Join me, Bryan Hlavinka, as I sit down with the insightful Brandon Mack to peel back the curtain on the Houston LGBTQ+ Political Caucus's intense endorsement process. Discover the weight such an endorsement carries and the grueling scrutiny candidates endure to secure this emblem of progressive support. We navigate the significance of Dr. Cody Pyke’s historic appointment and the essential healthcare services for incarcerated populations, illuminating the challenges and triumphs of advocacy within the system.
The episode takes a creative turn with Tamarie Cooper, co-founder and artistic director of the Catastrophic Theatre, as we discuss the powerful storytelling and satire in their productions. Explore the resonance of shared human experiences in the play "It Is Magic," and learn how the theater's 'pay what you can' model breaks down barriers to cultural experiences. Get a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the vibrant world of Houston's drag scene with Catastrophic Theatre's 'This Party is a Drag' gala, a testament to the art form's diversity and expression.
To wrap up, we delve into the evolution of Tamarie Cooper's one-woman shows that blend dance, storytelling, cooking, and live music to create authentic performances that defy traditional theater norms. And don't forget to check out QueerVoices.org for a wealth of information on the people and events we discuss. You'll come away from this episode with a deeper understanding of the intersections of bioethics, law, advocacy, and the arts, and the persistent fight to amplify underrepresented voices.
Queer Voices airs in Houston Texas on 90.1FM KPFT and is heard as a podcast here. Queer Voices hopes to entertain as well as illuminate LGBTQ issues in Houston and beyond. Check out our socials at:
https://www.facebook.com/QueerVoicesKPFT/ and
https://www.instagram.com/queervoices90.1kpft/
Join me, Bryan Hlavinka, as I sit down with the insightful Brandon Mack to peel back the curtain on the Houston LGBTQ+ Political Caucus's intense endorsement process. Discover the weight such an endorsement carries and the grueling scrutiny candidates endure to secure this emblem of progressive support. We navigate the significance of Dr. Cody Pyke’s historic appointment and the essential healthcare services for incarcerated populations, illuminating the challenges and triumphs of advocacy within the system.
The episode takes a creative turn with Tamarie Cooper, co-founder and artistic director of the Catastrophic Theatre, as we discuss the powerful storytelling and satire in their productions. Explore the resonance of shared human experiences in the play "It Is Magic," and learn how the theater's 'pay what you can' model breaks down barriers to cultural experiences. Get a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the vibrant world of Houston's drag scene with Catastrophic Theatre's 'This Party is a Drag' gala, a testament to the art form's diversity and expression.
To wrap up, we delve into the evolution of Tamarie Cooper's one-woman shows that blend dance, storytelling, cooking, and live music to create authentic performances that defy traditional theater norms. And don't forget to check out QueerVoices.org for a wealth of information on the people and events we discuss. You'll come away from this episode with a deeper understanding of the intersections of bioethics, law, advocacy, and the arts, and the persistent fight to amplify underrepresented voices.
Queer Voices airs in Houston Texas on 90.1FM KPFT and is heard as a podcast here. Queer Voices hopes to entertain as well as illuminate LGBTQ issues in Houston and beyond. Check out our socials at:
https://www.facebook.com/QueerVoicesKPFT/ and
https://www.instagram.com/queervoices90.1kpft/
Hello everybody. This is Queer Voices, a home-produced podcast that has grown out of a radio show that's been on the air in Houston, Texas, for several decades. This week, Brian Levinca talks with Brandon Mack about the Houston LGBTQ Plus political caucus candidate endorsement process.
Speaker 2:You can find our card on our website, thecaucasorg. We also have a specific website dedicated to our political action committee, the PAC. It's the paccaucasorg, or you can find it through a link through there. And in addition to that, the March primary election is going to be coming up during the first weekend in March, so it is right around the corner.
Speaker 1:Deborah Moncrief Bell has a conversation with Dr Cody Pike, who is the first transgender non-binary trustee of the Harris Health System.
Speaker 3:The US Constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. Part of that is making sure that while people are incarcerated, they have access to the standard of care for healthcare, and Harris Health, I think, does an amazing job making sure that we do provide good care to our patients when they are incarcerated at the jail.
Speaker 1:And Brett Cullum talks with Tamarie Cooper, the artistic director of Catastrophic Theatre, about their benefit Gaila next month, titled it's a Drag.
Speaker 4:We want people to come and celebrate the art form of drag, embrace your inner queens, kings, and everything outside of and in between. We're going to have wonderful drag performances, obviously. Right now I'm trying to negotiate with some very talented performers already here in Houston Queer.
Speaker 1:Voices starts now.
Speaker 5:This is Brian Levinke, and today I'm speaking with Brendan Mack of the H-Houston G-O-B-T Political Caucus, the screening chair and trustee, position number eight. Is that correct, brendan?
Speaker 2:That is correct, but just want to also correct that it is the Houston LGBTQ plus political caucus.
Speaker 5:I know you're in the busy process of endorsing candidates. Can you talk about that process and what goes into it?
Speaker 2:Our screening process, screening and endorsement process, first and foremost starts off with candidates submitting a questionnaire to the Houston LGBTQ plus political caucus because they want to seek our endorsement.
Speaker 2:So one thing I want to make very clear is that we as a community and as a caucus do not send questionnaires out to candidates to solicit them for our endorsements.
