The director, choreographer and playwright goes inside the queer horror, creative risks and dark humor behind Die Already!
by brad hart
Michael Mizerany has never been interested in playing it safe. As a director, choreographer and playwright, he creates work that is physical, provocative and rooted in the experiences of outsiders. His latest production, Die Already!, brings those instincts together in a blood-soaked blend of horror, comedy and queer storytelling set on Halloween night in Hillcrest.
Following our August Director Spotlight, Mizerany shares more about the inspiration behind the play, the evolution of his “Thrillogy” and why he continues to create theatre for those who were never supposed to make it.
Die Already! blends horror, comedy and queer storytelling in a way audiences don’t often see onstage. What sparked the idea for the play, and what can audiences expect without giving too much away?
The idea started with a question: Why do queer audiences love horror movies so much? Because we do. We always have. The more I sat with that question, the more I realized the answer was in the genre itself.
Horror has always been about the outsider—the one who doesn’t belong, the one whose difference makes them a target and the one who survives by being underestimated. That’s not just a horror movie archetype. That’s a lived experience for many of us.
I wanted to write a play that put a queer character at the center of a horror story and asked, “What happens when the person who knows all the rules ends up inside the movie?”
Audiences can expect a Halloween night in Hillcrest that starts as a very promising hookup and becomes something much more complicated. There’s blood. There’s comedy. There’s a Long Island iced tea I would advise everyone to avoid. And there’s a character I’m very proud of at the center of it all.
You’ve worked as a choreographer, director and playwright throughout your career. How has wearing all three hats shaped the stories you want to tell today?
Wearing all three hats has made me think about storytelling in a fundamentally physical way. As a choreographer, you learn that the body never lies and that movement tells you things about character and emotion that dialogue sometimes can’t convey.
As a director, you learn to see the whole picture and understand how every element serves the story. As a playwright, you learn that story is everything: the architecture of a piece, the rhythm of the dialogue, the shape of a scene and all the lives in the writing.
Die Already! is the third installment in your “Thrillogy.” What keeps drawing you back to the horror genre, and how does this production raise the stakes from the previous two?
Horror is the genre that takes fear seriously. It doesn’t look away. It looks directly at the thing in the dark and says, “It’s in there. Now, what are you going to do about it?” I find that enormously compelling as a storyteller. I also think there is something specifically resonant about that for queer audiences.
We are a community that knows something about living with threat, navigating spaces that weren’t designed with our safety in mind and finding ways to turn that experience—even when we didn’t know we were doing it—into horror.
As for raising the stakes, Die Already! is the most ambitious piece in the Thrillogy by a considerable margin. It has more characters, more plot, more blood, more comedy and more nudity than anything I’ve written before.
Each play in the Thrillogy stands completely on its own. You don’t need to have seen the other plays to have a complete experience. But if you have seen them, I think you’ll feel the progression. We’ve been getting braver with each one. This one goes all the way.
Looking back, was there a particular production or moment when you realized, “This is exactly what I’m meant to be doing?”
There have been several moments, but the one I keep coming back to is the first time I watched an audience experience one of my plays. Hearing them laugh when I wanted them to laugh, hold their breath when I needed them to and walk out of the theatre still talking about it—that was when it clicked. There is nothing like it. I realized early on that I would spend my life chasing that feeling. I still am.
For someone who has never experienced a Compulsion Dance & Theatre production, how would you describe the perfect introduction?
It has everything. It’s funny, scary and genuinely moving in ways that will surprise you. It’s unlike anything else you’ll see on a San Diego stage this year. Compulsion Dance & Theatre has always been committed to work that takes risks, trusts its audience and refuses to be comfortable or predictable.
Die Already! is all of those things, but it’s also deeply accessible. You don’t need to know anything about theatre, horror movies or queer history to walk in and have an extraordinary night. You just need to be willing to go along for the ride.
Every artist has that one project that changes them. Has there been a production that fundamentally changed the way you approach your work?
Every production changes me in some way. That’s the nature of the work. But Die Already! has changed me more than most, and I’m still in the middle of it. Writing this play forced me to ask some uncomfortable questions about darkness and creativity. Chase Hardesty is a failed horror writer who decides to manufacture his screenplay in real life. I understand his frustration and the desperate need to create something that resonates.
I make work for outsiders—for those who were never supposed to make it, and for the queer kid who grew up watching horror movies and found in them something that looked like survival. That clarity about who you make work for changes everything about how you approach it.
DIE ALREADY! contains adult subject matter including profanity, sexual situations, frontal male nudity and scenes of bloody violence. Recommended for mature audiences. Playing through August 9 at Diversionary Black Box. Click here for tickets and more information.