This week, The Argus sat down with Alisha Simmons ’24, an artist in every sense of the word. They talked about their two majors, being involved in the arts world on campus, and the inspiration for their senior projects on transformative imagination. From Middletown to London, Simmons has the passion and love for performance. 

The Argus: What are your majors and how do you see them in conversation with each other, if at all? 

Alisha Simmons: I’m a theater and FGSS [Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies] double major. Coming into Wesleyan, I already knew I wanted to do theater. So, I was deciding what the second thing was because I did a bunch of theater in high school, and I was like, “I love theater.” Originally, I was doing theater and psych, but then doing the intro psych class on Zoom freshman fall was so miserable. Then I was taking a couple of AFAM [African American Studies] classes, and I was thinking of doing that, but I just decided to do FGSS because it felt like I could have more overlap in the theater world, and because I really wanted to focus specifically on gender. I could have done it with AFAM, and sometimes I’m like, “Maybe I should have.” I think I also knew a couple of seniors who were in [FGSS] at the time who I thought were really cool, and that was honestly a big part of it. 

A: Outside of class, what are you involved in on campus?

AS: My main thing is I run [SHADES Theater Collective] right now, [which] is the student of color theater collective on campus. It’s historically been a theater collective, but we’re trying to expand to have it include all types of creatives of color on campus. Especially writers and filmmakers, because there’s so much overlap in those worlds. But we also welcome designers and whoever wants to come.

My freshman year, one of the first things I did on campus was this play called “Salvation.” That was through SHADES. It was peak COVID, so we had to wear masks [and] be six feet apart in all of our blocking. But it was such an amazing experience, because there’s all these upperclassmen that I immediately got to get to know and look up to. They were so welcoming, and really showed me the ropes in the theater world on campus, especially as a person of color, and how to navigate that. [The show] was just so incredible. It was about people who woke up in purgatory and how they cope with their lives and how they forgive themselves and each other. It’s about transformative justice and care.

I’m also a member of [the Eclectic Society, which] I’ve been in since freshman year. I’ve done social media for them, and I’m also currently the social wellness chair, which is a position that is [responsible for] sexual and racial violence prevention and making sure that there’s people [in Eclectic] to talk to for any concerns. I also work at Oddfellows Playhouse, the [Middletown] community theater. I’m currently assistant directing the Teen Repertory Company show, so that’s a really big deal. I’ve been [with] them since sophomore year. I work at Swings. I’ve been working there since sophomore year. I also do music. My freshman year, I was in this band called Bloody Undies.

A: Iconic.

AS: It is iconic, but all these underclassmen don’t know what it is. We started because I met one of my best friends Bella Amenta [’24] on Instagram before school started. Then once we got on campus, we were like, “Oh my god, we need to start a band.” Then we morphed into Strapson. We haven’t played in a while but we might play again. I’m also part of Black Raspberry and last semester I was a guitarist for them. Now I’m a vocalist, and that’s a really fun, super amazing community of people. Definitely a much-needed part of Wesleyan music culture is having an all-Black student group that is really good. Actually high quality music. We opened for Tierra Whack—that was pretty awesome. I work in the costume shop sometimes. 

A: Being a person who’s very into the arts on campus, such as theater and music, and considering that a lot of that scene had basically disappeared during COVID, what’s it like as a senior rediscovering this world three years later? 

AS: It’s weird, but it’s also exciting. It’s so exciting to have been able to see so many things evolve. To see things like Mic Check—if you’re a freshman or sophomore coming, in that seems like a common thing, but that is so new. Black Raspberry is so new.

Going to Zonker Harris will always be sentimental to me. In some ways, I honestly miss freshman year, because music on campus was kind of the only thing you could do and so outdoor concerts, at least in my world, was always what was happening. Always what I was going to, always what I was rehearsing for, and that was the event going on. So in that way, I feel like music felt more together on campus, because there were fewer people and so, the people who were playing the shows—you knew who they were. I’m glad that there’s so many artists, but I think that it’s still divided. So I think that music culture is definitely different, but I think that now is the closest it’s ever been to how it was before. To have so many people doing it, even if I don’t know them.

I also think in other ways [it’s changed]. I don’t really participate that much in Spike Tape, but that is a new thing in the past four years as well. Second Stage died, basically our freshman year, for good reason, and then Spike Tape took form, I think, [at the] end of freshman year, beginning of sophomore year. So seeing student theater evolve in that way has been really interesting.

It’s cool, but it’s also kind of sad that all these things are changing, but then I’m going to graduate. The freshmen are so lucky to have kind of the most normal college experience for the next four years. But also, I feel very proud of our class. I feel like we’re really connected in a different way because freshman year was so shitty in so many ways. But also, it was fun because we didn’t know anything else.

