Arts lends student director a hand in fighting for inclusivity and speaking out on societal issues.

Story by KELLY PEARCE

Auditions

A pair of Nike slides sit on the side of the stage. The actor walks barefoot into center and introduces themself to the production team sitting in the faded red seats of the front row. Old Main Theater is quiet, only the sound of forms shuffling between hands can be heard. Student director Jay Chavez signals to the auditionee with a nod.

“Begin when you’re ready.”

After a minute, the actor finishes their performance and Jay wastes no time diving into feedback. With only five minutes allocated to each audition, he can’t afford to.

“How did that feel?” Jay inquiries to each actor. He will repeat this question to 44 hopefuls by the end of the night.

“Good,” some answer hesitantly.

“I’m really nervous,” more tend to say.

Only six will be cast for a role, but Jay spends time going over feedback with everyone. True to his reputation, he’s good with people. This reputation is four years in the making. Jay is one of 158 declared theatre majors at Western, and has made a name for himself with everyone he’s met.

Jay doesn’t spend a lot of time in his seat the rest of the night. He jumps back and forth between his seat and the front of the stage, striking a dramatic pose as a new auditionee comes into the theater. Laying down and leaning on one hip, Jay stretches one long arm into the air and bends his knees behind him, revealing his personality before opening his mouth.

When each actor arrives, he pops up, shakes their hands or stretches his long arms around to hug them, welcoming them to auditions. He leans his bespectacled face in as he meets each new actor, and makes sure they feel comfortable in the theater, and with him.

Grace Heller, the artistic director of Student Theatre Productions and a friend of Jay’s, has her own experience seeing Jay’s people-person magic in action when he directed a different STP show, “Love/Sick”, last winter.

“There was one moment when we were getting really close to the show and there was a dress rehearsal. We were giving notes.” Heller says. “Someone was just stressed and started to cry. Jay was like ‘we’re going to take a breath together, we’re all going to calm down and be here together’. He handled the situation really well in a way I would not have known how to do.”

With the support of his program, Jay was cleared to direct a STP supplemental show for the second time in a year.

“We get a lot of submissions, so a lot of it is knowing and trusting who the director is.” Heller explains. To submit a show for STP, a director has to know their vision for the play, the history of the show, a plot summary and even a historical record.

The show he’s directing, “Snapshot” was written after 9/11, it’s technically set in 1969 at Mt. Rushmore, a famous monument of American history. “Snapshot” is a dramatic anthology, a collection of separate scenes and monologues woven together to form one play with an overarching message. This allows Jay to switch the order of scenes to tell the story he wants to tell. The story is a political one.

“This show is built from a tragedy. What Americans consider the harshest tragedy to happen. It sparked wars, political divide, hate crimes. So now we’re at this point again seventeen years later, and where are we now?” Jay says.

“Fuck America.”

Jay delivers this one line synopsis as confidently as if he was directing his cast at a rehearsal. He has chosen the play with that sentiment in mind, and much of it is due to the current political climate.

Jay is a bisexual, non-binary person of color. There have already been moments in his journey through theatre where he’s felt used for one aspect of his multifaceted identity. He wants to make sure no one he works with feels the same way, including his students and cast.

“Right now non binary and trans people aren’t considered real by the government.” Jay says. “We’re here, and art has always followed everything.”

In a New York Times article published late October, the Health and Human Services Department has been debating instilling a new definition of sex which would classify someone as “either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals that a person is born with”.

The article claims that the new Title IX definition “would essentially eradicate federal recognition of the estimated 1.4 million Americans who have opted to recognize themselves — surgically or otherwise — as a gender other than the one they were born into.”

Protest and civil rights groups have rallied against the possible constraints within this new definition, like genetic testing to solidify one’s sex if it is ever questioned, that would target transgender and nonbinary peoples.

“I think a lot of people are scared,” Jay said. “They don’t want to outwardly say ‘Fuck America’ because there is a big consequence for that. And I was fed up. I’m a brown person of color, I don’t have a lot riding on me. I try to leave the country because if I try to come back in they probably won’t let me.”

Jay hopes the audience is able to pick up on these larger issues behind the play, and can look to the arts as a source of hope.

“We’re fighting for arts. Within this resistance and this garbage, garbage place we’re at right now, great art will come from this,” Jay said.

Making art their way

If you make your way up to the second floor of the Performing Arts Center, you can go down the hallway and arrive at the theatre department offices. A glance to the right, and there’s folders on the wall with information on the major- acting, stage managing, design, directing. To the left, you can peer into the lobby in front of department chair Beth Leonard’s office.

A bulletin board is splayed across a wall of the lobby, with letters reading “Wall of Fame” at the top. Stapled across the board are pieces of paper with names of Western theatre alum and their jobs after graduating. There are broadway actors, dance company members, teachers, interns, and all kinds of artists that were once where Jay is now.

Jay already has a pretty clear vision of what he wants to do when the curtains close on his journey at Western.

Teaching. Specifically, high school.

