DOE: An Exploration of the End Q&A with Scarlett D’Giacomo

Album artwork for DOE: An Exploration of the End by Scarlett Prestigiacomo, featuring a silhouette of a person with antlers and deer ears.

  1. Is this the debut of the show?
    Yes!

  2. What was your inspiration for the show? 
    The plot of the show is something I’ve had in my head for a long time. It’s mainly pulled from my own dreams and journals which I use for therapeutic processing. It’s a heavily fictionalized/allegoric version of my own life experience relating to the formation of my gender identity and how it has guided my moving through the world. I’m very inspired by Norse poetry and Norwegian ballads, and much of the way I write is influenced by those things. I’m inspired by forest and fresh water and wetlands, and by my experience in the world as a black trans woman.
  3. What can we expect to see in the show?
    There will be music throughout, which will be wistful, melancholic, heavy, and whimsical. There will be poetry, which comes from the ancestry of my own inner world. There will be costumes, which will be campy, unsettling, and elegant. There will be ritual and movement. IT WILL BE VERY WEIRD and I hope you like it.
  4. What were some of the challenges with writing this show?
    There were two main things that I found challenging. The first is trying not to overestimate what I’m willing/able to do. I have a lot of grand visions in my head for what I want to make, but I also feel the need to do everything myself. For this production, I’m not only composing a very long piece of music and poetry, I’m also recording/engineering myself, I’m making my own costumes and set pieces, and I’m writing/printing/illustrating a book. Even though what I end up with isn’t going to be as grand as I originally planned, I’m still proud of what I’ve done and I’m working on feeling okay with that and not focusing on the things I wasn’t able to do. The other challenging thing for me is making the things I do translate into a cohesive story. I’m not particularly attached to people feeling grounded to a sense of reality when they’re experiencing my art. I want people to feel what I mean and don’t care if they know what I mean, if that makes any sense. So making sure that I get other people’s feedback on what they actually got from the story has been really important.
  5. What were some of the things you learned during the creation/writing process?
    In a concrete sense, through the personal research I’ve done, I’ve learned a lot more about Norse myth and poetic structures and devices used in Norse literature, as well as history and myths in the Vodun religion. In the abstract sense, I’ve learned to better simplify my art, honing in on the strongest parts is better than trying to have a lot of different elements.
  6. What do you hope people will learn from this project?
    I’m not sure how to answer this question. When I think about the show, I don’t know that I’m really teaching anyone anything, or that I really want to. I just want people to see it and be entertained. I’m not sure who will end up attending my show, but I imagine (and hope) that it is other folks like me who are trans, black, weird magic space people who just wanna see another weird black trans space lady do some weird art. The only thing I’d want that audience to learn is that since I can go up there and do the real weird shit y’all finna watch me do, y’all can go do some weird shit, too, and people like me would really love to see it.
  7. What does resilience mean to you?
    Resilience is the audacity, the GALL, to continually exist when there are forces out there that clearly don’t want you to keep existing, whether it’s coming from the outside world or within yourself. It is to just become more and more of who you are the harder you are challenged.
  8. How does your show reflect the Season 7 theme of Resilience?
    The plot of the show is about the main character’s resilience in the face of repeated attacks on her identity, her freedom, and her body. Over and over, she is challenged to give herself up and each time, she holds herself strong and because of that, she triumphs.

Scarlett’s show will run November 14-15 from 7-9PM each night at Gay City’s Calamus Auditorium. Buy tickets here, or click here to learn more about Scarlett.