I write music; I write musicals (book, music, and lyrics); and I’m working on 2 film scripts. I’ve had my work shown at 54 Below via the 2022 Write Out Loud Contest, at which I was a Finalist for my song “friend”; The Green Room 42 with my musical, SHE SINGS ME HOME; and at the Kennedy Center, with the help of Ally Theatre Company, where I debuted via livestream SHE SINGS ME HOME’s initial draft in November 2020. I am the IIDEAA (DEIA but with Intersectionality and Accountability added) Board Chair for TEMPO – Trans Expansive Music Professional Organization, which has similar aspirations as MUSE and MAESTRA but for Trans and Gender Expansive folks. Lastly, I’ve received the Agenda Grant from Audiofemme for the creation of my first EP and a micro-grant from The National Disability Theatre for my work.

I think, for better or worse, something that sets me apart as a singer-songwriter is that I layer my voice in Logic to create these songs. I unfortunately don’t play a tangible instrument like guitar or piano, but I’m able to write jazz, blues, gospel, soul, and rock music with clarity and a lot of harmonies (usually 3-5 harmonic vocal lines in most of my songs). I’m learning to read music theory right now to better translate my work for others, but this skill has served me well so far.

I am proud of my musicals, SHE SINGS ME HOME and RHAPSODY IN SUNFLOWER YELLOW, which are both Black-, queer-, and trans-led; I’m proud of the sheer amount of writing I’ve done in my life (140+ songs); I’m proud of my Women and Gender Studies degree, which enabled me to have the structural analysis underlying all my works; I’m proud of coming home to the genres I grew up with and mixing them with the evolving sensibilities I have about music.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I was misdiagnosed as bipolar as a teenager due to volatile mental health episodes and a lot of terrible years. I spent over a decade on medications that did not help and structuring therapy and my life in way that hurt me and others around me. I’ve lost myself and others, falling into despair many times, which you can hear in a lot of my songs and works that relate to my life like in SHE SINGS ME HOME. Nevertheless, there’s almost always a level of hope lying beneath the music or the lyric and, in early 2021, I finally was able to convince doctors, therapists, my friends and family, and myself that not only was I not bipolar, but that I had C-PTSD. That realization stemmed from that hope that lives beneath the surface of my skin that I think I was always trying to dig out.

Naming those things and going on medications for C-PTSD changed my life. Also, offering myself the accommodations I need as a probably autistic person gave me the headspace to tackle my trauma, channel it into my art, and finally start learning skills that will support longevity in these industries.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

To be understood and to understand; to connect and feel connected; to reach out to people like me and to those who aren’t like me but empathize with me and others’ struggles; and to change perceptions of what popular music can look like, in and out of theatre.

I also want to make a living doing this stuff, but that’s just me wanting to change my material reality so I afford to make music and write for the rest of my life.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.sunflowereyesproductions.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gotsunflowereyes/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gotsunflowereyes/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@gotsunflowereyes
• Other: https://linktr.ee/sunflowereyesproductions

Image Credits
Amanda Leigh Ponce (SHE SINGS ME HOME poster and logo for SEP)