Piper Quinn and Jayden Simmons Photo by Nadia Honary

The two couples are Grace and Zoe, whose ages I would place at about 40, and Savannah and Xavier, 16-year-old high school students. Grace was born male and married Zoe, but has transitioned to her true female identity, fairly well recovered from the surgery involved. Zoe had been supportive of the transition, wanting nothing but her husband—now wife—to be happy. However, Zoe is holding back some of her sense of loss, finding it difficult to adjust to the changes in, well, just about everything.

Xavier was born a girl, but has known all his life that he was intended to be a boy. Though his family dressed him in pink and costumed him as a fairy princess for Halloween, he never felt himself in that guise. An alter-ego mirror-self challenges him to embrace his identity. Savannah, a teenager of extraordinary heart, has known Xavier since kindergarten and always thought of him as a boy, even when his outward appearance was that of a girl. For her, it is the most natural thing to relate to Xavier in terms of his true—that is, male—identity, and she never faced the kind of adjustment that is undermining Zoe's desire to be a supportive partner to Grace.

Grace and Xavier "meet" online through a transgender support network. Their connection is completely appropriate, each gaining insights into themselves through the other's experience. There are two mothers among the characters—Zoe's mother has no patience for Zoe's efforts to adjust to Grace's new status, and urges her daughter to move on. Xavier's mother cannot accept her child's rejection of the body he was born with, tormenting Xavier with disapproval to the point that he runs away, seeking shelter at Grace and Zoe's home, where he is later joined by Savannah.

Grace is a pastor in an unspecified Protestant denomination and is committed to remaining in that role. Her church has no position on trans pastors—not that they approve, it just has never before come up—but now that Grace is fully a woman, her marriage to Zoe makes her a practicing lesbian, and that is not acceptable to the church. Zoe seeks escape through dreams, especially dreams in which she is learning to fly, as if the ability to elevate herself will relieve her of her life's earth-bound pressure.

It is notable that sex is not the subject of strife, nor for that matter, joy, in either the Zoe-Grace or the Savannah-Xavier relationships. One assumes that, beginning marriage as a woman and man, Zoe and Grace had a sexual past, but nothing is said about this, or about changes in that aspect of their relationship. As for the teenagers, their relationship is drawn as emotionally intimate, but never includes any show of sexual activity between them. In this way, the idea that gender identity and sexual preference are two different aspects of a person's psyche is well presented.

The characters and their conflicts, their means of seeking support, and the elements around them that undermine their attempts to be at peace—mothers, jobs—are well depicted, without sounding false notes. What does ring untrue is the confined universe Kelly has created. Zoe has no one in her life to confide in. If she has any close friends, they are never mentioned, she is the only person to show up for a support group, and the only family member shown is her bitchy mother. Of course, she retreats into dreams, but IRL ("in real life", as digital savvy Xavier informs Grace), it would seem unlikely for Zoe to be so isolated from any support, and for the cards to be so stacked against her. Grace is repeatedly in scenes with a fully supportive friend, while Zoe is on her own. This leads to Zoe expressing envy of Grace for having a "trendy" new identity, a charge that only widens the growing gulf between them.

The quartet of main characters are all played beautifully, Eileen Noonan as Grace, Olivia Wilusz as Zoe, Piper Quinn as Savannah, and Jayden Simmons as Xavier. The bond of affection between Savannah and Xavier comes across more fully than between Grace and Zoe, but that fits with the circumstances of the eroding base of the older pair's relationship. Olivia Wilusz, as Zoe, in particular excels at portraying the self-denigration that strikes when she is unable to be as unconditionally supportive of her partner as she means to be, and her need to grieve over what has been a genuine loss to her comes through both in her voice and her physical bearing. Jayden Simmons is endearing as Xavier, living as a male with no regrets, but maintaining stereotypically feminine traits of tenderness and vulnerability.

Zealot Hamm, Katherine Engel, and Marcel Michelle complete the ensemble, each doing fine work playing multiple roles. In addition to the two mothers mentioned above (Katherine Engel, as Zoe's mother, is exquisitely horrible), these include the bishop of Grace's church denomination, Grace's sassy friend Tilly, Xavier's alter-ego self, and the flight instructor of Zoe's dreams.

Claire Avitabile directs Ballast with a sure hand, making the frequent shifts between characters, and between real and imagined ,encounters always clear and weaving together these different aspects of the characters' realities into a meaningful whole. Costume, set, lighting, and sound design all serve the play well. Walken Schweigert's musical compositions for the dream sequences are especially helpful in establishing their different planes of reality.

Ballast (the title, by the way, surfaces in reference to Zoe's flying lessons) is being performed at Mixed Blood Theatre's Alan Page Auditorium. It is a fine, if not perfect, play, and this mounting brings forth both the emotional heft of the challenges its main characters face, and social issues that are emerging as our society increasingly addresses and seeks acceptance for transgender identity. Twin Cities' audiences are fortunate to have the opportunity to see this play so early in its journey, which no doubt will—and should—travel on.

Ballast, a 20% Theatre Company production, continues at the Mixed Blood Theatre through September 10, 2017, at 1501 S. Fourth Street, Minneapolis, MN. All tickets are sliding scale, $5.00 - $25.00. For information or tickets call 612-227-1188 or go to www.tctwentypercent.org.

Writer: Georgette Kelly; Director: Claire Avitabile; Associate Directors: Margo Gray and Marcel Michelle; Set Design: Karen Lee Tait-Fries; Costume Design: Jenna Rose Graupmann; Lighting Design: Courtney Schmitz; Composer: Walken Schweigert; Set and Props Apprentice: Sarah Eliza Smith; Stage Manager: Shannon Hessburg; Assistant Stage Manager: Scout Fleckenstein.

Cast: Katherine Engel (Maureen/Woman/Little Boy), Zealot Hamm (Flight Instructor/Figment/Tilly), Marcel Michelle (Bishop/Ruth/Mrs. Grabowski), Eileen Noonan (Grace), Piper Quinn (Savannah), Jayden Simmons (Xavier), Olivia Wilusz (Zoe).