Art & Creative Expression
Queer Shakespeare in the Midwest, free to attend
Beks Roen runs Roguish Goblin Stories, a production company whose first indie production paid every artist $20 an hour without a single cent of ticket revenue.
A student noticed Beks Roen's pronoun pin. It was 7AM. Beks had just walked into their English class with a teaching partner, passed out laminated scripts and raggedy costumes, and challenged a roomful of sleepy high schoolers to play the witches in Macbeth.
It was the first day they had met. The student came up to Beks that day with one sentence.
“Because I see you, I know I'm gonna be okay.”
Beks Roen
Beks answered in the hallway: "You are why I'm an actor, producer, writer and teacher."
"That's why I started Roguish Goblin Stories," Beks says.
Beks describes RGS as "a production company for trans, ace, and aro stories around fantasy and queer Shakespeare." Beks also self-publishes: books, essays, plays, music. The aim is "to help people know they're loved and not alone."
"My first indie production raised enough money to pay all artists $20/hour without a single cent of ticket revenue," Beks says. "So now, that's my baseline moving forward."
"I'm insistent on paying artists well and keeping theatre free to attend. I love creating theatre that makes people tear up and feel like they belong. Regardless of whether it's Shakespeare or a fantasy swashbuckler, the connections made at every performance I've done have literally changed my community for the better."
Beks is putting videos of every show on a subscription platform that, they say, "will eventually become a full streaming app."
"I insist on doing trans aroace theatre in the Midwest USA because there's not a lot of access to inclusive live spaces for us," they say. Countless teens have come up after shows with words like that first student's.
"The fluidity of his characters is where I first found my trans identity," Beks says of Shakespeare. At their first Shakespeare theatre contract, Beks was cast in multiple ensemble roles with multiple genders, in a cast that included people of several different genders. "It was the first time I'd met trans and genderqueer adults."
"When I started to learn about my own non-binary identity, those actors were the first people I reached out to."
"I want to grow RGS into a production company that supports multiple queer artists full-time, feeds artists on top of paying them, and has mental health coordinators on call. A theatre that builds community gardens and affordable housing around its stages."