For rainvaldez’s acting students, the class’ potency goes beyond the talent of its instructor — it also allows queer and trans actors to be themselves: “The space is more home than home feels like, because at home, we haven’t been able to be ourselves.”
Morgan O'Sullivan darted into a diner and sat across from Jasmine Linforth. Linforth began to eat oatmeal out of a cup, using it as an opportunity to seduce O'Sullivan by rubbing her leg against theirs.
Valdez says it’s common for acting classes in Los Angeles — and across the nation — to foster a cisgender, heteronormative environment, where they assume gender instead of letting students perform characters they connect with. ActNow, which is part of Rainbow Entertainment — a queer and trans production company led by Valdez — creates a rare communal space for LGBTQ talent, where they can grow as performers without judgment.
Transgender and nonbinary actors are often subjected to roles that the industry assumes for them. But students say the class allows them to subvert traditional norms of gender and sexual identity within the characters they embody. Valdez pinpoints exactly where students are holding back, which helps them bring out the confidence she knows they hold. Every student has that moment they can recall. For Allen, it was when Valdez encouraged her to accept the praise she received after performing well in a scene. For O’Sullivan, it was about taking up space onstage. “‘If you can’t take up space, I do not want you holding space for anyone else ever,’” they recall Valdez saying.
As newcomer Coyote Park concluded their monologue, Valdez invited those in the class to share their ideas of figures that might embody the actor’s “character essence.” “We are important,” she says. “Our stories are important. Our ideas are important. Our bodies are important. Our love is important. Our relationships with each other, our existence is revolutionary. And the existence of this class is revolutionary.”
Moments like these fostered by Rainbow Entertainment are the beginnings of something bigger. It’s exactly how Valdez’s “Razor Tongue” blossomed into her first Emmy nomination for actress in a short form comedy or drama series in 2020.relaunched with its new name in August on Instagram It began with “Rub & Tug,” a film in which Scarlett Johansson was originally cast as a trans masculine character. At the time, Valdez spoke with the Hollywood Reporter and other media outlets about her response as a trans woman, and every time, the same question came up: “Where do we find queer trans artists? Is there a school specifically for LGBTQ actors?”In 2017, she began organizing readings at the then Now>Ever Artists.
Danielle Squyres, center, delivers her lines from the play “Jaja Hates California” with a group of LGBTQ thespians. “They’re doing the work,” Clayton says. “They’re growing, they’re finding themselves, and they’re finding their rhythm, their emotional well.” “The company is still ahead of its time when it comes to traditional Hollywood standards,” Valdez says.
“It’s not going away, because it’s something that loves me too,” she says. Just as much as the class has altered students’ lives, it’s altered her own too. “I get to be a mother,” Valdez says.
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