RACE & IDENTITY

Two Plays at Diversionary Theatre and The Old Globe Tackle Complex Issues

by STEPHANIE SAAD THOMPSON

Christian St. Croix’s thought-provoking

play, Monsters of the American Cinema, made its world premiere in Seattle in 2022. But its San Diego premiere at Diversionary Theatre on March 18, directed by Desireé Clarke, is a homecoming for St. Croix—who grew up in Sacramento but has long made his home right here in our city. In fact, an early draft of the play won an award at the San Diego Fringe Festival.

“Moving to San Diego from Sacramento really opened up my experiences,” says St. Croix, who is himself Black and queer. “I met people I would never have had the chance to meet; saw things I would never see back in my hometown. It gave me so much inspiration for my writing.”

In Monsters of the American Cinema, Remy, a gay Black man, finds himself a single parent to his straight white stepson, Pup—after Pup’s

Obsession,OveractingandLadiesLosingTheirLatchkeys

father, Remy’s husband, dies of an overdose. Remy has also inherited a movie theater he and Pup try to run together. Throughout their struggle to find a way to continue as a family, their shared love of the titular monsters of vintage American horror films becomes a bond that ties them together.

“I was very curious about families in which LGBTQ parents are raising kids who are not their own, especially transracial families,” says St. Croix. “I did a lot of research, read a lot of stories. I wanted to learn how people got by, not only on the fringes of a bigger canvas, but also at the center of their own story.”

Monsters of the American Cinema is not the first of St. Croix’s plays to win awards and widespread recognition. It won the Carlo Annoni International Drama Award; and was added as a reading and study assignment for one of Carnegie Mellon University’s 2019 dramatic writing courses. But St. Croix insists it’s “just a simple weekend snapshot of the lives of two people—inspired by real people who exist as part of the social and political dynamics of our time.”

Pup—while having been raised by activist parents who thought they had instilled their values in him—succumbs to a desire to fit in at school and uses homophobic slurs that take Remy by surprise. “It shocks Remy to see how easily Pup falls into the character of a bully,” St. Croix says. Remy and Pup live in the suburb of Santee, and

St. Croix knows full well that San Diego audiences will react more knowingly to that fact than did Seattle theatergoers. (S.D. locals likely have heard it referred to as “Klantee” over the years.) “Living there is definitely a challenge for Remy, but I absolutely do not mean to trash the town of Santee.”

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