Jasmine Joshua sat in a coffee shop ten feet from the colorful poster for their latest project, Here and Their, which will be showing at 12th Avenue Arts June 13–28. It’s more than just a silly punk rock show about Queer identities and family; it holds a personal message that echoes throughout Joshua’s work. Both Here and Their and Joshua’s autobiographical one-person show, Bread Crumbs, center around gender identity and what it’s like to come out later in life.

“I came out as Nonbinary when I was 33,” Joshua told the SGN. “I was already married. I have twins. They were three years old. As far as I was concerned, I had done it. I had womaned. I had married. I had produced progeny.”

Joshua didn’t even hear the word “Nonbinary” until their late 20s. At 33, they worried it was too late to explore.

“I couldn’t go out to Gay bars and figure out what that meant. I wasn’t in college,” they said. “I didn’t have the language to describe it. As far as I was concerned, it was too late for me. I was 33 [and thought], ‘This is who I am forever, and there’s nothing I can do to change that. I will live in the silent hell of knowing I’m not right.’”

Their background in theater helped them process their fear of coming out. Looking back on their career, which included creating and performing in the first gender-bent version of 1776 and striving to rethink how casting and gender roles work, they realized that regardless of how they’d looked to the outside world or the pronouns they’d used before, they’d always been Nonbinary.

“I call these my breadcrumbs, where I look back on my life and see these moments where I’m like, ‘Ah, that’s when I knew,’” they said. “When I look back, especially on my childhood, and I think about moments when I could pretend to be someone else or morph into whatever I wanted to be, those always brought me the most joy.”

From this reflection, Joshua got the inspiration for their one-person show, Bread Crumbs, which premiered at ACT Theater’s solo fest in 2020. Following a similar throughline, Joshua began working on the book for Here and Their, inspired by their coming out journey. They’ve spent the last seven years developing the show at retreats, programs, and workshops nationwide.

“It’s about a person who comes out in their thirties, and it’s like, ‘Oh my god. Do I start over? Do I have to abandon my family? Can I include my family? Are they going to be cool with it? How do I explain it to them when I don’t even know how to explain it?'”

Here and Their has something for everyone, but at its core, it’s a show that Joshua wishes they’d had earlier in their journey.

“When I came out at 33, I was the oldest Nonbinary person I knew. I didn’t know anyone older. I had no idea what it looked like as an adult. Most of the people I knew who are Nonbinary were in their teens or twenties, and they had been out for years,” they said.

Though they’ve grown up in the arts — both of Joshua’s parents are actors — it was coming out as Nonbinary that opened their eyes to their life’s work. “I knew that truly my mission in everything that I do is to be visible, because I needed someone to be visible way earlier than I had,” they said. “My higher mission, truly, in almost everything I make, is to make spaces where others can be visible too, because, to steal a line from my show, ‘The more that we all know, the more that we will grow.’ To me, that is paramount.”

With catchy songs, plenty of LGBTQIA+ inside jokes, and a strong central message about self-exploration, Here and Their is a show that fulfills the innate purpose of theater: relief from outside woes.

“You’re going to come in and have a good time,” Joshua reassured those seeking to attend. “I’m not saying there aren’t 'feels' in it. There are definitely 'feels,' but this is not going to be about trauma; this is not going to be about danger. This is a joyful, funny story about us and the people who love us. There are jokes about our community, and there are jokes about people who don’t get it. We run the gamut. It’s got something for everyone, wherever you are on your journey.”


Joshua’s show runs until June 28. For more information, visit www.hereandtheirthemusical.com.