Bi Jean Ngo, Melanye Finister, Joseph Ahmed, and Danielle Leneé in BACKING TRACK at Arden Theatre Company.

The Rebecca Wright directed production of R. Eric Thomas’ Backing Track at the Arden Theatre made the case that finding queer love in a banal suburb is possible, a radical opinion for some, and that processing grief can also be a joyous practice.

The show is episodic and paced by a mixtape of songs and quotes that lay out the process of how a family has come to terms with the loss of their co-matriarch, Mel. The show carried the energy of a live sitcom recording and I was happy to be part of the laugh track.

Thomas’ swears that this play isn’t autofiction but that the show’s gay romance is fan fiction. It’s easy to see what he means when you watched Avery (Brenson Thomas) and Abraham (Carl Hsu) find love in spite of their scrolling through the abyss of headless torsos. When they first meet on Grindr, Abraham is shrouded in darkness, his face unabashedly hidden despite their texts conveying an emotional intimacy that some would assume requires at least two talking heads. Watching Abraham go from carefully curated angles of his biceps to typical suburban gay man that shops at Target, was refreshing. You wouldn’t believe that this could happen especially, with Avery guarding his heart, which is very much on his sleeve, but their romance is insistent and endearing.

Even if the play was fan fiction, we got into the very real politics of the queer Philly scene. I was shocked to learn that Woody’s had a computer station for you to dutifully check your Adam for Adam profiles. I didn’t realize how much of a technological slow burn it was to reach our current state of queer dating apps, an oversaturated market that seems to take us farther and farther from human connection. Can’t wait until I can go to Woody’s on the Metaverse.

You can catch Backing Track at the Arden Theatre through April 10^th or can stream it online from April 11^th-24^th. Buy tickets here.

Alexi Chacon: You’re writing, and this particular play Backing Track deals a lot with memory. In this show, you flesh out the process of grief and memorializing someone after death. Your biography on Representative Maxine Waters’ life, cements legacy while the person is living instead of memorializing someone after the fact. Did you have a different approach to writing about memory for each of these works?

Eric Thomas: That’s a really interesting question. One of the things that animates Backing Track is that Miriam, the character who has passed away before the play begins, is such a huge presence in these people’s lives. The grief that they are dealing with is separate from her, which is one of the stumbling blocks that they come around to realizing. When working on the book about Representative Waters, I had the opposite challenge. People started calling her Auntie Maxine, based on something that I wrote and the challenge that Halina and I had in the book was trying to not lean into stereotype and instead uplift everything that she had done while making it present for the reader in in the moment. We wanted to give her, her flowers while she’s alive.

AC: This show also focuses a lot on property ownership. It’s one of the first plays I’ve seen where two people of color own property, and are not, like in Raisin in the Sun, working towards property ownership to achieve that “American Dream.” Was that an intentional kind of departure from how people of color are portrayed in relationship to property ownership?

REC: I’m very much always trying to touch the hem of the garment of Lorraine Hansberry, Alice Childress, and August Wilson. I grew up, reading and going to see those plays and understanding myself as a Black person in that world. As I became an adult, and I started to go to the theater, then I was seeing plays like Clybourne Park, and I wanted to have a conversation because there was something missing. It’s partially about the way that we structured how we understand contemporary theatre to work and how we think those characters are supposed to exist in the theatrical world, particularly characters of color. I wanted to upend that apple cart. If Esther as a character, who is your neighborhood association president is a white woman, comes in and demands that the yard appear cleaner, it’s a very different context. But it’s one that we expect. We expect white characters on stage to represent a sort of maintaining of order or to have the upper hand. That tone changes by making Esther a person of color in the show.

AC: The show has an Airbnb owner, Abraham played by Carl Hsu, who encroaches on the neighborhood by snapping up homes left and right. Does making Abraham a person of color justify his neoliberal girl-bossin’ success at the expense of our own community? Do you think that conversation starts to be supported by the play itself?

REC: As a playwright, I’m not necessarily interested in judgment, but I am interested in the conversation that you have when you get dessert after the play. The American Dream is about hanging your shingle. Well, that’s not the big bad, but the idea that we have to take things, take property, take pieces of land, and turn them into money in order to prove our worth in this country is explored in the play. I think the play opens up both possibilities, where Abraham can be grappling with the implications of him pursuing the American dream while also being humanized as the romantic lead. He’s Meg Ryan in “You’ve Got Mail” and he’s also Tom Hanks.

AC: I loved Avery and Abraham’s relationship. It was refreshing to see queer romance that was not based on intense yearning. It was just two people living life in the suburbs who fell in love. But of course, they are gay and so they met on Grindr. Understandably, Avery kept internally wondering whether romance was dead in our queer hyper-sexualized culture. What would you tell him? Is there is there hope for romance in hyper sexualization, as we experience it, within queer culture?

