I’m on a mission to tweeze the performance out of the everyday — the ways we betray ourselves and each other by conforming to a status quo. Experience informs my writing, while the pursuit for understanding propels it. When I bring an idea to the page I ask myself two questions. The first: how can I abstract it so that I can see what it really is? And then: how can I use it as a catalyst for connection? My work is interested in flirting with the surreal. In this way, I can sublimate interior schemas into living things that can be experienced communally, cutting through the isolation of identity.

Thus, Another Kind of Holding On is a simultaneous abstraction and recognizably specific account of what it means to try and dig one’s roots into what is meant to be a liminal space. Nothing can ever settle in this oxymoronic state, and there is a constant tug of war at place in the play. Whether it is between our characters, Me and You, within the dynamics of their relationship, the pull between comfort and the pursuit of personal desire, the collision of antiquity with modernity, or the layered role of memory in its unreliability, both concealing and exposing truths. This work asks us to question how we get stuck in life and why we choose to stay put, despite knowing that everything we really want is on the other side of the door.

Writing as a young artist, navigating expectations and parental wounds post-college in Trump’s America, the pull to stay shut in, to stay wrapped in bubbles and attachments that are familiar, but outgrown, is strong. However, I also know the trade off for comfort is most often fulfillment. Simply put, staying where you are means missing out on the things that are not where you are. This is the tug of war in my own life that has given birth to this play. Yet, we are all, regardless of age, race, occupation or nationality, balancing these two pulls. We are all stuck in our rooms — our studio apartments — on an individual level, and on national levels. Perhaps the whole planet is in a room of its own, and the only way to connect with the world we want to see is to take a deep breath, confront the traditions, predispositions, and fears we are holding on to, and let go.

Playwright: Geneviève Bluestar Scott
Director: Timiki Salinas
Performers: Bart Elliot & Geneviève Bluestar Scott

Recording of September 20, 2025 performance, as part of the Circle Theater Festival at the AMT Theatre (354 W 45th Street, NY, NY)