By Hari Ziyad

On July 13th, poet, writer, RaceBaitR deputy editor, performance artist and playwright Timothy DuWhite’s one-man show Neptune had its world premiere at Dixon Place in NYC, during the venue’s annual HOT! Festival: The NYC Celebration of Queer Culture. If you didn’t get a chance to witness the show many are calling breathtaking, don’t fret yet—there are still four more performances, on Friday 7/20, Saturday 7/21, Friday 7/27 and Saturday 7/28 (get tickets here!).

Described by DuWhite as “an immersive abolitionist fairy-tale,” Neptune is a semi-autobiographical piece about surviving as a Black, queer, HIV positive person in a world where you can be criminalized for being “Hard to Love,” and the possibility of finding new worlds where the hard to love can be free.

In the midst of non-stop rehearsals, I was able to use my sway as DuWhite’s newly minted fiancé (after he proposed on stage on Neptune’s opening night!) and my accompanying seductive charms (?) to get him to take a few moments between all of his preparations to chat about the aspects of putting the show together you might not see, its messages, and the importance of finding where you are from.

Hari: So tell me again how the idea of Neptune came to you, and how the show ended up at Dixon Place?

Timothy: Well, it all started last August when I was asked to do some poems to close an event on the Main Stage of Dixon Place. During this time I was working on a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for my mother who was having issues making ends meet, so I used that show as an opportunity to do a special performance of a poem dedicated to her called “Silver & Gold” with my friend Marcus A. Bedinger.

What I didn’t know was that the artistic associate of Dixon Place, Mark Hayes, was in the audience, and he loved my performance. He came up to me afterward and asked if I would be interested in having a meeting with him and the founder/artistic director Ellie Covan. I said sure, even though at the time I really didn’t know what he wanted to talk about—I was mostly just hoping it involved some money.

So I go to the meeting, and basically they told me they wanted to offer me a residency at the theater, and asked if I was working on a project larger than a poem. I wasn’t, but mama ain’t raise no fool, so I was like, “absolutely!” I started making some shit up that had nothing to do with what Neptune turned out to be, and they were sold.

The idea of a show about a character on a journey to get to Neptune came later from ruminating on a desire for a place for Black folk who feel unlovable to escape to. I wanted it to be something intergalactic. Then after a conversation with my father, where he shared with me his experiences in Neptune, New Jersey, the name just felt like the perfect fit. Especially since my father spent the majority of my life struggling with feeling hard to love too.

The way the residency worked is they gave me forty minutes once a month in their lounge to do whatever I wanted that would help me create this show. Along with the monthly dates, they also gave me a small amount to fund the entire process (which was great, but damn, I didn’t realize how expensive making a show actually was!).

Eventually, I named the monthly series at the lounge “10 Days Till Neptune: A Configuring,” I liked the idea of “10 Days Till” because I wanted it to feel like a countdown, even though the series began in October and my show wouldn’t go up until July. Each series date I used some of the money they gave me to pay for a feature performer, and then I’d share an excerpt from my play I’ve been working on. Then I’d sit down with the audience and ask them for feedback on the scene, and on general themes of the play.

I knew I wanted my play to be different, but I also wanted the process of creating it to be different too. Writing this play has truly been a communal effort. I’m so thankful for those discussions at my series. Folks have been so generous to me.

H: Before the first show you called me and I came rushing over early because you were freaking out haha. But when I came you said this wasn’t just anxiety about performing, it was that you were feeling strongly the weight of what this play could do. Could you explain what you meant by that?

T: I was just feeling overwhelmed. Partly because of how much of myself I was exposing in this play. But also because I knew the stories I share in Neptune are not just mine alone. I really wanted Black people to win in this play. Especially Black queer folks. Like I really fucking did! So my freak out was mostly me just being scared that I would let us down. Thank you for holding me up in that moment, baby girl.

H: What do you want audiences to take from this show? And how have audiences responded so far? Have you been surprised?

T: I really just want folks to start daydreaming their own new world, honestly. So far, audiences have been so receptive. The shows have been feeling like church. Folks have been so open and generous with their interactions and investment during the show. A surprise for me, honestly, is how much white people have really been fucking with it haha.

H: Well, this is a show that all audiences will get something from based on the talent and storytelling alone. We know, however, that too much of the theater going community in NYC is white. Are you ever afraid that you will lose your message in trying to make sure the show is a success, and how do you cope with that?

T: When I was writing this, I was very intentional about saying whatever the fuck I wanted. I don’t think there was anytime in my writing process that I censored or softened my language in fear of a white audience. And a lot of that just came from me wanting this show to be everything I could dream of. Like, I really didn’t want to play myself, or write a play that I have to cringe through certain parts of.

A huge motivation for me, honestly, was the movie Moonlight. I have never seen a film that made me feel the way that movie made me feel. I went and saw it about 6 times in theaters when it came out. Moonlight is one of the Blackest things I’ve ever seen, and yet, it still got all the recognition, even from white people. Which still confuses me to be honest. But either way, it stands as a blueprint for me as to what is possible when you don’t compromise your focus.

