Queer Voices
Queer Voices
January 29, 2025 Queer Voices Author/Activist Christy Claxton and Actor Candice D'Meza
Can understanding human motivations truly transform corporate culture? Join us as we sit with the insightful Christy Claxton, a lesbian musician and writer, who reveals the soul-sucking realities of corporate life and how she managed to maintain her creative spirit amidst it all. Christy shares her journey from being a middle manager for over 30 years to rediscovering her passion for writing after being laid off. Her new book, "Bringing Jesus and Other Lies," offers a candid look at her life experiences, and she shares invaluable lessons on leadership and creativity that challenge the status quo.
In another turn of the episode, we delve into the transformative power of education and storytelling. Inspired by past encounters with influential teachers, we explore narratives that challenge societal perceptions and reflect on the intersection of corporate careers and artistic pursuits. Our discussion includes touching anecdotes from a collection of stories about unlikely friendships, such as a young offender taking his former teacher on a motorcycle adventure. We also ponder the broader implications of personal stories and their resonance with audiences, drawing from experiences that have shaped our creative paths over the years.
Artistic innovation takes center stage as we spotlight Candice D'Meza, a multidisciplinary artist who blends Afrofuturism with unique theatrical productions. From exploring themes of queer futures to challenging identity constructs, Candice's work pushes boundaries and invites audiences to imagine a world where nature and humanity coexist harmoniously. Her latest production, "Miss LaRaj's House of Dystopian Futures," and her other projects highlight the liberating aspects of defying societal norms. We celebrate how artists like Candice and musicians like Lee Harris inspire us to break free creatively and redefine our future narratives.
Be free, people!
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 podcast version of a broadcast radio show that's been on the air in Houston, texas for several decades. This week, debra Moncrief-Bell has a conversation with well-known lesbian musician and writer, Christy Claxton.
Speaker 2:Freeing Jesus. I wrote that story in the mid-90s, so LGBTQ plus was still even in Austin. We were ducking under the radar for our own safety. That character, her neighbor I intentionally wrote her to be sort of just almost in the shadows.
Speaker 1:Brett Cullum has a conversation with Candace DeMesa.
Speaker 3:Shadows brett cullum has a conversation with candace demesa, actor, activist and filmmaker. I don't have any formal training as far as like playwriting or things like that. I think that works in my favor because I do feel freer to just, I guess, do what I want. But as an actor so I did prior to creating my own projects I did act all around the city and at the Alley Theater.
Speaker 1:And we have Brett's community calendar. Queer Voices starts now.
Speaker 4:This is Deborah Moncrief-Bell, and today I'm talking with Christy Claxton about her new book Bringing Jesus and Other Lies. First of all, christy, we've known each other for a number of years, and I first knew you as a musician. In fact, you even played in the KPFT studios.
Speaker 2:Many times I did yes, yes, in fact pre-production. We were reminiscing about those days with you and Jimmy Carper, and Outvoice was always so kind to me as a musician and it's so much appreciated.
Speaker 4:Certainly I enjoyed the music in your piece from the porch project, which at one time Christy had a place out in LaGrange and it was a house that had this big porch and so the porch became the stage and she would have different musicians come out and she would play and it was quite a special time and place. But you've got to make money for the man, and Christy has had a career that I had not even realized that she had been part of, which was a 30-plus career as a I guess a middle manager would be the correct title.
Speaker 2:Yeah, director, I think that's middle management in most corporate structure squarely in the middle. I worked for about 12 years, squarely in the middle. I worked for about 12 years. I worked for a large worldwide publication or a company that publishing e-commerce marketing as a director of commerce operations. There were things about it I really enjoyed, especially the young people my team I had young. Most of my team were younger, you know, they could people my team Most of my team were younger. They could have been my kids and they kept me refreshed and feeling optimistic and I love them very much.
Speaker 2:But at the same time, corporate is you're not there for the mission, you are there for the stockholder. It becomes soul-sucking and anyone who believes that they're there because they as a person really matter probably need. This is so terrible, but it's true. You probably need to get that out of your head. The money's good, the benefits are great, but you're selling out for a certain amount of your life and I, after I was laid off along with many of the middle management structure of that company, I was told by a woman executive that used to be with the company you're just a number in a cell of a spreadsheet and your number was too high has nothing to do or about you. It's about your salary. So you know.
Speaker 4:You know, here I am, and as soon as I was laid off, I started writing again you said you're a writer and a creative thinker and you spent your career masquerading as an operational leader, but you never stopped writing your short stories, essays, blogs and songs. What was, uh, your approach, in your natural state of creativity, to holding those positions and understanding what motivates people to do the things they do?
Speaker 2:I have a master's degree in creative writing and for my thesis I wrote a play, and this is I'm actually talking more about at this point. Another book that I put out called Leadership Challenged a middle manager memoir. I've done two one or published two, shall I say. But what I had, an instructor who actually won a Pulitzer that taught us about premise. And when you think about premise from a playwriting point of view, plays are action, they're active. So that premise is pretty simple.
