​profile to explore the intersection of lived queer experience and the writing life
by julianna gonzalez

In Las Vegas for spring break my senior year of college, I learned that I had won my school’s playwriting competition. The prize was $1,000.00 and a staged reading directed by Michael Barakiva, a professional director from New York City. I was thrilled since $1,000 was a lot of money to me but also because I’d seen Michael Barakiva’s work when he came to Vassar, his alma mater, my sophomore year to direct his play String Theory. It was a telling of three Greek myths all tied together with a string motif. I remember the production was well-performed and beautifully designed, but mostly I remember that the writing was expert, delicately weaving stories I was only partially familiar with but then wholly interested in, invested, moved.
 
On the Strip, celebrating, I discovered that I had several missed phone calls from a number I didn’t recognize and a voicemail from Michael. In it he says that he’s disappointed that I am not respecting his time and that he expected better from me. I panicked, called him back immediately and apologized profusely, promising to be better from thereon out.
 
That was the first lesson Michael taught me, though I didn’t actually learn it until much later—to stand up for your time as an artist, for your work.
When it came time for the reading, he introduced himself with an anecdote—he had been skiing a week earlier, terrified, and yet decided that he could not die because he had to direct this play. This play had saved his life. The audience laughed and settled in for a stunningly directed reading that caught me by surprise; he had found so much power in the words I’d written that I didn’t know was there: it gave me so much more confidence as a writer.
 
I kept in touch with him after I graduated, attending a couple of his shows, and even meeting up with him to discuss further work on the play of mine he directed. We met up in a Starbucks and he would take breaks to walk around the block, as he had recently quit smoking and was replacing the habit.
 
In the past few years, he’s been writing, in addition to directing shows and serving as the Artistic Director for the Hangar Theatre based in Ithaca, New York. I was thrilled to learn of his YA novel One Man Guy through Twitter, reading his insights on the publishing process, the exciting and unexpected elements, all with a great attitude and sense of humor.
 
Michael and I exchange a few warm emails about getting together when I am in New York City for a friend’s wedding in March for this series. Exhausted from a night of dancing with college buddies I hadn’t seen in, somehow, years, I venture out to Hell’s Kitchen and meet him at his apartment.
 
Michael opens the door with a smile and welcomes me into his home, a colorful and well-loved space full of art and books. He mentions that his husband is around somewhere and begins to call for him, a booming voice traveling across and through every room a handful of times until finally, a handsome man emerges, smartly dressed, a bit timid. “I’ll be back,” says Michael, and he exits left to get ready for our adventure.

Rafael turns to me and says “So you’re living in Detroit?” I answer yes and we find an easy and lovely conversation.
Picture
Michael and his partner, Rafael
Michael returns, moving towards the door. “Ready to go?” He takes a light jacket off the coat rack and I, feeling older, like a fellow adult, say to him “It’s colder than you think.” He grabs a heavier leather jacket and opens the door for me as we say goodbye to Rafael and head out.  
 
We try to go to a specific coffee shop that Michael loves but it’s not open, and so we walk a bit farther to find another one. On our way, we run into a tall man who falls into an immediate and intimate hug with Michael. They chat for a bit, holding each other’s faces, shoulders, forearms, only a few inches between them, and an incredibly familiar energy. When Michael returns to me, he says “I hadn’t seen him in about six years.”

“Six years?”  I think about how to phrase my next question. “That was so immediately intimate,” I say, not a question at all.

And he chuckles. “With gay men, there’s a certain closeness that’s accepted.” I nod. I think about how long it takes to learn these things.

​We talk about how neither of us was out during our time at Vassar. “What a waste” we agree.
 
When we get to Fika, he insists on holding the door open for me, on paying for my coffee and even on getting me something to eat. “I like to feed people,” he says. And he does. In 2012, Michael started a company called The Upstart Creatures, described on its website as “a not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating (meta)physical feasts that combine theater and food.” I happened to attend its inaugural production—an adaptation of Milton’s Paradise Lost, a collaborative effort by the ensemble, which became an eight-hour event presented as a concert reading and offering two breaks with beautiful gourmet meals, all prepared by the ensemble as well. It was well-attended and successful, set in a church with long tables in the back for the delicious food the smells entering the performance space promised throughout the reading. It was an excellent exercise in temptation. Since then, Michael and his team have been dedicated to hosting two to three productions a year, all free and focusing on texts that are new/rarely produced, and, of course, gorgeous food. “It’s how I give back. It’s how I know to give back.”
...he wants to write about gay sex and relationships in a positive way ... to stay away from the oft written trauma and assault focused aspects of the gay life.
Michael’s first book, One Man Guy, is about Alek, an Armenian teenager home alone for summer school in a suburb of New Jersey, meeting Ethan, a charming, skateboarding free spirit. They engage in a youthful flirtation that makes you blush as you read and remember the butterflies that come with a first love. Their relationship moves rather quickly and Alek gets a crash course in gay culture, leading to some humorous moments with which we can all identify. This book, though light-hearted and fun, tackles issues such as coming out, bullying, and even enters a thoughtful conversation about the Armenian genocide. It is lovingly written, vulnerable, accessible, a book we all wish we had growing up. 

