‘No one’s gonna do it for me’: Student looks to his own experiences to find success as a playwright

Story by Jenni Ciesielski

Photos by Landon Cooper

Growing up, Gage Tarlton was always drawn to romantic comedies.

He loved the fun but cheesy dialogue, the catchy soundtracks, and how the main character could always find the one person to spend forever with in under 90 minutes.

But as a gay teenager, he looked at the movies he spent his childhood adoring and realized none of them were written for him.

“It was, like, no one is going to write this queer rom-com that I want to see,” Tarlton said. “No one’s gonna do it for me, or maybe they will later, but I didn’t want to wait for it.”

And while Tarlton, now 20, has cheered at the recent progress Hollywood made with “Love, Simon,” the first gay rom-com to come from a major film studio, he walked out of that movie still not feeling represented.

“If I were in 10th grade seeing this movie, I would have loved it,” he said. “But at this point in my life, this just seems a little too tailored to people who are straight or just coming out of the closet. What about the people who are already comfortable with their sexuality and already out?”

That’s the question Tarlton set out to answer earlier this year when he started writing “Just Like Now,” the first of two full-length plays currently being workshopped and produced at UNC.

Kent McDonald (left) and Jared Bowen-Kauth (right) rehearse for an upcoming performance of Gage’s original play “Just Like Now,” which will be performed at the end of November.

When Kenan Theatre Company (KTC) puts on “Just Like Now” at the end of this month, it will be the first time the company will perform a student-written play in five years.

For those who know Tarlton, this feat isn’t surprising.

Despite not having a theater department at his high school, he landed multiple leading roles including the Emcee in Cabaret in UNC in his first semester.

Earlier this year, he was chosen to be an acting apprentice for Williamstown Theatre Festival, a summer-long residency theater program in Massachusetts whose past performers include Bradley Cooper, Gwyneth Paltrow and Christopher Walken.

Less telling than his resume is the passion he exudes — the detail in which he can recount playwright Jen Silverman’s writing process for “The Dangerous House of Pretty Mbane,” the way his eyes light up when he talks about how “Angels in America” inspired him as a writer and how he could watch the play — an eight-hour show — every single weekend.

When it came to being a playwright himself though, Tarlton originally wasn’t always so sure.

One of the things that drew him toward theater in the first place was the collaborative aspect that comes with being an actor.

From the first script reading to the all-day rehearsals to the final bow, Tarlton always found a community in the cast of each show he performed in.

The idea of writing and rewriting lines in a room by himself seemed far less favorable.

coffee shop
Gage works on a new play at Open Eye Cafe. He often goes to coffee shops to work on pieces.

“You just have to be alone and be willing to write anything that comes to your mind down and then go back and rewrite it and rewrite it, which is hard,” he said.

But after taking a playwriting class that focused on looking at theater as a driver of social change, Tarlton found a new perspective that gave him a purpose in his writing.

At the insistence of his friend Ruthie Allen, who’s directing “Just Like Now,” Tarlton started to write the perfect rom-com he wanted to relate to when he was a teenager.

He looked to his own life and dating experiences as he wrote and realized that in order to tell an authentic story, he’d have to acknowledge that it’s not always going to end in an epic proposal or finding your soulmate.

“So it kind of led me into this idea of sometimes where people might not just find love in a romantic relationship but also in our friendships,” he said.

The first draft’s plot was a retelling of Allen and Tarlton’s friendship.

But as he workshopped the show at Williamstown and heard new actors deliver his lines, Tarlton found himself finding new inspirations for the characters.

Even as the show went through drafts and characters adapted, Tarlton always had a clear vision for what he wanted “Just Like Now” to reflect — a story about navigating the best, worst and complicated elements of dating as a queer college student that people his age can relate to more than the tearful reunions and epic proposals in rom-coms.

Finding a home for “Just Like Now,” however, was less simple than finding its message.

He won a $1250 grant through the UNC Provost committee for LGBTQ Life to provide the funds needed to produce the show, but no place to produce it.

After workshopping and performing a staged reading at Williamstown, he pitched the final script of “Just Like Now” to David Navalinsky, the Director of Undergraduate Production and head of KTC.

The decision to produce Tarlton’s play was an easy one.

“He’s a hard worker and incredibly passionate,” Navalinsky said.“[The play] seems like the right story for this time and for this age group.”

Hearing how other young actors — both in the KTC production and the staged reading at the Williamstown Theatre Festival — have resonated with “Just Like Now” has pushed Tarlton to keep searching for things in his and friends’ lives that other playwrights haven’t been writing about.

Rehearsal
Gage Tarlton watches a rehearsal lead by the director, Ruth Allen (center) and the stage manager, Amelia Jerden, taking place in the Joan H. Gillings Center for Dramatic Art on UNC-Chapel Hill’s campus.

In that search, he found the inspiration for his second show, “We Were Kids,” which is currently being workshopped through UNC’s Lab! Theatre.

The play takes place two years from now in a high school that goes on lockdown due to an active shooter in a school 15 minutes down the road.

At first, it seems like a modern day “Breakfast Club” with the lockdown treated a typical nuisance.

Most students appear desensitized to it, instead discussing their plans for when they get out of high school — with the exception of one student whose brother is in the school with the active shooter.

Writing about gun control wasn’t Tarlton’s initial intention.

“I started thinking about gun violence and was like, okay, but who is gun violence really affecting now?” he said. “And it’s high school kids, specifically when you look who’s leading the charge on these discussions with March For Our Lives, theater kids are the ones that are leading the charge on gun control.”

UNC senior Sam Yancey, who leads the Lab! Theatre readings, chose “We Were Kids” because the characters and dialogue were unique while also being realistic.

“He has a very distinct voice,” Yancey said. “He has an incredible talent of just writing about real people.”

Another element of Tarlton’s writing that stuck out to Yancey was how it was one of the first shows she’d read in Lab! that felt like it was written with young audiences in mind.

“Plays are not targeted towards our demographic,” Yancey said. “It’s sometimes hard to relate to the content we’re putting on because it comes from a lot of older, more experienced playwrights.”

As he gets older and has new experiences, Tarlton knows his plays won’t be about teenagers and 20-somethings forever but believes it’s important for there to be theater for people like him and Yancey to personally connect to.

That’s why he’s trying to share his stories now, entering his plays in every playwright competition and festival he can find.

He’s already on his way to his ultimate goal — professionally pursuing theater in New York.

The Dare Tactic Theatre, a nonprofit New York-based theater production company, recently announced Tarlton’s first one-act script, “The Last Blueberry on Earth,” was one of six scripts to be selected to be workshopped and performed at an off-off-Broadway venue next February.

“It was supposed to be for only New York playwrights, but I submitted anyway,” he said. “They asked me if I would be willing to come to New York in February to be in the rehearsal room, and I of course said yes and then a couple days later they said, ‘All right, we would love to offer your play a spot on our series.”

His Dare Tactic production is not only a potentially career-starting opportunity in New York but also another reminder of why he’s pursuing this even if he doesn’t get into the next festival or showcase series.

“I look at it as collecting my no’s,” he said.

“You collect your no’s, and the more your no’s get bigger and bigger and bigger, the yes that’s waiting for you is also getting bigger and bigger and bigger.”

Jenni Ciesielski

Jenni Ciesielski is a senior media and journalism major from Weddington, NC. She currently works in the press office for Governor Roy Cooper and previously interned at Project C.U.R.E., a Denver-based international healthcare nonprofit. On campus, she serves on the Executive Board for Admissions Ambassadors, where she leads recruitment and event planning for the university's tour guide program, and formerly worked as an editor at the Daily Tar Heel.

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