Speaker 2:It's A leads to B and in the corporate world or in a leadership role, you're often looking at B and you need to understand what was A to get you to B. And if it's a failure, if B is some sort of a failure, what happened at A that made that failure happen? And if you go back and you look at people because regardless of how two-dimensional people are made to be in a corporation, they're still human. So I would use the same faculties that I used for writing, especially short stories like the ones in Freeing Jesus. I would use that premise type approach to why did this person act in a way that led to B. So really A becomes this Y, and if you understand the Y as a leader, then you have an opportunity to mitigate failure, to support success and make a better workspace and bring in some it's kind of a false sense, but to bring in that sense of ownership and pride in what a person does. And if you can do that, then the company is going to benefit, whether they understand that or not.
Speaker 2:So as a manager, I always thought about A leads to B. My A is almost always a human being and that human being there's something motivating. Why are they behaving in the way they do? Why have they become negative? Or why are they burned out? It could be something as simple as you've given that person more work than they can handle, so helping them in that way. Or it can be that they have something going on at home them in that way, or it can be that they have something going on at home, even though it's not a job manager's job to be someone's personal therapist, that still affects the way they perform and it has to be addressed.
Speaker 2:So that's how I did it and I think that that's the part of leadership. It's really hard. The most important thing a great leader can do is listen. And leaders typically in a corporate structure, especially in the middle, because you're getting crushed from the top and pressured, and then you have a responsibility to those that you lead. It's really easy to stop listening and start reacting. So the most important thing anyone can do in a leadership position is listen, really listen, truly listen, and that's what I, you know took into that 12 years of corporate work that I did. But you know, when I write fiction, sometimes these stories are things I've eavesdropped over, or every one of them they're lies, but they're based in a truth that I've observed.
Speaker 4:As I read the book, which I found quite engaging. It's kind of the Southern Gothic style is in there, and I know that that's a result of some of the writers that you've admired I could tell where there were elements of truth in your real life, but there were definitely things like I don't think you ever were a pole dancer Never.
Speaker 2:I knew a few. You know, I rented my house to a stripper when I was touring with Out of Nowhere and in graduate school my theater friends invited me to drink beer at Dudley's Draw at College Station. Anyone listening that went to Texas A&M and wasn't a cowboy knows about Dudley's Draw and I sat with. Actually she was a porn star, oh my gosh. And of course I was like probably 19 and terrified. But she was so interesting and so smart and so engaging. So I think when I like when I wrote that I was I've never been a stripper but I've I've known a few I think more than anything there it was someone who's crass, someone who's kind of owning their own desperation because they don't feel that they have any other options and at the same time are sort of poking their finger in the eye of a concept of salvation that isn't real.
Speaker 2:And so I wanted to write that story in a way that she is not really giving herself any real love or any real respect, but slowly she grows into a much more dimensional person as she makes a friend with the lesbian that lives next door. And I wrote this Freeing Jesus. I wrote that story in the mid-90s, so LGBTQ plus was still even in Austin. We were ducking under the radar for our own safety. That character, her neighbor. I intentionally wrote her to be sort of just almost in the shadows, but not sort of like Racer X is in Speed Racer. He's just sort of the dark hero that's waiting when you need her.
Speaker 2:But then I also wanted to point out that the shallow objectification that created the main character exists within our own community. We do it too. I mean, how many clubs in your lifetime have you been to that people are objectifying other people? Or when they're on dating apps, I mean it's the perfect form of themselves. Men or I have this great body or the pics of that part of the body that only they want to see. And I wanted that to be in the story that we in our community can be just as shallow and self-centered in our wants. And that's why I ended the story with her feeling very dissatisfied with what had happened and finding that salvation is really forgiving ourselves and leaning in and accepting maybe the less pretty or the less flashy things in life, and when we do that we find our tribe.
Speaker 4:I found a number of the characters were damaged or had to deal with damaged people and I think you are really speaking to having compassion and kindness in your approach and certainly they're very Texas stories.
Speaker 2:Writing about what I know is the only really honest way I can write and through years working in hospice, when I was working in hospice, everybody dies, so you see so many different types of people, from the highs to the unbelievable lows, and freeing Jesus and other lives to me. First of all I think it comes off pretty strongly is I am a massive fan of Flannery O'Connor and as a Southern writer she was always, always searching for salvation or searching for a pain-free emotionally, physically pain-free place and running up against disappointment in trying to find that Her stories they're brutal. I mean they're brutal, but O'Connor for those that don't know had lupus and her life could be brutal. She literally had to go home and live with her mother and give up her dreams of New York and being a part of the literati. So I really encourage people to read her writings if you have it, including her letters. I think it's always in the back of my mind the Peace from the Porch Project, always in the back of my mind, the Peace from the Porch project, my writing, my blogging, always in the back of my mind that we have to take those blinders off and see humanity for what it is and accept it where it's at.
Speaker 2:There's so much beauty that's overlooked by our own sort of these worlds.
