-//-Quinn Marchman-//-

Could you just start by telling me in what ways you’re an artist?

Denver actor, teaching artist with the Black Actor’s Guild. Production, in that I’m in meetings with different groups of people like okay: “There’s a concept and we have a date, how do we find the content and the people to produce that content and with a firm intention that says something, that feels valuable to us as creators, performers, and the audience.” How do you effectively create a cohesive storyline that involves a community. The peak of my artistry culminates in that process whether I’m an actor, writer, director, or just fully behind the scenes as a producer. 

It was interesting seeing you in that show Nourishment because it felt like you were more of a performing artist than an actor. Was the dance and movement uncomfortable?

Hell yeah. I have no formal movement training outside of the movement that you do for theater, that’s definitely a wall I have built up. I love to dance. I learned very early on, like in middle school, that if you look like you’re having fun, you’re at least 25% better of a dancer.  The good lord didn’t give me much rhythm, but luckily growing up in the Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em dance era you learn a lot of those small dances you can add to the repertoire of high school dances. But doing contemporary movement with professional New York movers was way outside of my comfort zone.

The show nourishment is produced by Gwen Gussman, who’s a friend from high school. She just had the confidence in me and she’s definitely the type of person that’s like, “I like this idea for you, I think you should try it.” She just didn’t give me an option and it felt like a noble challenge. She has a very inclusive creative process in that we all felt like we were developing this concept and performance together even though she was the one to make the final decision on things, which, the more I work the more I appreciate people that can make decisions. We love to be very wholistic in the process of creation but you need people to have firm requests and then firm decisions.

When did you start performing?

I feel the act of creation gets us closer to God. I think one of the first performances I ever did were prayers at church. I would go with my grandmother and granddaddy, they are still my strongest indication that there is a god and a heaven that’s worth working towards.

So being raised in church I would see the pastor come out, he’s a tall black guy with a nice goatee, bald, and he had this presence about him. So for the first seven years of my life I thought he was God. And so I was like “Oh, cool, God’s showing up to Parkhill every Sunday spitting good facts.” It was just his stage presence and the cadence of course that I was like, “that’s kind of tight.” And then to be able to see the call and response aspect, back and forth that was appearing to me even outside of the religious aspect, because I didn’t understand it. I then started to mirror his speaking pattern and the way that big words would flow out. I would mirror that at family dinners and then my grandmother just appointed me the family chaplain.

I did it because it made my Grandma happy, I love my grandma, but then I really loved the attention it gave me. That feeling of like, “Oh, I like that I’m speaking and people are listening to me. 

Then, I auditioned for Denver School of the Arts and it was really cool because it gave me a great platform to learn how to express myself and was very happily one of the first times that I was in a class where there were other black kids in my class and we vibed. We sat on the same couch and it was jokingly referred to as the Black Actors Guild Couch and then we’ve run with the name ever since, really. 

There's no feeling that I’ve ever been able to recreate like being on stage. Being able to elicit a response based off of a choice I’ve made either from the improve standpoint it’s like words just kinda came out you don’t have a script. And with a script, something you may have had for a month and a half to then sometimes discover the words and your character in a new way on stage with the audience, it’s an absolutely fascinating discovery.

Can we get back to the like creation as a link to god?
Um. that was like a more trite and poetic thing than I would normally say but I’ve been exploring it more, especially with nourishment, the question was Why believe? Why do we believe in things that we can’t see and why do we feel called and destined to serve this stuff? Like I fell out of love with the idea of having a dream.

At this stage in my life having experienced like death of friends, particularly black actor’s guild, two of the five people that were on that couch in high school are dead now so having to process the meaninglessness of that, I’m allowing myself to feel more, be more explorative. So all of that to say my love of theater and arts and words, I don’t have to have a great explanation for it, it is this internal motivator and I feel awesome doing it I feel awesome exploring other people’s work and that is a practice to me that feels like the process of worship. Right now I know that my spiritual practice is in the creative arts.

What are you creating towards?

So my overall philosophy, which I think is soon to change, is do dope shit with dope people, get dope results. That’s the litmus test.

Can you define dope? 

Does it feel good does it do good? That’s pretty dope. On a more step by step basis, what is the story I’m trying to tell, who am I trying to tell it to, and what is the conversation that it sparks? 

We’re doing Untitled at the DAM inspired by Jordan Casteel’s Returning the Gaze. She is a great starting point for these conversations. For her the whole exhibition is around big portraiture of people that she’s met in Harlem, with a strong intention of them looking at you through the artwork. For me in theater it’s the idea of immersive theater and the idea that the stage is not the most effective way to tell the story or not the only way and that the story can happen all around.

So returning the gaze in a theater standpoint is blurring the line between who is really the performer, who is really the audience. I think walking in the exhibition in the art museum, we are performing, and we should maybe lower our voice a little but and we have our hands behind our back and we have an inherent distance with the art until there’s something that really sparks you and so you move a little bit closer. 

The stories that we’re trying to tell at Untitled are ones that force the audience to be in a different place than how you normally would be and looking at history, specifically five points—whether it’s the triumphs or the tragedies of a hundred year old neighborhood with a deep history of segregation, intimidation, systemic disenfranchisement, all those great buzz words—the question was how do we authentically portray that story, expand it to levels that you don’t normally think about. How do you go deeper or flip it in a way that feels new while still being very conscious and aware of the very hard lines that were drawn in the past that kept us in these boxes.

