Carolyn Jack

Playwright and author Jeffrey James Keyes grew up even more different than different.

 

It wasn't just that he was effeminate as a child and that he was bullied throughout his youth. What made his life unbearable was being labeled mentally slow by his parochial-school teachers. That assessment followed him from grade to grade until, one day, he couldn't stand it anymore. When he was only a high-school sophomore, Keyes took his life in his hands.

 

But not to end it. To begin it. On the day he sat in his guidance counselor's office and had to listen to her tell him that all he could hope for in life was work on a farm or in a factory, Keyes hit a tipping point: He made up his mind to change schools.

 

"I believe I became an adult at that moment and took control of my life," he said. "I learned to advocate for myself."

 

That may sound like a small step to those who have never been harassed and misjudged by an entire buildingful of people for 10 years. But it was huge for Keyes – after hearing from teacher after teacher that he was sub-par intellectually, he wondered if even his family believed it. But his parents, a hospital-records worker and a construction employee who were separated, loved and encouraged their son. Though he didn't feel he could really talk to his mother then about being gay or being tormented by his classmates, he could talk to her directly about his future. So when he came home and told her that he wanted to attend a different high school, Keyes remembered, "She was all for it. I think she was impressed that I had a plan."

 

It was true that he had been a poor student as a child. He read slowly, and still does. He earned low grades. His teachers decided early on that that was who he was.

 

"I had classes that inspired me, for sure, and teachers that inspired me," Keyes noted, "but I had a D on my shirt, for dumb." When your permanent scholastic record classifies you that way, he added, "you carry that information that people have about you all the way through … high school. I was bullied a lot. I saw no way that I would ever make it to the next year if I stayed at that school."       

 

The courage Keyes found in himself to change his fate had been fed by one day of attending a local theater school, the First Stage Theater Academy in his hometown of Milwaukee, Wis., where he went as the guest of a friend. At the end of the day, he broke down in tears. When the leader of the school, Ron Anderson, pulled him aside to ask why, the young Keyes explained that he had loved the class, but his parents could never afford to send him regularly. Anderson promised the boy that if he were willing to help out at the school, he could be an intern and attend class for free.

 

Keyes was and did. He had found what he needed. He ended up working and studying at the academy summers and weekends throughout high school, taking a vast range of classes including stage combat, improv, voice and speech, classical/contemporary scene study, mask work, and in-depth Shakespeare and Chekhov classes.

 

"It changed my life," he said. "That gave me the confidence to understand that, just because you're dealt a hand," you don't have to just accept it. "That place helped me to see that there was more to me than what that guidance counselor saw."

   

But at 15, he still felt desperate about his high-school situation. Keyes knew that some of his acting friends attended a different Catholic high school, one with a strong arts program. He decided that that was the school for him, so he and his parents went there to talk with a counselor. The counselor – named Jeff, like Keyes – took them on a tour of the school and sat with Keyes through the assessment test.

 

The test results led the counselor to enroll the teenager in classes that were all AP – advanced placement. He said, Keyes recalled, " 'I think you're not being challenged at the school you're in.' He was like a guardian angel for me."

 

A perceptive angel, at that: Keyes made straight A's, his natural high intelligence stimulated and thriving at last. In his final year at Milwaukee's Pius XI Catholic High School, he decided to try out for the theater programs at Emerson College and Boston University. Having played Mercutio in a production of Romeo and Juliet, Keyes had chosen that character's famous "Queen Mab" speech as his audition piece. But on the way, he impulsively decided to stop by Fordham University, a Jesuit-founded school in New York City: Not only had some of his high school friends decided to go there, but his "guardian angel" counselor had taken a job there, as well. Once on the campus, Keyes was invited to audition for Fordham theater professor Eva Patton and Lawrence Sacharow, head of the university's theater program.