Speaker 2:We create our own milieu, our own sort of environments that we feel comfortable in our bubble and we're not coming out of that. And that's what when I write short stories, that's what that's about is you can be a victim of circumstance and in most cases, that's what these characters are. They're a victim of circumstance and then they have a choice on what to do about that. And the irony is that I was a victim of really my own circumstance by working for so many years in corporate America and not really doing anything about that when I could have. It's just something as shallow for me as I was making a hell of a lot of money and I had these great benefits and it gave my wife and I had these great benefits and it gave my wife and I the good life, but really was it a good life? And I think the question is here is, when you read Freeing Jesus, are these the good life or do these feel like a life that we're all living? And it's a choice.
Speaker 4:I think my favorite story is where the young offender, who's doing community service work as part of his sentencing, kidnaps his former third-grade teacher, who's in the you describe it as an old folks' home and takes her on a motorcycle ride.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, and that story I mean. Society is so down on him and even though she enjoys this adventure with him and his buddies, he is still looked down upon. He's not going to be forgiven for what he's done because people have already set their minds on who he is and that's all they see is the offender and don't see the human being underneath that. And that was. I wish I could remember Deb, when I wrote that, why I wanted to write something like that. But there must have been some sort of a writing prompt or something that asked writers to write a story about their favorite teacher or something.
Speaker 2:And I wanted to write a story about the people who we look at and say there's no way that person had a favorite teacher. It's a wonder they got out of school in the first place. So you know, she was able to affect him in a positive way, even though it was late in her life and he's a full-grown adult, versus the stories we always see in social media and TV about the doctor who was poor, whose teacher didn't realize that she's the reason he's a doctor, otherwise he would have been living on the streets, kind of story. Well, what about the rest? So that's what that story's about. What about everybody else?
Speaker 4:yeah, I think it was an homage to those special teachers that we many of us at least I was fortunate to have that touched our lives and inspired us and were offered a guidance to where our life would go, and I felt like you must have had a teacher like that and that when you wrote this story it was with that teacher in mind.
Speaker 2:Truthfully, I hated school. I hated it. Now that doesn't mean I didn't do well in school. I did do well in school. I graduated fifth in my class and you know I went on to get my undergraduate and a master's degree, which is school, and even my mother's, like you, love school, I love learning. I hated school. I hated the structure of it. And if I think about favorite teachers hated school. I hated the structure of it. And if I think about favorite teachers, they don't show up until high school.
Speaker 2:And it was an English teacher who had the backbone in a small town to introduce us to true literature, true storytelling. You know nothing. You know things that would be banned books today. And if it weren't for her, I don't know that I would have ever known who I really was. I would have just gone through school and done the right thing and become a teacher, which I kind of wish I had done, but I didn't. But that would have been an honorable profession per my mother, my grandmothers were teachers, my aunt is an educator, or I would have become something like a lawyer for the money. And if it weren't for that one teacher, yeah, I wouldn't be a writer. I know that Her name was Mrs Clark.
Speaker 4:So these were not stories that you sat down and wrote and that became the book. These are stories that have come to you and that you've written over the course of 30 years.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, exactly when those stories come through. You know well. Let me say that probably the corporate career stifled my writing. But yes, these are over the course of 30 years.
Speaker 2:The first story 1968, I wrote in graduate school it was part of a class, so that would have been in the 1990, maybe 91, that I wrote. That one Freeing Jesus was written in the mid-90s and then many of what I called the parables were written maybe 15 years ago when I was still at Bear Creek and I was doing some freelancing and there were oftentimes prompts would come through for just content and I would write a story and I took it seriously and I would write a short story. So they sat around and I had wanted to publish this many years ago and then just never got to it because the energy wasn't there from the day job sucking it away. And once I published Leadership Challenge, the middle management memoir, which I did write after being laid off, I thought about that collection of stories and I'm like I know how to do it. It's done. Why not go ahead and publish that as well?
Speaker 2:So I did, I put that out as well and honestly, it's probably the one people prefer or like the most. I think they're intimidated by Leadership Challenged. They think it's a business book and I'm just here to say it is not. It is. I would call it a corporate coming-of-age story. It's a memoir. So it's not business-y at all. But here I am two books and currently working on another. I'm not sure if it's going to be a short story or a novel.
Speaker 4:I will tell you that as I was reading and I don't want to say the stories weren't complete, because they were, but they also were intriguing in a way that I wanted to know more I was like imagining what happened next for these people and what the reactions to them might have been when you think about our own narrow little lives in the world. And then to imagine it was just food for thought, which is my favorite food. Uh and uh. It also was a great read for a wintry night, just to set, because they are short stories and it's a short book. But uh, each, each one of the characters became someone in my mind and I I would to know. So I'm hoping you will write a novel. I think having a full story would be a wonderful thing coming from the pen of Christy Claxton.
Speaker 2:Right, and I get that a lot. I want to know more when I write stories, but I think I write stories the way I write songs, because so many of my songs are really the same thing. They're short stories. Lost in Texas short story Juan is a short story. I mean, they are based on real people and these events and songs are just quicker and easier to write for me than short stories.
