​Cooking With Butter? was originally conceived as a 15-minute play written for a recipe from Marymount Manhattan College’s Writing for the Stage concentration. With a desire for expansion after multiple successful readings through À La Carte Play Workshop, Annie did just that.
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Moving forward began the expansion process of musical adaption. With the original short being a piece that heavily nodded to musical expression,  that nod was not only leaned into, but embraced.
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Continuing the workshopping process, Purple Light Productions worked in collaboration with À La Carte to not only polish the book and score, but expand perspective on the piece.
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As a piece commenting on the queer experience and growing up in a political climate that fails to acknowledge it‘s existance, we wanted to create a space of artistic feedback that had numerous perspectives.
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In doing this, we were able to create an artistic space with individuals from different backgrounds and identities to assure we were creating the most truthful and moving piece of art we could surrounding such an important topic.
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In this space created, this piece has been developed on a basis of collaboration. Collaboration through stories, interpretations, constructive feedback on book and music as well as discusion regaurding assosiated emotion tied to personal experience.
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And in collaboration, we have created and workshopped (and continuously worked to develop) a piece that not only speaks to our experience in discovering identity and what it means to us, but the experience of hundreds of thousands of people who just need to hear that “it’s okay not to know who you are or why you are that way”. That is the beating heart at the center of this work and one we are all incredibly passionate about.
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This piece has been developed through numerous book & music workshops and readings through Purple Light Productions and À La Carte Workshop this past year...
But along with that traditional process, we must credit the lifetimes of stories that all go into what is, for many, this shared experience.
The stories we have gotten to hear and discuss through this process, and the fraction of this experience we may be able to bring to light for individuals who know nothing of it...
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And as this piece is always growing and developing, it is a story and experience we’d love to share with a wider audience.
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