Breaking the Binary: meet the founder behind a US theater company for trans and non-binary artists
First, there was baseball. Then, a short stint in ice skating. 'I was really into Webkinz for like, two months,' said the 27-year-old during a phone interview. A fixation on Sillybandz, the brightly colored, animal shaped rubber bracelets, soon followed.
But, a musical being produced at their local YMCA caught Strus's attention. Seussical the Musical, to be exact, a comedy based on the works of author Dr Seuss. 'I saw the ad in the paper at the time, so I auditioned for the show and got in', they said.
A tiny role in Seussical catapulted Strus's love for the art form. They began checking out cast albums from the library, used their minimum wage job in high school to pay for cheap Broadway tickets. Now, as a young adult, Strus leads Breaking the Binary Theatre (BTB), a new work development incubator specifically for transgender, non-binary, and Two-Spirit+ (TNB2S+) artists.
The BTB community and transness has been 'life changing', said Struss, who is trans, non-binary and uses they/them pronouns.'The community I've met through BTB has shaped me as a human,' they said. '[It] really solidified my personal value system and helped me understand so much more about the world and what freedom can mean when you strip yourself of any inhibitions that society has put on you.'
BTB Theatre, founded by Strus in July 2022, is a revelation, one of the only theatrical spaces created for and run by gender-expansive artists. BTB employees, who help facilitate the organization's many projects, are based in New York and at other theater hubs in the US, onboarding throughout the year according to the organization's needs. The group doesn't have a formal theatre space, preferring to stay 'nimble' in response to the community's varying needs, said Strus. Instead, group members meet virtually and collaborate around specific projects. 'I'm really thinking about how BTB can best be serving our community in a moment where the circumstances around are changing and shifting ever so rapidly every day,' they said.
BTB oversees a rotation of initiatives for artists in various roles within the theater industry.
The theater hub hosts an annual reading series, with work written and presented by TNB2S+ creatives. The series, which sells out annually, features a mix of artists at varying career levels. Emerging playwrights will often work alongside veteran actors and directors. Noted participants of the program include L Morgan Lee, the first openly trans performer to receive a Tony award nomination, playwright and TV writer Jen Silverman, and actor Indya Moore, who starred in the FX series Pose.
The organization also hosts their free 'summer intensive' for six TNB2S+ performers, a coveted chance to work with Lee on audition materials, storytelling and how to engage with an industry that is often prickly towards trans artists. BTB also produces a zine every year for Trans Day of Visibility on 31 March, commissioning writers to contribute.
The group will be going to Edinburgh festival fringe in late July through August to produce Red Ink, a one-woman show by trans activist and artist Cecilia Gentili. Gentili suddenly passed in February 2024, an 'earth shattering [moment] for so many people', said Strus. Even following Gentili's death, Strus and other producers wanted to continue producing the show with trans artists who could inhibit Gentili's artistry. 'We found that it was really fruitful to hear other people do it [and] stepping in to keep stories and her spirit and her work alive,' said Strus.
A posthumous, off-Broadway production of Red Ink last June starring actors Jes Tom, Angelica Ross and Peppermint raised over $35,000 for various organizations, including Trans Power in Diversity. The latest iteration at the Edinburgh festival will feature performer Chiquitita, one of Gentili's chosen daughters. '[When] I'm thinking about people who could actually take this work on and honor the legacy of the work and the ways that we wanted to, Chiquitita was the perfect person,' Strus said.
Strus's day-to-day tasks rarely look the same, especially as they juggle work as a commercial theater producer. There's draft announcements that need to be sent to BTB Theatre's press representative as they gear up for a summer show and a script that Strus needs to give notes on. There's also payroll for BTB artists, offer letters that need to be emailed out for upcoming projects, and play readings to attend, all in the pursuit of more TNB2S+ creatives. Strus's mother asked about Strus's work-life balance during a recent visit to the city, bringing up the subject with a slight touch of concern. In response, Strus responded that they 'do not really have one'.
'My hobby is also the thing I work in. I'm really blessed that the thing that pays my bills is also the thing I'm most passionate about in the world,' Strus said. 'So much of my life revolves around the theater, I wouldn't have it any other way.'
Strus's journey with gender predates the creation of BTB, they said, but the creation of the organization remains integral to their own self-discovery. They first started questioning their identity in 2019, and those questions intensified during the Covid-19 pandemic.
'When the world shut down, it was something I had a lot more time to think about,' said Strus. 'When you take away all of the distractions of work and socializing and you just have time to sit with your own thoughts, you really learn a lot about yourself.' Being trans, said Strus, has been the greatest blessing. 'I don't even know I have words to explain, because I don't think words exist that can encapsulate the gift that it is.' At the time, Strus was working as an agent at the now defunct A3 Artists agency. By chance, Strus began representing a number of TNB2S+ artists: costume designer Qween Jean, playwright Reid Tang, and others. That work experience proved foundational, defining 'where my understanding of community really came from'. Even now, Strus said, TNB2S+ creatives and their work was seen as 'not being profitable'.
'My philosophy around that was different,' said Strus. 'I want to work with artists I'm interested in, and art that excites me. I think naturally, that was the connective tissue. With all those artists, their work excited me and maybe it had something to do with transness, even if I didn't know at the time. But I also wonder if it had to do with [the fact that] these artists couldn't find homes elsewhere, so I was like the agent that was willing to or interested in working with them.'
