“Lights”
“Check”
“Camera!”
“Check– wait, um. No, not check, I have no idea where James is.”
Opening night is always an adventure. Actors rushed, drinks spilled, and bodies collided backstage as the director tried to get everyone in place. Within the chaos, however, was something beautiful.
Mac
Fifteen year old, aspiring comic artist. Coming from a long line of “sports-ball players,” Mac always felt like the odd one out. Their notebook was filled with character sketches, some of whom were based on real life.
The first page held a portrait of a young 13 year old boy with buzzed hair, blue polo and a smile that didn’t touch his eyes.
The last page, of this particular notebook, held a portrait of someone filling the boy’s frame, but with different features. The blonde hair flowed over shoulders, covering an eye. The other eye, shadowed in blues and purples, rocked a sharp liner that cut towards their temple. The lips, glossed in pink, pulled the corners of their lips into a huge grin.
When Mac, the happy fifteen year old bearing some resemblance to the child on the first page with a different name, was asked to storyboard the play Lee was putting on, they jumped at the idea. It took over a year of after school sessions, iPad in hand as Lee spewed ideas into the void for Mac to translate into image.
Lee was very clear that casting would be for who fits the roles– race, gender, and grade level didn’t matter.
Lee
What mattered to Lee was art. He had known of the comic artist since fifth grade. They never really crossed paths, however. Not until the person he now called his best friend changed their name to Mac and joined the stage crew last year. This was the first time Lee had met anyone else who had gone through a transition. The memory of frilly pink dresses and grandmother’s speech about preparing to be a “good mother” creeped up, which he shoved away.
Three years ago, there was a play and not enough boys auditioned. The director, Miss Terry, saw Lee’s potential and sheepishly asked if he would be willing to play the male lead, Lee. The eighth grade girl, by a different name then, sheepishly agreed. Little did the director know, that girl was ecstatic for the opportunity to get out of her skin and into someone else’s. Little did the girl know that character would show her parts of herself she never knew existed. When she changed her name, it wasn’t that she was still playing “Lee,” but that she wished to honor the man who showed her he was allowed to exist. It was through the character that this new Lee, the young actor, found himself.
When Lee met Mac, he didn’t know what to think. Mac was terrible at stage crew, spending most of the rehearsals hidden away drawing. Subtle peeks over their shoulder revealed bright, colorful sketches and scenes of androgynous characters fighting monsters, racing dragons, and looking fabulous the whole time.
He had found his storyboard artist.
Miss Terry
Terry was surprised when Lee and Mac approached her with their play: A race of alien shapeshifters taking odd jobs to travel to Earth. She was initially skeptical about the alien’s agenda– to invade, of course– but as she thumbed through Mac’s storyboard and Lee’s script, she couldn’t hide her excitement.
Because the characters were shapeshifters, there were no traditional gender requirements for casting. Auditions were held based on personality– Golb was a domineering linguist– perfect for Sierra, a bilingual transfer student. Beep had a hard time controlling their powers– some days, they looked like a human girl, some times, and an adult man. Presently, the makeup team was making them look something like a melting marshmallow.
She smiled at Jake and May, carefully putting the puffy helmet-mask onto Mason, hiding the rosy cheeks and red lips from Beep’s last appearance.
Lee had insisted that the cast and crew all be filled by students. He had pressed the importance of art for art’s sake, “unadulterated by gender and society’s cage.” A little dramatic, but he made his point.
It made sense. There are decades of research into narrative therapy, art therapy, and expressive arts. Creative expression allows people to work through their emotions and better empathize with others (Intersection of art, 2024). To take on a character is to take on another person, another body, another life. For these kids, theater allowed them to explore parts of themselves that may be frowned upon in their daily lives. Beep‘s- Mason’s-
mother would be horrified if he came home in full makeup. But for a play? She donated makeup from her salon.
Gender is a performance. Even if it is a role banned on some stages, on this stage, becoming someone else is praised (even if that someone else is really the real you). (Wilhelm, 2024)
Lee and Mac’s Death of Isolation wasn’t the first performance to play with the concept of gender. Kabuki theater, known for men playing women-roles, had existed since the Edo period in Japan. Albeit, there were some shady sexist reasons, it is a foundational mark in history of the fluidity of gender under the mantle of art (Kabuki, 2025).
