Extra Credit - Catholic School Daze

I was thrilled to find out that Karen Anzoatequi was performing at UCLA one of her most well-known plays, “Catholic School Daze.” I didn’t go to Catholic School but I can definitely relate to the plot of the story. Her play focuses on Karen’s experience within a Catholic school, while simultaneously discovering her love and desire for womyn. Through this very creative and entertaining play, Karen brings in a wide-variety of issues into one play, gender roles, queerness and religion, all intersections that affected her life. As someone who was raised in catholic household, I understand the pressure to be straight. However, I have recently accepted the love and desire I hold for womyn. Through the plot, Karen copes with her sexuality though the use of self-harm, a pain and trauma that many queer people experience due to the pressures of society to be heteronormative. This was a triggering scene for me, because although I have never cut myself due to my queerness, I have undergone other forms of self-harm. Through her play, I was able to see how powerful survival for queer people is. The ending to her play was extremely powerful, in which she tied in her religion to her queerness and “broke bread and shared wine,” with the audience. “Breaking bread and sharing wine represents the body and blood of Jesus Christ, which was a metaphor for the acceptance of queer folks within a religion that often rejects us.

Overall, this performance was extremely powerful. She was able to undergo the borders of her religion intersected with the borders of her sexuality. The most beautiful thing about it was that it showed how powerful the survival of queer people of color truly is.