Alexandra Rogers (they/she) is an NYC-based director, playwright, and dramaturg devoted to creating work that highlights LGBTQ+ stories while subverting norms and challenging comfortability. Discussions of queerness, connection, and the performance of identity are woven throughout Alexandra’s work— as well as a deeply rooted love for stories and storytelling. They are currently the Literary Director with Ghost Light Theatre Company and the founder of the Bright Lights Playwriting Cohort, which provides literary support and removes barriers that may stand in the way of a developmental process for early career playwrights.
Alexandra has worked on productions with Ghost Light Theatre Company, Rogue Theater, Sidekick Productions, and One Egg No Batter, as well as several productions with Marymount Manhattan College. Most recently, they directed A production of their play STAN, or The Dinosaur Play (The Tank) as well as two developmental workshops/staged readings of The Ulysses Protocol (The Tank) and but not enough to save you (NYCC Studios) with Ghost Light Theatre Company. They also served as head dramaturg for both. In addition, their play Small Parties was recently produced at Nebraska Weslyan University, and as apart of the Chain Theatre's Winter One Act Festival. In addition to their artistic work, Alexandra is working on revising their honors thesis “The Great Work Begins: Tragedy, Temporalities, and Utopia in Queer Theatre”, for publication.
Artistic Statement
Artistic statements are my great white whale. Or perhaps, I am Sisyphus and they are the rock that will steamroll me time and time again. That is if I can even get the damn thing to move.
The real problem is that I’m not really sure who I am. Or rather, I don't know how to even begin to describe it to you. This isn't to say I lack any sort of ambition or interest or conviction or that I don't have anything to say— it's quite the opposite. I have way too much material to cover in any succinct sort of way, and that drives me up a wall. The idea of not being perceived in whole. The worry that I've left some crucial piece out.
So instead of trying to concentrate my essence down to one “I am”, I will give you a list:
I am but a collage of inconsequential knick-knacks and poetic thought. A junk drawer. Maybe you think it's unkind to describe myself like this, but I think a junk drawer is the most interesting part of any room. It has infinite possibilities— it can be an endless source of inspiration. You can reach in and pull out a plastic doodad you put in there years ago that is just the thing to save your dangerously lopsided Ikea table. Or you can find a tchotchke that holds the memory of a moment long past. Or you can find some dead batteries and lint. It's all about the luck of the draw.
Junk drawers are the ultimate storytellers.
I am jack— that is, a jack of all trades. I know this phrase has a negative connotation, but did you know that everyone gets the saying wrong? It's not just “jack of all trades, master of none”, It actually goes: “jack of all trades, master of none, is better than a master of one”. I’d like to think I have mastered more than a few of my trades, but Within my art, I am always seeking out more, I am always looking for the new and important, and I am always searching for more trades to try my hand in. After all— how are we to achieve any sort of change or innovation if we stick to one trade and one trade only? That's how stagnation happens.
Stagnation is a death knell for art.
I am nothing if not a fanfiction writer who took the bit too far. I started my writing career in kindergarten by writing, illustrating, and binding a Percy Jackson comic book. Unfortunately, When I took it in to show and tell, my magnum opus was confiscated because Percy Jackson promotes “false deities” according to my southern baptist school. But despite the discouragement, I kept on writing, and I still have not escaped this affinity for fanfiction, even in my work today. I deeply enjoy crafting stories around pre-existing entities— whether they be F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby or a real-life Trex fossil named STAN— because I believe that so much life and meaning can be found in subverting the comfortability of an audience’s preconceived notions of any one story, object, or trope.
The subversion of expectations is what changes hearts and minds.
I am nothing but a plastic bag in the wind. When I was a senior in high school, we took this test in psychology called “the locus of control”. The purpose of this test is to “measure an individual's level of internal versus external control of reinforcement”— in plain speak, it measures how you perceive the world around you, in terms of how much control you think that you have over your life. A low score means that you have a relatively strong locus of control— you believe that you and you alone control your life. A high score, well, you can imagine. Life is out of your control.
The test was on a scale of 1-44. I got a 43.
Now I think personality tests are largely bullshit, especially when applied to neurodivergent people such as myself, but I also think that perhaps my perceived lack of control is what led me to write seriously in the first place. With every story I pick up, with every interest I accrue, I am effectively tethering myself to the world around me— and perhaps, more importantly, the people around me. And through art, not only can I connect myself to the world I sometimes feel so disconnected from, but I can pull the world into my plane of existence. Rather than stoop to the world's level, I seek to bring the world up to the clouds, where I reside. Looking back, it's clear this feeling of no control was a product of a preconscious identity crisis, but it taught me an important lesson:
Sometimes life is a bucking bull, raging and raring and out of your control. Find the things that will help you hold tight.
Now, I am my own prophet. I write my own meanings into existence. I create the understanding I so desperately needed as a kid and pass it down. Growing up, I never had the words or concepts to understand the ways I was feeling. Why did I feel such a pang of jealousy and yearning when I looked at Gerard Way or a young Billie Joe Armstrong? Why didn't I care about boys and dating despite so deeply entrenching my personal ethos in ideas of love and belonging? Why did I feel so different? Why did I feel so alone? With next to no representation around me, It took me years to sort out my own identity as a trans and queer person. It is something I am still, to this day working on. This is why, with every piece of art I create, I seek to create a representation that both creates opportunities for people like me, but will also challenge norms and give people the words they may need to understand themselves. Theatre is where I found my understanding— all I want to do is to create the same for others. I want others to know that though the world gives you one path to walk, there is always another option.
Sometimes destiny is just a suggestion.
The list of “I am”s could go on and on forever— and no one has time for that. So to end, I will say this: I am a lot of things, but what I am the most, at heart, is a storyteller. I love stories and telling them because within stories we can find little pockets of life, infinite and glowing, bright as the sun. we can make connections that would never have been made. We can consider our past and rewrite our futures. We can create and destroy worlds and we can change hearts and minds. Because, in the end, we are all made of stories and life and love, and as a storyteller, I believe it is my duty to share the 1000 suns burning bright within me. Sharing stories— that's how we get more life.
We are all merely a composite of a thousand lives lived. A story book each and all. To shuffle off this mortal coil without demanding your fair share of tales is a crime.
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-A