Artistic Statement
Jim Hellwig, known as The Ultimate Warrior in the toxic world of pro wrestling, couldn’t get work for 15 years because he was too toxic himself. In that time, he was a conservative speaker. In ‘05, at The University of Connecticut, he told someone who objected to his homophobia that “queering doesn’t make the world work.” Now, Hellwig is dead and the cishet world is fucked; let’s queer it up. In the scripted entertainment industries where every character is assumed to be default male, I strive to up non-binary representation, and to make roles gender neutral and/or specifically non-male wherever possible in order to un-quo the status just a little.
I am also proudly Jewish. I haven’t been in a temple outside of playing Daddy Warbucks in a shul production of Annie in more than 20 years. I worship at the altar of Scrabble, Chinese food and Groucho Marx, who was the subject of my NYU Thesis play. He nearly visited the set of The Exorcist. It’s a long story that I’m happy to tell you if we work together. Judaism is a common theme in my work, and fighting christian supremacy has been a concern to me these past 6 years for some reason. In my recent play The Cohens in Covid, which was produced at the Fall/Winterfest, I address the prevalence of white supremacy within the Jewish community. It’s like a matryoshka doll of bigotry.
Additionally, I may be a tiny bit of a giant geek. A shocking revelation coming from someone who started their artistic statement writing about wrestling and not even in the context of Chad Deity. I am oft inspired by pop culture and by the surrounding fandomst, which have their own problems with white christian cis-het male supremacy. I’ve written plays, including both of my MFA thesis candidates, that deal with QAnon, Gamergate and incels (but I repeat myself), because I am too terminally online to not do that, and my doomscrolling can’t have been in vain. In my one act play, “No DeLorean,” a trio of nerds invent time travel, at great and perpetual risk to the universe, not for any humanitarian purposes or for Hitler killing, but to get Back to the Future the Oscars it deserves.
In this ongoing pandemic, I have written for many different forms of theater. I started taking sketch writing courses at the Upright Citizens Brigade in the fall of 2019, imagining that most everything I wrote would go up on their stage. By the time I finished them, they no longer had a stage, and our final show was performed on Zoom. In one of my sketches, the heroine of “The Yellow Wallpaper” solved her problems by changing her Zoom background to a party. In the intervening time, I have not only written for stage and for zoom, but for hybrids of the two, accounting for performers, such as myself, who can’t perform in person. These past few years have shown me that what theater can be is malleable. Whatever shape it’s molded into, I want to write for it. And I truly hope that the theater industry can hold a place for immunocompromised and disabled theater makers who cannot commit to the inherently hazardous conditions of working in person during Covid.
I am also proudly Jewish. I haven’t been in a temple outside of playing Daddy Warbucks in a shul production of Annie in more than 20 years. I worship at the altar of Scrabble, Chinese food and Groucho Marx, who was the subject of my NYU Thesis play. He nearly visited the set of The Exorcist. It’s a long story that I’m happy to tell you if we work together. Judaism is a common theme in my work, and fighting christian supremacy has been a concern to me these past 6 years for some reason. In my recent play The Cohens in Covid, which was produced at the Fall/Winterfest, I address the prevalence of white supremacy within the Jewish community. It’s like a matryoshka doll of bigotry.
Additionally, I may be a tiny bit of a giant geek. A shocking revelation coming from someone who started their artistic statement writing about wrestling and not even in the context of Chad Deity. I am oft inspired by pop culture and by the surrounding fandomst, which have their own problems with white christian cis-het male supremacy. I’ve written plays, including both of my MFA thesis candidates, that deal with QAnon, Gamergate and incels (but I repeat myself), because I am too terminally online to not do that, and my doomscrolling can’t have been in vain. In my one act play, “No DeLorean,” a trio of nerds invent time travel, at great and perpetual risk to the universe, not for any humanitarian purposes or for Hitler killing, but to get Back to the Future the Oscars it deserves.
In this ongoing pandemic, I have written for many different forms of theater. I started taking sketch writing courses at the Upright Citizens Brigade in the fall of 2019, imagining that most everything I wrote would go up on their stage. By the time I finished them, they no longer had a stage, and our final show was performed on Zoom. In one of my sketches, the heroine of “The Yellow Wallpaper” solved her problems by changing her Zoom background to a party. In the intervening time, I have not only written for stage and for zoom, but for hybrids of the two, accounting for performers, such as myself, who can’t perform in person. These past few years have shown me that what theater can be is malleable. Whatever shape it’s molded into, I want to write for it. And I truly hope that the theater industry can hold a place for immunocompromised and disabled theater makers who cannot commit to the inherently hazardous conditions of working in person during Covid.
