Triston P. Pullen will discuss the process and creation of his new play “Songs of Memories: A Whitmanic Queer Discovery”. From the conception of the idea of the play to the finalized script, Pullen has retraced Whitman’s life to highlight his “hells and damns” but also his greatest love stories. Pullen will also start a dialogue about the repression of sexuality Whitman describes as the “subtle electric fire” that played within him. Triston examines Whitman’s life and works to explore if Whitman’s life long struggle with melancholy connects to his repression of self-expression and identity.

Triston P. Pullen is an MFA Directing Candidate at the University of Memphis, in Tennessee. He is the founder/artistic director of Studio 1621, a summer stock theatre company, in North East Texas. Pullen’s work has been seen in Texas, New Mexico, Memphis, and New York City. He has worked with New York Times Best Selling Author, Colleen Hoover, to adapt her novel “It Ends With Us” into a stage play and has been a resource for playwrights around the nation as they create new works.