H: The idea that “finding where you are from” can save you reminds me of the struggle many diasporic Africans have in tracing their roots, and why they believe it so important. But there’s a scene in which the main character Wayne’s father explains that what saves you at the end of this journey back to where you are from isn’t necessarily a physical location. “Where you are from” and “where you are born” are two different things, he warns.

I have always been wary of DNA tests and the way they are marketed to Black people specifically, and I think this distinction is why. DNA tests won’t tell you where you are from—the real struggle and triumph and love and care and trauma that brought you here, which is what I really want to know—even if they accurately pinpointed physical locations on that journey (which we know they do not). And now we see the companies that run these tests are increasingly coordinating with law enforcement to build DNA databases to help lock more of us up.

Tell me how this distinction has shown up in your life, and why it’s so important for us to understand?

T: Well I grew up a military brat. Technically I was born in Baltimore, but shortly after my family moved, so I don’t know much about it. There is no way that if asked where I’m from I could honestly respond, “Baltimore.” So when I think about the distinction between those two things that’s the first to come to mind.

Also, since I’ve lived such a transient life, I’ve always had to find different ways of formulating “home” for myself. When I was younger I lived in Hawaii, Colorado, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Maryland and New Jersey. On top of that, I moved to different neighborhoods frequently within those states. I would have a best friend one year, then move miles away and never talk to them again.

I always used to envy folks who were able to say they lived somewhere they’re whole lives. Or knew a particular group of people since they were in kindergarten. I’ve always been in awe of folks who talk about their city as if it were their lover. Chicago niggas do this the most, actually. Just love Chicago as if it were a person. But, since I never really had that, I was able to train myself to find love in the movement. To be from where ever I was standing and care for that place and the people who inhabit it as if it were all my own.

I am very thankful for this understanding now in my adult life, and I think it is important, in particular for Black people. We constantly live in a state of upheaval. Any day, all that we know could be stripped away, and it has been this way for years on end. It’s important for us to know how to find ourselves and constantly reroot ourselves everywhere we end up.

H: What experiences come closest to what you imagine Neptune would be for you?

For me, Neptune is the house when I come home and you’ve actually done the dishes.

T: This nigga and the dishes! How bout the day you actually clean the tub, could that be Neptune, too?

Anyway, to be honest, even though you just tried me, I experience Neptune a lot with you. For me, Neptune is a place populated with people who are willing to do whatever they need to do in order to grow within themselves, with the understanding that their growth directly affects the community around them. In our relationship, I feel like we have a strong understanding that it’s impossible for us to love each other the way we both know we deserve if we’re not being honest with ourselves.

And the thing is that honesty usually brings up conflict, and messiness, and discomfort, and for many couples, that’s where the relationship ends. Shit, that’s where it ended many times in my past relationships. But the reason this is Neptune is because we know that that isn’t how love, or community, or liberation works. Neptune for me is where we humble ourselves. We affirm each others’ hurt. We hold each other accountable. No one carries a disproportionate amount of the emotional labor. And because of all these factors, no one gives up.

And that is what I have found with you.

H: Awww! I love you. So I guess it made perfect sense to propose after opening night then. How did that plan come about? You really pulled it off! I had no idea.

T: Well it started back in April when I was with my girls August and Jenn at Dallas BBQ. I told them, “Y’all, I think I’m going to marry this nigga.” They were all for it. I got the ring about 3 months prior to proposing to you. I just had it hiding in the closet neither one of us ever open.

I was scared I wasn’t going to make it to opening night. I would just look at you some mornings and be like, “Damn baby girl, you so beautiful. I’m bout to just ask him now.” But my girls would’ve been pissed. I originally was going to do it after the last performance of Neptune, but then you did the sweetest thing for me two days before my premiere—by knowing the perfect way to calm me down when I was freaking out about not being ready for the show—and I was like, “Naw, I’m proposing NOW!”

Thanks for saying yes LOL.

H: What’s nuts is that I had been pricing rings to propose to you! We really are on the same wavelength.

Back to the show. You’ve been performing for a long time as a spoken word poet. How is the acting you do in the show different? What has been the most challenging aspect of that for you?

T: Everything I write is poetic. Whether it’s an essay, song, FB status, play, it’s all influenced by my love for heightened language. But in spoken word I had the advantage of leaning heavily on my charisma. I know how to say a poem with the sort of liveliness that’ll make you like me before you begin to like my words. Which is a practice that proves useful in the realm of poetry slams. But for this play, and in acting, I couldn’t just be Tim.

There are times when Wayne isn’t all that charismatic. There are times when he’s insecure and unsure, and I had to lean into that as well, which is a far more vulnerable space when you are on stage being watched.

