Essays

This page features two additional essays that I’ve written about my experience as a performer and the ways in which this intersects with gender.

I Feel Good About My Boy-Voice

I wrote “I Feel Good About My Boy-Voice” in 2017 for a high school English class, in which we were instructed to rewrite Michael Chabon’s “I Feel Good About My Murse” (“murse” meaning “man-purse”) to apply to our own lives, highlighting some way in which we exist outside of society’s cultural norms. I chose to highlight how as a child I had a deep voice more akin to a little boy’s, and later, to a grown woman’s, despite still not having hit puberty, and the ways in which this affected me not only as a girl, but as a singer who always longed to be a soprano.

Conceal Me What I Am: Gender-Defying Costuming in Theatre and the Experiences of a Teen Performer

I wrote “Conceal Me What I Am” for one of my undergraduate English classes at the University of Guelph, where I chose to research the history and influence of women actors playing men onstage. Named after a quote from Twelfth Night, my favourite Shakespeare Comedy, I unpacked the tradition of “pants roles” alongside my own experience playing characters like Detective Trotter, ostensibly in drag.