The Feministing Five: Jax Jackson
By Anna | Published: January 26, 2013

http://feministing.com/2013/01/26/the-feministing-five-jax-jackson/

Teddy Ferrera is a play loosely based off Tyler Clementi's story and playwright Christopher Shinn's (a Pulitzer Prize finalist) own experiences. It runs from February 2nd – March 3rd at Chicago's Goodman Theater and features the theater's first transgender actor.

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And now, without further ado, the Feministing Five, with Jax Jackson.

Anna Sterling: Tell me about the play. How do you relate to the struggles your character faces? And what kind of effect do you think a play like this will have on its audiences?

Jax Jackson: It's a play about how students, faculty and staff at a large university respond to the suicide of a freshman, Teddy Ferrara. Mainstream media selectively reports that the suicide came on the heels of bullying by Teddy's roommate. I play Jaq, a transgender grad student who is part of a group trying to address the university's structural homophobia which they believe contributed to Teddy's death.

Jaq and I both want a world that's more inclusive, a place where people can easily question social constructs and express themselves. We both believe that this is possible if people are honest about the role they play in contributing to the pressure marginalized groups feel to assimilate to a dominant ideology. We are both trans men, new to understanding the set of privileges and responsibilities that being read as a white man in the U.S. entails. The main difference is that Jaq is a Women/Gender Studies grad student, and I've never taken a WGS class! I'm taking one at DePaul for research purposes now, and finding it very informative.