The UNM Queer Straight Alliance is performing this week to highlight the plight of LGBTQ youth.
"Diversity Within" was written in the summer of 2006 in part by Stephanie Yurchyk, a UNM graduate student. The play includes six monologues from characters dealing with issues LGBTQ people sometimes face.
"There's this diversity within the skit that we're doing, and we're all telling our coming-out story," said Brandy Rodke, co-chairwoman of QSA. "Each of them are characters of a different ethnicity or a different race and/or sexual orientations."
Three of the six characters are bisexual, transgendered or queer; the other three come from a religious background, have gay parents or are athletes.
The play will take place on May 6 and 7 amid the bronze statues on Cornell Mall. Rodke said the venue will help raise awareness about QSA.
"We're doing it within the bronze statues," she said. "We're not going to have a stage or anything. We are going to be acting like statues ... and we're going to be going around talking. We just want to draw more attention and get more people to realize that there is a group on campus that can be a safety network or a networking group."
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Yurchyk and two others wrote "Diversity Within" for freshman orientation at Rochester University in New York, which she attended before coming to UNM. Several of the stories included in the play come from real experiences, she said.
"On this campus, there is a very diverse group. And even within the QSA, it's a very diverse group," she said. "(Community members) might say, 'That story exactly encompasses my experience.' It's supposed to bring out a sense of inclusion."
This is the first time the play has been adapted since it was performed in New York, Yurchyk said.
"I'm hoping that people will see that you can come out at UNM and you have a support group," she said. "You have a group of people you can talk to about different issues that you might be having - whether it be questioning your sexual orientation or whatever else you might be having that relates to your sexual identity."
Student Derek Garcia is playing the role of the "gay jock" for the performances this week.
Garcia said he is looking forward to portraying an LGBTQ youth from an unconventional point of view.
"The idea behind the character is it's someone who is not necessarily stereotypically considered 'out' or LGBT, or someone who isn't considered by most people to be the most likely suspect," he said. "It's only a few lines, but it starts out by talking about how 'simply being me is not being that simple at all.'"
Garcia said he is concerned about LGBTQ youth shying away from activism, and he said the play might encourage them to speak up.
"We can bring to light stories and voices that otherwise would be either silenced due to fear, to intimidation . or self-censorship," he said. "I think that social change is a really general concept. It only begins with people being willing to express themselves and not feeling like they need to censor themselves. The only way change can happen is if the silence is broken."
"Diversity Within"
May 6-7
12-1 p.m.
Cornell Mall
