Hi! I’m Jen. I’m queer.

That’s how the play starts. And it’s true!

I make body-based multi-disciplinary performance. I claim my artistic lineage in the work of Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver and in WOW Cafe Theater’s mutual aid-based approach to developing performance; in Mary Overlie’s Viewpoints and the work of the SITI Company; and in 20 years of immersion in Contact Improvisation. I am fired up about questions of femme invisibility, the current use of the word “femme,” and generational divides in understanding gender. I have a lot to say about loss of identity in parenthood and the inescapability of societal judgement of parents. I stay up at night deconstructing the category of disability, especially invisible disability, toward the goal of personhood for all. 

I have been making performances since 1994. I have been presented at Dixon Place, LaMama, BAX, HERE, and WOW Café Theater, where I was a member for twelve years. I have had residencies at BAX, Movement Research, and White Bird Theater Project. I have been funded by the LMCC and the Brooklyn Arts Council. 

When I’m not making art or raising my kick-ass tween, I support the member-led social justice work at Congregation Kolot Chayeinu in Brooklyn. Someone who loves you might also have forwarded you my election email, where I share my super nerdy research on ballot measures and hyperlocal races like judgeships and district leaders. 

So I wrote this play.

It’s been a journey, let me tell you.

I wrote the first act back in 2019 as I was grappling with what felt like the total erasure of my queer identity when I had my kid in 2012. It paralleled the erasure my straight mommy friends felt, but it went so much deeper. Stick a stroller in front of a femme-identifying dyke and even the other queers can’t see you! I only knew one other queer mom in 2013, when the play was set, and that was pretty damn lonely.

Then the pandemic hit, and the play got put on hold for almost four years. When I resurfaced, so much had changed in the queer landscape, I decided to write a second act set eleven years later. In 2024, allllllll the queers were having babies! And the word femme meant something completely different. And the playground mommies were now experiencing perimenopause, and trying to raise pre-teens in the age of TikTok. 

The play looks at generational divides in how we handle gender in the queer community. It addresses the ahistoricism that is created by how fast queer culture changes. It takes on the question of how we’re understanding “femme.” It dissects and connects the postpartum and perimenopausal experiences. And throughout, it questions what it means to be truly seen. 

And it’s hilarious. I promise.