Speaker 2:They have to actively seek it. So we always release them and make them available to any candidate, from president of the United States all the way down to the end of the ballot for them to seek our endorsement. So once they submit the questionnaire, they go through a 45 minute to an hour long screening interview with our screening committee. The screening committee can be made up of any member of the caucus who has completed our candidate screener training and is an active member or a current member of the caucus, and they go through a screening interview. After that, all the candidates in that particular race are evaluated by our screeners on a point system based off of not only just the point system but also the interview, the screening questionnaire. There is a recommendation by the screeners in that particular screening committee that is then presented to the entire body and it is the entire LGBTQ plus political caucus that then ultimately votes on that particular endorsement. And all of that fun takes place at our endorsement meeting, which just passed this past almost two weeks ago, on January 27th, for the March primary.
Speaker 5:Why is the endorsement of the caucus so often sought out by the candidates?
Speaker 2:The reason why is because our card or our endorsements are widely considered to be the progressive slate. So it is often an indication to voters that if they have been endorsed by the caucus, that not only have they gone through a very rigorous screening and endorsement process, they are probably going to be regarded as the most progressive candidate in that particular race. Along with that, we have a wonderful infrastructure to support our candidates as a part of the Houston LGBTQ plus political caucus in the fact that not only do we distribute our card at polling places, we also phone bank. We also help them and support them in their get out the vote efforts. So there's a lot of infrastructure and support that candidates receive when they are endorsed by the caucus, and that's one of the reasons for why we're often sought out for our endorsement.
Speaker 5:How did you get involved with the caucus? I know you've been in it for a while.
Speaker 2:I am in my 10th year of being on the board of the caucus now and I got involved right after the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance unfortunate. Well, when it passed, I got involved and then unfortunately, as we all unfortunately remember it got repealed. That even increased my involvement of wanting to be a part of the caucus to talk about how our politicians can become better engaged with the LGBTQ plus community, but also how can we make sure that our caucus is reflecting all of the intersections that the beautiful LGBTQ plus community represents, not only in terms of sexual orientation, gender identity, but also race and ethnicity and socioeconomic diversity.
Speaker 5:For people that haven't heard the caucus what can you tell them about in 10 seconds?
Speaker 2:In 10 seconds. We are the oldest civil rights organization dedicated to the LGBTQ plus community in the Southwest. Not only do we endorse candidates, but we also educate our community and hold politicians accountable.
Speaker 5:I know we can't go through all the endorsed candidates, but where can we get information about that and when is the election?
Speaker 2:You can find our card on our website, thecaucasorg. We also have a specific website dedicated to our political action committee, the PAC. It's the PACthecaucasorg, or you can find it through a link through there. And in addition to that, the March primary election is going to be coming up during the first weekend in March. So it is right around the corner and you definitely want to make sure that you continue to be politically engaged. There will likely be a runoff after the March primary. That will happen in May, and then, of course, we have the general election in November.
Speaker 5:And so does the caucus re-endorse for the runoff, or how does that work?
Speaker 2:Yes, so we have already announced that for the runoff we will do another round of endorsements for the primary. For that, once again, the candidates have to seek our endorsements and they can contact screenings at thecaucasorg for more information. But we have already announced we will be doing endorsements for the runoff.
Speaker 5:Why should people vote in this election? I know that every election is the most important, but why is this one so important?
Speaker 2:This one is especially important because of the fact that so many of the individuals who are on the ballot are going to be the ones who have direct impacts on your lives. We have a number of state senators and state representatives who are on the ballot and, as we have seen in these, especially these last two legislative cycles, the LGBTQ plus community is under attack. So we need to make sure that we are sending representatives who are going to protect our community, but not just protect our community, but fight back against these attacks. We also have local elected officials, so we have our tax assessor collector race, we have our district attorney race, so really critical races where these individuals are going to have, once again, direct impact on the lives of us as Houstonians. So we need to make sure that we're voting for the best candidates who are going to be reflective of our values.
Speaker 5:And is there anything you want our listeners to know about the caucus before we go?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I would encourage everyone to please become a member of the caucus. We host our meetings the first Wednesday of every single month. I definitely encourage you to come check us out and also once again visit us on our website, thecocusorg.
Speaker 5:Well, Brandon Mack, thank you for coming on.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Part of our Queer Voices community listens on KPFT, which is a non-profit community radio station, and as such, KPFT does not endorse or hold any standing on matters of politics. If you would like equal airtime to represent an alternative point of view, please contact us through kpftorg or our own website at Queer Voicesorg. This is Queer Voices Still to come. On Queer Voices, Deborah talks with the first transgender non-binary trustee of the Harris Health System and Brett Cullum talks with the artistic director of Catastrophic Theater about their benefit gala next month.
Speaker 6:This is Deborah Montcrisbell and I'm delighted to talk tonight with Dr Cody Pike. Dr Pike was appointed to the Harris Health System nine-member board of trustees last May. Cody, welcome to Queer Voices, and just let me ask how did that come to be?
Speaker 3:Honestly, deborah, it is a bit of a mystery to me as well. So my understanding is when Commissioner Leslie Briones, the precinct four commissioner, took her position, she wanted to bring in some new talent into various public boards and she started asking around and someone, I don't know, who, put my name forward. There is a process to apply for open board positions, but that was not something I had done. Her staff, commissioner Briones' staff, reached out to me at my job and said hey, you know, dr Pike, your name came up as someone who might be a good fit for this board position. Would you be interested? I said absolutely. I went through several rounds of interviews with the commissioner staff and then with the commissioner herself, and then I'm happy to say that I was selected as her nominee and then that goes to the commissioner's court for a vote and I was unanimously approved by commissioner's court to be appointed to the board with my terms starting on July 1 of last year, 2023.
