Meet Rj Walker

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Rj Walker. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with RJ below.

Hi RJ, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?

In 2019. The Road Home Shelter near our small black box theatre was closing. Real estate companies wanted them gone in order to increase property values. A new shelter was built, but it was miles from the old shelter and it wasn’t on the bus line either. It also had 200 fewer beds than the old shelter. As is so often the case, money wins, and the shelter was forced to relocate. Worst of all, this happened around Christmas time, and Utah winters can be deadly.

When it comes to using art for social change, we had grown tired of simply talking about these issues or “raising awareness.” When a house is on fire, you don’t just sound an alarm, you throw water on it too. So we created a new kind of show that would inspire our audience to participate in Direct Action. The show was titled The Lord of Misrule and it was unlike anything that’s been put to stage before. During the show, the audience members would donate money to The Road Home Shelter to change what happens on stage in absurd ways. They might make a character refer to everyone as “daddy” or force the actors to do “funny walks only” or replace one character with an 8 foot skeleton puppet.

That first Christmas, we raised enough money for The Road Home to charter busses to move people to the new shelter. Community organizing and mutual aid are at the Core of Lords of Misrule Theatre Co. It is what defines us as a theatre company. We identify pressing issues in our community and we use theatre to create direct action toward the solution.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I’m RJ Walker. I’m best known as a spoken word poet, but I’m also the founder and playwright for Lords of Misrule Theatre Co. When I was 19, I was sent on a Mormon Mission to Texas. I was assured by my faith leaders, parents, and teachers that this was the right thing to do. Especially when it came to the mental health issues I had in Jr. High and High School. Jesus was supposed to fix everything and I just needed to commit harder. Well, on my mission, I didn’t sleep for two weeks, had a seizure, and suffered a traumatic brain injury. I was in a coma for 2 weeks before they sent me home. When I got home, I found out my parents had divorced and my father had disappeared. My mother was selling the home I grew up in. The worst part, though, was the social stigma. Missionaries who return early are treated as failures, or worse. My mother called me the “anti-christ” because I didn’t want to return to my mission and I was forced to live on the street. It took a long time to mentally and physically recover. Especially since everyone I knew and all the social safety nets were run through the LDS Church. If you didn’t live by their standards, you would never be accepted or assisted. I did end up putting my life back together, but I will carry my time in homelessness all my life. It was only because I found community through a local open mic night that I was able to truly heal.

When creating Lords of Misrule, we decided that we would create plays that help those who are rejected by the mainstream culture. We would create trailheads for people to participate in mutual aid. When you see someone right in front of you that needs help, you help them. But those most in need often go unseen, and just knowing about it isn’t enough. You have to create simple and fun pathways that lead to social aid.

We are planning several upcoming shows, here’s our tentative season calendar.

May/June: A Congress of Flying Monkeys
This is a new show from us inspired by The Wizard of Oz

Great Salt Lake Fringe Festival (July/August): Dungeons of Misrule
By popular demand, we’re bringing back our live Dungeons and Dragons show. The audience can donate money to help, or hinder, the adventurers as they face cruel and absurd horrors. None so cruel as the dice.

Christmas: Lord of Misrule
Our annual Christmas show and the one that started it all.

Other projects

April: Miss Rule Sketch Comedy Show
4 sketch comedy teams will present new and original work for 1 night only.

October: Miss Rule Sketch Show

Saturdays from 2-4pm: Open Improv
A free improv jam and workshop where anyone can attend and do theatre with us.

Our home venue is The Beehive located at 666 South State Street in Salt Lake City, Utah

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

1: Celebrate your imperfections
This is not to say that you should provide something that is sub-par in quality. But rather to acknowledge that your imperfections mark the work as distinctly human and distinctly yours. Let your voice crack, your feet stumble, and say the words your way. Life is not a perfectly choreographed script, its messy, and we can find beauty in those tiny moments of chaos.

2: Build the shortest path toward Direct Action
Raising awareness is good, but that’s only step one. You can shout “fire!” but the house will burn down if that’s all you do. You have to give the marching orders, point people towards the danger, and show them the solution. You have to show people where the fire department is and how they can support them. Change requires information AND action together.

3: Give yourself permission
Lords of Misrule is a punk theatre company and we embody the DIY spirit. Just do the damn thing. Give yourself permission to be brave, permission to fail, and permission to celebrate success. You can’t just sit and wait for some casting director, showrunner, or producer to pick you. If you want to make something, just make it. Even if that means making it with duct tape and prayers. Do it because its fun. Do it because you must. Do it because you have something to say. If you sit around and wait to be given permission by someone else, you’ll miss the chance to make something great yourself.

Okay, so before we go we always love to ask if you are looking for folks to partner or collaborate with?

Lords of Misrule is always open to collaboration, I mean, we collaborate with a new mutual-aid or charity group for every single show. We identify small, local groups where donations from our audience will have the largest impact. We keep everything grassroots and we want to support the groups that might not receive the institutional support of larger nonprofits.

Also, it is our dearest wish to spread mutual-aid focused theatre to different communities so that they can support their local mutual aid efforts as well. If you’re part of a theatre company, or want to start one, we’d love to work with you and teach us our ways. How our shows work, how we inspire direct action, etc.

We’d also love to come to your town and put on a show!

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Dungeons of Misrule Poster Art by @raire.materia (Instagram)

All other poster art by @connorbod7 (instagram)

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