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Stephen Fruchtman
Artistic Statement
Jim Hellwig, known as The Ultimate Warrior in the toxic world of pro wrestling, couldn’t get work for 15 years because he was too toxic himself. In that time, he was a conservative speaker. In ‘05, at The University of Connecticut, he told someone who objected to his homophobia that “queering doesn’t make the world work.” Now, Hellwig is dead and the cishet world is fucked; let’s queer it up. In the scripted entertainment industries where every character is assumed to be default male, I strive to up non-binary representation, and to make roles gender neutral and/or specifically non-male wherever possible in order to un-quo the status just a little.
I am also proudly Jewish. I haven’t been in a temple outside of playing Daddy Warbucks in a shul production of Annie in more than 20 years. I worship at the altar of Scrabble, Chinese food and Groucho Marx, who was the subject of my NYU Thesis play. He nearly visited the set of The Exorcist. It’s a long story that I’m happy to tell you if we work together. Judaism is a common theme in my work, and fighting christian supremacy has been a concern to me these past 6 years for some reason. In my recent play The Cohens in Covid, which was produced at the Fall/Winterfest, I address the prevalence of white supremacy within the Jewish community. It’s like a matryoshka doll of bigotry.
Additionally, I may be a tiny bit of a giant geek. A shocking revelation coming from someone who started their artistic statement writing about wrestling and not even in the context of Chad Deity. I am oft inspired by pop culture and by the surrounding fandomst, which have their own problems with white christian cis-het male supremacy. I’ve written plays, including both of my MFA thesis candidates, that deal with QAnon, Gamergate and incels (but I repeat myself), because I am too terminally online to not do that, and my doomscrolling can’t have been in vain. In my one act play, “No DeLorean,” a trio of nerds invent time travel, at great and perpetual risk to the universe, not for any humanitarian purposes or for Hitler killing, but to get Back to the Future the Oscars it deserves.
In this ongoing pandemic, I have written for many different forms of theater. I started taking sketch writing courses at the Upright Citizens Brigade in the fall of 2019, imagining that most everything I wrote would go up on their stage. By the time I finished them, they no longer had a stage, and our final show was performed on Zoom. In one of my sketches, the heroine of “The Yellow Wallpaper” solved her problems by changing her Zoom background to a party. In the intervening time, I have not only written for stage and for zoom, but for hybrids of the two, accounting for performers, such as myself, who can’t perform in person. These past few years have shown me that what theater can be is malleable. Whatever shape it’s molded into, I want to write for it. And I truly hope that the theater industry can hold a place for immunocompromised and disabled theater makers who cannot commit to the inherently hazardous conditions of working in person during Covid.
I am also proudly Jewish. I haven’t been in a temple outside of playing Daddy Warbucks in a shul production of Annie in more than 20 years. I worship at the altar of Scrabble, Chinese food and Groucho Marx, who was the subject of my NYU Thesis play. He nearly visited the set of The Exorcist. It’s a long story that I’m happy to tell you if we work together. Judaism is a common theme in my work, and fighting christian supremacy has been a concern to me these past 6 years for some reason. In my recent play The Cohens in Covid, which was produced at the Fall/Winterfest, I address the prevalence of white supremacy within the Jewish community. It’s like a matryoshka doll of bigotry.
Additionally, I may be a tiny bit of a giant geek. A shocking revelation coming from someone who started their artistic statement writing about wrestling and not even in the context of Chad Deity. I am oft inspired by pop culture and by the surrounding fandomst, which have their own problems with white christian cis-het male supremacy. I’ve written plays, including both of my MFA thesis candidates, that deal with QAnon, Gamergate and incels (but I repeat myself), because I am too terminally online to not do that, and my doomscrolling can’t have been in vain. In my one act play, “No DeLorean,” a trio of nerds invent time travel, at great and perpetual risk to the universe, not for any humanitarian purposes or for Hitler killing, but to get Back to the Future the Oscars it deserves.
In this ongoing pandemic, I have written for many different forms of theater. I started taking sketch writing courses at the Upright Citizens Brigade in the fall of 2019, imagining that most everything I wrote would go up on their stage. By the time I finished them, they no longer had a stage, and our final show was performed on Zoom. In one of my sketches, the heroine of “The Yellow Wallpaper” solved her problems by changing her Zoom background to a party. In the intervening time, I have not only written for stage and for zoom, but for hybrids of the two, accounting for performers, such as myself, who can’t perform in person. These past few years have shown me that what theater can be is malleable. Whatever shape it’s molded into, I want to write for it. And I truly hope that the theater industry can hold a place for immunocompromised and disabled theater makers who cannot commit to the inherently hazardous conditions of working in person during Covid.