I’m a mixed-race trans Puerto Rican theatre artist. I like heavy metal, visceral performance, and friendship. I have three tenants of my art. One is my plays, one is what I call Spontaneous Theatre, and one is my curation/producing.

My plays are genre pieces. Everyone in New York is Beautiful is a poly romcom that gets into the mess of that while celebrating its beauty. Crisis is a T4T Thriller. I write genre pieces because genre leans into the best parts of fictional storytelling. Each genre has an emotion it's designed to hit and it hits that emotion best. When I write a genre piece I can fit whatever's floating around in my brain into digestible tropes to create an experience that's smart and visceral at the same time. I consider all of my plays comedies, in their own way. Kate Tarker once described me as a "Dark Farceur".

Spontaneous theatre is a form of theatre I'm founding that involves the use of improvisation to play into the inherent "live-ness" of theatre, rather than it's literary or visual qualities. It's influenced by other very "live" genres like comedy and drag. My current work on this is through my piece, Gamepiece, which fuses game and theatre by allowing the audience in as not just interactions but collaborators, able to influence the plot through live writers-rooms and games. It's performed by The Sleight of Hand Ensemble, which I co-run.

As far as producing/curation goes. I run at theatre collective called The Spade, which is all about creating visceral theatre in the style of a DIY punk show. We rent basements, lofts, rooms, coffeeshops, and regularly do festivals of bizarre high-energy plays. I host these nights and introduce each new act like a comedy show. It's all about making a space for misfits.

I stay busy. I have no time for a graduate program or fellowship that requires relocation for years. Any progress I would make in my craft or connections would be offset by my loss of time building my community and creating my art. I'm a leftist. I'm poly. I'm an anarchist. I believe in anti-traditional community and radical relationships. There's a Brooklyn trans punk band called Starsrevenge that has a song that goes "me and my friends don't fuck around". That's my ethos.

My greatest artistic challenge right now is conveying the Transness of Being. Of finding what exists in a story, a line, a turn of phrase, that’s deeply trans. What does it mean to write a trans story that isn’t about hormones, transphobia, coming out, dysphoria, bathrooms. Why is Hyperpop a genre not only mainly occupied by trans women — but feel so trans inherently? Why are so many trans people I meet interested in old-school action/crime movies like those of John Wu and Michael Mann — and why is it them instead of Michael Bay and Martin Scorsese? Why are their so many trans woman video essayists? Why do I meet more trans people who believe in God than cis people? What is it with Trans People and The Mountain Goats?

I don't really like the classics. My friend Charlotte says "To Christian, anything pre-Ibsen is practically a clown at a child’s birthday party. Same goes for institutional theatre – they have no Broadway aspirations, not even Dimes Square affections. 'No gods, no Mamet,' they like to say, and LaBute goes with them." I think she's right. My biggest influences are Frank Zappa, Annie Baker, Claire Barron, Ian Mackaye, Filthy Frank, Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins, Martin Scorsese, Lucas Baisch, Hilly Kristal, MF Doom, The New York Neofuturists, The RZA, Tim and Eric, Stephen Adley Guirgis, the BK alt comedy scene, David Mancuso, Miles Davis, Laura Les, John Darnielle, George Steiner, Mark Fisher, Charles Mee, the BK Transcore punk scene.