EDGE Interview: Michael John Ciszewski on his 'Summer of Lovefool' Tour

New Jersey native Michael John Ciszewski came to Boston for college and stayed for a career in theater. Before relocating to New York, Ciszewski worked with some of Boston's most acclaimed companies; from the premieres of "This is Not America" at Huntington Theater Company and "The Usual Unusual" at Speakeasy Stage Company to a turn as Titania in Apollinaire Theatre Company's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" to starring in Umbrella Stage Company's production of "Bent" and appearing in productions by the Lyric Stage Company ("Murder on the Orient Express," "The Little Foxes"), Hub Theatre Company ("Love's Labors Lost," "Peter and the Starcatcher"), and New Repertory Theatre ("Holiday Memories"), Ciszewski burnished his professional resume.

But Ciszewski also found himself flirting with disaster in his personal life, turning to alcohol for inspiration and jeopardizing his career in the process. Bootstrapping himself to a healthier place, the young theater maker began to write, produce, and star in his own projects, including the solo show "Everyone is Dying and So am I" and the film "The Sun is Sleeping."

Not that his life is solo; Ciszewski's partner Brian, an educator and theater maker in his own right, supports Ciszewski's creativity by acting as publicist and, in the case of his newest show, "Lovefool," has served as a co-creator and coproducer, with the two developing the show together. "Featuring dazzling and deliciously dumb multimedia outbursts, 'Lovefool' plays like the queer party playlist of your dreams set to shuffle," the show's press release notes, and it's an accurate description: Part memoir, part audience interaction, and very much constructed with the building blocks of pop culture, the show invites serious contemplation by way of the zippy fun of a game show or a concert.

Ciszewski toured "Lovefool" in New York and Boston last fall, then brought it back to NYC stages throughout June and July. Now he brings the show, in a newly refined form, to Providence and Provincetown in August. Like the two solo shows Ciszewski created before it, "Lovefool" dives into the youthful performer's own life, addressing issues like sexuality and addiction head-on but also meditating, in his trademark pop culture-infused way, on universal experiences such as creativity, love, connection, and existential despair.

EDGE caught up with Michael John Ciszewski for a chat about the show's themes, his love of pop music goddesses, and the challenges – and rewards – of the artistic life.

EDGE: What would you say is the core message of "Lovefool?"

Michael John Ciszewski: Queer love is worth following and fighting for despite heartbreak. We are an inherently creative people, and it is our superpower to mend the broken pieces of our hearts, time and time again, into a way of living that is more free, full, and beautiful than anyone ever thought possible. Just imagine our world if we all did that!

EDGE: Is this a continuation of your earlier projects?

Michael John Ciszewski: It's absolutely a continuation, but it's also a very intentional pivot. I realized looking back that [my earlier] projects were real downers; "Everyone is Dying and so Am I" is, as you might gather from the title, is about grief and loss. "The Sun is Sleeping" was about the end of the world as we were experiencing it [during the COVID pandemic]. So, while I did take the themes and, more specifically, the structures I learned making those first two pieces, I wanted this one to be radically anti-suffering. I want things to be joyful. I want to bring silliness and queerness into a piece of work. Something that has been really fun is looking at my shows a little bit like a musician might look at their setlist.

EDGE:You've been honing and refining the show since you toured it in New York and Boston last year. What's changed between then and now?

Michael John Ciszewski: "Lovefool" is tighter, funnier, and more direct and conversational than the versions we played last year. I learned through grinding the show – on my feet, in front of raucous, queer crowds – what exactly [it has to offer] to audiences. "Lovefool" is a sincere and silly celebration of queer love in a moment when bad-faith bigotry and chilly cynicism threaten to snuff it out.

EDGE In this time of increasing attacks on our community, how do you see the role of theater in helping us adapt and respond to a changing social and political climate?

Michael John Ciszewski: Creatives have a responsibility to be the change we wish to see in the world with our work. We're going to the trouble of creating worlds onstage and generating a very potent energy between artist and audience; why not seize those opportunities and make something that folks can carry out of the theatre, into their lives, to affect change?

"Lovefool" may appear to be pure escapism – it's romantic comedy at its silliest! But there is nothing I take more seriously than queer joy. That is our birthright! I only ever fight for what I love – our community, our expression, and our vitality – and I intend "Lovefool" as an uncompromising assertion of the whimsy and heart that makes queerness magic.

EDGE: You have talked about your experiences with alcoholism in your earlier work, but not like you do here.

Michael John Ciszewski: Alcoholism nearly threatened my life on stage. I was doing a production of "Peter and the Starcatcher" in Boston. The run happened beautifully, and for that I'm extraordinarily grateful, but I know in hindsight and with a lot of therapy that I drank primarily to feel more and to dive deeper. A lot of that came from a place of creative impulse, and I had to learn to honor the creative impulse by detaching it from the catalyst that I thought drinking was. When I wanted to rummage around the depths of my emotional life, I would drink. I was never quite satisfied, and that is something that I know for me is an artistic, creative trait. Only when I was able to see that my thirst for more was actually dishonoring my work and creating harm did I recognize that I needed to stop.

I've made all three of my shows in sobriety. And all three have been a real reclamation of my creativity on my terms, giving none of it away to the power that I invested in booze. And I'm very, very grateful to sort of report from that place now within my work, because I know that there are lots of folks who interrogate their relationship with substances and our many cultures have very different relationships with drinking. I have a very easy relationship with my alcoholism now, and I'm very proud of that, and so I like to offer my thoughts and questions while I continue to enjoy the way that other people do their thing responsibly.

EDGE: You hit the nail on the head in "Lovefool" when you observe that many LGBTQ+ people have to go through the normal developmental phases out of order or over a longer span of time than straight people do. Things like first crushes or puppy love are often suppressed in queer youth by social forces and family. Is that a crux of what you're exploring here?

Michael John Ciszewski: Yeah, in a big way. I say in the show that our eternal and returning adolescence is our superpower as queer people. I believe that there are opportunities for us to grow in ways that are nonlinear, and I believe that it can be a lot more linear and straightforward for our heterosexual, heteronormative, cisgender counterparts to hit those [stages of development].

But it's a sort of privilege that we get to keep trying on newness. This is a millennial perspective, too, because I'd like to believe that some of our younger queer siblings are experiencing their coming-of-age milestones – their puppy love, their first love – at the same time as their straight counterparts. It'd be a great gift of progress for that section of the show to eventually become irrelevant. But in the meantime, I do believe that the way we can constantly try on developmental experiences as an exploration of our own identities is a very specific queer thing.

"Lovefool" plays at Fletcher House in Providence, RI on Aug. 3 and at the Redroom in Provincetown Aug. 6 and 8. Visit this website for tickets and more information.