REC: The way that Grindr works in this play is so ridiculously romantic. Avery and Abraham show that it is absolutely possible to have a delightful tête-à-tête with somebody on the apps. But I’m a huge fan of being in the room and staying in the room with people, I am going to make myself sound like the old queen sitting at a piano bar in Province Town, but when I first started going out, I would go to Woody’s, which back then was a gay bar, and just talk to people. Then they started having computers at Woody’s that you could go to, to check your online profiles. Some people would stand at those computers all night checking their profiles instead of talking to people. When the apps came out, they got rid of the computers because everybody had the computer in their hands.

It’s deeply scary to strike up a conversation with somebody, it’s very scary to say this is this is who I am on the inside. But instead we’ve traded it for this is who I am on the outside. It is so strange to send yourself out piecemeal over the internet. Here’s a here’s a chest, here’s other things. And here’s my face if you need that. I get it. I’m a person. But one of the things that is really exciting to me about this play is that it highlights inherent and insistent romance. The conversations that Avery and Abraham have are conversations that I think so many of us are yearning for. I knew that some of my friends in Philly would see the show and they would see the romance that we dreamed about, that we talked about, that we wished for. Avery and Abraham work because they are two people being 100% themselves. They think they have nothing to lose because they think this app is just body parts. And then they fall into it, in love.

AC: I had no idea that Woody’s had computers to check your profiles. What if you spilled your drink on the computer?

REC: Our computer literacy was so underdeveloped that we might have not realized that water breaks computers. The smaller bar looked like a FedEx Kinkos and people would send messages on Adam for Adam. You’re at Woody’s right now, just turn around and meet someone?

AC: I’m picturing a desktop computer on the piano at Tavern on Camac.

REC: The first produced play I had in Philly was called Time Is On Our Side and is essentially about Tavern on Camac and ultimately how we find each other as queer people.

AC: I’m definitely going to read that; Tavern is one of my favorite places.

Miriam has such a huge presence on the show even when she has no speaking lines, and no physical presence on stage. I wanted to delve deeper into Miriam as a character. It’s clear that Avery gets his humor and wit from his mother Mel. What parts of Avery come from Miriam?

REC: Oh, that’s a great question and I thought about that a lot. Even though Avery is cantankerous in the way that Mel is he’s also a community maker in the way that Miriam was. Miriam was a member of the neighborhood association and helped create that community. He creates these cabaret-karaoke communities on his cruise ship gig that people keep booking because he is a showman and pulls people toward him. Oh, I love Avery. He’s just so great.

AC: A lot of this play spoke to the Black queer experience and the Black familial experience. Was any of it autofiction?

REC: You would get a very different answer if you asked my parents this. They would say oh, yeah definitely. None of it is autofiction and some of it is fan fiction. It’s about the way I wish my dating life had gone. I’ve made people mixtapes but never got them. I would have killed to have a conversation as delightful as Avery and Abraham’s. Avery is not me. Avery is a character that I play on the internet sometimes. But Avery is so much bigger than I am. And I don’t write about problems that I have, that I haven’t already worked through. That’s how you get messy plays. If there’s any sort of similarity it’s the portrayal of a family that has really sharp idiosyncratic relationships with each other.

Photo by Mark Gavin

Justen Ross currently plays Pharus in the Jeffrey L. Page directed production of “Choir Boy” at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre. Pharus is a student at Charles R. Drew Prep School for Boys, an institution with one mission: to ensure that all students obediently fit into an outdated conception of masculinity, which is readily enforced by Headmaster Morrow (Akeem Davis). The show focuses on five students who are in the school choir, led by Pharus, who is anointed as the best singer in the group.

This coming-of-age story centers on Pharus accepting his queerness and figuring out if he can express that side of himself while also still being a “Drew” man.  His classmates have decided that those two sides of Pharus cannot co-exist and are determined to make Pharus choose between the two.

I spoke with Ross to discuss the parts of himself he brought to his portrayal of Pharus. Our conversation was healing, and you can get tickets to his performance here. Choir Boy runs at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre until March 13^th.

Read our conversation below:

Alexi Chacon (AC): When I saw the show, I noticed that there was a large emphasis on what it meant to be a “Drew” man, and how it was steeped in some regressive conceptions of masculinity. Do you find yourself challenging those same regressive, outdated forms of masculinity in your own day to day life outside of your character?

Justen Ross (JR): Absolutely. Growing up, my father was an assistant principal of a charter school named Charles R. Drew. I went to a Catholic high school, so I know what it’s like to be in an all-black, all male institution where piety is at the center of its values. It had a big influence on me, especially having a father figure like Headmaster Morrow play out in real life. I know what it’s like to constantly have that male gaze that oppressive dated, gaze of masculinity on you. I know what it’s like, and I am on my healing journey. Now, as a queer man, I’m figuring out what’s the value in being a man if there’s any.

Growing up, it was survival. You wear the Jordans’ and a hoodie and a hat. For me, that’s how I survived, instead of being loud with my crop top. That’s how I maintain my status and my safety within the community that I was brought up in. To this day, I still struggle with wanting to wear certain things and wanting to talk a certain way, but I have to keep my safety at the front of my mind. But as I’m healing, I’m learning that I’m beautiful the way that I am in whatever way I want to express myself. But it does take a little extra work to feel safe in those expressions.

