We recently connected with Lucky Stiff and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Lucky , thanks for joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

In 2019 I had the opportunity to work on a production of Hundred Days by The Bengsons and Sarah Gancher, a soaring folk-punk concert musical chronicling the Bengsons’ personal journey through their whirlwind courtship which led to their eventual marriage, at Kokandy Productions in Chicago. As one of the first productions to cast performers who were not the Bengsons themselves, we had questions about how to faithfully represent the journey the couple underwent while utilizing their personal story to illustrate universal questions about love and living; while we could have cast as close to type as possible, we instead chose to cast interesting performers who did not necessarily look like the Bengsons to channel the spirit of the couple. We made it all the way to opening night before the worldwide COVID crisis shut us down, not knowing if the production would ever return

When Kokandy reached out to remount the production the world had vastly changed and the artists in our production were no exception. We rethought the process of making theater in ways that we had never questioned before; in pay structures, in casting (we expanded the cast and orchestration), and in the audience we were attempting to reach. In addition to these intentional changes, unimagined dominos fell when some of our cast members, including one of the romantic leads, began pandemic-instilled gender journeys, a fact that was suddenly un-ignorable to reviewers and audience members and changed my own life. The production sparked hard but necessary conversations with many folks close to me who had trouble wrapping their brains around a gender nonconforming romantic lead. Being forced to defend the idea that someone who was worthy of love AND deeply beautifully humanly flawed AND not fitting a traditional straight-presenting mold forced me to admit that I myself was worthy of love, and feedback from gender nonconforming audience members made me realize these conversations were happening in many living rooms on a scale I had not realized. When I think back in the future to art I’ve made that has had a real, personal impact in folks lives, I will remember Hundred Days.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’ve been working in theater on small and large scale for most of my life, but intensely for the past 20 years. I’m an interdisciplinary artist who believes the boundaries between art forms are arbitrary and limiting, but most often find myself working as a director, writer, or performer. From the moment I saw a human-sized crescent moon sitting on a four poster bed at a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, I knew I wanted to create visually-driven performance events that were elemental, evocative, and sensual. I founded experimental performance companies in Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz CA to produce experimental interpretations of golden age musicals and original dance-theater pieces sometimes involving puppetry, then moved to Chicago in 2013 to earn my MFA in Directing for Theater at Northwestern University while establishing an internationally recognized solo performance practice.

My work combines nightlife culture and performance art with elements of traditional theater, and has been featured at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Steppenwolf Theatre, Goodman Theater, Boy Friday Dance Company, Bushwig Festival of Drag and more. Last year I directed The Jury by Jonathan Bauerfeld and Casey Kendall, an original life-affirming musical set against the opioid epidemic in the Pacific Northwest (NYC), co-directed Get Out Alive, an afropunk musical about mental health written by and starring Nikki Lynette (Chicago), and directed and performed in an original workshop of a site-specific one-audience member drag show for hotel rooms at Mercury Store in Brooklyn NY. I am currently directing a workshop of Book of Names, a new musical telling post-war immigration stories at Ellis Island by Jon Bauerfeld and Casey Kendall at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

Pay a universal living wage for artists, and provide housing for them.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

So many opportunities that you think are handed out on the basis of merit are actually given on the basis of self-submission and networking. I learned just this year that the 30 under 30 list and the Pulitzer Prize in literature are self-submissions. I never even knew to try.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.luckystiffdrag.com
• Instagram: @lucky.stiff
• Twitter: @luckystiff2
• Other: @lucky.stiff on Tiktok

Image Credits
Gracie Meier, Liz Lauren, Justin Barbin (top and bottom), Erik Michael Kommer (top and bottom)