“Dear Steve…it’s Allie”
a love song to white America from a radical leftist, transgender, snowflake heretic
Scroll down to learn more and watch the trailer on this page.
“Dear Steve…it’s Allie” is a theatrical autobiography told with songs and stories and pictures, featuring Allie n Steve Mullen, a contextually contingent, trans-feminine, gender-mobile father—a heartland boy and a cosmopolitan lady.
“Dear Steve” is a multi-disciplinary, multi-platform set of works which positions the trans identity of Allie n Steve
— an ‘outrageous mobility’ —
as a way of interrupting one-dimensional ways of viewing our racial past, asking Allie n Steve to locate themselves in the uniquely American history of cultural love and theft.
A multidisciplinary ballad of transformations
In a performance that is both traditional and high tech, Allie plays the piano and mountain dulcimer, weaving in electronic music and samples, as she sings, tells stories, and talks to her younger self — Steve — detailing the things she knows that he is not able to see, even as a grown man.
The recollection of a chance encounter on the train, an ice cream cone with a date, a jingle composed for a chemical manufacturer, the memory of a boyhood home run, a conversation with their daughter about her bat mitzvah, all reveal their connection to our national drama, as Allie extends the grace to Steve that he is not able to extend to himself.
Watch a 10-minute except of clips from “Dear Steve…it’s Allie” above
Written and performed by Allie n Steve Mullen
Story conceived in conversation with Lloyd Brodnax King and Beatrice Bosco
Directed by Beatrice Bosco
Filmed by Tirtza Even
Lighting and cinematography by Meredith Zielke
Edited by Pegah Pasalar and Mauricio Dias Chades de Alencar
Sound recorded by Emily Beanblossom and Haruhi Kobayashi
Special thanks to:
Shiben Banerji, Paul and Cyndi Demaree, Leah Gipson, Christina Gomez, William Harper, and Dwayne Moser