New play in downtown Las Vegas asks: How far are you willing to go?

In popular culture, terrorism is sometimes portrayed as act of intolerance or hatred. But what that’s turned around, where the terrorism is a reaction to intolerance? 

That’s a scenario explored in the “ Angry [Slurs],” a new satirical production at the Majestic Repertory Theatre in downtown Las Vegas. 

And by the way, that’s not the real name of the play. The title has an actual LGBTQ slur that we can’t say on the radio. 

It explores extremism, bigotry and political opportunism on both sides of the political aisle. It lets the viewer decide which characters are in the right and which are in the wrong.  

Two of those characters are played by local actors Andrew Young and Ray Winters, who sat down with State of Nevada's Joe Schoenmann.

Young has worked with the downtown theater for about six years. When he came to Las Vegas seven years ago, he got involved with director Troy Heard “as soon as I got here.”

“When he said he wanted to do a queer story, I was just on board,” Young said. “I don't think that there's enough queer stories out there and the opportunity for queer actors to actually tell their stories … It's really on the pulse of what's happening in the world right now.”

Winters started working with Heard during the COVID-19 lockdown. 

“I picked up Angry, and I read it in about two hours, and I just couldn't stop thinking about it.”

A quick summary of the play: Winters and Young are roommates named Bennett and Cooper. Bennett's ex-boyfriend has been attacked outside of a gay bar. The play was written in 2013, before Georgia adopted a hate crimes law. So when it takes place, there's not only sadness, but a lot of anger. So somebody decides to take the law into their own hands. 
Young says it takes a feeling from reality to another level.

“This story is something that is really discussing when your rights are being taken away right in front of you, how far are you willing to go to protect those rights?”

Majestic Reperatory’s tagline for the play is,. “It's only terrorism if it doesn't work. When it works, we call it a revolution.”

“What is terrorism to one person may not be terrorism to another,” Young said. “For some people, queer people are terrorists. In the end, just us being who we are is an act of terrorism for some people on the streets; people are still afraid of us, people still have their problems with who we are as people, so just being myself is some days a revolution.”

The Topher Payne play, described as a dystopian revenge satire, asks you how far you’re willing to go. The actors have faced discrimination in their real lives, so it wasn’t a stretch to get into character.

“I feel like there's obviously a lot of oppression. It's rare that you even see queer stories being told by queer people. That in itself, it's been nice to try and kind of tackle,” Winters said.

“I'm thankful my queer story hasn't been too hard compared to stories that I've heard from queer friends. But you know, you still experience these things, I've even experienced the use of this slur in our title here in Vegas, from people as well,” Young said.

He went on to say there hasn’t been a lot of opportunities to tell queer stories in Las Vegas, and with a title like Angry ..., it’s a financial risk many theaters aren’t going to take.

“The difference is that this story is something that can relate to every single person because of what's going on in the world,” he said. “It's going to make you question: How do I feel about that? How would I feel if that was my friend going through this? Or if that was my coworker going through this? How would I feel if my rights were being completely negated every single day of my life, and I couldn't actually be who I was? Or the threat of me actually not being able to live my life in that capacity?”

Angry ... runs through Oct. 23.

Andrew Young and Ray Winters, actors, Majestic Repertory