Speaker 6:Explain what Harris Health System is.
Speaker 3:Harris Health System is the business entity name of the Harris County Hospital District. So the same entity, just our public facing name is Harris Health System. We are a public entity. We're technically a division of the state of Texas. In the Texas law we are charged with providing medical care to people who are of lesser means or I think the statutory language is like the needy residents of the county of Harris County. Because of how populated Harris County is, that makes us the. I believe last I checked the numbers we are the third largest public safety net system in the United States.
Speaker 6:I have used Harris Health in the past and I got excellent care there. The doctors are trained through Baylor, so you get as good as you get anywhere, I think, and it is something especially for those who might not be insured or underinsured and those that are indigent. You have quite the background as far as qualifications. I got exhausted just reading about all the things that you have to your credit. First of all, I guess we should say that Dr Pike identifies as transgender and non-binary, and maybe you can take a second to explain what that nuance is there. You use both she and they pronouns. You're a medical doctor, an attorney, a bioethicist and an adjunct professor at the University of Houston College of Medicine. So in your spare time you serve on the board of Harris Health and you also have testified in Austin in legislative hearings for the horrible bills that were transphobic and mean spirited and wrong-minded. One question what is a bioethicist?
Speaker 3:There are a lot of questions there. I'll start with my gender identity and how I identify both as a transgender woman as well as non-binary. In my journey as transitioning and exploring my gender identity, the binary of gender was something that did not resonate with me. I initially presented just as non-binary. I exclusively used they, them pronouns, and I played with gender a lot. And the more I gave myself permission to explore gender, the more I found that, while I still identified as non-binary and as something that was not on one end of the spectrum of gender or the other, I identified more with a feminine experience and with, I guess, the moniker that is woman. Compared to other experiences and there are plenty of people I know who identify as non-binary women it became important to me to embrace both of those aspects of my identity. So that's kind of how I landed on the she slash, they and presenting and identifying as both non-binary and as a trans woman.
Speaker 3:To your question about the bioethicist a bioethicist is a field of applied ethics, applied philosophy, wherein you look at sticky ethical questions and try to figure out what is the most norm the term is normative the best way, the most ethical way to approach them. Ethics oftentimes is associated with medical ethics, but it's much bigger than that. There are bioethicists that look at animal ethics. There are bioethicists that look at environmental ethics. So it's really just the application of normative philosophy and normative ethics to something in biology, and my focus, of course, was on the more medical ethics side of things and healthcare policy side of things. But that is in a nutshell what a bioethicist is.
Speaker 6:It seems to me all these qualifications are very well suited for serving on a board such as Harris Health, and it's a two year term unpaid. Like I said, you do it in your spare time. What exactly does the board do?
Speaker 3:The role of the Harris Health Board of Trustees is to provide guidance and oversight in the operations of Harris Health and there's a balance between. You know, we don't want to be micromanagers. We are not involved in the day to day decision making on each little thing. That is, authority given to the CEO and his staff and team, Dr Porsa. But we're there to make sure that the hospital is and the hospital district is being run in a way that meets the charge that we're given by the state, that we are delivering high quality healthcare to people who don't have health insurance or who are indigent or people who reside in Harris County that are undocumented. We're really more of an oversight than a manager, if that makes sense. There's a balancing act between delegating authority and making decisions ourselves. That said, we are very much in tune with all of the decisions that happen and we oversee a lot of different aspects of the Harris Health System.
Speaker 6:Harris Health oversees a fully integrated 2.3 billion healthcare system and it includes community health center, same day clinics, multi specialty clinic locations, a dental center, dialysis center, mobile health units and two full service hospitals in Harris County and it was one of the leading service providers for those that had HIV AIDS and it is a key safety net. Last year, Harris Health took over healthcare services for the county jail. We already know that Harris County Jail is the largest provider of mental health services in the state. What are some of the issues involved with dealing with an incarcerated population?
Speaker 3:One of the hardest things with the jail medical services that Harris County has taken on is it just comes down to funding. Again, as a state entity we are not as funded as, say, a private hospital, and with the jail medical services, harris County Jail is essentially a small city within a city, and so I think the largest challenge from my experience on the board so far is just volume, the volume of folks who they get arrested and then they're booked at the jail while they're waiting for trial. And they might be there for nonviolent crimes, or maybe they didn't commit the crime at all but they haven't been exonerated yet, or they haven't had their trial date but they are still in the jail. And every moment that they're in the jail they have a constitutional right to healthcare. The US Constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. Part of that is making sure that while people are incarcerated they have access to the standard of care for healthcare, and Harris Health, I think, does an amazing job making sure that we do provide good care to our patients when they are incarcerated at the jail.
Speaker 3:But we are not the criminal justice system. We don't have control over the flow of those patients and we can't get them out if they don't need to be there, If they, let's say, maybe they qualified for a bail bond or something like that. That's not really an arena that Harris Health has a say in. That's much more reserved to the Harris County Sheriff and other criminal justice entities. And so we have an overwhelming number of people in the Harris County Jails, and I'm hopeful that with bail reform and with continuing building coalitions with our criminal justice organizations and law enforcement, that we will be able to decrease the number of folks that are simultaneously incarcerated in the county jail system.