Another thing that I had to learn as an actor, that my director Zhailon Levingston hammered into my head over and over again, is that I need to leave space for discovery. In poetry, when I’m reciting a piece, it’s understood that I know what word and stanza is coming next as I speak. But in acting, when I memorize my script, I still have to be mindful that for my character, they didn’t memorize this. For my character, each word is a new thought. So when I’m acting I have to be mindful to not be so sure of myself. To stumble sometimes, to be hesitant, to be human, which in the poetry slam realm is often frowned upon.

H: In the show, you mostly play Wayne, a character based off of yourself, but you also play an old southern white police officer, a bumbling young Black cop, and a sassy radical love interest, among other characters. What part of your imagination did these characters come from, and how did you learn to embody people so different from yourself?

T: Well, many of the characters you’ll see throughout the play are just extensions of the world we currently live in. The older southern white cop who feels that somehow he’s the one under attack by this “generation.” The Black cop who believes that working within the empire would protect him. These are people that we live amongst. But the character that truly has my heart is Bilal (the sassy radical love interest).

My director and I had a conversation after my first rehearsal doing Bilal’s scene, and he asked me who Bilal was. So I told him about all the different friends, and the aspects of you that I see in Bilal. And then he asked me about what part of me was Bilal. And I told him a story about the first time I realized that “being gay” was something people could read off your body, and how you move.

I was like 7 or 8 living in Tennessee. It was a nice day so the entire block was on the street, and I remember this boy walking down the sidewalk towards my direction. I overheard one girl say, “Oh, he’s fine.” But then, right after, another girl said, “you see how he walks, he’s not interested in you.” I was terrified! I was like, “Walk!? You could tell by how he walks!?!”

After that day I studied how my brother and father walked and talked, and tried my best to imitate them. I’ve spent so many years actively lowering my voice that I don’t even know what I truly sound like. Eventually, my director and I decided that Bilal is going to be the “Tim” that never learned to police himself.

Funny enough, after my brother saw the show, he told me it was like he was seeing me for the first time, and that he wondered what it might have been like for me if they all knew earlier.

H: What strikes me about all your work, but particularly this play, is the gracious vulnerability you show in an attempt to be as honest as possible about your journey. In Neptune, you touch on everything from your mother’s alcoholism, self-blame after an experience of sexual violence, and how sometimes HIV makes it seem like you are unworthy of love. Why do you think it’s important to share these experiences, and how has the process of sharing helped you deal with and grow from the trauma?

T: I try to live my life as honest as possible, simply because I’ve spent so much of my life in shame and fear. I’ve learned throughout these years of being an artist that one of my primary jobs is to give people allowances they wouldn’t have elsewhere. By that I mean when people see me being open, they should feel emboldened to do the same. As an artist I work a lot with the idea of being a “witness” and how I allow people to witness me. Through witnessing hopefully somehow they too can feel seen.

As far as how it has helped me grow through my own trauma, basically, when you’re able to give something a name, it loses some of its teeth. Not all of it, but some.

H: You get into some deep shit here, and I think a lot of people will see a play about Blackness, queerness and HIV and think it’s going to just be a long depressing show. But you also bring so much life and humor and hope to these stories, which of course all Black queer and HIV affected lives have. Why is it so easy to reduce who we are to our trauma, and why is it important to challenge it here?

T: It’s easy to reduce us to our trauma, because it’s the most convenient. You don’t have to get to know me if you already know the story that accompanies people like me. Which is why you can so easily call me “brave” or “inspiring” or “gross” or “doomed.” It’s just simpler.

I don’t think I’m really challenging anything in my play. I have literally just written about my life, and yes some shit is hilarious. And yes, some shit is sad. But I didn’t write anything to challenge folks stereotypes. The audience challenges themselves by sitting and allowing me to live without interjection, and placing boundary.

H: You call this play an “abolitionist fairy-tale,” which I just love. What does abolition mean to you, and why is it so integral on our journey to Neptune?

T: Abolition for me is the understanding that the world we currently live in is utterly unacceptable, and the only way towards liberation is the destruction of this world as we know it. So the imagination is imperative for abolitionist work. So when I ask people to journey with me in this show, I’m asking them to be co-conspirators in creating a new world.

What I’m mostly interested in are the thoughts and actions that my play influences once folks leave the theater. Abolition does begin with imagination, but it certainly does not end there.

H: Do you see yourself working as a playwright beyond this show?

T: I absolutely see myself working as a playwright after this. I actually already know the idea for the play I wish to write. I’m not going to say it here ‘cause I don’t want niggas stealing my idea, but trust, it’s LIT! Well, I mean, you actually already know what it is LOL.

H: Are you going to continue to stress me out by freaking out for the rest of the month even though every show already has been and every future show is going to be amazing?

T: Yes!

Dixon Place’s HOT! Festival runs through Saturday, July 28. Find the complete lineup at dixonplace.org, and get tickets to Neptune here!

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Hari Ziyad is a New York-based storyteller and the Editor-in-Chief of RaceBaitR. They are also a script consultant on the untitled Tarell Mccraney television series coming to OWN, the managing editor of Black Youth Project, and an assistant editor for Vinyl Poetry & Prose.

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