A: How are you feeling about your senior year to come? We’re kind of in the beginning, so what are you looking forward to this year?

AS: I’m doing a senior project. I’m doing two capstones. I’m doing an essay in FGSS this semester and I’m doing a capstone in theater next semester. And I’m really excited about it. I’m also really overwhelmed by it, but it feels like the culmination of my educational experience. Both capstones are about imagination as a tool for resistance and self-determination for queer and trans people of color, specifically focusing on the role of the body in performance art, how the body is used to embody this imagination in different ways, and different methods that performance artists have used to do this. Also, why queer and trans people of color artists use performance art as a medium, because it’s one that has been created from being cast out from traditional theater and visual art worlds.

In the spring, I’ll have a devised ensemble performance in Russell House. I’m hoping it’s this immersive installation. You walk through and it’s an hour of vulnerability and care and anger and freeing experiences for the performers. I just want to create that world where liberation happens and [you] really feel it. Because the first step to liberation is imagining that it can be true in the first place.

A: What inspired you to pursue this?

AS: [I was inspired by my] first play, “Salvation.” A devised theater experience is so unique in the way that it’s inherently so collaborative. If you’re in a room with people that you really trust, ideas just kind of come out of you so naturally. I had this experience of improvising a whole monologue about my character, that it’s not even that I had to think about it—it just came because I was in this room with people that I trusted. I was in a space where I was allowed to try new things without judgment. I think that having that experience was really pivotal for me.

I also worked on a show called “Book of Chrysanthemum” in my sophomore year that was written by Laia Comas [’22], who is now doing theater in New York. She’s really awesome. We co-directed and I stage managed. We did it in the Develin Room in Olin. That show really opened my eyes to how theater doesn’t have to be in a traditional space.

Then, I went abroad to London. My whole curriculum was basically about performance art and live art in the U.K. I saw such incredibly weird performances. I saw theater in a gay bar where somebody just comes on the stage, strips, and then puts back on her robe with this song playing [in the] background, and then gets off stage. That was amazing.

But performance can be anything. Performance is just action, and anybody can perform. Anybody can create this type of art. It’s not something that’s restricted to highbrow theater companies on Broadway. Theater can be us having this conversation right now. I think that’s so powerful. You can be an artist, and you can use your body and space to make a difference and to say something that you believe in. At the core of it is sending a message, and somebody hears it. All of these things, and also my own experience as a queer, trans person of color, Black person in the world, and my own experiences with gender and gender performances, for performativity and how it feels to be in my body. Seeing how performance artists have tackled that through their work just opened my eyes.

This theory that I read last spring was the cherry on top. [It was] this piece by Marquis Bey called “Black Fugitivity Un/Gendered.” If you’re familiar with Hortense Spillers’ “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe,” where she talks about her theory of ungendering—basically how, because of the violence of slavery, Black women have been stripped down to female flesh, and flesh represents the body being stolen from them through violence from chattel slavery. In that view, flesh doesn’t have gender because flesh isn’t human. Marquis Bey takes that and blends it with this other theory of transformative manifesting, “Tranifest,” and then creates this term called “Traniflesh.” To talk about the liberatory potential of the overlap of blackness and transness. Essentially how two negatives actually just make a positive. If you are being stripped of your identity, that actually allows you the most freedom to move in the world and the most power to transform. Because nobody is believing you exist anyway, so you might as well create your own reality. Black trans people have the power to create a transformative world.

Anyway, that’s my project, and it sounds like a thesis but it’s not technically a thesis. April 4 through 6 in Russell House.

A: As you’re coming to the close of your Wesleyan career, what advice would you give to underclassmen who are just starting out, or even people who are in the middle of their time here?

AS: Everyone’s just as scared as you are. As a senior I feel so young. I feel younger than I was two years ago, in some ways. But then also, in some ways, I feel so much older. If you’re looking at all these upperclassmen, you’re like, ‘Oh, my God, they look like they have their shit together.’ In some ways we do, that’s true. We know the campus, the school, what’s going on. But we also don’t in so many ways. You’re not alone in feeling scared. Also, everybody I know who’s graduated has told me this because it’s real: Take that class you don’t think you’re gonna like. Try something new. Also, make Wesleyan weird again. Let’s bring back the weirdness. That’s my parting words: Freshmen, if you’re weird, be loud about it. Also, go to the UOC (University Organizing Center). There’s cool stuff there. 

Lia Franklin can be reached at lfranklin@wesleyan.edu.