Speaker 6:You've done extensive research on the incarcerated healthcare and you've given talks on pregnancy care in jail. So if someone is arrested and they're taken to jail, they may already have an existing health problem or a chronic ongoing, such as diabetes, or they may actually get diagnosed for the first time with something at the jail. They may also become sick while in jail. There's been some pretty dreadful cases recently. How is Harris Health addressing that issue?
Speaker 3:Our board meets monthly at a minimum. Every month. There's a statutory requirement that the jail medical services team gives a report to the board and if we see something off or something that breaches the standard of care, the board throws its weight behind. We need to investigate and figure this out and get it taken care of.
Speaker 3:I'm happy to say that since I've been on the board, I have seen a tremendous improvement in how we deliver healthcare to our inmates, and we have we call them dashboards. We have multiple systems tracking making sure. Let's say, if a inmate asks to see a medical professional, we start a clock and we time how long does it take for them to be seen. We track making sure that people are consistently getting whatever medications that they need. So you used an example as diabetes if they were taking something like metformin or if they needed insulin. We're making sure that. We're tracking what is the time and by tracking these things we identify opportunities for improvement and can immediately act on those. I have been actually very impressed with where the board is and, while I've only been on the board since July of last year, I've heard horror stories of where what the situation was in the jails prior to Harris Health System, taking over the jail medical services.
Speaker 6:And surfing on the board. You don't actually do hands-on medical care yourself through this system.
Speaker 3:That's correct. Yeah, my role in the system is purely from the board of trustees, lens. I don't do direct patient care and my day job, as it were, the thing that I pay my bills with. I'm a practicing attorney here in Houston.
Speaker 6:Being that you identify as transgender and non-binary. How does that reflect itself in the care of patients at Harris Health?
Speaker 3:When I was appointed to the board, I was the first transgender person or at least first out transgender person ever appointed to the Harris Health Board, and that was when my appointment was announced. It was simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying. I am pleased to say that I had folks reaching out to me, members of the LGBTQIA plus community, saying how important it was to see that kind of representation, to see a member of our community on the board, and I'm on the opposite end. Sad to say that I got really aggressive threats through my Twitter. I was attacked online. There were hit pieces written about me trying to claim that I was lying about my credentials, which, if your source is Google, maybe you should dig a little bit deeper. But the scariest part was when I started getting mail at my place of work attacking me, and that was really stressful. But I will say the impact has been amazing.
Speaker 3:This service position like you said, it's not paid has been the most fulfilling and most wonderful opportunity I've had of my life, of my career, and it changes how conversations are happening in that boardroom. Having a trans person present, having a visibly queer person, an out and proud queer person at the table talking about okay, but what are we doing about this? What are we doing about addressing these specific health needs, social determinants of health, faced by our community and I love the folks I work with. I know their hearts are in the right place, but you don't know what you don't know right. So having me there, I think, allows a different perspective that no one else brings to the table and I think that is going to create beneficial changes in how Harris Health provides care to that subset of the population we provide care for to the LGBT plus community.
Speaker 6:You have such impressive credentials, how do your other board members stack up? Are they all physicians?
Speaker 3:Currently on the board.
Speaker 3:There are two physicians, myself and our chair, dr Andrea Catecostis. There are lawyers on the board, there are business people, labor organizers, professors of law, there are people who have worked in state and federal government. It's a really diverse thing and I think that's important because if you imagine if the board had nine doctors doctors we all have a certain lens that we take to things and while because I'm also an attorney and an ethicist, I think I think a little differently from someone who is just an MD, just in air quotes, but I don't think that the board would be running as effectively if it was all physicians. I think the physician experience is important to have there and we should always, I think, have at least one or two physicians on the board to give that clinical perspective. But I really enjoy that our board is diverse in terms of the experiences and the skill sets that different board members bring to the table, because it allows us to tackle very complicated questions of how to best deliver health services to the constituents we provide for with an interdisciplinary approach.
Speaker 6:This is Deborah Moncrette-Vell. You're listening to Queer Voices and I'm talking with Dr Cody Pike, who serves on the Harris Health System Board. Is there anything that I didn't ask you about that you think is important for people to know?
Speaker 3:I often get asked how I got to have the amalgam of degrees that I've collected, and it is certainly a non-traditional story with twists and turns, and I don't want to give the long-winded version, but there's a through line to all of it. I started out in medical school and while I was there, became obsessed with normative bioethics and medical ethics, making sure that ethics and ethical decision-making and normative processes were involved in the delivery of healthcare. That led me to the master's in bioethics and health policy, in that I took a course on medical ethics and the law, which led me to have an interest in how law affected policy. Simultaneous with this, I was doing advocacy at the Texas Capitol because, as you mentioned earlier, there have been all these bills attacking reproductive rights, attacking the LGBTQIA plus community, attacking especially transgender people and transgender children, and I wanted to understand the law so that I could be a better advocate. And then it just so happened, in the course of the JD portion, the law school portion of my dual degree, I fell in love with practicing law, which is why I don't practice medicine currently and I practice law full-time.
Speaker 3:But all of this has been me chasing a root cause analysis, looking to what is at the at the root of all of the ills we see in socioeconomic disparities. Why are people of color receiving worse healthcare than white people? Why are undocumented persons getting worse care? Why are queer people getting worse care? Why are people born with uteruses not getting access to what they need? And this combination of degrees is my attempt to understand every facet of the root cause, and my personal conclusion is it all comes down to our policies and our laws, and it's my hope that by continuing to speak up for folks and speak up for my community and my own experiences, that we can get some real changes going on.
