“The first part of the program was built around gaining theater skills, and bringing in guest artists to really inspire the piece, and the other last half is the actual piece that we’re presenting on Thursday and Friday.” Restivo said.

For Queeriosity, the youth devised and wrote the entire piece, but the directors brought in Amy Berlin, of ComedySportz improviser to teach the youth improv. Other community members, like Beth Marschak, Diversity Richmond’s board chair, and a number of corporations and company leaders to discuss Richmond’s LGBTQ history.Managing director of RTP Phil Crosby discussed LGBT history overall and the directors also brought in local drag artists.

Restivo said the stories of the local LGBTQ community from years past had a big impact on the students.

“Something at the beginning of the program with the LGBT history, it was a lot of, ‘wow I had no idea that Richmond had that history,’ he said.

Kendall Bruffy, a sophomore at Henrico High School, got involved to gain more experience in theater and support the LGBTQ community.

“It’s theatre and I haven’t done a lot of theatre in the Richmond community, I’ve done a lot of after school theatre, but never done anything close to professional theatre so that was one of the big things that interested me,” she said. “Also the fact that it was with RTP, because it’s that LGBT activism that I have a lot of spirit towards.”

Bruffy said being able to write something collaboratively with other peers was the most interesting aspect for her.

The production came to life after an online survey that the youth of SPECTRUM took themselves, and sent out to their friends and the community to find out how they received their education on LGBTQ issues.

“How did you learn about LGBTQ issues, how did you learn about different vocabulary and the LGBT dictionary and a lot of their answers were from online,” said Bruffy.

Burke said even before sending out the survey, and just talking with the youth, they were already “well-versed in queer culture.”

“It’s indicative of the internet culture right at their finger tips; once we kind of tapped into that and recognized that commonality. So that’s how Tulip comes to find herself there,” she said.

Zoe Cotzias, a senior at Henrico High School, was instrumental in getting a group together for SPECTRUM after finding out about the program while taking theater over the summer at Maggie Walker Governor’s School.

“I quickly became involved and got all of my friends involved,” she said. “We have so many friends that either belong and identify as queer and identify with the LGBT community or are strong allies of it and would love to support in any way possible.”

Cotzias said the production was a great experience to get to know the others involved and learn from them to create a piece together.

“We started out with a lot of education, a lot of getting to know each other,  and building a big relationship,” she said. “We were bouncing ideas off of each other and a lot of times it would start off as a joke and we were like, ‘well, what if that were a piece,’ and some of them were issues we were having at school, issues we were having in our everyday lives.”

Cotzias, who identifies as queer, said she wanted to get involved with the program to explore LGBTQ education outside of the internet and create a piece that revolved around issues she and other individuals in the LGBTQ community were facing.

“It’s very difficult to get that education and get a reliable source of information for that education, almost the entire piece is about how a lot of queer education comes from the internet and while it’s a great source, it’s not alway the most reliable source,” she said. “The education aspect of SPECTRUM is hugely important and also a place that people can come together and create something that’s about themselves. We’re so used to hiding ourselves, this a very open space.”

In Queeriosity, Cotzias said attendees will get to see them focus on serious topics, but they also kept an element of comedy in there to keep it fun.

Once SPECTRUM wraps Queeriosity, they will start getting the gears turning for their next production so any youth that are looking to get involved please contact them here.

Queeriosity: The Conversation No One Wants to Have will be held at Richmond Triangle Players on Altamont Avenue this Thursday and Friday. Tickets are $5 to the general public and free for students.