Cypress Cai, a third-year theater student and playwright, is showing their piece at UCLA’s third annual Fringe Festival. They worked with a group of their best friends, such as director James Stutts, a third-year theater student and actor Warren Riley, a fourth-year English student, to create a piece that questions modern masculinity through an unnerving and tragic narrative. Cai said this play dissects two men at the end of the world and examines the cycles of violence and masculinity they impose upon each other.
“I think it’s meant to be… a tragedy about enforcing masculinity between men, about the way they talk about women when no one else is in the room,” Cai said. “Even among trans people, we are affected by the burden of masculinity. Even though we chose it, it’s still this oppressive force that has to be policed and maintained.”
Cai said that because of Fringe Fest being a fast-paced and shoestring-budget festival, it became a place for students to test out their dumbest ideas. “MEAT” was born through the combination of unusual experimental acting classes and Cai’s personal challenge to write one play each day. They said that it was later read in a student playwright circle and put away until production time that summer.
“By the time we were producing it, I didn’t feel that close to the text,” Cai said. “I had written it and then put it away for kind of a while and so even returning to this text I was like, ‘I’m surprised that there’s this in it because I don’t remember writing that.’”
Cai said there were no major changes to the original script, but because of the sparse language, minor changes made major differences. One change that Cai said stood out was when they realized that there was no implication of it being the end of the world and the few simple added lines reframed the entire story.
Cai works closely with Stutts and said that the director often talks them down from a ledge when they were pushing for too many changes. The entire production process was highly collaborative between Cai and the rest of the team, leaving scripts open-ended, and from there they were able work together to create a vision they are both comfortable with, allowing for breakthroughs, Stutts said.
“Honestly I feel like I kind of have one of those [wow] moments every rehearsal,” Cai said. “I’m working with some of my best friends in the whole [world]. And to have that kind of room where everyone here I trust so deeply as a person and as an artist, and is someone that I want to be working with for the rest of my life.”
One of “MEAT’s” actors, Riley, said the idea of falling on your face usually brings about fear when acting, but in Cai’s process, that’s how great work is created and it all feels like a part of the journey to create something thrilling.
“When you meet Cypress, they’re the loveliest, kindest, most gentle person you ever meet,” Riley said. “The horrors that come from their brain never cease to amaze me.”
Both of the actors in “MEAT,” as well as Cai themself, are transgender. Cai said there was no intention for it to be a trans play; it was something that just happened and the two actors, being some of Cai’s best friends, have become intrinsic to the play. They have been there from the beginning of the script readings and once they were cast, the stakes were raised, Cai said.
Riley, being a trans actor, said that because theater is a very type-based world, there can come this feeling of fear and thinking, “will I be able to do this?” He said he leaves rehearsal confident he can do the things he questioned with the help of Cai and Stutts, because those doubts don’t exist to them. Riley said that he and Cai have an ongoing joke that Cai’s imagination is much better than Riley’s because they always believe in him.
Cai said their vision for this play is that even at the end of the world, when there is nothing left but these two men, there are still these cycles that reinforce masculinity, even without a society to sustain them. Cai first believed this story to be a scary one, but instead, they said it became a tragedy that reflects and questions social norms. Cai said they and their team hope that this is seen as the tragedy it is, creating a discomfort that sparks discussion.
“Men are revered,” Cai said. “There’s something gay about being straight, you know; there’s something very like, paradoxical. They’re not gay because they’re gay, they’re gay because they love men and revere men.”
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Featured Image Photographed by Siena Hunt/BruinLife
