JENNIFER LANIER
A Two-Spirit Native American and African American writer, actor, and director, Jennifer Lanier has always felt at home on the stage. But as a queer person of color, she learned quickly that her onstage options were limited, leading her to explore backstage options as well. Now the co-artistic director of the Original Practice Shakespeare Festival (OPS Fest)—an Oregan-based non-profit engaging with Elizabethan England theater styles—finds that she’s in a position to make theater just a little queerer. “Theater represents [the] privileged, straight, white man more than any art form in the U.S. And everything that I do, and am, in the theater crashes against that privilege and kicks it off the ledge,” Lanier says. OPS Fest uses original practice techniques of Shakespeare, such as engaging directly with the audience and playing with concepts of gender, to bring the full theatrical experience to life. “We ask our cast to imagine who they think the character is, letting them play the character as their own gender or the gender as written,” Lanier says. The lack of gender barriers allows her and her fellow actors to lean into their queerness, and has led to creative performance choices—including Lanier’s starring turn as a Black, lesbian Othello. “Shakespeare was queer already,” Lanier says. “Drag comes from men who dressed like women—of course they couldn’t hire women—for roles in his shows. So we just keep going, encouraging our audience to take the ride with us.”
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