Dear Reader,
As an English major with a fondness for Renaissance drama, I knew one of our Renaissance-themed Iris issues had to reflect my love of Shakespeare. I settled on “Performance” as the theme of our second issue: both to encourage our team to write about their own favorite plays and other forms of media, but also to reflect how the best drama from the Renaissance demonstrates a burgeoning concern with how one’s identity shapes their experiences. I’m so impressed with how our writers made this theme their own!
Beck Jewell opens this issue with his piece “Queer Revival via Queer Revivals: Genderbent Casting in Musical Theater,” in which he discusses his favorite queer revivals of classic shows and some more he’d like to see.
Madina Fayzieva’s poem “Good Girl, Rotting Teeth” offers a fresh take on Puritan witch trials and how they connect to our current moment. Chastity Quarles considers the pressure on mixed-race individuals to perform their identity in a convenient way for others, in her poem, “To the Little Mixed Girl in the Back of the Classroom."
Next, Geovanna Murphy chronicles her unconventional but ultimately cathartic response to her recent breakup in “How (Not?) to Do a Breakup.”
In freelancer Sydnee Mason’s short story “Tears Dry on Their Own,” a family struggles to cope with the loss of their patriarch.
Bridgette Stands’ narrative ballad, “The Ghosts of Fresno,” presents a delightful and whimsical portrait of some dancing and not-so-scary cryptids.
Ashley Gyawali’s short story “Resham Firiri” (a title borrowed from a Nepali folk song which roughly translates to “silk flying in the wind”) depicts a wedding ceremony in which neither spouse is quite what they seem.
Alyssa Rim interviews a friend to unpack what it means to be a Korean living outside of Korea in “Two Tank-Topped Gyopos.”
CJ Ackerman-Garvin recommends some of their favorite weird and wonderful short films in “The Water's Warm, So Hop In: Love Letters to Adult Swim and Other Forms of Digital Strangeness.”
Finally, the eternally stylish Monet Gonda closes this issue with “Dress the Part: My Favorite Fall Transitional Pieces.”
As always, thanks are due to Mary Esselman and the Communications team for their hard work in getting this issue ready—especially as I frolicked in North Carolina for fall break.
Emily Frost