 

Keyes performed the Queen Mab speech. The instant he finished, he recounted, Sacharow leaped to his feet. "You're in!" he exclaimed. Though Patton quickly warned her colleague, "You can't say that!" – there was, of course, an admissions process to be followed – the university did end up accepting Keyes to the program, based at Fordham College at Lincoln Center, laying the groundwork for his later MFA studies in playwriting at Columbia University uptown.

 

If Keyes's high school and college records would likely shock – and humble – some of those early teachers of his in Milwaukee, his professional record since completing his MFA would astound them all. Now a senior administrator at a New York-based foundation, Keyes has for years balanced meaningful day jobs with a wide range of writing projects and successes. While working in earlier positions including theater-program administrator and student-affairs officer at the Columbia University School of the Arts, Keyes has generated a wide and eclectic array of creative writing, including plays, films, journalism, and a best-selling James Patterson book, Killer Chef (2016), on which he earned co-author credit.

 

His plays have been presented at many festivals across the country, such as the 2013 and 2016 Samuel French OOB Festival and the New York International Fringe Festival. His award-winning short film, Uniform, for which he was both screenwriter and executive producer, made the official-selection rosters of over 20 festivals from Los Angeles to Atlanta. And Keyes's many magazine pieces – lots of them written for LGBTQ+ publications and websites, have included interviews with a host of notables including Sandra Bernhard, James Ijames, Ani Di Franco, Billy Porter, Mo'Nique, George Takei and Elaine Stritch.

 

In the middle of all this activity, Keyes also won the 2020 L'Engle/Rahman Prize for Mentorship from PEN America, which honors participants in its long-established Prison Writing Mentorship program – a testament to Keyes's constant efforts to help others, whether students, fellow artists or those at risk.

 

What he may be proudest of, however, is serving as an example of a self-sustaining artist. To Columbia students and others, "I think I really showed that I'm able to be a stable, creative person, put food on the table without outside help," he said. Keyes believes aspiring artists need see that they can both create art and survive, not just barely, but decently. To them, he's demonstrated that "I'm still writing – it doesn't really matter what I do during the day" to earn money.          

 

All of Keyes's achievements, past and to come, came close to never existing at all. What helped him, starting in Milwaukee, was community – the family, friends, theater artists and others who supported and assisted him along the way. Keyes continues both to rely on community and to be community for others, and he wants his fellow artists to not forget to value those magic circles of people who share experiences and ideas, who lift you up.

 

"They encourage me to write. And they come out and support me," he said of his creative friends. "Who's going to read your stuff if you don't have a community? I work with people in my communities to clear the path." Since that crossroads moment with the guidance counselor, "I've learned to listen to my gut, but also to really trust people," Keyes observed. "I'm not a climber, but I do lean into people who are authentic, totally good, kind people, and look for those open doors. I'm grateful that I advocated for myself and was blessed to walk through so many open doors."

 

 

Gary Briggle's big change happened twice. Decades ago, he faced it as a young man just starting to seek his path as an actor and singer. And recently, he confronted it again as an older and far more experienced performer, a theater veteran whose resume has expanded to include directing, writing and instruction.

 

It arose from the same question, perhaps more painful the second time: Who am I as an artist and where do I fit into this profession?  

 

The latest answer seemed to be a stark "done and nowhere," since Briggle is now beyond the age when many people retire from their jobs. Older actors often find fewer and fewer roles open to them as time goes on. And age isn't the only issue: Over the years, theater and American culture have changed, with more roles going to actors who have the specific ethnic, national, regional and other backgrounds that describe the characters – a good and too-long-delayed change, overall, but one that leaves many actors feeling that they can be cast only as who they are in real life, not who they have the skills to play. As a white man over 65, Briggle saw his options dwindling. He thought maybe his performing life was over.

 

And then he thought, "Oh, hell, no," he said – he wanted to keep doing everything. What needed to change, Briggle realized, was not his profession, but his approach to it. Rather than relying on others to give him jobs, he needed to create his own opportunities. He realized that the change would come "by way of evolution and not seeing dead ends, not seeing shut doors," through self-generated work and "the ongoing doing of it."

