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Local LGBTQ youth theatre program SPECTRUM explores queer education in the modern age
Read More: Henrico High School, LGBTQ youth, queer life, Richmond Triangle Players, Social Media, SPECTRUM, TheatreLAB

This week, local high school students will explore what it means to be LGBTQ in today’s world as part of Queeriosity: The Conversation No One Wants to Have, a production put on by SPECTRUM.
SPECTRUM is a LGBTQ youth outreach program run in partnership by Richmond Triangle Players and TheatreLab for youth to create a production that’s uniquely their own with the guidance of mentors and program directors.
“For me its about the creation, but its also about community and providing a safe space where people can grow and connect with others and have their voices heard,” said program director Chelsea Burke, who’s been involved with SPECTRUM since its inception in 2014. “There was a lot of conversation around identity, self, and openness and being educated… then we stepped more into the theatrical devising side after the new year.”
SPECTRUM’s Queeriosity follows a young girl named Tulip as she uses the internet and all its vast resources to explore the basics of queer life touching on serious issues to more light-hearted ones.
“[Tulip] is very naive and doesn’t really understand what sexuality is,” said production manager Lucian Restivo. “Though out the piece, she stumbles upon the best learning material ever, the Internet… YouTube, Tumblr, all that stuff, social media, and finding out what all these queer terms mean. All of these are a learning lesson for her as she goes through the night.”
Restivo added the audience will see Tumblr posts, YouTube videos and other social media aspects come to life on stage as Tulip explores LGBTQ culture. The piece ultimately aims to shine light on finding your “authentic self” and what queer means to other people.
The six youth in this year’s SPECTRUM program, mostly Henrico High School students, spent 22 weeks working on the piece, learning storytelling and performance techniques from community experts and mentors through workshops and classes.
“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.

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