Mary Jacobs

25; vegan 8 years; hometown New Orleans, LA

 

"The play I wrote this past fall was a comedy called ‘Be in Touch.’ It was about a girl that had moved back to the planet of New Orleans after college. It’s a heavy-handed satire on gentrification. The short version is: A girl from the future moves back to her planet of New Orleans and has become an alien on her home planet. Her full name is Stella Adeline Juliet Francis Marie Astrid Landry Tibidot. It was just a play on the Catholics of the city and how people have their real name and their confirmation name. And Landry and Tibidot are Cajun names, and I’m Cajun. I don’t have a Cajun last name, but I was always jealous of people who did. My mother’s Cajun and my father is from New Orleans proper.

 

"She’s the nicer, naïve version of me, what I sometimes wished I was. I feel like I was super cynical and mad coming back and it being and feeling so different. It took me a really long time to get comfortable back here. A lot of that has to do with my cynicism. I’m aware of that about myself and think it’s a weakness. I made Addy the opposite of me. She trusts everybody. She’s much more willing to go with the flow when someone tells her to do something that’s kind of crazy, she’ll be like, ‘Okay, I’ll try it,’ even if it’s the worst idea. That’s kind of her downfall as well as her strong suit. She’s willing to give people the benefit of the doubt."

photo by Holly Feral