Speaker 6:That sounds wonderful. I'm so glad we have you there and thanks so much for being with us tonight on Queer Voices.
Speaker 3:Thank you, I really enjoyed talking to you.
Speaker 6:This radio program, queer Voices, has existed since the 1970s. On KPFT we have this little crew of folks working every week to produce what's no longer unique because we're almost mainstream now, but we're still an important voice that might not otherwise get heard because it's not on that many places. So KPFT is very important to give voices to those who might not otherwise have voices. So, as Glenn always says, you participate by listening. You should also participate by supporting the station. So please go to kpfftorg and make your donation right away.
Speaker 7:I'm Brett Cullum. I'm joined by Tamri Cooper. She is a co-founder and the current artistic director of the Catastrophic Theater in Houston, which actually won an outsmart Gaste and Greatest Award for Houston's Best Experimental Oral Alternative Theater Company. For like several years running she has been performing her entire life. Tamri was a graduate of HSPVA. She's appeared in some notorious Infernal Bridegroom Productions shows and she's even shared the stage with Jim Parsons back when he was just an actor here in Houston. She has done her own review every year for what will be the 27th edition this coming summer. Tamri Cooper is currently acting as part of the cast in Catastrophic Show at the match. It is Mikkel Maher's it Is Magic, which runs February 9th through March 2nd, and I am tired just saying all that. But, tamri, welcome to Queer Voices. And though happy to be here, tamri, tell me first about it Is Magic. What is this show about?
Speaker 4:Well, we have a long history with Catastrophic Theater of producing plays by Mikkel Maher. He is probably I think he's next to maybe me our most produced playwright. We've done, I think, almost eight productions. We've done remounts of productions, we've received commissions and created original plays with him, and this play is one of his most recent works. He actually is based in Chicago and has a theater company called Theater Ublek and they almost always premiere his work.
Speaker 4:We are very happy to be bringing this now to Houston and has been performed in some other cities across the country, but it is a play that definitely, if you have any history in theater, if you've been an actor, if you are a theater lover, if you've ever gone to the theater, there is a lot of humor and situations in it that really sort of are satirical of the experience of being an actor and specifically an actor auditioning.
Speaker 4:Now, that said, you don't have to be a theater lover, you don't have to be an actor to gain access to this work, because really it's that's just one entryway into this play. If you have ever gone out for a job interview or gone on a first date or ever just put yourself out there for something you really really wanted, then you can relate to this play and you can specifically relate to the power of no, which is certainly one of the themes in the play. Mickle's work, I think, is always very funny. There, of course, are moments beyond just humor. There's pathos as well, but this one is just particularly hilarious. I think that I don't think anyone could go in and watch this play and not be laughing their asses off.
Speaker 7:What are the things in the summary? It mentioned that it's about community theater, specifically.
Speaker 4:It is set in a community theater. I don't at the same time, though, think that this is some kind of attack or spoof of community theater specifically. I think it's more just showing what it's like to work in theater, particularly one maybe that is a little more low budget where a few people wear a lot of hats, which of course I can relate to with catastrophic. Community theater is a hard thing, I think, to to absolutely define.
Speaker 4:Sometimes we think of community theaters as being just purely volunteer only, maybe more out in the suburbs, for example, actors that I guess don't consider themselves to be professional actors, but then I think there's a lot of gray lines in that, because a lot of actors that we know and work with definitely have worked in community theaters, and I even would just look at how we are awarded rights for productions. I always have to say if we're an amateur theater or a professional theater, and of course we think of ourselves as a professional theater, but that really does come down to the licensing house. Some people only will determine your professional theater if you have all equity actors, if it's all licensed union performers and and stage managers. Others will call you a professional theater if you pay the actors anything even just a dollar. So that definition, I think is is really sort of vague. I don't again, I don't want anyone to think that we, as the catastrophic theater, are making fun of community theater, because that's absolutely not the case with this play.
Speaker 7:Oh, I don't think of it as a pejorative term at all. I've done both community theater and professional theater myself and I can tell you sometimes the community theaters have more money and do better stuff than some of the professionals.
Speaker 4:Yes, it's all over the place really, but I think it really is just more of like the idea of what you'd find in any theater where there are people who are just devoting their lives to that specific company. There is sort of the typical idea in this play of the artistic director, who is a very powerful person in the play, and then I play Deb, who is a playwright first-time playwright who is frantically trying to cast her play, which is an adult adaptation of the three little pigs, and Amy Bruce plays my sister, sandy, and it's not quite clear what Sandy does at the theater, but I am also the entire marketing department, so you can see how there's. You know we do a lot for this little company.
Speaker 7:Well, that just mirrors life, basically because I know that you as the co-founder and artistic director of this company, and if you could tell me just a little bit about the mission of the catastrophic theater and how you started this troupe back in 2007 with Jason.
Speaker 4:Well, jason and I went to high school together first of all, so we have Jason's last name.
Speaker 4:Jason Nadler. Jason and I went to high school. We went to HSPVA, graduated in 1987. Here I am dating myself. We somehow, life just continued to throw us together. We ran the Jerry Brown campaign Houston headquarters in 1992. We worked in a punk rock club called Katal Hyuk and dated each other's best friends, things like that. So we've always been thrown together.
