Today we’d like to introduce you to Ryan Conarro.
Hi Ryan, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
My partner Max and I moved to Denver in summer 2020. It was a pandemic-motivated move: I lost my position with a New York-based arts organization and felt lucky and excited to land a spot as visiting faculty at University of Denver. We checked out rentals using FaceTime and Zoom and signed on a little house in West Wash Park/Speer, sight unseen.
One of the first strolls we took when we rolled up in our UHaul took us just a block away, past Historic Grant Avenue Church & Sacred Space. Even in that time — when gathering places were buttoned up tight and the church marquee read “We’re All In This Together, 6 Feet Apart, LOL” — it seemed clear to me that this space was part of the heartbeat of this neighborhood.
I met with the University of Denver Department of Theatre, and with a small artistic ensemble I’m part of called Generator Theater, and together we decided to take a leap of faith: co-producing my show “Saints of Failure” in Spring 2021, with the hope that we might even do it in person. I sent a message to Historic Grant Avenue’s “contact” page online, and to my surprise, I got a reply. Their wonderful director, Helen, said: “Yes.”
“Saints of Failure” is a piece of autobiographical performance exploring queer identity and faith. In it, I tell stories about my Catholic upbringing and about coming out, losing friends, hustling into gay marriage, and muddling through gay divorce… stories that wend their way from painful territories into, I hope, funny ones. All the while, Martha Yordy plays gorgeous music on the organ… Mark Middlebrooks sings… and I slather myself with makeup, creating “saint” images or icons designed by my collaborator Risha Rox. “Saints” was made for a church space; it premiered in Brooklyn in 2019 at a historic church there, with director Ellie Heyman at the helm. Historic Grant Avenue is the ideal home for this show here in Denver.
After the performances of “Saints,” we have a community conversation, facilitated by leaders in Denver’s arts and culture scene: Lynde Rosario from Denver Center for the Performing Arts; Rex Fuller from The Center on Colfax; Levi Teachey from PFLAG Denver; and Sandy Dixon and Greg Robbins, from the DU Department of Religious Studies. It’s not a panel of talking heads; rather, the group invites the audience to get together and share their own stories of “failure” and sanctity. The stories that surface from Denverites in the audience are surprising and vulnerable… and it’s also been incredibly moving to share space with real people, in a room, telling stories together. It’s an essentially human act, and it’s one we’ve all missed so sorely during Covid.
These audience conversations are important to me; really, I view them as part of the show itself. Over time in my practice as an artist and educator, I’ve come to understand that my core value is communion: I love being part of projects or processes that make it possible for people to connect with each other, to find common ground. I like that the word “communion” is an active word, suggesting ongoing engagement and leaning in. It also, of course, carries strains of spiritual practice, and though my relationship with organized religion feels complicated, I like this spiritual undertone. So I hope that folks who participate in these conversations feel glimmers of communion as they listen and share.
This orientation towards communion informs my work beyond this production, too. I’m collaborating now with the Valverde Neighborhood Association and the DU Center for Community Engagement for the advancement of Scholarship and Learning (CCESL) on a story-sharing initiative in the Valverde neighborhood. In my spring course at DU, Contemporary Queer Performance, I’ve lined up a visit for my students to The Center on Colfax, which will lead them into a project creating video works that illuminate queer histories of landmarks around Denver. I also work with the DU Prison Arts Initiative, spending time in arts workshops in multiple Colorado facilities. I’m very excited to be working with incarcerated artists to prepare to launch a statewide prison radio station this year. Through each of these–as with the time I’m getting to spend inside Historic Grant Avenue Church for “Saints of Failure”–I know that I’m really the one who’s getting the best deal here, learning about this new home and getting to cultivate new relationships here.
In another sense, this journey feels like some mysterious, powerful circle: my earliest memories as a child are, in fact, from living in Aurora. My parents are both originally from Atlanta. My father was an Army doctor, and a few years after I was born, we were stationed in Denver. I started elementary school at Mission Viejo Elementary and became an altar boy at our family’s church here. Like other LGBTQ people, I can look back now on those earliest memories and recognize that even then I understood, on some level, that I felt a sense of difference–though I could never have named it then and had no queer models in my life. This year, being back in Denver, I often feel faint memories flooding back. (Do you remember the early 80s commercials for Elitch Gardens? I do, and I also remember how desperately I dreamed of going there…) It feels right, somehow, to be a part of sharing stories here this year, in this iconic Denver building where history and futurity can live together all at once.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I’m an interdisciplinary artist, a facilitator, and a media producer. I work with stories and storytelling. I often work with documentary materials–real people’s stories, including my own–and my projects range from large-scale public performances to solo installations to assets-oriented projects with communities and schools. I feel like all of this work, at its root, simmers down to some fundamental human questions: Who am I? Who are you? How do we share space with each other and learn to live and work together?
I was raised Catholic, as I mentioned, and I’m one of five siblings. We appreciated ritual and spectacle growing up, as well as playful group creation in our various family houses, moving around a bit as an Army family. Somewhere in there, I came to understand that I was gay. I moved to Nome, Alaska after undergraduate theatre training to become an itinerant radio journalist, then made my life as a theater maker and teaching artist, in Alaska communities and as a visitor to other parts of the country, as well. Over time, this range of experiences has informed my artistic process, with its focus on sharing and amplifying stories.
What’s next?
I’m looking forward to continuing to create and share story-centered work in Denver… and I’m especially excited about this statewide prison radio station with DU Prison Arts Initiative. It’s called Inside Wire Radio, and it’s set to launch this fall. Stay tuned, as they say; I think we’re all going to get to hear some powerful, untold stories from inside these facilities.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: https://www.ryanconarro.com/
- Instagram: ryanconarro
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ryan.conarro
Image Credits
Personal photo (from “Saints of Failure”): David Painter Additional photos (from “Saints of Failure”): Carolyn Brown