 

As a student performer, Briggle had had an epiphany, suddenly understanding that his professors were giving him chances to experiment that – even though he didn't feel at all ready for them – he should take. "I needed to wake up to the fact that opportunities were being put before me by people who understood my talent in a different way than I did," he said.

 

Afterward, rather than heading for New York after graduation as many young actors typically do, Briggle spent his subsequent career taking on big challenges – Shakespeare, opera, directing, arts-company executive positions – that pulled him into work of ever-greater quality and visibility. He gradually built an enviable reputation in such regional theater centers as South Florida, Cleveland and his home city of Minneapolis.

 

His credits include serving as artistic director and principal tenor for Lyric Opera Cleveland (Ohio), artistic associate for Seaside Music Theater in Daytona Beach, Fla., and ensemble member of the West Palm Beach-based Stage Company of the Palm Beaches (and its later iteration, Florida Repertory Theatre), Minnesota Opera Company, the Children's Theater Company of Minneapolis and the Arizona Theatre Company. Along the way, he has developed a passion and special affinity for Gilbert & Sullivan and Noel Coward, won a South Florida Carbonell Award for his role as Bunthorne in Patience, and portrayed characters ranging from Dr. Watson to Falstaff. He's even done television. 

 

Briggle took every opportunity he could and worked hard to be ready for new, more difficult ones.

 

It was, he explained, "a kind of goal-oriented, product-based" achieving that would help him attain his first goal: "Getting over my largely made-up sense that I was disappointing everybody by not being a hit on Broadway." Eventually, Briggle discovered that that kind of splashy success wasn't what he wanted or needed; being able to choose fresh roles and paths was.

 

"I needed to make choices that kept me learning, growing, expanding, that took me out of my comfort zone," he said, rather than letting people make him keep singing the same few roles over and over again. He didn't want to keep doing endless productions of The Barber of Seville. "I needed more adventure. And I've never needed to be the star."

 

That same realization came back to Briggle decades later, just when he thought his life on stage had ended. At that moment, he understood that it was only his apprenticeship that was over. Now it was time to take what he had mastered and give it to young people. Though he's reluctant to call himself a teacher – he's seen how brilliantly his life partner, Twin Cities theater artist-educator Wendy Lehr teaches, "and that's not me" – he's found that he can sit in a room full of kids and engage with them, offering them artistic methods and tools that have worked for him.

 

To help a young person become a more expressive and holistic artist: Briggle said exuberantly, "I discovered I could do that and I loved doing that."     

 

But he's doing it his way: Burned by an attempt at joining a university faculty that turned into what he called a "staggering experience, professionally," of politics and backstabbing, Briggle has acted on his second epiphany by constantly creating his own professional opportunities. He mentors young artists at his own home studio; still acts in and guest-directs musical productions in the Minneapolis area and elsewhere; and has become a writer/adapter of stage works. These range from a chamber opera about 17th-century scientist Isaac Newton to a piece about early-20th-century stage artists Coward, Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lunt that was picked up by NPR. They also include a hit version of Shakespeare's Henry IV, Parts I and II called The Rogue Prince (and also based on the related Orson Welles film, Chimes at Midnight) that Briggle co-directed with Lehr for the Twin Cities' Theatre Coup D'Etat.

 

He acknowledges that doing his own work this way makes being a theater artist – always financially dicey – even more precarious. But "I just enjoy it so much," Briggle exclaimed. "It's so pleasurable because I have no expectations for it. And when it turns out that people are excited about it, I'm just amazed. It's a joyful alternative to waiting for somebody to write something for me to be in."  

 

It turns out that change has taught this lifelong learner something powerful. When circumstances alter what you are, have or do and there doesn't seem to be any choice left, "make something up," Briggle urged. "Something that gives you the greatest joy."