Speaker 2:But I've thought about that honestly what if I took Lost in Texas and wrote a novel around that song, you know? So I'll keep writing. I plan on keep writing. I love it and I may be begging on the streets, but I hope that I can continue to do this. I'm calling myself semi-retired because I turned 60 last month, so if I can stay out of the corporate world, I will and I will keep writing and I hope that people will keep reading. But yes, freeing Jesus was meant to be a flight read. You could fly from New York to LA and read it, or you could honestly, you could fly from Austin to I don't know San Juan and read it.
Speaker 4:A good couple of hours to spend your time in other people's lives. I know that you're involved with several other things. You're still connected to Peace from the Porch and Porch Talk. So what are? I think you have a blog.
Speaker 2:On christyclaxtoncom. I do blog some, but I have moved more toward Porch Talk, which is a podcast and you can catch it on Spotify. Porch Talk a Peace from the Porch project, and for the most part it's me and my dear friend, longtime songwriting and performing partner, stacy Leder, in discussion. But I do bring other people in and we're just having a conversation on the proverbial to quote porch about topics that are important mostly to those of us who do not fit into cis, white, male, you know, and talking about the challenges of LGBTQ plus, community women, people of color and the challenges we have. So, and then, you know, eventually hopefully we get to more fun stuff too as well. It's, it's pretty much anything goes. We've just sort of gotten into this the challenges that people face in the workforce, because it's such a real thing right now, with layoffs and the struggles that people are are going through right now.
Speaker 2:But yeah, tonight in fact and I know that this is going to be post tonight when this airs but Stacey and I are doing a live recording from Book Woman for Porch Talk and we'll be encouraging audience to participate, to ask questions, to offer commentary.
Speaker 2:So we'll set up a microphone for the audience and record it and I'm not sure how long. Maybe I can do it fast, but the post-production is the hardest part of a podcast. But I'll get that up for people to hear and what I'm hoping is that we're able to do that in many different places where we're you know, me and someone else, but the podcast recording live from different venues anywhere Houston, austin, la, whatever. We want to do that, and I want to do that because I want the community sense, I want people to be involved and then also doing readings from the books as well. But yes, porch Talk is on Spotify, so Porch Talk, a Piece from the Porch Project. If that's tricky, just christyclaxtoncom. Everything is there. So people can get to my books, they can get to the podcast and any other writings and such that I've done.
Speaker 4:Well, we've been talking with Christy Claxton about her book Freeing Jesus and Other Lives, and you can check her out at christyclaxtoncom and find out about her other piece from the Porch Projects. Thank you for being with us on Queer Voices.
Speaker 1:Thank you, deb. So great to talk to you. This is Glenn from Queer Voices. You're listening to KPFT. That means you're already participating just by listening. But how about doing more? Kpft is totally listener-funded, which means it's people like you who are making donations who support this community resource. Kpft is totally listener-funded, which means it's people like you who are making donations who support this community resource. Kpft has no corporate or government strings-attached funding, which means we're free to program responsibly, but without outside influence. Will you participate in KPFT financially? This station needs everyone who listens to chip in a few dollars to keep the station going, because that's the way it works. Even if you're listening over the internet on another continent, you can still contribute. Please become an active member of the listener community by making a tax-deductible contribution. Please take a minute to visit kpftorg and click on the red Donate Now button. Thank you, this is KPFT 90.1 FM Houston, 89.5 FM Galveston, 91.9 FM Huntsville and worldwide on the internet at kpftorg and worldwide on the internet at kpftorg.
Speaker 6:This is Brett Pelham and here is your community calendar for February. February has a lot of theater going on and one of the big ones is February 7th. The Catastrophic Theater presents Miss LaRage's House of Dystopian Future. It's by the wildest author, Candice DeMesa. It opens at the match on February 7th. It will run through March 1st. It is an entire cast of non-binary and trans actors, so you need to see this one. It is going to be the queerest of the queer as far as plays go this year. And speaking of gay theater, la Boheme at Houston Grand Opera. If you haven't seen this one yet and according to my Facebook timeline most of you have they are having a Pride Night. It's going to be Sunday February 9th. That is Houston Grand Opera's production of La Boheme. Sunday February 9th, tickets are half off. If you go to Outsmart, they have a code and they are actually sponsoring this off. If you go to Outsmart, they have a code and they are actually sponsoring this particular production. So thanks to Outsmart Magazine for saving us some money on these opera tickets.
Speaker 6:All right, this month we're talking galas, galas, galas. The first one up is Wags and Whiskers, which is a luncheon and pet fashion show, where Ernie Manouse and Frank Billingsley are going to be honored as well. That's going to be held at Hotel Zaza on February 8th. Get ready for Wags and Whiskers Also coming up February 15th. You know you can't go without celebrating Valentine's Day and we have Project Love, which is a Valentine's fundraising gala. It is going to be at the Dow Academic Center in Lake Jackson and it's going to star RuPaul's Drag Race star, mistress Isabel Brooks from Houston. So if you want to catch her, that will be February 15th. Oh, and Chloe Ross is going to be performing with her as well. And, of course, the big event Friday, february 28th, the 72nd Diana Awards. Now, this time it's going to be held at a quorum, at Poor Behavior. This year's beneficiary is out for education. So always a great time you get to go to the Diana Awards, get some great first class entertainment, some great food, a lot of jokes, a lot of great awards, and the Dianas is one of the oldest gay organizations in well the country. So definitely go out and support them. Friday, february 28th, the 72nd Diana Awards, and we will see you next month.
