I've been telling stories for over 30 years. Here’s mine.

In 1995, after a decade working the Off and Off-Off Broadway theater scene in New York City, I wrote and performed a solo show entitled Word of Mouth. Directed by V (formerly Eve Ensler) of The Vagina Monologues fame, and produced by the legendary comedy duo Mike Nichols & Elaine May. Word of Mouth went on to win The Drama Desk Award (1995), The Outer Critics Circle Award (1995) and the show was awarded several other theater awards as I toured the country. As it happened, that year I also adapted a ten-minute section of Word of Mouth into a screenplay for a short film. TREVOR told the story of a 13-year-old boy who considers suicide after realizing that he's gay. This poignant, humorous film about being one's self no matter what went on to win first prize at The Berlin Film Festival, The Sundance Film Festival and an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short (1995).

Two years later, I co-founded of The Trevor Project, which has become the largest suicide prevention and crisis intervention lifeline for LGBT and questioning youth, For me, this experience illuminated the power of story in a very personal way. What began as a ten-minute story on-stage about my own experience inspired a national movement, and I got to witness what can happen when we dare to tell our truth in public. Twenty-five years later, The Trevor Project is still saving young lives and making it better for LGBT and questioning youth. Trevor was and continues to be a pivotal experience in my artistic life, one that not only awakened me to the power of story, but also determined my life’s mission.

Since then, I’ve chosen to tell stories that not only move the people, but also (hopefully) create social change. In 1995 I performed a solo show (Extraordinary Measures) written and directed by V, produced by Music Theater Group and presented at The HERE Theater Center in NYC. Extraordinary Measures was later presented at The Museum of Modern Art to mark World Aids Day, a moving tribute to all those who died too soon and to the people who cared for them. In 1999, I created a performance piece entitled The Road Home: Stories of Children of War. Based on interviews with people who had experienced violence in Bosnia, Cambodia, troubled urban areas in the United States and elsewhere, the work was presented at The International Peace Initiative at The Hague. In 2007, I became the executive producer of After the Storm, a feature length documentary film that highlights the stories of 12 young people living in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. I have written three novels for young adults and created The Letter Q, a collection of letters by queer writers to their younger selves. As an actor, I have performed both on and Off Broadway in plays such as the 30th anniversary production of Mart Crowley’s The Boys in The Band, Gore Vidal’s The Best Man and in the original NY production of Caryl Churchill’s groundbreaking gender-bending play Cloud 9. I wrote and performed the solo show, The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey (Outer Critics Circle Award 2015). And if you’ll excuse the brag, the NYTimes praised the show and ranked me “among the most talented solo performers of his (or any) generation.”

Then in 2017 while traveling around the United States performing Absolute Brightness, I made it my business to visit schools and LGBTQ+ Youth Centers where I could meet and talk with queer youth. As founder of The Trevor Project, I’d been doing this for over 25 years; but this time instead of meeting so many youth in crisis, I encountered young people who were quietly thriving on the sidelines. With the support of their peers, their parents or a community of like- minded folx, these young people were changing their names, inventing pronouns and reimagining gender in a way that was impossible to imagine even ten years earlier. Not only were they remarkably well-informed, but they seemed to have a social justice component that I’d never seen in any previous generation. But even more impressive was the fact that they were able to extend their concern and care beyond the LGBTQ+ community. Their insistence on diversity and inclusion was absolute and included everyone. It was as though the principles of human decency and mutual respect had been quietly installed in their personal hard-drives at a very early age. And rather than being defeated by the problems of the world and the thought of what lies ahead, they were leading with hope.

As I traveled the country and continued to meet with queer youth in classrooms, in theaters and at LGBTQ Youth Centers, I listened closely to them as they revealed what was on their minds and in their hearts. I was amazed to discover that they were busy building a brave new world without anybody’s say-so, offering one another support and encouragement, meeting each other online as well as in person and projecting a vision of a livable future.

With this in mind, I founded The Future Perfect Project, a national arts initiative that provides in-person and online creative workshops to LGBTQ+ youth, encourages them to tell their stories and through media projects amplifies their vision of a better tomorrow. As I became immersed in their vision of a changed world, I decided that I needed to do more to inspire hope not only in the hearts and minds of young adults, but in my contemporaries as well. As always, I turned to the medium I know best - the theater.

I am at heart a storyteller, and whether I’m standing on stage telling a story by myself, producinga documentary film, writing a novel or acting in an Off-Broadway play, it is the story that captures my imagination and ignites a hope in me that I might somehow make the world a better place. Considering the current state of things (i.e. the Climate Crisis, Civil Rights and Racial Discrimination, Gender Inequality, Political Polarization, Poverty and Homelessness, etc.) my desire to have a positive impact on the world is demanding more than hope; it wants action and community.

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Oh, and I changed my name…

For those of you who don’t know, I’m now using my middle name - Celeste. As a child I was terrified people would discover Celeste. Throughout my life I’ve ghosted that part of myself and kept them out of sight. No more.

When I co-founded The Trevor Project 28 years ago my intention was to save the lives of LGBT and Questioning youth and provide them with a place to turn in crisis. But one of my personal hopes for the Trevor Lifeline was that it might become the means by which older LGBT people could appropriately express their love and support for queer and questioning youth, a channel through which the wisdom and experience of one generation could be passed along to the next. For too many generations, young people have had to figure out in secret what it means to be gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. As adolescents, many of us had to search for proof that we weren’t crazy, we had to find our gay history by reading between the lines and we had to locate one another in a world that required us to be practically invisible. My own journey was not exceptional in this regard. I found my way to queerness by feeling my way forward alone and without the support of mentors or teachers. Friends and lovers certainly helped, but it was basically a DIY situation. Only in the last decade have gay youth been able to be more than just beginners at being queer. In fact in many respects, they are showing us how it’s done in this brave new world.

Since 2017 I’ve been working closely with LGBTQ+ youth, and I’ve been so impressed by their ability to express who they are. It’s ironic that these young people are now encouraging me to be more myself and allowing me the opportunity to learn that it’s never too late to become yourself.

Celeste