“I think people need to start realizing that theatre for the younger audiences is just as important, and they can make beautiful art. I don’t need an older generation to put on a show for me.” Jay said.

This aligns with Jay’s reputation in the department, and especially with department chair Beth Leonard. She has worked in all realms of theatre for thirty years, from professional to academic. Now in her sixth year as chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance, she’s seen the commitment Western students.

Leonard sees in Jay the type of dedication that leads someone to the Wall of Fame. She, a theatre veteran and self-proclaimed tough professor, respects him as a student, and a person.

“I think with Jay’s sensitivities, that will be one of the things he will bring to a program is an open-armed acceptance of anyone who will walk in the door.”

Those who know Jay know his worth to future generations. According to Leonard, the dedication confidence and acceptance that Jay emits will do nothing but benefit those around him.

She is adamant that one of the most important lessons he can teach others is not even about theatre.

“That you can survive almost anything. You can survive and go forward and retain the kind of person that you want to be. I don’t know all of Jay’s world, but I know he is uniquely himself and no one would be able to change that. We have a world in which young people are struggling and they can see in him someone who has come through the fire and be forged into a role model.” Leonard is as confident in this as Jay is while directing.

A Jay of all trades

“Look,” Jay announced when auditions begin running late, “We have to keep going. I have to run a meeting at 10.”

Aside from “Snapshot,” Jay was performing in a downtown Bellingham community theatre show during fall all while working on 13 class credits, and runs meetings as the president of The Viking Comedy Hour every wednesday night on campus.

Jay’s performance journey began his sophomore year of high school when he was cast in favorite show to date, “Almost Maine.” As one of four younger cast members, he was able to learn from veterans seniors and became comfortable onstage for the first time. He even has a tattoo to commemorate the show across his arms: ‘that’s far and closer.’ It’s one of his favorite lines.

“Because the farthest you can be from someone is sitting right next to them.” Jay said.

He connects his index fingers together and draws a large circle in the air away from himself with one before connecting them again.

If you’re lucky, you can meet Sue Nami, Jay’s drag queen persona, who makes an appearance at Western for occasional Viking Comedy Hour shows. He refers to her as if she was some exasperating friend. As the local bad bitch theatre queen, with an eyebrow slit, clown eyes, high heels and an ample body.

You might be wondering Sue Nami ever makes it off campus to Bellingham’s own drag community. You’d be disappointed.

“No, I don’t have time.” Jay laughs, then corrects himself. “But I am headlining down in Portland in December.”

Ask him about how he feels about spring graduation and Jay’s only answer is a sharp, exasperated sigh and an eye roll. It seems he would rather create comedy sketches with VIking Comedy Hour and direct than go on about his feelings toward entering the real world.

Never saying no

In the program for an iDiOM show he performed in, “The Skriker”, next to Jay’s photo is a sentence that sums him up well:

“It is said that Jay is the person who won’t say no to an opportunity.”

Leonard has had Jay in several theatre classes, and has worked with him as part of Western’s Summer Theatre program for years. She says that unlike so many college students, Jay has squeezed out every opportunity from a university community he can. He is not passive, and does not wait for others to show him what to do or how to do it. He just goes for it.

“He and I are at odds often for me saying ‘you’ve got to stop, you’ve got to say no to some things. You’re a whirling dervish and I want to make sure you stay okay’.” Leonard says. “What I’ve discovered is that I think that’s how he stays okay, by staying productive.”

Jay has plans to direct three more shows this year, one at a middle school, another at Western, and one in the summer even though he’s set to graduate in the spring.

Rehearsals

Further into the quarter, “Snapshot” is cast and Jay is about to begin a rehearsal.

He’s late, and as he walks in the cast turns and comments on the new lack of hair on Jay’s head. What was once a medium length bun with highlighted tips has been sheared down to above his ears. As the exclamations of surprise come in, he laughs and casually explains that he was unable to get medication from the Health Center so he decided to get a haircut instead.

Jay is, as with so many things in his life, not shy about the trip to the health center, or medication. This quarter is actually the first that Jay’s been able to seek and receive medication for his anxiety, but he knows he’s needed it for awhile. The constant work can sometimes intensify his depression and anxiety, but it’s kept him ahead of his mental illness for years.

“If I don’t keep busy I get lost in my own head. And if I’m lost in my own thoughts, I think about why people hate me.” Jay said. “It’s to stop from killing myself.”

The arts world is “unstructured” to Jay, which allows him to create projects, direct shows and perform on his own time, at his own will. Jay switches his tone from nonchalant honesty to one of serious warning. While keeping this busy isn’t always healthy, to him it’s a necessary evil.

To conclude warmups, Jay turns around and joins the cast on stage to lead one of his favorite games.

The group closes their eyes and reflects on the stress in their day. As the group breathes in, getting more and more tense, Jay tells them to scream out when they reach their tipping point. After thirty seconds, the group in unison screams into the empty, dark theater.

“Fuck you!” Their screams echo to the back rows of Old Main Theater.

Jay screams with them, adding a few more for good measure, then gets back to work.