Jasmine Joshua founded Reboot Theatre about a decade ago while pregnant with twin daughters - a time when they didn't want to give up theatre, but weren't sure when they'd reenter the acting arena.
"I was not out yet when I founded [it], so I actually like to think of Reboot as one of my breadcrumbs when I look back and go, 'Ah, that made sense,'" Joshua told the SGN.
Joshua reached out to their social network in 2014 to see if people would be interested in putting on a living-room performance from 1776, and the community came together to build costumes and design the set. It became the nation's first fully realized, all-female production of the musical.
"I had never produced anything before, but it just started coming together, because people were so excited about this concept, and it kind of just became," Joshua said.
Nowadays, Reboot - which "tests new interpretations of established works through nontraditional casting, design, and methods yet to be discovered"- stands as a Queer hub in Seattle's International District for performers and lovers of musicals and drag.
Joshua loves creating relationships between the audience and performers, including themself. She said that acting and performing on stage is a passion she will always pursue.
"Acting is my first love in theatre," Joshua said. "I love being an actor - For most of my life, I didn't really know who I was, and thinking about [that] was painful and confusing. When you're acting, you're not you, and you can be anybody - that is freeing and amazing."

Upcoming productions
Reboot's upcoming production, Damn Yankees, is a sporty musical comedy based on the novel The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant, by Douglass Wallop and George Abbot. The tale follows Joe Boyd, a middle-aged baseball mega-fan who trades his soul to the devil for an opportunity to steer his favorite team to victory in a pennant race against the New York Yankees.
Damn Yankees seemed like the perfect pick for Reboot to experiment with new casting efforts. "It's exciting [to see] how much can we change the context to make it something different," Joshua said.
While different show licenses have various rules about what a theater company can and cannot do, Joshua finds it interesting to portray an all-women's baseball league, and wonders how that will change the story, which engages in sexism.
"This version doesn't have to be the definitive version. Theater isn't a museum, and that's what makes it the best," Joshua said.
For their next theater venture, Joshua is focusing on what it means to be an older Queer person in a community and world that are changing.
"I've written a Nonbinary musical about what it's like to come out as an adult, and it has a lot of intergenerational queerness," Joshua said, adding that they want it to be a feel-good identity-crisis piece that's comical and not just sad or traumatic. It will focus on what happens after a person discovers something new about themselves in their thirties and forties.
Joshua said Seattle has a bustling number of talented playwrights, but continues to lose space to put up new works. "This is my first time independently producing something. The bigger houses unfortunately are slimming down. Next year, I'm excited to bring this show and to dispel this notion that putting up new works is hard, [and hope] that everyone is going to come to see this."
They said they will provide updates about the upcoming production, scheduled for next June.

Damn Yankees will be performed September 6-21 at the Theatre Off Jackson (409 Seventh Ave., Seattle). For more information, visit https://RebootTheatre.org