From a distance

This has been a very strange week to be in Rome.

In the past week, on top of the happenings in my personal life, it's felt like everything back home is coming apart at the seams.

A lengthy exposé, long in the research phase and long, long overdue, came out in the Chicago Reader exposing the longstanding sexual, emotional and psychological abuse at a prominent storefront theatre in my hometown theatre scene. It's something I, like most of my friends and collaborators, had heard about for years, and my relief at finally seeing a publication having the guts to publish on what had been deftly swept under the rug for so long was tempered by my frustration at not being able to be there in person. (The same goes for the entire movement inspired by this theater company's abuse, as the larger community has worked to create support systems and safe spaces for survivors and to create a pilot program for a code of conduct designed to address bad behavior wherever it occurs in the non-Equity or Equity scene.)

And then, of course, the horrific massacre in Orlando. I have a ton of friends in the LGBTQ community, and seeing the outpouring of grief and anger while being so far away was frustrating and surreal. Layered on top of that was a deeper frustration driven by my pessimism that America has any ability or desire to change our grotesque, death-enabling gun laws. Watching it all play out on tvs in Italian coffee bars and on social media just amplified that sense of frustrated impotence. So we're back to the old routines: telling friends that they are loved, writing to congressional representatives to try to convince them to care about this sickening issue, and hoping that the futility and wretchedness of hate somehow loses, even though it keeps coming back around.

I'll have a post up about Rome (maybe a couple) in the day or two to come, but I wanted to briefly register how much my heart is back at home with my people, how much I love my friends and communities, and how strong that pull is to be there with y'all. Thank you for pushing ahead in this fight against all the horrible things in the world. I look forward to rejoining you soon.