Speaker 6:Multidisciplinary artist, writer, actor, activist, filmmaker, mother it's so hard to pin down Candace DeMesa because when you think you got her, she just shifts again. In her own words, she uses theater, performance, multiple literary genres, activism, dance, critical pedagogy, rituals, social practice, documentary, experimental and short film. She uses textures that involve grief, world-building, science fiction, afrofuturism, fantasy, spiritual technologies of African cosmologies to fashion what we call multidisciplinary experiences. We last saw Candice here in Houston, at least sort of virtually on film, in her most recent commissioned work, a Maroon's Guide to time and space, which had its world premiere performance run with a catastrophic theater May through June 2023 at the match. It basically featured Harriet Tubman as a time-traveling DJ who took the audience on a wild ride. Few could ever forget. Well, she's back and she's got a new production that opens on February 7th and runs through March 3rd, called Miss LaRage's House of Dystopian Futures. Once again, catastrophic Theater is presenting this at the match. So please welcome somebody that I just idolize to queer voices, the undefinable and completely free and liberated Candice DeMesa.
Speaker 3:Hello, I love thinking about myself as free and liberated. Candice DeMesa. Hello, I love thinking about myself as free and liberated. I just need to tell my toddler that, like she's yeah.
Speaker 6:Well, I think that that's what your work has such a sense of. It's free of any kind of expectations or rules or anything. And you do make this collage out of theater, and I think that that's what people are really drawn to, especially with these productions, is that you just combine it all. It's wild and very few people are doing this. How do you describe yourself? How do you describe yourself as an artist?
Speaker 3:I mean, you know, I have like my artist bio, which is like, of course you know, like the artist calling card for like the business side. You know you have to write it up and make it sound great. But how I would describe my, how I would describe myself as an artist, is I am always looking at the world from this like spiritual lens, a very non-material lens, and I am in a really deep, committed relationship with inquiry and questions and soul searching. And so I feel like all of my art is trying to get to the root of why this group project of what it is to be human sucks so bad. Like, why does it suck? And I just I'm always thinking about like what would it take for us to do better at this, and what would it take for us to do better at this, and what would it take for us to be freer and more liberated together? I just I think about it constantly, all day, all night, finding new ways to look at that question.
Speaker 6:Well, second up, I wanted to ask you we've got Miss LaRoccia's House of Dystopian Futures. How do you describe that, which is probably even a harder question?
Speaker 3:Oh, my goodness, I think this is the weirdest thing I've ever done. Oh, yay, today it is so weird and even me, as I was like reading what I wrote. I'm like what is in that head, I don't know. You know this project brought to you by being on the spectrum. You know this project brought to you by being on the spectrum. So I think Mr Rogers House of Dystopian Futures imagines a world where humans have essentially, like we are coming to an impending crisis we're in the midst of a poly crisis right now, with multiple wars, multiple environmental crises, multiple man-made environmental crises and so it imagines that moment after all of these crises hit ahead. It explores what a world that de-centers human supremacy would look like. It imagines what might plants animals mineral. It imagines what might plants animals mineral, like rocks and the earth itself. What might they have to say to humans about what it is to exist here on this floating rock in space? It is done through some really amazing storytellers.
Speaker 3:All of our artists are queer or non-binary. Identifying artists are queer or non-binary identifying. I think that's important because they are embodying these primordial essences of these biological entities. Right One, miss Leraj, embodies earth. We have Miss Minnie, who embodies the mineral aspect, rocks, geological, massive canyons. We've got Fi, who is fire, mommy, mommy Water, who is water, and we have Flora and Fauna, and then we have Fungi, which is a digital character. So the show imagines what would it be like to teach humans what it is to exist through the eyes of all of these primordial entities and their song and dance and film. And it's really weird. It's so weird.
Speaker 6:Oh, my gosh, I I'm gonna have so much fun trying to write this summary, oh yeah, yeah, I struggled let me ask you just where did you come from? Where were you raised?
Speaker 3:so I was raised in in California, in Southern California. Okay, this explains a lot.
Speaker 1:Oh it does it really does it really does it like totally tracks.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was raised in Southern California. My mother is African American and my father is from Haiti. I grew up just like a Southern California baby and then moved to Texas when I was 25, about 25.
Speaker 6:Why did you come here from Southern California?
Speaker 3:Oh my God, the cost of living. That really, yeah, yeah, california expensive. I didn't want to. Yeah, I couldn't do that anymore.
Speaker 6:What do you like about here? I mean, is it, are you a fan of Houston? What is it that draws you here and makes you say, hey, I'm going to be an artist here in Houston?