Speaker 4:Sometime around the punk rock club we decided we wanted to start doing plays and we formed the former company Infernal Brighroom Productions, and that had a great run. We unfortunately had to close Infernal Brighroom due to some very poor financial mismanagement, which I'm not gonna get into that whole story. It wasn't us, but, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, we were able to create a new company, which now is catastrophic, and we've been together since 2007. Many of the same artists that worked with us with Infernal Brighroom came along with us for the formation of catastrophic theater. I think our mission is something more formal, like we are an ensemble driven theater, dedicated to creating an exchange between artists and audiences, and that's very true.
Speaker 4:I would say about our work that we do primarily original work and lesser produced works, so there will be some avant-garde classics will. For example, jason is a great lover and fantastic director of Beckett, and so we will throw some of those into our seasons. There are other playwrights like Susan Lloyd Parks, sam Shepard, marie Irene Fornes that make their appearances in our seasons, but then we also do develop a lot of original work. Obviously my shows are original. We've worked with our ensemble to create new works. We've had rock operas. We did small ball, which is actually a Michael Maher play, chosen original commission for a basketball musical that is still sort of making its way through the country right now, having different versions.
Speaker 4:I would say too about our work that it's less about wanting you to come out of there saying, wow, that really made me think. It's more that we want you to come out and say that really made me feel something. Our work is definitely not always plot driven. Some people might find that confusing. It is not message driven theater either. It may feel confusing at times what you're experiencing on stage, but we always just say let it wash over you and whatever you take from that, whatever you feel is the right answer.
Speaker 7:I'm talking with Tamarie Cooper of Catastrophic Theatre. Your company has lived in the Match Theatre Complex since I think they opened it. Tell me about how that relationship came about a little.
Speaker 4:Originally. Actually, the kernel of the idea for Match, which was going to be a multi-arts organization facility, started way back in the day when we were in Pernod O'Brien Productions and, along with DiverseWorks and a few other organizations some which no longer exist we had come up with this idea it went through various different names of creating a place that we had a permanent space but that we shared with some other organizations. It evolved greatly from that, from being just maybe five theaters or five arts companies to being a more multi-use facility for all smaller to mid-size arts organizations throughout Houston. At one point we just sort of we weren't really in there in the prime sort of final planning stages of Match and we were existing over in a warehouse facility which had been the former DiverseWorks space and then became the docs. But Kirk Markley, who is now the director at Match, and at that time they were really sort of working on curating and getting people to come in as tenants, as renters, and he alerted us to the fact that there was a theater at Match when their first year. That would probably be a great fit for us and so we jumped on that and it has been a really good home for us.
Speaker 4:There, of course, are limitations when you don't own your own facility, when it's not yours 365 days a year.
Speaker 4:So, for example, when we've had to cancel a week of performances when an actor, for example, had COVID, we can't add an extra week at the end of the run. Someone else is already coming in. Things like that can make it difficult. You have to build and remove your set very quickly because again, you have a limited amount of time in the actual theater space, but you don't have to clean the bathrooms anymore and things work and there's actual air conditioning and heat that is reliable and there's really cool technical theater equipment. So these are things that we certainly didn't have access to in all of our earlier times and some of these not intentionally built for theater spaces, and I do like that. I like the central location of it. I think our audiences feel pretty comfortable coming to Match now at this time. Do I ideally someday hope to have our own space, our own box? Of course, that's still going to always be a dream of ours, but right now, where we are at as an organization, match is still a really great fit for us.
Speaker 7:Well, I feel that Match has really changed the game in Houston Theater because it's really expanded, a lot of people coming in and doing these shows and doing really what you guys do Like very new, experimental, very cool stuff. I mean, I'm addicted to the match. I'm probably there every weekend.
Speaker 4:And I do love some of that cross pollination. You see where we're walking through and there's some Indian dance festival going on and then some other kind of film festival going on and for, and there's people carrying their chelos for a concert in the gallery. So I do love that and sometimes things can come out of that and grow with partnerships with other organizations. I think that actually there is a demand now that there could be a match to at this point, because there are so many groups that do take advantage of the facility. I know that at one point there had been some other real estate when they were first building match that was available right behind it, and I know that they wish that they had at that time been able to see into the future. They couldn't at that point possibly raise money for a whole, nother second facility but that now it's like, ah, that actually probably would have worked. So, who knows, maybe there's a way to have another facility like that.
Speaker 4:But it has been very important with some other places closing down since then too. So you know where do we all go. Where do the smaller and the midsize theaters perform? Not just theater, but dance, and performance are music. You know, you name it Well.
Speaker 7:Tamri Cooper of catastrophic theater, speaking of fundraising and things like that. You have a big gala coming up. April 27th is the date. Tell me a little bit about that, because I think the queer voices people are going to be pretty excited about the theme.
Speaker 4:I am so happy to tell you this. So we always have one big annual gala. The word gala is a little misleading because it makes it sound a little bit more formal, and our parties are certainly not formal. They are pretty big and raucous and ridiculous. I think is is the better way to describe them.
