For many years I have played with gender nonconformity—wearing femme clothes, makeup, and even auditioning for a college acting class with Juliet’s balcony monologue from Romeo & Juliet.

When I began to conceive of myself as a woman, I looked back at these moments and found that their meaning had transformed. New throughlines had emerged. What then I had felt were playful transgressions—subversions of my identity as a cisgender man—now I see as clear premonitions of gender apokálypsis (uncovering, unveiling, revelation).

My idea of what constitutes a woman is intimately informed by the woman I love—my mother Qi, my partner Megan, my best friend Alice. Put simply, they are who I am, more than some universal idea of femininity.

I want to tell a story about this uniquely interpersonal way that gender is constructed. I believe this phenomenon is love—to place another person in your soul. And it does not have to be reciprocal. Just as with Sean’s mother, my mother has constructed my identity as a woman, and she struggles to accept me as a woman. But this does not invalidate the ways that I love her. The ways she has made me who I am.

–Alan Wang Lin

writer & director

When Sean was sixteen he was cast as Juliet in Romeo & Juliet and realized he wasn’t a boy. He was too afraid to tell his mother so instead he told her he was Romeo. Then they would run the lines together and he would learn to become Juliet—and become a woman—by watching his mom, by studying the way she would look at him and ask:

“What’s in a name?”

Now it’s opening night and his mother sits in the crowd, waiting. Can she accept who her child has become when Juliet takes the stage?

Years pass. Now, Sean has transitioned and goes by a different name. She misses her mother. We don’t know much about their current relationship, but we know it never was the same after that opening night. She thinks back to that spring. It was beautiful, becoming Juliet by becoming her mother. She saw her mother so clearly. And for a moment, her mother must have seen her, too—seen her for the woman she is. Then it all disappeared.

In developing the screenplay for Running Lines, I wanted to explore the ways in which performance and play can serve as crucibles or testing grounds for new identities, connections, and feelings. I’ve long loved movies that explore the craft of acting as a story in and of itself—Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car, Kwedar’s Sing Sing, and Trier’s Sentimental Value are all terrific examples of this that have come out in the past five years. And Nakahara’s The Cherry Orchard—which is about an all-girls high school’s production of Chekov’s play—is another favorite of mine that shows how this conceit can greatly serve a coming-of-age story.

Something magical happens when characters in a film rehearse to act as characters in a play. Two narratives begin to run in parallel: the story of our characters, and the play they act out. Their performances refract and expand in emotional intensity as they act towards both their onstage scene partner and their IRL father, or friend, or foe.

To tackle how to orient these moments in a cohesive structure, I looked to my two filmmaking bibles: Yang’s Yi Yi and Malick’s The Tree of Life. While incredibly stylistically disparate, these films both frame their narratives around perception and memory. Quiet moments alone, conversations overheard, the memories we forget and the others we never do. I knew I wanted the use same approach to tell the story of Sean and his mother.

Finally, I looked to films about being at odds with one’s identity, and of parents trying their best to access the lives of their children. Matsumoto’s Funeral Parade of Roses, Koreeda’s Monster, Schoenbrun’s I Saw The TV Glow, and Mills’s 20th Century Women were all invaluable in shaping the heart of this story.

Sean never expected to be cast as Juliet. He auditioned for the role as a lark—it was fun to be a girl calling out from her balcony just for a day, for one audition. But now he has the part, and he needs to do it. He needs to keep feeling the freedom he felt in that audition, in Juliet. But his mother would never let him, and he doesn’t have the courage to try to explain.

So he lies, tells her he’s Romeo, and she’s so proud of him, of his lie. And worse, he needs her help. He learns both parts to keep up the lie, and they rehearse. She pushes him hard, and she is cruel, but for a fleeting moment, Sean truly sees his mother—not

just as his mother, nor Juliet, but as the woman she is.

Sean’s mother studied theater in college before switching paths and pursuing a career in pharmaceuticals. She’s always hoped Sean would one day share her love for theater; when he tells her he’s been cast as the lead in his high school play, a deep joy blossoms inside her like a lotus.

At first, she keeps her distance. She wants to give her son the freedom to nurture a love for art in his own way. But when he comes to her for guidance, and lets her into his world, she becomes brutally determined to make him a great Romeo. She knows he can be great, for he is so much like herself, and once she was great, too.

We experience the film as memories of our unnamed narrator, who is Sean ten years in the future, post-transition. We know little about her life now. She looks back at this crazy time when she was so neurotic and scared. When she was pulled by an inexplicable powerful compulsion to be Juliet, and betray her mother’s trust to do so.

Now, in retrospect, the nature of this compulsion is so clear. In Juliet, Sean saw her true self. Our narrator reckons with the fact that this time of betrayal was the closest she and her mother have ever been, and maybe ever will be.

June – July 2026: Crowdfunding, Casting & Logistics

Through June and July, crowdfunding will begin. A casting director will be brought on board to begin the casting process, locations will be scouted, and crew will begin dialogue with producers to get locked in. Art department and wardrobe will begin prepping and boarding as Rose and Alan work through a shot list together, all while we share more information about the film to raise funds for it!

August 2026: Principal Photography

Running Lines will shoot August 13th through the 16th in New Jersey, primarily at Alan’s family home and high school. Our crew of 20 filmmakers will come together to execute Sean’s world.

September – December 2026: Postproduction

After production, we will spend the next few months piecing together the film, adding music, graphics, and compelling sound design to get it ready for festivals and a completed cut.

Thanks to our fiscal sponsorship with validBodies arts project, INC, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, your contribution is tax deductible to the extent allowed by law.

Every contribution we receive will go directly towards funding our production in August. This includes paying our cast and crew ethical wages, transportation, equipment rental, set design, and so much more!

$25,000: Reaching this milestone ensures we can move efficiently through post-production. These funds will provide our post-production team with the resources necessary to complete the highest-quality version of the film without delay.

$30,000: This goal brings us to the finish line. It covers the costs of film festival applications and distribution efforts, while also allowing us to compensate our above-the-line team for their extensive pre-production work.

You can learn more about our project here.

The greatest strength of independently-funded grassroots cinema is its capacity to give voice to the unheard, its freedom to tell stories that would seldom get the opportunity to be produced in a more traditional financial structure.

Sean and Jenny—a gender-questioning Chinese American teen and an “American-born-Chinese” mother who once pursued a career in the arts—are characters that come from my lived experience, and from imagining my closest friends and I as parents one day. At the same time, they are unlike any characters I’ve seen represented on screen before.

I conceived of “Running Lines” around the time I began to take my own personal gender dysphoria seriously. It’s been an emotional and beautiful ride, finding this story as I’ve found myself. Every day I’m moved by the love and support I’ve gotten in pursuing this project from my closest friends, from old classmates, from people I’ve never met before.

Please consider supporting our campaign by pledging a contribution, following our campaign on Seed&Spark, or sharing our campaign with someone you know who might resonate with our film. Truly, from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for taking the time to learn about this story.

Sincerely,

Alan Wang Lin