Speaker 3:I really owe all of my artistic development to Houston. Really, I don't think there is any artistic me without Houston. The seed was like nurtured in Southern like. Yeah, the seed was nurtured in Southern California but as far as like the growth, I owe catastrophic theater a lot, giving them my first like lead role in a show, especially that didn't specifically request for that character like an African-American or black actress, you know, which was a struggle in Houston at the time. So that was like monumental for me.
Speaker 6:Which show is that?
Speaker 3:Oh, it was buried child.
Speaker 6:Yes, okay.
Speaker 3:And they've really been a big part of like, supporting all of my growth and expansion, which has been really, really important. But there's so many other like individuals and organizations in Houston that have really like, trusted me and believed in me and helped me to grow. So Houston is very is a very special place as far as the arts ecosystem, the theater ecosystem I don't know that people know that we have more theaters per capita than most of the US. This is a great network to throw your hand into. There are great artists here and, of course, we have a great like funding arts ecosystem here because of the oil revenue. Right, houston's very special and unique in terms of the amount of funding that's available. So I love Houston. I think Houston's a great art city and I'm so excited that the nation recognizes that Houston's a powerhouse. We've got a lot of powerhouse artists of all genres that come out of here.
Speaker 6:It's amazing and I've definitely been a champion in the last couple of years and just looking at people that are coming from New York and LA and all these places saying that they're coming here because they have more freedom that word again to do what they want, a little bit less constrained by things like money and space, yes, yeah.
Speaker 3:Card for arts?
Speaker 6:Yes, so what was your educational background? Like I know, I was trying to read your biography, tell us a little bit about what you kind of came up studying.
Speaker 3:I went to Cal State, long Beach, long Beach, anyway, homeless new dog, and I initially studied theater and then my junior year I changed to black studies. And really it's because I found at the time as an actor I was having a hard time embodying characters because I did not realize in my head the default human that I was trying to embody was white and I couldn't be white. I didn't actually have as a neutral in my head even myself, you know, as a point of departure. And when I realized that what was happening in my brain, I changed to Black Studies because I wanted to know about that phenomenon, like, how does this happen socially, what has been happening around this where, like, the default human can be not you and I could absorb that. How could I even have absorbed that? So that was where I learned all about social and economic relationships between race and class and gender and how that's manifested historically around the world, specifically in the United States. And then, because I, you know, always think of myself as somebody who, like, wants to change the world, I went and got a master's degree. At that time I had one kid.
Speaker 3:I went and got a master's degree shortly after in public administration, thinking like, yeah, I'll do government work, you know I'll do. Yeah, I'll change the world. What a. You know, that was so cute, oh, so cute. But I thought I would change the world that way, but it was. It was actually really important for me because I learned about bureaucracy, I learned about systems and structures, I learned more about some of the impediments government to what we're dealing with as far as some of the limitations on our abilities to be free for damn near all of us, and I learned some systematic approaches that I still use to my art. I learned grant writing. I learned just very specific, important work around the administration of the art that I do. That has been actually really critical. So it ended up working out, even though it's very different than what I thought I would be doing.
Speaker 6:No, that's wild, because most artists do not know how to get those grants or how to do the business side of the art and without that to base you know, to fund your project you can't get anywhere. You know you're just going to be in a cardboard box on a street corner going hey, look at me, your work is so brilliant. I mean it's like this collage. And when I saw your work at the Catastrophic last year I mean it was just this poetry, it was film, it was theater, it were these innovative sets, it was these wild costumes, this music. I mean it was just. Everything was just thrown into this bucket and I felt like I'm just not in a piece of theater, I'm in a world. All of a sudden I'm in this entire environment and all of my senses are engaged and everything's coming at me and I'm seeing all these different forms of expression. How did you come up with this way of expressing yourself theatrically? Because it feels new.
Speaker 3:So I don't have any formal training as far as, like playwriting or things like that. I think that works in my favor because I do feel freer to just, I guess, do what I want. But as an actor, so I did prior to you know creating, know creating my own projects. You know I did act all around the city and at the alley theater, so I did learn, I did have a lot of time looking at scripts and and understanding text and understanding what, like, what good writing is, what good storytelling is. And then when I shifted into like multidisciplinary art outside of theater, then I was exposed to a whole new world where artists could jump really far out into things I thought were like this is weird and awkward and I feel uncomfortable and there were so fewer limitations than the traditional theater that I cut my teeth in and I really loved that and this opportunity to be free and actually the project I first pitched to Catastrophic.
Speaker 3:that meeting did not go very well. I was nervous about jumping far, so I pitched them like a very safe traditional play and I'm so grateful that maybe like three days later, I was like I think I, I think I got scared and I think I'm settling. And they days later I was like I think I got scared and I think I'm settling. And they were like yes, yes, we agree and we love your work and we want to encourage you to jump as far out as you want. That's what you know. That's their theater, they support that. And so I had been thinking about Harriet Tubman as a time traveler for years, just like ruminating on this concept and thinking like, oh, harriet Tubman saw a future and she saw like black people free. And then one day I was like, well, I don't feel very free, so who did she see? And then that threw me on a whole nother.
Speaker 3:Like you know, portal of like. Oh, my God, she saw other people beside us. Who is she saying? Like, how do I look? I'm looking at her. She's looking past me. I should be looking forward to the future.
