I always knew. What have you always known?  From as far back as you can remember?  What were those first things you were certain of?   I always knew that I was different from the others.   I always knew there had to be others like me, somewhere.   A community.  The performance you are seeing tonight is about that community and could not have been created without the participation of that community.  I want to thank everyone who took the time to share their stories with us.  If we had never done a performance; your simple act of telling your stories and allowing us the opportunity to listen would have been an amazing gift.  Always (K)new is not theatrical storytelling in the traditional sense. The stories we’ve collected provided an amazing wealth of images, anecdotes, and emotions around the issues of gender and identity.  Always (K)new serves to weave them as a tapestry using spoken word, animations, music, and movement.  Similar to the formation of a personal identity, sometimes the words and images attract and other times they repel one another.   These are stories of people you know and people that live thousands of miles away from you, and yet they seem familiar in their uncertainty, fears, strength, and wisdom.    Grab a seat.  Listen to the stories.  Tell us one of your own.  It’s always new.
George Contini, Dept. of Theatre and Film Studies
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