Meeting Challenges Head-On
She Calls Me Firefly, Teresa Lotz’s play that was recently produced by New Perspectives Theatre Company and VH Theatrical Development Foundation Off-Off Broadway, is about a gay drug addict suffering from lasting effects of abuse at the hands of his mother.
Three Times Fast is one of her musicals she’s writing with bookwriter/lyricist Naomi Matlow about a 15 year old girl who has been diagnosed with OCD.
“I use my work to create a platform to raise awareness of social inequality,” says playwright, composer and lyricist/book-writer Lotz. “When my eyes were opened to the systems of privilege that are in place around us, I felt like my world turned upside down. I started to see how I fit into the rest of the world.”
The professional world of musical theatre has continuously been a big part of the gay/queer movement, says Lotz. For decades musicals have prominently included LGBTQ characters. The problem is that queer women are often left out of this equation. Musicals like Rent and If/Then, notes Lotz, feature lesbian couples, but they’re in supporting character roles, or, as she calls them “stock” lesbians.
“The huge issues with gender parity in the professional theatre world are amplified for the queer women community,” she says.
While she reflects excitedly on several of her past productions, Lotz says she had the most fun with She Calls Me Firefly working with an amazing, supportive, and fully committed cast, each member delving into super difficult subject material.
Lotz says her work is different because she’s not afraid to get a little weird. to dive into the absurd and the challenging. She says she embraces collaboration at all levels and tries to create work that leaves mega spaces for interpretation – by the actors, directors, instrumentalists, and others.
If you missed Lotz’s July performances at the Musical Theatre Factory, and Three Times Fast on July 29th in Boston as part of the International OCD Foundation Conference, make sure to check out her Fall 2015 production of Anonymous, an original one act musical composed by Lotz and several other writers.