Speaker 3:Yeah it just I had been thinking about it actually for some years. And then how that relates with indigenous African spiritualities, where you learn you can't get anywhere into indigenous African spiritualities and not hit some other entity who, they say, taught them what they know about, essentially how to be human, how to organize societies, and I couldn't get around that. The skeptic in me always wants to be like, oh, but I'm like, if you're going to honor indigenous wisdom and they say that they are not alone in the cosmos, that these other entities have come and helped them, then you have to consider that. And so I just I did. I threw it all in a in a blender, like all these things I ruminate on, like I said, shout out to being on the spectrum for the, the rumination and you know these hyper fixations, space and harriet tubman. But I threw them all in the blender and that's the show that came out is maroon's Guide, portals and dancing.
Speaker 6:And I've been a theater critic for over a decade which embarrasses me to even say now and I have seen so many Black companies here in Houston, such as Ensemble Vincent, victoria Presents, the Sankofa Collective, a whole bunch of people and I don't feel like they're doing what you're doing. It feels like that they deal with kind of a cultural heritage and they deal a lot with for lack of a better word the past or the present, and I feel like you, candice, you're owning the future and it's so cool to see that you actually are projecting this afrofuturism that I don't even think I had a definition of that until I saw your show and started like deep diving and of course I did. When I saw that Lovecraft Country series too but shout out to Lovecraft Country on HBO I wanted to ask who are your influences Like? Who influenced you as an artist?
Speaker 3:Lovecraft Country I really loved. I think the writer is oh, I know her. I think her last name is Naima Green. I love this show so much I had to go look her up because I said who, who did this, who did this?
Speaker 6:Misha Green, oh what was it. Misha Green.
Speaker 3:Misha Green. Yes, thank you, misha Green. I love the work that her and the other writers in the room did for the show, and I think that was where I realized that I am a science fiction person.
Speaker 3:And I hadn't really known that, but it made sense once I realized it. But I'm like oh, this is who I am, this is what I do. The other show that really inspired me was Atlanta. Yeah, the show Atlanta. Like just how they just broke all the rules by the time they got to season four. It was just odd and disconnected story wise, and I loved the freedom of that. I think those would probably be my biggest influences.
Speaker 3:There's another artist out of Houston that I, autumn Knight. That has a very successful career and I'm always just inspired by what to me feels like a thread of freedom in the work and I am most inspired by. I just do not. I'm very bored and uninterested in dealing with the past or the present. I'm uninterested.
Speaker 3:A big thrust of my work is that I don't want to tell oppression stories. There is no real path to freedom there, there's only telling someone else's narrative. And so if I'm going to create a lane for myself and the people I love to exist, I have to look at the future. I have to find that thread to place them safely, and so I don't. I don't deal with depression. It's actually explicit in Maroon's Guide. It explicitly says there are no.
Speaker 3:There is no whiteness in the making of this piece. We're not escaping from slavery. We're not escaping like Harriet is in a battle with no one. Because I think if you make that the central conflict, it prioritizes again the system you're trying to subvert, prioritizes again the system you're trying to subvert. So I don't do it as a practice. And it's the same with Miss LaRogge's House of Dystopian Futures, which I call queer futurism. Now I mean, I'm on a new thread, which is I want to de-center humans completely, like everything that humans make and label. I don't want to de-center. What if we were not important anymore? Make and label? I don't want to decenter. What if we were not important anymore? What if what we made we looked at twice, three times? What if we trusted nature more than we trusted the human impulse to categorize? And I just feel like that's the freest way we can get. I keep my feet in the present, but I keep my heart and my head in the future. That's an amazing place to be, obviously heart and my head in the future.
Speaker 6:That's an amazing place to be, obviously. And another thing I wanted to ask you and this is really banal but what music do you listen to Like when? If I go into a playlist of yours, what am I going to get?
Speaker 3:That's a good question. Okay, I tend to listen to like the same bunch of things over and over. Okay, so when I was writing a Maroon's Guide, there is another Houston artist named Lee Harris and I listened to one of her albums. I think it was called. It has something to do with Third Ward. It felt really scary to jump far out and so I just wanted to listen to something that felt far out. Another artist jumping far out sonically, making interesting things with the voice and sound and exploring, and I wanted to feel free, so I would listen to that to help me get out of my own mind. Fear and mind, blah, blah, blah. This one. I listened to Plantasia by Mort Garson. It is a strange tinkly album and the songs are like oh to an African violet, it's a song to a spider plant. I think it came out in the late 70s and it's like weird, like synth music to plants.
Speaker 6:I am, so there I'm going.
Speaker 3:So good and I just, yeah, it makes me think to plants. I'm so there, I'm going so good, it makes me think about plants and I felt like it was really fun. So if I'm creating, I kind of have to listen to something that feels like the mood of what I'm trying to live in.
