November 2025
November 2025
ABOUT the show
The Passion of Miss de Marco, Unemployed Stenographer is an interdisciplinary theater work, incorporating elements from opera, musical theater, oratorio, dance, straight play and fine art to tell the story of a young, queer woman in 1930s New York and her brush with media fame before her untimely death.
The narrative is based on the actual news coverage of Norma de Marco’s injury during an armed robbery of a queer club in the East Village, where she intervened, saving the life of a police officer, receiving a blow to the head with a pistol for her trouble. The head injury was later found to be the likely source of her presumed-suicide the following evening, though many other factors were also at play.
A modern take on the Greek chorus, reading actual headlines and news articles about the events as they unfolded, propels the story, interspersed scenes from the last three months of Norma’s life. Based on historical documentation from her life, the show follows her introduction to the queer scene by her uptown girlfriend, the robbery and its aftermath, plus the media debacle that followed her untimely death.
Structured as a queer lives-of-the-saints style play, Norma is ultimately a reflection on how well we can ever truly know a historical figure from outside sources, and questions what we actually know about queer icons from the past and their lives.
ABOUT the writer
Felix Graham, ED.D.C.T., is an NYC-based musician, writer and teaching artist whose practice explores the juxtaposition of voice, gender & identity. He has had two careers as a performer: initially as a classical singer & pianist, then post-transition branching into cabaret/queer musical theatre, which included a role in Decadence, where he was the first openly trans-masculine singer to perform at the Friar’s Club.
As a choral composer/director, his work explores ensemble singing as performance art, examining the shift in interpretation of the art music canon when performed by GNC voices/ensembles. His first large-scale composition, Stations of the Lost: A Trans Requiem, was written as a subversion of the traditional liturgical memorial, using the gnostic poetry of the gender-bending occultist Alastair Crowley – the “wickedest man on earth.”
As a teaching artist, Dr, Graham works with trans/GNC singers and gives workshops nationally on trans voice, music & identity, and creating secure musical learning spaces for marginalized communities. He is currently the artistic director of TRANScend & founder of TRANScend Choral & Community Music Foundation – a non-profit dedicated to gender-inclusive music and music education in New York City.