Welcome to Season 3 and the first stop on our queer road trip: Spartanburg, South Carolina. In this episode, you’ll meet the youth at Uplift Outreach Center, an LGBTQ+ safe space behind a baptist church and the only center in the area dedicated to serving queer youth. Find out why folks come from all across the region (“The Upstate”) to spend time at Uplift, take a tour of the center’s gender-affirming free clothing closet, bake dinosaur brownies with the Uplift Program Director, and hear directly from the hearts + minds of young people in the region. This is Part 1 of 2 of our visit to Spartanburg, South Carolina.

⚠️ CONTENT WARNINGS:

Please note that some resources may contain triggering content and do not necessarily reflect the beliefs of, or the definitions used by, The Future Perfect Project.

⏱️ TIME STAMPS:

0:53 Intro & Welcome to Season 3

01:00 Inside the UPLIFT Outreach Center

05:00 Youth Speak: Identity, Safety & Everyday Reality

09:00 Holding Joy & Building Community in the South

14:00 Coming Out, Family Tension & Staying True

17:00 Baking Brownies w Jodi, UPLIFT’s program director

24:15 Outro, Credits & Gratitude

25:23 Crisis Resources

💬 TRANSCRIPT: https://share.descript.com/view/nnAy4Lah4pm

📝 RESOURCES/SHOW NOTES:

Visit our site for full show notes on local queer info, history, and additional resources mentioned in this episode → http://thefutureperfectproject.org/podcast

We want to hear from you! Send a voice note to our online voice message box → I’m Feeling Queer Today! Speakpipe - http://speakpipe.com/ifqt

🚨 CRISIS RESOURCES:

If you or a young person you know between the ages of 13-24 is currently in crisis, check out thetrevorproject.org for LGBTQIA+ specific support through text and chat, or call 1-866-488-7386

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Season 3 we're going on a queer road trip around the U.S. to answer a big question: What is it like to be an LGBTQ+ person where you live?

So buckle your seatbelts–we’re speaking directly to the queer young people in five different U.S. cities: An LGBTQ+ youth center in the basement of a Baptist church in Spartanburg, South Carolina; a home for religious and secular queers alike in Provo, Utah; a high school for the performing arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; the Northern tip of Cape Cod where it’s pride month year round in Provincetown, Massachusetts; and a center opening its doors to the queer youth of Columbus, Ohio since 1994. Forget everything you think you know about these cities and towns, and get ready to hear from the LGBTQ+ youth who call these places home.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In our second bonus episode of Season 2, we’re sitting down with the creatives behind the Mount Holyoke College (MHC) production of William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. IFQT! producer, host, and the MHC Much Ado About Nothing Assistant Director, Lily Mueller (they/she/he), leads us in a roundtable discussion with this uniquely queer, trans, and neurodiverse cast, crew, and creative team. In this episode, you’ll hear these artists talk about their experiences working on this production, queering the arts, the importance of theater, and some of their visions for a perfect future. As Talia Pott, the production’s director, says, “We can use our voices as young people and our gifts as artists…to share our voice and our humanity out into the world…We are here and we’re not going to go anywhere.”

THE MUCH ADO ROUNDTABLE PARTICIPANTS

Talia Pott (she/they) Director

Izzy Messina (they/he) Beatrice

Charlie Watts (she/they) Dogberry, Don John, and Ursula

Lily Mueller (they/she/he) Assistant Director

⚠️Please note that some resources may contain triggering content and do not necessarily reflect the beliefs of, or the definitions used by, The Future Perfect Project.

⏱️TIME STAMPS:

1:21 Introducing the roundtable

3:34 Brief synopsis of Much Ado About Nothing

5:30 On queering a "heterosexual" play

7:08 Don John is queer-coded

9:19 Transmasc Beatrice

11:00 The power of theater & experiences being in a mostly trans+neurodiverse cast & crew

14:50 Experiences as a queer neurodiverse actor

15:54 Costuming flowers

17:49 Future theater dreams, w/ unlimited resources

20:55 Lily about their first-time directing experience

22:06 Julie Novak tribute

📝 RESOURCES/SHOW NOTES:

• MHC Much Ado About Nothing on IG: https://www.instagram.com/muchadomhc/
• For more about the roundtable participants and other links visit our site→ https://thefutureperfectproject.org/podcast#s2episode-8

🚨 CRISIS RESOURCES:

If you or a young person you know between the ages of 13-24 is currently in crisis, check out thetrevorproject.org for LGBTQIA+ specific support through text and chat, or call 1-866-488-7386

🫶 CREDITS:

IFQT! is produced by The Future Perfect Project with support from Radio Kingston, WKNY, Kingston, New York.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.