Artistic Statement
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Spencer J. Vigil
Artistic Statement
My name is Spencer Joshua Vigil, and I am a Transgender Composer, Lyricist, and Book-writer who happens to also belong to the BIPOC community. Through my writing I strive to tell authentic stories that are restorative in nature. I am in the business of healing; healing communities, healing past traumas, healing the self that is between where I am now and where I wish to be in the future. This means I often highlight communities that go unseen in the musical theater cannon.
I create content for the forgotten theater goer. The one by themselves in the mezzanine clutching their arm rests. The one who must run to Sardi’s or Shake Shack during intermission because there is no gender-neutral bathroom for them to use in the theater. The one who looks around the audience and sees no one else that looks like them. At one point in time and still to this day, I am this theater goer, but there is a power in knowing that I have the tools to change that too.
In my work I do not shirk away from tough material in order to make the audience comfortable. While I think the theater is a place to escape, I also believe that as writers in theater we have the moral obligation to show the audience how the world can be by showing how it once was. I love theater philosophy and theory because it reminds the writer of their responsibility to the work. If there is one thing I commend myself for, it is my moral obligation to the work I create. It is true; I have struggled greatly with addiction and loss but in the trials my commitment has become even stronger than it once was.
I have taken what’s been my life circumstances and have used them to create work that includes rather than alienates, that heals rather than angers, that shows humanity rather than stereotypes, that asks tough questions of the audience rather than glossing over problems. In my musical Loud & With Feeling, which debuted at Berklee NYC in 2023 Directed by Tony Nominee L. Morgan Lee, I sought to take two seemingly polar ideas religion and sexuality and used them both to show how like sex or gender, that spirituality also lives on a spectrum and asked of the audience-maybe these two ideas aren’t so far from one another as once previously thought.
In my work I always wish to hold on to what has made me fall in love with writing in the first place. Connection. Vulnerability. Access. Knowledge. Especially in theater where the collaboration comes full circle and every sense is tested to each own’s interpretation. Theater is the closest I ever feel to God and Magic. Thank You.
I create content for the forgotten theater goer. The one by themselves in the mezzanine clutching their arm rests. The one who must run to Sardi’s or Shake Shack during intermission because there is no gender-neutral bathroom for them to use in the theater. The one who looks around the audience and sees no one else that looks like them. At one point in time and still to this day, I am this theater goer, but there is a power in knowing that I have the tools to change that too.
In my work I do not shirk away from tough material in order to make the audience comfortable. While I think the theater is a place to escape, I also believe that as writers in theater we have the moral obligation to show the audience how the world can be by showing how it once was. I love theater philosophy and theory because it reminds the writer of their responsibility to the work. If there is one thing I commend myself for, it is my moral obligation to the work I create. It is true; I have struggled greatly with addiction and loss but in the trials my commitment has become even stronger than it once was.
I have taken what’s been my life circumstances and have used them to create work that includes rather than alienates, that heals rather than angers, that shows humanity rather than stereotypes, that asks tough questions of the audience rather than glossing over problems. In my musical Loud & With Feeling, which debuted at Berklee NYC in 2023 Directed by Tony Nominee L. Morgan Lee, I sought to take two seemingly polar ideas religion and sexuality and used them both to show how like sex or gender, that spirituality also lives on a spectrum and asked of the audience-maybe these two ideas aren’t so far from one another as once previously thought.
In my work I always wish to hold on to what has made me fall in love with writing in the first place. Connection. Vulnerability. Access. Knowledge. Especially in theater where the collaboration comes full circle and every sense is tested to each own’s interpretation. Theater is the closest I ever feel to God and Magic. Thank You.