AC: You brought so much of yourself into your portrayal of Pharus. How did you take care of yourself after a performance where you had to re integrate yourself into a prior mindset and then play out the worst outcome of navigating those really dangerous environments?

JR: Thank you, first of all, thank you for asking that. Theater has been co-opted by white supremacy in so many ways. And one of the ways that theatre has been co-opted is we as actors are taught how to prioritize warming up, but we aren’t taught how to prioritize warming down, and how to come out of something. So I appreciate you for asking that. When I was younger, I was more straight passing, and it was because I changed myself and I tweaked myself. When Headmaster Morrow says tighten up, I tightened up and I tightened up so tight, my muscles are tight, even now I’m struggling to release them from all the years of carrying that baggage of just sucking it in. So coming to the role of Pharus has been so liberating. There is a lot of myself in it. And I would say a lot of myself that has been lying dormant. This has been a process where I’ve been able find my voice truly and find out what the voice sounds like when it is loud and proud and warming down.

When I warm down I daydream a little bit and give  myself three things that Justin is grateful for in his life right now. So at the moment, I’m grateful for my mother in ballroom and how often she checks in. I’m grateful that my three friends who are here and staying with me. And I’m also grateful that I got through that show safely. That’s a little bit of what warming down looks like to me. And then I walk back into the world as Justin, and I feel safe, and my cast mates help with that. They’re just the best.

AC: I wanted to ask more about the cast as well, because in the play, within this group of students there are clear divisions based on homophobia despite their shared experiences as black boys. They’re so afraid to be emotionally intimate with each other. I assume that didn’t translate over to the friendships you developed as a cast. Tell me more about that. How did the rapport develop?

JR: I was doing the first the first week of rehearsal on Zoom. I was at home while all the boys were rehearsing in Philadelphia. I felt isolated from the boys in the same way that Pharus feels during the show. The moment I touched down in Philly, the boys said let’s meet up. And they asked if we could sing through some songs and just instantly the melody was like butter. When we were together it was like The Temptations or the Jackson Five, it was beautiful.

We hang out every night after the show, we watch movies together, we see other plays together, we go out to eat together, we share stories about our life, we are family, those are my brothers. It makes this show much easier because we have a lot of intimate moments on the stage, cursing slurs, intimate touch. And it makes it so much more comfortable because we all really love each other. And we’re invested in each other’s well-being offstage.

AC: I want to touch back on mentorship. It’s clear that Headmaster Morrow in this show both deeply cares and recognizes some of the best parts of Pharus. But, in an effort to protect Pharus also tears down aspects of himself that are integral to who Pharus is. It was painful to watch some of that mentorship, play out on stage. Can you tell me maybe about some positive mentors in your life that built you up, who recognized the best aspects of yourself and amplified them?

JR: I gotta give the trophy the black women in my life. My mother, my auntie, my Nana, my mentor, Jade Lambert Smith. The first person to tell me that I was enough was a black woman. The men in my life, they like to bring that structure and the realism in their guidance, they want to make things tangible. And the women in my life taught me how to dream. They taught me how to value myself and value things that I can’t see or can’t feel. That’s so important because in the show Pharus is having his dreams snatched from him, time, and time, and time again.

One person I’d like to highlight in particular is Jade Lambert Smith, acting coach, and teaching artist in Atlanta, Georgia. She is the reason that I’m here today. She’s the first person to tell me that I could do it. She trusted me. A lot of kids need that. She’s the reason for it all. I have about 1000 Moms Alexi and she’s one of them. Black women are my rock.

AC: It’s so important to, to dream, especially for communities of color, because to dream is an act of resistance. I have my own people who have taught me to dream and to not be afraid. I was going through the playbill, and I read that y’all have an Equity Diversity and Inclusion Officer and Intimacy Consultant, which I think is so critical to the topics being explored in this play. How did she make tangible changes in the show to make sure that everyone felt safe?

JR: I don’t know if we would feel as comfortable and as safe in the show if it was not for Miss Noelle. This black woman who came in and was the rock and held it down. What she did. She came in and made sure we were all in agreement on what our community guidelines were.  What do we expect from each other when we’re working on stage and off? What parts of our bodies are okay to touch? You can come to me, and I can share anonymously, if you ever have a problem with something. That was her job. And our director Jeffrey L. Page is somebody I love working with, but he can move really quick. Her job was to make sure that in the midst of all of that urgency, that we were moving at the speed of trust with one another, so that we don’t move too fast, slip up and harm one another. And if there was ever a day we were uncomfortable, she had a plan B for us. She’s so important.

AC: What’s next for you? What can we expect?

JR: I’ll be doing a short film with Donja R. Love, an amazing HIV-positive playwright, the first week of April. I think that’s all I can disclose. ‘m writing a television series/web series. It can be done in many mediums. I write poetry and I’ll be in Atlanta performing at poetry slams, and I’m also a ballroom girl so I’ll be practicing my voguing as part of the Juicy Couture Chapter in Atlanta.