What are some of the projects that you do or are hoping to do with Black Actor’s Guild?

What I’m really motivated by is how space becomes a character in creation, how that changes. I would love to work in an old church and create something that may have to do with beliefs because I mean humans have been around for a long while and we still don’t have a firm grasp on who what when where and why belief. Finding the most exciting ways to encourage audience to move and explore while not being aware that they are on stage, necessarily. So yeah space is the big one. It’s the first view point.

There’s a theater practice called viewpoints and there are 7-10 viewpoints depending on which practice you look at but space and then the questions are what is the space, how do we interact with it. I had a really cool time with some students at Emily Griffith High school in the DPS School district building downtown. There’s thirteen floors and Emily Griffith is on floor # 3 and out of 10 students I was like who’s ever been to the 14th floor? That’s a conference space, they have a restaurant, that’s usually where teachers go. they technically can’t tell the students they can’t go in there, but there’s very little encouragement to do so. So we go up to the 14th floor and walked around and immediately stood out. How does this feel different from being on the 3rd floor? What are some things that you observe about how people interact here that is different from what you’re normally used to? We looked out the window and it’s an awesome view of downtown. What are you relationships to the buildings? So exploring is what I want to do with audience.

Who inspires you? Or what are you inspired by?

Ryan Foo first off. We started Black Actor’s Guild in high school. There was five of us, myself, Tyriq, Aaron, Nick, Corin, Nick and Corin are the two that have since passed away. We cultivated a community of, its too corny to say outcasts and misfits, but nonetheless we attracted people from other majors. We were theater majors, there were ten different majors and you spend most of your time in your major but we cultivated a friendship amongst people in different majors. Ryan Foo was a vocal major, I thought he was very weird, I did not like him. 

Through our trials and tribulations, Ryan really took on the mantle. His official title is Director of Operations. The phrase “show and prove” comes up in that he showed up and then he proved, developing all these new relationships with other people, taking all these risks, he more and more became a person you could rely on. And then over the very challenging spiritual times of both of our friends passing away about a year apart from one another, that necessitated us working together more and more and then helping each other process the trauma and challenges and very naturally we started to have more and more conversations, and very slowly my distrust of him turned into the most profound trust and brotherhood that I didn’t know that I could ever want.

We both have the time and space for one another. I called him one night after an emotional—it was like a house party and this girl was playing music about her friends who had just died and I was like oh shit these parallels are too strong I need to get out of here so I called him and he formally requested to be the god father of his child, that’s a proud fucking thing for me. Dedicated five minutes to Ryan Foo.

There’s such a long list of people, shout out to my mom. I’m proud to celebrate my mom for a sec cause she’s definitely an inspiration, she taught me big words when I was a little kid and had adult conversations with me, and I think more and more how important it is to cultivate the minds early, like kids ask questions, take the time to answer it. Now she’s just like a straight up hustler, she’s been doing Zumba, and I won’t give away her age but she’s past the half century and she’s said recently I’ve never felt more confident than I do now, and that really resonated with me like I’m almost 27 I think I know shit but there’s so much more time to discover, challenge yourself, feel weird then feel great. 

The Denver arts community as a whole. I have a lot of friends in LA, NY Chicago, Hong Kong, elsewhere and sometimes I feel a little self-conscious that I’ve stayed here. Like there’s the trope like oh all my friends from high school stayed in their home town. But the Denver arts community has always given me a reason to stay, I’ve discovered a whole lot being here. So Denver inspires me, it enrages me a lot, but everything is a mirror and the things I feel frustrated with Denver and its development are all things I can see within myself, but I feel very very connected to this space.

I’m inspired by politics a lot in that I appreciate the challenge that these constantly evolving narratives, dichotomies, vocabularies, I’m inspired by the quest to be more woke today than I was the day before. It’s like how many new perspectives can I see today and how annoyed can I be by my super progressive liberal arts community and what are the ways I can challenge those concepts while taking the appropriate steps back when necessary to recognize my own privileges and to just learn. I’m very motivated to try to not see both sides cause there’s like 50 thousand sides so like how many different angles can I create in my shape without becoming a circle. 

Can you tell me story your stains tell?

I mean there’s a plate of pasta I left on the dining room table that I could have washed yesterday, and I was walking out the door like ahh I should have washed that. The story my stains tell is a choose your own adventure with the intent of always making the more interesting choice. I have made personally a lot of mess and have facilitated a very messy story, thus far and I am really motivated in that it was always the more interesting choice, in that fear was acknowledged and ultimately ignored.

I want to know what beauty means to you.

Beauty can be anything, any creation that sparks joy.

But I guess the beauty that I’m working towards is kind of that synchronicity, so on a very human experiential level, it’s a synchronicity when you can take all of the choices you’ve made in life, both good and bad and find a moment where  all of that is validated and that gets to come in taking a hike and standing amongst the aspen trees at four pm and you see the leaves dance in the light and I really don’t mean that to sound as corny as it just sounded but I don't know like that is fucking beauty because you had to work to get to that moment. A part of it is the moment where all of the past and the future converges in the present. So beauty is just when that validation of self is realized and in the same time very unimportant because you’re too present to think about it.