Speaker 6:You know it's funny because when I first saw you and when I saw your video presentations and Maroon's Guide with you talking, I immediately went video presentations and Maroon's Guide with you talking I immediately went to Prince and that is somebody that I grew up with and I felt like he saw the future. It's hard for me to explain, but I felt like that when I went to a Prince show. There were no colors anymore, there were no boundaries. We all felt so free to be with each other. You reminded me just the way that you held yourself, the way that you spoke, the way that you seem to come from the future. It just reminded me of this presence, of this music giant that I worshipped growing up. But there's one other artist that, if you get a chance to check out, there's a Swedish singer called Agnes and she came.
Speaker 6:Yeah, she came out with an album called Magic Still Exists and it's an album that you have to listen to from the very start to the end. You cannot skip around on the tracks, because it is totally a lecture about being and existence and things like that. And I just thought when I started listening to it I was like am I going to see Candace DeMesa pop up in here somewhere? So definitely, Magic Still Exists by Agnes.
Speaker 3:I'm going to listen to it immediately after this, like immediately, and I'm gonna eat.
Speaker 6:We've gone off the rails so much, but that's expected, because I'm talking to candace de mesa, miss laurage's house of dystopian futures, full of things like judgmental rocks and things the earth coming to life, and I can't wait. And it's running at the Match Complex. Starts February 7th. Runs through March 3rd. One of the wonderful things about Catastrophic tickets are pay what you can. You don't even have to pay like some exorbitant amount that they're going to set for you. You can absolutely do it, but from my experience it's worth every penny that you can offer. I'm so thrilled to see you thriving and coming up on your second show, so I will be there just cheering and thank you for coming on Queer Voices.
Speaker 3:And it runs February 7th through March 1st. Okay, so can I briefly say I am so excited about this show because it's my first foray into my new mental fixation, which I'm labeling queer futures, and I'm sure that label exists, but I'm borrowing it. I really am loving like. My idea of this queer future through this show is that a queer future is where we as humans position ourselves within the larger spectrum of all life, cosmic life, plants, animals and what I really love, and why it's so important to me that we have queer storytellers telling the story, is that when we really position humans as part of nature, the things that we find divisive, right Transphobia there is no precedent for that in nature. There is no precedent for homophobia there is no precedent, there's not even, I think, from a natural lens. There wouldn't even be like need for labeling because there is no opposing. All of these things exist so beautifully in nature as a function of an ecosystem of care. And I think humans, if we could really just get off ourselves as like we think you know being supreme, we could really find, by looking at these interrelationships, ways that we could organize ourself in our society. That would really help us to get out of our own way in terms of how we're limiting empathy to each other. I love that because the future to me is us. When we rejoin plants. That future is clear. That future is so queer coded when we look at it and my entrance into queer identity is through.
Speaker 3:I love the way that bell hooks terms it, which is like existing outside of racial, cis, hetero, patriarchal system. Right, just, I find my Black womanhood very much exists outside of a gender binary. Personally, I've never felt like I've had to exist in the gender binary that exists in like the white colonial imagination. There's been an expansiveness that's been afforded because I've my identity's always been at odds with every part of the, the society that's been. It was meant to be oppressive but it's actually been very liberating because I was free from the get-go. If you really look at it, you know this. These identities can be free from the get-go.
Speaker 3:I love that. Looking at plants and animals and as prophets, as teachers, as master teachers, really shows us that what we're grappling with is like biology, not even one on one. It's the basis for nature and already figured out how to evolve to make sure that everybody fits it, and already figured that out like hundreds of millions of years ago and we're still like on square one. And then also there's going to be very elaborate and flamboyant costumes and there's a whole dance number again and just getting roasted by nature, which I really just want to see humans get roasted, just get talked bad to Planting animals who are completely above and beyond the human definitions of gender and just look fabulous. It's like my dream right now.
Speaker 6:It's a great dream to have right now, because it does feel like such a scary time to be queer. I mean, it's really been a hard year, so we need Miss LaRage more than ever. So there you go.
Speaker 3:To guide us all into. I do I just really hope to take all these communities that I love and I'm a part of that have named and claimed me and I name and claim I really am, I feel like, one by one, I'm just like trying to take us and deposit us into like a little homeland. Do you know a future homeland where, in spite of what's happening socially, there is this like free place in the heart that we can hold right, like as a promised, a promised land. That's really that's what I'm hoping, and I'm hoping that thread of like, that feeling of promised land, becomes infectious enough that once you feel it, you can't go backwards, you can't unfree when somebody has given you a space to be free.
Speaker 6:Well, there you go. Artistic Harriet Tubman, candice DeMesa. Let's go Miss LaRogia's House's Dystopian Futures. Thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 1:This has been Queer Voices, heard on KPFT Houston and as a podcast available from several podcasting sources. Check our webpage QueerVoicesorg for more information. Queer Voices executive producer is Brian Levinka. Debra Moncrief-Bell is co-producer, brett Cullum and David Mendoza-Druzman are contributors, and David Mendoza-Druzman are contributors and Brett is also our webmaster. The News Wrap segment is part of another podcast called this Way Out, which is produced in Los Angeles.
Speaker 5: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 For Queer Voices. I'm Glenn Holt, thank you.
