JT: The show is very much about overcoming queer shame. That's been a central journey in my own life, really over decades, but especially during the period when I was working on the play. That half-decade leading up to it was a time of reckoning for me in that regard. I was definitely feeling my Caryl Churchill oats in that scene, but it's also one of the moments that comes closest to autobiography or, maybe more accurately, self-portraiture. There's that image of Prince George being hooded with my actual latex pup hood. It's a hood that I've worn to raves over many years. That moment felt like a very direct way of placing my own body, history, and desire inside the work. BG: Your hood is the actual prop used in the show? JT: Yes, I was very specific about that.

It couldn't be just any hood--it had to be that exact one from this particular store in Berlin called Blackstyle, which doesn't even make it anymore. For the few people who know me personally, it's a hood I've worn a lot and been photographed in, so it carries personal significance for me. For me, it embodies this transformative state of abandon that Prince George is reaching for but can never fully attain because of the strictures he lives under. It's a state I've pursued in my own life as well as a sense of freedom and liberation, both sexual and spiritual. But it can also be self-obliterating. In the effort to remake oneself, that pursuit can involve a great deal of destruction. I was writing the play during lockdown, at a time when I had no income from my art because everything was shut down. I was working primarily as a fetish sex worker, focusing on BDSM and extended role play scenarios.

Writing the play felt like a personal charge to myself that my lived experiences couldn't be more radical or interesting than the art I was making. I needed to bring something to the stage that approached what I was actually living at that moment. That's what I hope audiences, and especially queer audiences, can connect to in the work. BG: You're really giving something of yourself to the work, and that comes through. JT: Yeah, totally. The struggle with identity that interested me here was one that moves beyond the familiar question of "Am I gay or am I not?" or "Will my parents accept me?" I wanted to push past those more traditional coming out narratives. The coming out struggle still matters. There's real value in articulating that experience for people for whom it remains urgent.

But for me, that hasn't been the central question for a long time. As a gay man, I've had the privilege of spending many years where that wasn't the primary site of struggle. A more active struggle for me now is trying to navigate the pull between a normative life and one oriented toward radical freedom. That includes grappling with pleasure, desire, and sometimes more difficult terrain like chemsex or dependencies. Those tensions feel much closer to my lived reality than the binary of disclosure or acceptance.