Speaker 4:This year's theme we have landed upon is this party is a drag, and that meaning that we want people to come and celebrate the art form of drag, embrace your inner queens, kings and everything outside of and in between. We're going to have wonderful drag performances. Obviously, right now I'm trying to negotiate with some very talented performers already here in Houston, and then it's also fun for just people like me who are not drag performers but who love the art form and look at this as an evening, to have some fun and to just, in a very amateur way, sort of take on a different drag persona for the evening, and people can interpret that as they will. I love it when people that have never done drag go full on and you see someone's husband walk in and he's completely transformed. It's fantastic. But if people want to just come in their jeans, that's great too, and we will have special drag stations where people, if they're feeling the feeling it with all of the wonderful drag going on around them, we can add some makeup and we can add some facial hair, we can do all kinds of things. But yeah, it's definitely celebrating the art form. And particularly you saw my show last summer and you know that I went ahead and sort of took on the absurdity of the attack right now on drag, which we all know is layered with other attacks on the LGBTQIA community.
Speaker 4:So I like putting this out there, I like to be in support of this art form and I think there's a lot of similarities you'll find in particularly experimental theater and the type of theater catastrophic does. And with drag I mean both are about authenticity, about being able to create something to tap into that creativity without any limits, without rules and restrictions, being able to just really feel safe and present yourself in your true self or in a fun form of expression. And there's definitely some crossover between theater and drag. I mean my favorite, I guess famous I put the quotes around it, but drag queen, of course, is going to be Jinx monsoon, which we've all got to know through RuPaul and now with all of their wonderful projects and they're a theater kid, you know that's what they grew up doing. So, yeah, the amount of talent you find in drag and in Houston's local drag scene, not enough respect, I'll say that for Houston in general always. But I want to see more of our drag scene get some of that national spotlight. I was happy to see Blackberry on Dragula because that was very great, and to see her go so far with that too was fantastic.
Speaker 4:Sadly, being a co-artistic director and a mother and wife, I'm not out at a lot of drag shows these days. I don't think I really got back to them much after the pandemic, but I keep up a little bit through social media and I am just really happy to see, you know, so many people still going, still doing it. So, yeah, so that's going to be our party. We'll have a lot more details as we get closer to it in the spring. It is a fundraiser, but we always try to keep those tickets within a reasonable cost too. It's usually like 50 to $75 for a general admission ticket and you get all the foods you could ever want and free drinks and all that entertainment. So it's really what you would probably spend on a typical night out anyway, and this time you're doing it for a great cause.
Speaker 7:Well, one of the things I always love about catastrophic theater is you guys have to pay what you can, even for your tickets for your general shows. It's so nice and you can kind of decide exactly what you want to give and it's not set. It's not like tuts where you're going to pay 150 bucks to go see. You know yeah.
Speaker 4:Pay what you can is actually become a core value for us, not just a ticketing model.
Speaker 4:First it seems like, well, will that work? But it does, and part of it is that you will have people who at this point maybe they just they're not in a place financially to, like you said, afford a high price ticket to go see theater or see any kind of art, and so we want to remove that financial barrier. We feel like it's more important to get people actually into the theater to be able to experience it, and then it works. Because there are other people then who do come, who do have the financial means to purchase a ticket at a higher cost, and so if you are in that place, then you know when you're buying a ticket for example, $50 that some of that is going to go towards. You know, this program that will help someone maybe a college student, maybe somebody who's just having a hard time, who's in between jobs, whatever, who's never gone to theater, so they're not sure what they're getting into. You're helping them get that seat and yeah, so it's. It's really important to us that we continue to to offer pay what you can.
Speaker 7:I'm Brett Cullum and this is Career Voices and of course we are talking with Tamarie Cooper of the Catastrophic Theater here in Houston. I know you've already apologized for being a heterosexual, cis woman with a kid and all of that kind of stuff, but I think you could definitely bear that title of honorary drag queen because every show I mean every Tamarie show you have you're surrounded by this chorus of drag and your persona in that show has a very camp, a very drag sort of quality to it. And I remember once you had like Ted Cruz being hunted by feral drag queens in a forest, and you've had drag Tinkerbell. You've had drag Gwyneth Paltrow and Barbie Orgies and things like that. I mean, let's face it, you're pushing a pretty queer aesthetic right.
Speaker 4:Yes, it's true, my gender and sexuality may may not fall into the queer and, you know, non cis, but I do consider myself an ally and my best friends are queer and yeah, you're right, it's sort of been a camp type of thing my entire life, coming up with that, that that sort of iconic sort of personality and humor and just my favorite things in pop culture too.
Speaker 4:So I do apologize, but I want to be there so much as an ally and do whatever I can and sometimes if that's just putting these issues and things into my own entertainment platform, then I do think that's really important and I'm I'm very honored and I have to say, going back to outsmart 2, you know we have various awards for theater and stuff around town and the one that has always meant the most to me personally as a theater is when I have one the you know, actress or actor awards over the years, and it really does, I know, because it's also the community is voting, not just a few random people, and it's that's the one that I happily have the plaques in my back room from the OutSmart Awards. So just putting that out there. And how great too that we also have received recognition through OutSmart for being the outstanding experimental theater in Houston. So thank you, outsmart.
Speaker 7:Your one woman shows. How did you first come up with that? I mean cause, that was a while back, but what made you start that?
Speaker 4:Well, the very first one I was gosh. That was like 1996. And we had really just started doing plays with Infernal Brigham and I actually did not have theater training per se through college. I was a dancer and I just had it in my head that I wanted to create a piece. That was a lot of my choreography, but it was mixed with me cooking dinner for the audience and telling stories and having a fashion show, cause I was also quite the vintage thrift store maven at the time and also I had some friends in a band, so they were going to play on the roof and that was the very first Amalelia. It was at the Orange show. It was just two nights and it was super fun. It was great and my now co-director and wonderful Bestie, jason, saw it and was like we need to do more of this and let's do it with Infernal Brigham next year.
