Tornado Tastes Like Aluminum Sting is a title that touches many senses and faculties, but is very puzzling.  How would you describe your play?

I would describe it as a play about a family who loves each other. That is the core of this play, and love was the most important part in writing it.

Did you write this play so others could understand more of who you are and what your world is like?

I actually did write this play for us – for autists like me. It’s an invitation to everyone. Chantal [the child in the play] presents it that way. But I wanted to write a play that in a way privileged our processing and our way of thinking because it isn’t in much of any dramaturgy when I go to the theater. 

You have said, “I really trust that audiences are hungry for anything that’s new; anything that is human.” Why do you trust that?

It’s partly a natural positivity that I’ve always had. I used to call it, the “F.U. Spark.” It kept me going as a child – that little engine of belief, happiness, and joy. I am a little older, so it’s taken me longer to get here, but we need each other, particularly in the divisive time we are living in. We have to have some grace with each other. 

You have described the “F. U. Spark,” as that “piece of me, deep inside, that made it through all the violence, the part that no one could extinguish. We’ve all got it.” 

This is in relationship to the documentary that is being made by James Rutenbeck [Lost Nations Pictures] featuring my life and work, and is particularly in reference to my experience of growing up in rural Kansas. Each of us who is different experiences all kinds of abuse. I could not walk down the street by myself without being threatened. But somehow there was still a skip in me, a fizzy part of me that no one could penetrate. I feel blessed that I had it and still have it. 

Is this play based on your life? 

It is not an autobiographical play. I did give Chantal some of my conditions: I am autistic, I am nonbinary, I do have synesthesia, and I did grow up in rural Kansas. Those attributes and the landscape, yes. The rest of it, no.

Is this play about the childhood you wish you had had?

One reason I wrote it was to write parents who were accepting. They accept Chantal’s differences the way someone would accept a different hair color. They are just like anyone else. They are messy, they make a lot of mistakes. They are very human.

Film in your play is a significant way Chantal processes their experiences. 

I love film. It does a couple things. A lot of autistic and ADHD kids have hyper-interests and will go on and on about those interests. There’s a lot of info dumping. Also, Chantal explicates what confuses them through the lens of those films. They are trying to find a relationship.

You call yourself a “PneumaFractualist” – “I don’t have a language-first brain. In my mind, numbers and shapes, swirling colors, and millions of scattered flakes that resemble crayon shavings are the data I process. My memories, for example, are embedded in these three-dimensional objects. Accessing the matching words with the shapes is akin to kneeling on the floor with presbyopic eyes and trying to pick glitter out of the carpet.” 

Talking doesn’t feel natural. It takes a lot of work just to speak. I don’t understand the mechanism, so when I am talking to you, it’s not like it’s automatic. I’m constantly thinking about it and working to put the words in order. I don’t see words because I see images in my head and have to translate the images into the words and speak. When I was a kid, I learned that if I could imagine a grid floating in front of my vision, then I could focus on one little cell at a time and block the rest out. It’s a kind of meditation. I taught myself just to focus on that information alone. In doing so, that’s when I realized that there are such big worlds in such small details.

Does one color or shape always represent the same feeling?

Yes, it’s consistent. The difficulty for me is that because all of my senses are affected that it sometimes becomes incredibly difficult for me to know where its coming from. If I have that grid and can get it really small, I can understand. When I look at my husband’s roses outside, I zoom on one and they always sound like a different bell ringing. If I look at all of them, it sounds like this bell chorus. Sometimes it’s magnificent, sometimes it’s a lot!

Do you have any formal training?

I don’t. My mother would go to thrift stores because we didn’t have any money and come home with boxes full of books. I would go through them and gave myself the most eclectic education. I read text books, religious books, geometry, intro to calculus, American history, Norton Anthologies. I discovered plays that way. The first two plays I ever read were, Julius Caesar and For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf by ntozake shange. I read them until the pages fell out. I didn’t understand them. That became my education. And they were poetry.