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Our critics saw Tears and Glitter and Mimetic Desire, two new plays written by Mikki Gillette and directed by Asae Dean, which opened May 30 at the Back Door Theater and run through June 21 under the block Glitter and Desire. Though we recommend seeing both plays, Nicole Eckrich and Brianna Wheeler attended both productions and offer their thoughts as a guide to which one you may enjoy more.
Tears and Glitter
Care for an intimate, uncanny look at life through and presented by a transgender lens this Pride season? Look no further than Tears and Glitter, presented by theater company Salt and Sage. Thirteen transgender and nonbinary individuals share their collective joys and heartache on center stage as six friends navigate their turbulent social and political climate preparing for Pride 2023. Gillette’s predictions from two years ago ring forebodingly true as she cases the mid-2020s in amber.
“The ways in which trans people change our bodies, pronouns and IDs are nobody’s fucking business,” Gillette tells WW ahead of Glitter and Desire’s debut. “Until that’s the consensus view, though, groups like the one you’ll watch here will be taking care of each other and fighting for the things we know are true because our need to live authentically will never be outstripped by the prejudice of those who hate us.”
Tears and Glitter’s cast depicts a rainbow of nuanced stances. Each character represents a stereotyped reaction to persecution. While Collier (Thorn Hartspring) is a fighter, Quinn (Jody Read) goes down the internet rabbit hole in hopes of gaining his power back and making positive advances. There is the mediator, Murph (Marina Benedetti); the newcomer, Rhett (Christian Guitierrez); and the beguiling optimist leads, on again off again, Tara and Dita (Billie Jane Dawson and Juliet Mylan, respectively). Their romantic connections, as well as their tumultuously different advocacy strategies within a friend circle, are refreshingly different to anyone outside of a trans-dominant friend group.
“You’ll see the characters be mad about things that are happening to the community because the community is being hurt,” Gillette says. “You can see this on the left right now politically in our country. These things are happening, and it feels so hard to find a way to counter them, and so there is blame that can happen and turning on the people close to us.”
Some theater patrons might need to prepare themselves for a little situational confusion if they’re not used to groups where multiple people use they/them pronouns or have gender-neutral names. Once that short hurdle is cleared, Tears and Glitter offers a poignant, raw, fly-on-the-wall look into an often misrepresented and misunderstood community. The cast’s cohesion shines throughout, from their onstage chemistry to their impressive in-character blocking. A girl-on-girl scene-stealing kiss, for instance, feels moving, rebellious and provocative.
“It feels like everybody is talking about the trans community right now,” Gillette says. “Cisgender people are inviting other cis people to have opinions about the trans community right now, which is really upsetting. I hope that if people come to this show, if they are trans, they can get to see characters who are like them who are getting to speak for themselves, and if they are cis, they can get a different point of view.” NICOLE ECKRICH.
Mimetic Desire
Rather than being biologically motivated, contemporary philosopher René Girard’s Mimetic Theory posits that human desire is rooted in imitation. Mimetic Desire unpacks that theory through a transgender lens, revealing a salient and universal truth: In terms of desire—biological or otherwise—amateur adulthood is messy as hell.
Mimetic Desire is less philosophical analysis and more an exploration of novice intimacy via a chaotically incestuous friend group stumbling through their college years together. The work both satirizes and exalts the experiences of its characters in a way that speaks directly to audiences either living in that era of their life (read: the messy years) or looking back with wonder and humor at their own tumultuous introductions to adult relationships—romantic and otherwise.
The production centers on the intertwined relationships of seven libidinous college pals: cohabitating couple Danny (Cosmo Reynolds) and Maddy (Ethan Feider), roommates Mia and Alec (Hazel O’Brien and Damien Luis, respectively), charmingly antagonistic singletons Landon and Sam (Lennox Blodgett and Tea Johnson) and the interloping newcomer Corin (played by Maryellen Wood).
In theory, mimetic desire is triangular—based on the subject, model and object. In short, the subject mimics the model, and both desire the object. This results in rivalry, which eventually leads to scapegoating and expulsion. Mikki Gillette’s interpretation of the theory unfolds in triangular relationships between Mia, Alec and Corin; Danny, Alec and Maddy; and Danny, Maddy and Landon. Despite the manic interplay between romantic and platonic entanglements, each melodrama’s thread is strong and compelling, with every character reveling in moments of insight, vulnerability, and hilarious self-realization.
There’s a particular strength to Gillette’s dialogue—the way her scenes build and unfold can feel like peering into a secret world, only to find it’s remarkably similar to your own. Her characters have breadth and volume. Danny, Mia, Corin and Alec’s student film subplot, for example, may strike familiar chords with anyone who’s been in an ambitiously creative yet distractingly amorous friend group (you know who you are). Meanwhile, Maddy twisting between Alec’s over-the-top flirtation and Danny’s soft-masc malaise will feel familiar to anyone who’s nearly blown up their life trying to navigate their own, and their partner’s, evolving needs. The delicate way Gillette builds Mia and Corin’s relationship over the first and second acts is a low-key master class in crafting conversations that resonate intergenerationally—all while maintaining the signature balance of depth and levity that’s earned Gillette a number of awards.
Save for a Psychology 101 sidenote, mimetic theory was relatively unfamiliar to me at the outset. But the concept of Mimetic Theory—and Mimetic Desire—was expressed concisely through these characters and their churning relationships. Each wanting what another has, ad nauseam, gives the audience a chance to reflect on their own mimetic impulses and how those impulses have shaped their lives—and the lives of those around them.
Gillette describes the work as autobiographical, though hindsight has painted all her characters (loosely based on friends from her early 20s) in broad transgender strokes with bright splashes of sentimental hilarity. Our biggest takeaway—besides “20-year-olds be fuckin’”—was the lingering question: What is desire, and is it mimetic? The conversations that blossomed afterward were nearly as engrossing as Gillette’s work. BRIANNA WHEELER.
SEE IT: Glitter and Desire at the Back Door Theater, 4319 SE Hawthorne Blvd., saltandsagepdx.com/season-2025. Tears and Glitter: 7:30 pm Thursday and Saturday, 2 pm Sunday, June 12–21. Mimetic Desire: 7:30 pm Friday, 2 pm Saturday, 6 pm Sunday, June 13–21. Pay what you will.