Speaker 4:So that then led to a show that I did on a school bus and I really wanted to do another school bus show, brett, just a few years ago. I was like let's get back on the bus. It was so unique and strange and it's just not a good financial model. You can't get a lot of audience onto a school bus at one time and then now we have to be responsible adults and pay for things like insurance, you know. And yeah, my dreams were dashed for that remount, but that was Tamalelia too, and they just sort of evolved from there. They didn't even used to have scripts. I cast some of my neighbors in them, I think, in the beginning, and they always sort of were what was on my mind, or taking my own personal stories, my take, and mixing it with a very vaudevillian sort of component. You've got tap dancing, you've got show tunes, that type of thing. But again, it's usually been performed by a very interesting motley crew of musical theater type performers. I will highlight someone like Walt Zibrian, who has been in so many of my shows and played such a featured role in so many of them. Walt is not a singer nor a dancer, although he has done some pretty fantastic moves in my shows, but for me he's just, he's a part of it, he's essential to the shows, and I also like the fact that we have a real diverse group of actors. So you'll have some people that are in their 50s and some people that are, you know, very large, and we all just look like real people. We're not that perfect, polished sort of musical. Oh, here comes the chorus and here's the ingenue, and then they brought in the dancers. You know it's real people and it's very intimate, but doing very big stuff right in your lap. So our sweat may be hitting you as we're singing about egg rolls, but you know it's real people in front of you and I think that's what sort of makes it different.
Speaker 4:I'm not really a musical theater person in the sense that I don't really go out and see all the new Broadway shows One of my dear friends, scotty Lepton, who is a performer he was the Tinkerbell last year and he's been a stage manager for me and he's just obsessed with musicals and so he's always got the latest thing playing and he's just horrified by my lack of musical theater knowledge and sometimes I'll even say I don't really like musicals. And he's like what? And that's not completely true, but I guess I just my musical theater love comes back to more in the early days, the golden sort of MGM musical film classics, you know. So yeah, it's an odd thing. I do say that there are people that get dragged to my shows, who come up to me afterwards. Maybe it's someone's date. You know they're like oh my God, now I'm doing like a straight guy voice. Oh my God. Like you know, I hate musicals and I love your show, so it is open to all. I really do think.
Speaker 7:Well, Tamarie Cooper, now that you admitted that you are not a big fan of musical theater, I think we should probably wrap this up, because we're on Queer Voices and we're probably getting hateful calls right this second. No, just kidding.
Speaker 4:And I don't mean that for all musicals, I just mean that I guess what I would say is just like anything a catastrophic, anything with an infernal brug, anything coming out of my brain, it definitely goes through its own bizarre, unique filter.
Speaker 7:That's what we love about you. That's what we love about catastrophic. Just a reminder it is magic. It opens February 9th and it runs through March 2nd, that's right. And you have like free beer Fridays sometimes.
Speaker 4:Every Friday within the run we will have free beer Fridays, which is a fun way to just hang out a little bit. The cast will rush out, usually from the show. We'll get changed and come out and you just hang out and talk with the audience members that stick around and talk with the cast about the show and enjoy a high quality canned refreshment, and we will have some that are not beers as well, in case you're not imbibing. So you know just, it's a good way to just build community, I think, and get to know everybody. We have an opening night party too. If people come to opening night, that's also the whole audience is welcome to come to that.
Speaker 4:That's just down the street in the mid-main lofts, and we have talk backs too on some of the Sundays, where one of the Sundays the playwright, mikkel Maher, actually will be in town I think that's gonna be the 25th and after that Sunday, matt and A he'll stick around and we'll have just again very casual conversation with him about this play and about him as a playwright and his relationship and history with catastrophic. So that'll be really fun.
Speaker 7:That's the 25th of February. Thank you so much for coming on here. I have been such a fan of you, your shows at the catastrophic theater. It's probably my favorite theater company, just because I myself am a little bit odd and like to see dancing cockroaches and singing about egg rolls and all of those things.
Speaker 4:Well, we love having you there, Brett, and really appreciate your contributions as a critic and just as a journalist covering the arts in Houston. Thank you so much.
Speaker 8:I would say my name is Paul, I am a journalist.
Speaker 7:I am a playwright, houston.
Speaker 8:Martha, what that fellow on the wireless just say Something about him. Interwebs.
Speaker 1:You don't have to ask Martha. We've got all the names, dates and webpage links for people, events and anything else mentioned in the show right on our own website. It's QueerVoicesorg. We even link to past shows and other tidbits of information, so check it out, queervoicesorg. Besides, martha is a cat. She doesn't know anything about websites. This has been Queer Voices, which is now a home-produced podcast and available from several podcasting sources. Check our webpage QueerVoicesorg for more information. Queer Voices' executive producer is Bryan LaVinca. Andrew Edmanson and Deborah Moncrief-Bell are frequent contributors. The News Wrap segment is part of another podcast called this Way Out, which is produced in Los Angeles.
Speaker 8:Some of the material in this program has been edited to improve clarity and runtime. This program does not endorse any political views or animal species. Views, opinions and endorsements are those of the participants and the organizations they represent. In case of death, please discontinue use and discard remaining products.
Speaker 1:For Queer Voices. I'm Glenn Holt.