Cait McKinney

“Most of the audience came every week. They came because they loved Jeff [Weiss] and they loved Hot Keys but they also came because something was happening in the room that exceeded all of us but that also depended on all of us — the us in the audience and the us on the stage. I’m not sure I can fully find language to describe the experience of that show. It has stayed with me for a very very long time. It’s not unlike other experience I had, experiences at some demonstrations or at some political actions. Moments where I am taken out of myself, where I am seized by something that moves me, not emotionally — although emotions are certainly a part of this experience — but rather something that compels me to an even more extended set of actions or commitments. It’s this very specific experience of suddenly finding yourself wanting to be a part of an event or a group or a world that you recognize that you are just then in that very moment a part of it. It’s an experience, I think, of realizing that you’ve somehow managed to bring yourself to just the right place. It’s a kind of ecstatic pleasure in belonging, not forever necessarily, but at least in that exact moment in which you realize you want to belong.”

- Sharon Hayes (2009) Keynote Lecture, The Creative Time Summit: Revolutions in Public Practice. In Coming After: Queer Time, Arriving Too Late and the Spectre of the Recent Past (2012), Ed. Jon Davies.