Honestly, she had learned so much from these kids already. Lee was killing it as a director, way beyond where she was at his age.
“Miss Terry!”
“Hmm?” She turned to see the stage manager, Kui, behind her, looking frantic. “What’s wrong?”
“We can’t find James!”
James
James stared at the destroyed A/V lab, breathless. Well, perhaps disheveled and ransacked was a better word. The show was starting in twenty minutes and he could not find the telephoto lens– the telephoto lens he borrowed from his grandfather that cost more than his mom’s car.
He had sworn he locked his gear in the lab but it wasn’t there. This was it. He was done. He’d turned every corner of the room inside out and it wasn’t there.
To his knowledge, he was the only straight guy on the crew. He was initially nervous when Lee approached him to record the show and get some still shots. Jame’s life, until this school year, had been spent alone or with the “tech nerds,” as his grandfather called them in jest. They weren’t bad people, but were definitely… missing some social software updates.
It had been common to use words that he now recognized as totally not okay. While he may have made fun of “guys wearing a dress,” with his friends before, now he just didn’t care. It was weird at first, being in a room with so many different people who he had avoided in the past. He could only imagine grandfather’s face if he were thrown into this situation.
But in art, it didn’t matter. He initially took on the job “with the gays” because running photo and film for a whole play would be a great resume builder before he graduated this spring. His family, obviously, would not be at opening night, but were proud of his skills and what that would mean for his future.
However, as rehearsals went on and he spent more time with Mac and Lee, he realized– they were just people. Yeah, he didn’t quite understand why they felt the need to change their names or wear stuff that, in James’s opinion, they didn’t quite pull off. But then again, people said the same thing about when he and his buddies played Magic the Gathering or cosplayed at ComicCon. The coolest part about coming onto the theater team was he got to see people from nearly every club and clique happy.
That was new. He and his D&D buddies had fun, but it was very surface level. Plus, they complained a lot about “society” and “judgemental freaks”– ironically while being judgy themselves.
James could hear the frantic movement of actors and crew down the hall. He heard laughter and excited giggles shushed by teachers trying to get people into position.
He couldn’t let them down. He and Mac had stayed after school countless days going through the storyboard to discuss lighting, angles, and set design. James wasn’t just setting up a tripod but was an integral part of capturing their vision.
These were the closest friends he had made in high school and now the play would be ruined because he couldn’t find the stupid–
“James”
James turned around to see Mac in the doorway, holding the telephoto lens. Without thinking, he rushed to them and wrapped the artist in a big bear hug. “You saved my life. I thought I ruined everything.”
Mac grinned and handed the lens over. “You left it by your tripod backstage. Be careful, I know how your grandpa can get.”
James blushed. “Honestly, I just didn’t want to mess up the recording and stress you out during your play.”
Mac rolled his eyes. “Our play. Come on, it’s show time”
You
It’s okay to be weird. It’s okay to perform a role that might be foreign– to you or those around you. As educators, parents, and adult humans just existing, we need to make sure the children in our life are not trapped in boxes. When we are trapped with the same people, the same stories, the same narratives we cannot grow. Inside a vacuum, there is no reference for right or wrong or what hurts or heals (Tietjen & Tirkkonen, 2023). Loneliness is the breeding ground of sadness, hate, and physical stress absorbed by mind and body (Brandt et al, 2022). The cure to suffering is a long, complicated journey that no one has the full answer to. However, we do know the first step.
It’s The Death of Isolation.
Blog written by Sentier therapist Paradise Foster, M.S., LPCC
References
Brandt, L. et al. (2022) The effects of social isolation stress and discrimination on Mental
Health, Nature News. Available at: Kabuki (2025) Encyclopædia Britannica. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/art/Kabuki
The intersection of art and health: How art can help promote well-being (2024) Mayo Clinic.
Available at: https://mcpress.mayoclinic.org/living-well/the-intersection-of-art-and-health-how-art-can-help-promote-well-being/
Tietjen, R.R. and Tirkkonen, S.K. (2023) The rage of lonely men: Loneliness and misogyny
in the online movement of ‘involuntary celibates’ (incels) – topoi, SpringerLink. Available at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11245-023-09921-6
Wilhelm, W. (2020) Gender is performance: Why Trans* Actors Should Transcend the
Character Breakdown, HowlRound Theatre Commons. Available at: https://howlround.com/gender-performance
