Thread by @BriggonSnow, I wrote a thing and wanted to share it here. This [...]

I wrote a thing and wanted to share it here.

This was something I wanted to write up as a recap to June - a personal #pride reflection when it came to me voicing Caleb in #TheBrightSessions, #TheInfiniteNoise audiobook and now...our upcoming limited series @thecollegetapes. Things have been busy over here at Atypical.

We recorded The College Tapes in June and immediately went into a demanding post production schedule. We transitioned simultaneously into the @instrangewoods production, restarted our pitching discussions with partners after an industry pause and reset, and ended up developing

and writing three more shows that will be heading into production very soon. All this is to say that the work of keeping creative and building stories to share with you all, compounded with the horrific state of the world and culture coming to an important - and damn tardy -

moment of reckoning, meant that my time to reminisce just wasn’t on the list of reasonable priorities.

But here I am...having listened to a handful of sound design drafts out of the twenty episodes we need to finish in time for our fall release...and I want to step out

of the producer shoes for this and talk about playing Caleb; if you’ll allow me.

Returning to this world...getting to write for and voice a character that I feel like @laurenshippen and I have raised for the last five years together...was nothing short of heart-bursting.

Caleb is a unique guy when it comes to storytelling. On paper, he’s the golden-boy jock; popular, seemingly care-free, incredible athletic ability securing his position in adolescence’s hierarchical structure at the tip-top. But what if the character that you’d expect to be

leading with force and aggression, and let’s face it, male toxicity...what if he was the most empathetic and kind person in the entire story? And I don’t mean Pollyanna kind; he’s conflicted, and angsty in a way that most young men have to work-through, but his whole deal is

pulling punches because he knows and he fears that if he didn’t...he’d be the last word in any situation. Oh, and he’s in love with another guy. To be given the opportunity to voice Caleb...I will always regard as one of the greatest and most fulfilling honors of my entire life.

I am a gay man. I grew up with a devastatingly-cruel internal homophobia that kept me from stepping out into my own truth fairly late in the first twenty something-years of my time here on earth. I missed out on living authentically and openly, and loving fiercely and

unapologetically in my high school (and some of my college) years. But with Caleb, I was given the chance at a redo of sorts. I was given the chance to embody a person that leads with his heart, meets his mental health head-on, and holds his boyfriend’s hand through happiness and

struggle.

I was so sad to have to put Caleb’s story down when we wrapped the original run of The Bright Sessions. But I had felt fulfilled by what came out of the experience. I sit here writing this today living a dream that I didn’t know was possible for me when I was Caleb’s

age in the original TBS series. I’m sitting here with my husband working across the room, two dogs at my feet, and a full heart because of stories like Caleb’s being shared out in the world. Every act of happiness in a queer person’s life I consider bravery. I didn’t know I could

be brave and live openly when I was a kid...but here I am. I still get messages from young people from all over, telling me that Caleb and Adam made them feel less alone...or it gave them the courage to tell their family they were LGBT+...or that they found community in others

online because of a shared fandom surrounding a simple phrase: “You Keep Me Green”. I’ve been asked to share my experience with my own queerness, and I’ve laughed and cried in DMs and the halls of convention floors when fans have approached me with a look in their eyes that every

LGBT+ knows...a look that we’re connected...that we have a shared struggle, and because of that, an enormous capacity for empathy and connection. When Lauren Shippen trusted me with Caleb, she gave me the key to a world of beautiful, inspiring and rebellious human beings from

every walk of life that just want to reach out and feel that someone is reaching back.

Making art is reaching out. I knew that when I was asked to come back and sit in a booth and record the audiobook for The Infinite Noise, and I knew that when I was standing in my closet

recording The College Tapes for weeks across from a cast of diverse and incredible people, having just gone for a dog walk with my mask on...or marched in a protest for our siblings that know the kind of oppression and evil that I as a cis, white male could never truly know.

I had to step back into the role and narrative surrounding a character that represents the best of humanity, all the while a hurricane of pain, and hurt and anger and fear swirled - and continues to swirl - around us all. And I’m not saying that it was a struggle to escape into

recording...because it wasn’t...it was a gift. And really truly, it wasn’t an escape. All of us in this cast were given the opportunity to approach the material from a place of defiance. We recorded an unapologetically queer story during pride month, and we each knew that what

we did would help to hopefully contribute to someone’s life out there. That some kid might listen to The College Tapes having never heard The Bright Sessions before...or maybe they grew up with Caleb...but however they come to this, maybe...just maybe, they’ll listen to our

voices, and can feel our hands in theirs as we walk with them and they realize how special they are.

During this production I said my last words as Caleb Michaels. I think this is it for our boy (at least in audio)...and with it...my time as custodian to a young man I love so

very much. I think the line was an inconsequential one; somewhere in the middle of a script in the middle of the series. And that was it. Out with a whimper in a way. But that’s not where this character’s power lives. Me speaking into a mic isn’t where Caleb lives, not really.

This character lives with whoever comes across his story; making it their own, like I did. Once I hit stop on recording, Caleb isn’t mine anymore. He’s out there for anyone who needs him. I’ll always hold this character in my heart, because playing him opened up parts of it that

I didn’t even know were there; and it filled it up with all of you.

- Briggon

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