“Last Summer at Bluefish Cove” to break the mold by shining the spotlight on gay stereotypes
Minnesota State’s Theater Department is set to debut their newest production, “Last Summerfish at Blue Cove”at the end of this week.
The play is centered around a group of lesbian women spending their summer on the fictional Long Island seaside town Bluefish Cove. Their once idyllic summer vacation is promptly turned on its head with the arrival of Eva, a recent divorcée.
The show speaks on the complex crossroads of life as a woman and a queer person, and unabashedly praises the strength of women who chose love over anything else, even if it meant risking their safety.
Another character in the show is Lil, the only single lesbian on the island, and Eva’s eventual lover. Lil is played by Nevaeh Braucks, MSU senior and long-time stage performer. Braucks has acted in countless plays on campus, but for this role she went the extra mile, researching for her part.
“I’m researching queer women through history, I’m researching how to fish, the Girl Scouts. All of these things have helped me prepare for this role, in a way you don’t have to do for a lot of shows, so that’s been a really fun educational challenge for me,” Braucks said.
According to Braucks, the main takeaway of the show is spending time with your chosen family. Each of these women has retained bad experiences from their birth families, so they established a new chosen family with each other on the island.
“One of the biggest messages this show gives off is prioritizing the things that mean most to you. For these women, it’s spending a summer with their friends they love, that they have been through so many trials and tribulations with, in a place away from all the chaos they experienced,” Braucks said.
One of the major themes of this play is the queer experience, shown unapologetically and without a filter. In the past, queer people have had an uphill battle in history involving being silenced by the media and being persecuted by the masses. This show aims to educate the audience and let them know that queer people are much more than their sexual orientation and that they’re not going anywhere.
“Queer people are everywhere, and for years they were silenced and ostracized by the media and their family. There’s no reason they should be hidden and this story… its a story about queer women, but at the end of the day, they’re people. They’re not a caricature. They’re not a stereotype,” Braucks said.
The play runs from Wednesday to Saturday in the Andreas Theater at Earley Center for the Performing Arts at 7:30 pm. Tickets are $10 regular; $9 for seniors and children under 16; and $5 for MSU students. The box office is open 4-6 p.m. on weekdays in the lobby of the Performing Arts Center. Tickets are available online at MSUTheatre.com.
Header photo: “Last Summerfish at Blue Cove” is the latest theater production on campus, documenting the lives of eight lesbian women on the seaside town Bluefish Cove. Seven of them are pictured above, mid-scene during costume rehearsal. (Dylan Engel/The Reporter)
Write to joseph.erickson.2@mnsu.edu