"The Fantasy of Queerness": A Conversation with Roger Q. Mason about Lavender Men: An Emancipation Play and Making a Queer of Color Creative Life in Theater and Performance

It was in Summer 2017, in the fabled rolling hills of Ripton, Vermont, on the campus of the iconic Bread Loaf School of English, a short walk from the farm of Nobel laureate American poet, Robert Frost, that I first met playwright, actor, and director, Roger Q. Mason. Mason, an alum of Bread Loaf, and self-described "Black, Filipinx, plus-sized, gender nonconforming, queer artist of color," had returned to the glorious campus that lays at the feet of the extraordinary Green Mountains, to edit the campus newsletter, "The Crumb," and to work as assis-tant director of that summer's production of Shakespeare's Othello. The production would feature actors from the Trinity Repertory Company of Providence, students in the Brown University/Trinity Rep Master's in Fine Arts Program in Acting and Directing, and students, faculty, and staff of the Bread Loaf School of English. In the course of preparing to mount the production of Othello, an idea emerged to extend the conversation around Shakespeare's tragedy by producing a staged reading of a tangentially related work—Lolita Chakrabarti's 2012 play, Red Velvet. Red Velvet, which first bowed at London's Tricycle Theatre, focuses on Black American thespian, Ira Aldridge who, in 1825, took the role of Othello in a production in London. Aldridge's performance took place before slavery was abolished by the British in 1832, and his performance was also notable in that previously Shakespeare's title character, Othello, tended to be played by white actors in blackface.

Figure 1.

Roger Q. Mason is dedicated to using theatre as a vehicle of visibility, equity and inclusion for LGBTQIA+, GNC people of color. Photo credit: Sara Martin.

When it was decided that Bread Loaf would hold a staged reading so that dialogues on the themes about race, discrimination, gender, envy, and violence in Othello would have a contemporary cousin to consider, it was a prime opportunity for Mason to display their love for theater and their desire to practice as an actor's director. Given Mason's prodigious talent, and ridiculous work ethic, matched with the wonderful ensemble of actors and production staff alongside him, the staged reading ballooned into a full performance of Chakrabarti's play; a theater experience I will always remember, and an introduction to Mason's other talents alongside their playwriting. I thought even then, if this is how they direct and engage with a play as wonderful as this, including a remarkably insightful talkback, I cannot wait to read their work someday.

Well, in spring 2020, someday came, when I received a copy of Mason's Lavender Men: An Emancipation Play. The play, a historical fantasia, posits the queerness of Abraham Lincoln. Outside of the play, discussions of Lincoln's queerness are often attributed to his relationship in Springfield, Illinois, with Joshua Speed, including sharing a bed over the course of four years and an exchange of letters that seem to confirm the two had a sexual relationship.¹ In Lavender Men, Lincoln's queerness is explored in a relationship between Lincoln and a legal assistant named Elmer Ellsworth. However, as a historical fantasia, Lincoln and Elmer's trip through their relationship is interrupted, and also illuminated, by the appearance of the character, Taffeta, a self-described "fabulous creation of color."² Taffeta's presence throughout the many scenes of Lincoln and Elmer's queer fantasy of their relationship, brings matters of race, masculinity, gender nonconformance, and sexuality, as well as the themes of invisibility, self-possession, regret, and the nuances of "carrying too much of other people's shit"³ to the fore of the only story Lincoln and Elmer keep telling. As a consequence, a new understanding of the same old tale they tell to themselves and each other is possible, but at what cost, and to whom?

Lavender Men is only one of a trilogy of plays we might think of as Mason's...