#doubleatlas

[playwrightsrealm]

Double Atlas: 6 Great Queer Horror Stories

As part of our #BeyondTheStage programming for MJ Kaufman's "Double Atlas," we're diving into the horror canon! According to MJ, "queer vampire narratives draw on a complicated history of iconography that is both problematic and reclaimed. The following is a list of great queer horror stories!"

Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1871)

Dracula's Daughter directed by Lambert Hillyer (1936)

Blood and Roses directed by Roger Vadim (1961)

Vampyros Lesbos directed by Jesús Franco (1971)

Daughter of Darkness directed by Harry Kumel (1971)

The Hunger directed by Tony Scott (1983)

[playwrightsrealm]

Double Atlas: a letter from the playwright

Last year I wrote for two seasons of a horror TV show. Uncharted terrain for me, I had to get up to speed on the horror cannon. I would leave the writers’ room each day with a list of horror films to watch that night. Soon I had fallen in love with the genre. But not with its transphobia.  Horror, it seemed to me, had a habit of using trans characters to exploit viewers’ discomfort with gender and sexuality, particularly their fears and biases around misogyny, transphobia and homophobia. Trans characters showed up rarely, and when they did, they were problematic villains or helpless victims, their stories centered on cheap reveal plots. Also they were almost exclusively transwomen. Like a microcosm for our larger culture, horror had almost no trans representation, and what it did have was deeply harmful.

When you have no good models of who you are (because you are trans or gender non-conforming), how do you figure out how to be? What to look like? How to act? I started writing this play because I wanted to explore the line between self-discovery and narcissism. When you have to be your own model, falling into narcissism is a dangerous trap. I also wanted to explore the complexity of long-term queer relationships–how much partners come to rely on each other for the validation the world does not provide. When there is so little validation for gender non-conformity in our world, where do we find it? Through gazing into the water at our own reflection? And how do we avoid the terrible fate of Narcissus?

This story emerged full of the conventions and tropes of horror that I was steeped in while writing it. A fully produced version would delve more deeply into the visual language of horror onstage.

MJ Kaufman's recent productions include Masculinity Max in the Public Theater Studio program, Sensitive Guys at InterAct Theater and A Walrus in the Body of a Crocodile at Clubbed Thumb. MJ’s work has also been produced and developed at WP Theater, Colt Coeur, New Conservatory Theatre Center, NAATCO, New York Theater Workshop, the New Museum, Yale School of Drama and Lark Play Development Center as well as in Russian in Moscow. Along with Kit Yan, MJ co-founded Trans Lab, a fellowship for TGNG theater artists. Recently MJ was a staff writer on Netflix’ "The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina."