When You Need Me
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T.J.
SYNOPSIS
Before winter break, surrounded by rowdy classmates, Parker finds himself outside and in the cold trying to get away from it all, only for his ex-beau Donovan to stumble out into the wintry mix, sangria jug in hand. Parker doesn’t know how to be “normal” around Donovan anymore. And Donovan can’t help but put his foot in his mouth. What starts out as an awkward conversation melts into a vulnerable instance where what was lost is again found.
PLAYWRIGHT’S BIO
T.J.L (he/him/his) is a queer, Southern, Blck, multi-hyphenate playwright from NC based in NYC. He received his BA in Theatre Performance from ASU. Since graduating, he has worked with various regional theatre companies along the East Coast. He has been a finalist and semifinalist in selection for programs such as Ars Nova’s Play Group and Fault Line Theatre’s Irons in the Fire. T.J.L was a member of the COOP’s 2022 Clusterf*ck cohort and the 23/24 SOUL Reading Series cohort at NBT. T.J.L was a Playwriting Fellow for the Playwrights Realm and the Gatekeepers Collective. He was named a finalist for the 2023 Founders Award from NYSAF. He was named a semi-finalist and a finalist for the 49th Annual Samuel French OOB Festival. His goal is to craft worlds for stories that promote softness, celebration, encouragement and acceptance for queer BIPOC people, especially queer Blck boys.
A BIT ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT
When did you start writing plays? If you had a moment where you realized you wanted to write, what was it?
I think I started writing plays out of frustration for queer media around 2019. I was so exhausted from watching anguish and sad stories where trauma was the only thing that was being served. Almost like queerness and trauma had to go hand in hand for every person who belonged to the Alphabet Mafia. I wanted to see stories where queer people could love on each other inconsequentially. Where they could just exist and not have to worry about something tragic befalling them. They could roll around in the gooey, lovey-dovey, vomit-inducingly-sweet things that everyone should experience while they’re alive in a space with someone they trust. So that’s what I started writing. First just monologues. Then a solo show. Then a two-hander and three-hander and short plays and then it was off to the races at that point.
How did you come to write your OOB play? Was there a particular inspiration behind its creation? How has it developed?
As weird as this might sound, I actually got the inspiration to write this play when I was walking around on a cold night trying to quiet my brain (because it’s always going a million miles a minute), and I was listening to “Loving Someone” by The 1975. I had just discovered the song, and it was like the 100th time I had listened to it that day. And I remember while listening to the lyrics, I had a thought to myself: “I wish the me that was in college had heard this song, maybe it would have given me a lil hope for something when I was in a dark place back in school.” And that’s when the image kinda slapped me in the face. I pictured two boys on a porch outside a party back in my college town of Boone, NC, in the snow, and one of them was trying to speak in ASL. I ran back home, opened up my laptop and started writing. After about an hour or so I had the bones for it and after about three days I had When You Need Me.
What are five words that describe who you are as a playwright?
Vulnerable. Transparent. Squishy. Hopeful. Loving.
What/who are some of the major influences on your writing?
As a big romance novel reader, I would definitely say that I get a lot of inspiration from writers like Tia Williams, Rebekah Weatherspoon, Alexis Hall, Talia Hibbert, Kennedy Ryan and Casey McQuiston. They all just have a way of writing about love that makes sense to me, the sorta sense that I think everyone should be able to understand and gravitate towards. As far as playwriting, I have to give hats off to Dominique Morisseau, Aleshea Harris, Erika Dickerson-Despenza, A. Rey Pamatmat, Lauren Yee, UGBA, Xavier Clark and Heather Christian. All amazing writers who captures the practice of storytelling in their own unique ways!
What’s one fact someone would never guess about you?
One of my great uncles on my father’s side of the family was the first Blck mayor of a town in Texas!
What are some of your favorite plays?
Oratorio For Living Things by Heather Christian, some of the most thought-provoking music you will EVER hear! English by Sanaz Toossi, a very great dissection of how invasive the English language is and can be for other people who do not speak it as a first language. Oh Mary! by Cole Escola, just a fun romp, and I haven’t laughed that hard from a script in a long time, highly recommend. Wet Brain by John J. Caswell Jr., trippy with plenty of heart. Wittenberg by David Davalos, honestly felt like fan-fiction but in the best way possible. Decision Height by Meredith Dayna Levy, a good play for an all-female cast with so much heart! Back Stroke Boys by Xavier Clark, because it’s a coming-of-age story for a queer boy of color, and those always hit me right in the feels! cullud wattah by Erika Dickerson-Despenza, because it centers a tragic problem with a large female cast, and it feels like a cry into the chamber that holds so many people accountable about a problem that should have been fixed already. Indian Princesses by Eliana Theologides Rodriguez because it does so much work with a premise you think is simple, but you have so much room for unpacking a topic that affects so many young women in the world.
Any new projects you’re working on or shameless plugs?
Currently writing an anthology of short plays that captures different queer relationships at different apexes in their development. When You Need Me and my short from last year’s OOB Festival, Are You My Last Stop?, are both from that anthology series that I dream and hope to have published one day with the intention of it being for queer actors in college to be able to use for their studies for classes that focus on dissecting scenes. I’m still developing my play tre that features a throuple situation amongst a best friend group going to college. I’ve started writing another throuple play that features a group of queer men in a cabin near Christmas in the middle of a snow storm. It’s turning out to be very eerie and unsettling. And it explores the importance of consent and using your voice to really get what you need (not want) from someone you trust. I think that’s something that has been growing in my fingers lately. Plays that skew a bit on the queer horror side of the fence. But I promise that all the queer boys make it out alive and intact and in love in these stories my fingers and thought palace have started to concoct lately.
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