On why he wrote One Man Guy, he said that he was feeling artistically starved, that he felt like he was in a position, as Artistic Director at Hangar, to offer much to many but not himself. “I made myself sit down and write as often as I could, and it was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done. It took a long time. I needed it.” He goes on to say, “I don’t consider myself a writer.”

I interrupt him. “How can you not? I have your book in my bag right now. You’re going to sign it later. You’re writing another book!”

And he sighs, saying, “I don’t consider myself a writer—it’s hard for me to write.”

“What will need to happen in order for that to change?”
​
“The change has to be internal, a change in how I identify myself.”  
 
I asked him when, exactly, One Man Guy was published, and he sits back with a little smile and says “Let’s see” and he takes off his wedding ring. He counts silently and I ask him what he’s counting. “Oh,” he says, “we have a diamond for every year we’ve been married.” One Man Guy was published four diamonds ago (there are six diamonds total).
I happened to attend its inaugural production—an adaptation of Milton’s Paradise Lost, a collaborative effort by the ensemble, which became an eight-hour event presented as a concert reading and offering two breaks with beautiful gourmet meals, all prepared by the ensemble as well.
Michael’s next book, Hold My Hand, due out in 2019, is a stand-alone sequel that follows Alek and Ethan as they explore the sexual side of their relationship. Michael says that he “wants to write about the learning of gay sex, the fumbling awkwardness and lovely aspects of figuring it out.” He goes on to say that he wants to write about gay sex and relationships in a positive way, one that normalizes the event of being gay. He wants to stay away from the oft written trauma and assault focused aspects of the gay life.
 
“And maybe this is something you can work out for me, because I haven’t found the best way to say it—maybe you can find a way to talk about how those aspects, that trauma, is almost pornography. People love those stories, the same way they love crime shows. Why?”
 
I agree with him and still today continue to work on how to answer that question. There’s the idea that, perhaps, we want to understand the fragility of our lives from a safe distance. Or, maybe, there’s some internalized homophobia and/or misogyny and/or racism in the pleasure of watching LGBT characters, women, people of color suffer. It’s a complicated, multi-faceted thing to think about. What we both agree on, however, is that neither of us wants to feed into it—and that there’s no need to.
 
We go on to discuss Love, Simon a blockbuster romantic comedy with a leading man who is gay and Netflix’s hit show Queer Eye—we talk about how these, along with Michael’s books, are turning the gay storyline into something bigger, into an opportunity for positivity, change, acceptance. Being gay is not the event—love is the event. He and others are trying to make it that simple and good.
Picture
Michael directing a rehearsal of The Zona Rosa Project at UC Davis.
My time with Michael is always full of lessons, mostly about how to be gracious and proud and kind, in our work and in ourselves, as artists and members of a community. To offer the best of yourself to everyone. Tell them a story, offer them food, a seat, some time.
 
“Are we good?” he says without looking at his watch.

​We leave the coffee shop and walk down to his street together. As he turns left off of Tenth Avenue and I continue down to catch my bus, we both look back at the same time and exchange one more smile, knowing that everything happened just in time, that nothing was a waste.
Picture
Julianna Gonzalez is a playwright whose works have been produced in Portland, New York City, and at Vassar College, where she studied drama. Most recently she served as the assistant director for​​ the world premiere of Oye Oya at Portland's Milagro Theater. She lives and works in Detroit, Michigan.
Michael Barakiva is an Armenian/Israeli American theater director and writer.  He has directed classic and contemporary plays as well as developed new pieces at many theaters in New York and across the country, including the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Syracuse Stage and Ensemble Studio Theater.  In addition to his novel, One Man Guy, Michael has co-written a new play, String Theory, loosely inspired by Greek myth, with Amy Boyce Holtcamp and Sarah Braunstein, and The Nature of Things, a commission from the Sloan Foundation, based on the life of Lucretius.  His next book, Hold my Hand, is due out in 2019. 

Michael holds a B.A. in Drama and English from Vassar College, and attended the Juilliard School as an Andrew W. Mellon Directing Fellow.  Awards and affiliations include Phil Killian Fellowship at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Drama League Summer Fellowship, the David Merrick Prize in Drama and the Lincoln Center Directors' Lab.  He was also featured on an episode of MTV's Made, in which he coached two high school students through the process of writing, directing, and producing a play.

Michael lives with his husband Rafael.  He proudly serves as the Artistic Director of the Hangar Theatre in Ithaca, NY, as well as The Upstart Creatures, in New York City.