Months later, Strus was hired by Second Stage Theater in New York City to work as the manager of artistic development. As a part of the role, Strus attended a mandatory diversity, equity and inclusion training. Facilitators presented a visual called the 'wheel of diversity' to the group. '[The image] said diversity in the middle and then around the word were all of the sort of things you should think about when you're trying to build a diverse group of people: race, ethnicity, age, gender, class, for example.' Strus realized that each represented group had a theater company made specifically for them, except TNB2S+ artists. Black artists had the National Black Theatre. Older creatives had the Mind the Gap initiative with New York Theatre Workshop. 'There [was] no company specifically focusing on trans and non-binary artists,' said Strus.
A close friend, dramaturg Sarah Lunnie, was one of the first people Strus talked to about their discovery, the fact that there was no theatrical home for gender-expansive artists. Lunnie gave them two directives: write a short blurb about the project and tell at least three people. Heeding Lunnie's advice, Strus began to tell anyone who would listen, peaking the interests of others who had felt left out in theater's narrow binaries. Eight months later, BTB was born.
Creating art as a TNB2S+ artist continues to be difficult as the Trump administration escalates its attacks against the community. Republicans have tried to malign gender-expansiveness and legislate out the existence of trans and non-binary people. As BTB's founder, Strus is trying to prepare for potential attacks, especially as the group has only ever operated under the Biden administration. But, in the meantime, Strus noted that they find 'great solace in what our community is able to do for one another, and how we're able to uplift each other in this moment'. When it comes to creating art in times of far-right extremism, Strus added: '[Trump's agenda] is a reason for me to stop and think about how we can do it the most safely, but it's not a reason to stop doing it.'
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'It's perennial for me as a writer to ask, 'What does masculinity mean?' 'What does the performance of masculinity do?'' One reason he is so defined by this theme, he explains, is because he shares a name with his father. 'I'm a 'junior' – so there's a kind of ownership, an expectation of legacy, that I've lived with my whole life. As an artist, I'm preoccupied with disrupting: this notion of how a man is supposed to act at any given moment.' He wants to explore what lies beneath the ideal of masculinity that young people are fed – an ideal that requires them to stifle many components of their emotional being. 'It takes time,' says Ijames, 'to bring that stuff back to life.' Alongside Juicy in Fat Ham, there is Larry (based on Laertes) who feels a closeted queer passion for Juicy. Shame and homophobia shape their trajectories. 'Many times,' says Ijames, 'homophobia is about not wanting to face parts of yourself. I'm not one of those folks who say you're homophobic because you're actually gay – but I do think you are homophobic because you think that if you get too close to a man's body, then your body might betray you.' Ijames grew up in a large family, in the small town of Bessemer City. His father worked in truck manufacturing ('He's retired military – that type') while his mother taught elementary school ('She wanted us to be surrounded by art'). What was it like growing up queer in this household, in this corner of the south? 'I wasn't in a family that was like, 'Oh, you're gay, get out of here, you're the worst.' They said, 'Just don't get in trouble.'' And the masculinity in his family contained a 'softness', something he puts down to it being mostly comprised of women. 'They were such engines of the family that it changed us. I remember thinking I should be elegant because one of my uncles was very elegant.' What about the greater forces around him, such as the Baptist church? He tells an instructive story about a late family member called Thomas Calvin, who was a theologian. As Ijames's uncle, he believed a Christian had a simple duty: to make the world a better place. 'And that is my framework for Christianity.' Although Ijames has witnessed – and experienced – intense homophobia in churches, he still takes moral direction from the 'social justice aspect of the teachings of Jesus'. Given the changes that have swept America under Donald Trump, it is hard to escape 'strongman' notions of masculinity. Has it ever felt more toxic, more in crisis? 'Well,' says Ijames, 'that's a thing a play can't fix.' He adds, in his even way, that masculinity is hardly one single thing. 'It's a constellation of stuff. I don't feel safer with these strongmen, so what is the strength we're talking about? I don't feel more protected. I don't feel like we're somehow more powerful. I just feel like anxious people – and I'm an anxious person – are being anxious with each other.'All those alternative versions of manhood are there in Fat Ham, rubbing alongside darker elements. But there is playfulness and exuberance, too. Its characters do not seem as villainous as Shakespeare's and the ending might even be described as happy. Is Ijames deliberately creating a state that is good out of Shakespeare's rotten one? 'I was very much doing that. I was curious about what happens if we spend time figuring out what paradise looks like. What if everyone didn't die at the end? What if everyone had a place to live, enough to eat. These are questions about civilisation.' There is violence in Fat Ham and it seems implicitly bound to race and US history, but Ijames does not get into cycles of inherited violence within some Black communities. Instead, he goes down another route. 'I don't write that because I don't know how to be inside that. Joy is a thing I know in excess. It's one of the tricks of being an actor: you understand what offers pleasure to the audience because you have to do it with your whole body. I think marginalised people in general, and Black Americans in particular, are miraculous. I think we should party once in a while.' Fat Ham is at the Swan theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon, from 15 August until 13 September
