Tyler Neufeld’s play, “The Man Who Ate Time,” creates a whimsical space for transgender identity, community and self-realization.

Neufeld, a fourth-year theater student, has been working on “The Man Who Ate Time” since his sophomore year at UCLA. Now, the full-length queer comedy was recently performed at the Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center in Venice on May 24. Neufeld, who is soon to graduate, said the play was produced through Untitled Theatre Company, an organization he co-founded in his sophomore year. The production, Neufeld said, highlights the distinct relationship many transgender people have with the concept of time and reflects on some of his own experiences as a transgender man.

“The overarching theme would be the funny relationship that I have with time and that a lot of trans people have with time, in that you’re waiting for a super long time in the closet and you feel like a shell of yourself, waiting to come out like a butterfly,” Neufeld said. “I wanted to write something a little bit more silly and magical.”

Neufeld said he has been writing since he was young. Before he was even nine years old, Neufeld said he wrote a jukebox musical that incorporated remixes of vacation Bible school songs and performed it using his childhood toys as puppets to family and friends in his backyard. During his freshman year at UCLA, Neufeld said he created another play centered on transgender identity, called “Teleolakegical,” which focused particularly on relations between sexuality, gender and religion at a Christian summer camp.

In light of the way the current United States administration is affecting the lives of trans people, Neufeld said his play blends serious topics with comedy to create a welcoming space for joy. Many of his other projects, Neufeld added, express more dystopian and serious themes.

“Because trans topics can be so hesitantly approached by cis people, I wanted to gain an audience and make everyone feel welcomed into the conversation,” Neufeld said. “Comedy is just the best way to go.”

The two-hour play also integrates the creative backing of stop-motion pixel art, Neufeld said. The play was performed as a reading accompanied by stop-motion displays on a screen behind the actors.The pixels, Neufeld said, invoke a 1990s or early 2000s aesthetic that helps to set the 2007 Ohio atmosphere of the play. The pixel art, Neufeld added, allowed him to integrate cinematic choices such as quick cuts and close-ups that usually would not be possible in traditional theater productions.

In addition to this visual aspect, Neufeld said he was intentional about the play’s characters. Neufeld made sure to differentiate himself from the fictional Tom, as doing so helps him to shift from playwright and director to character and actor, he said. For example, Neufeld said Tom has a nervous tic where he touches his top surgery scars but skips the middle, whereas Neufeld said he touches his chest in the middle, opposite his character.

In terms of the other characters, Neufeld said it was challenging to write the play before he had cast it, particularly because he was trying to depict authentic stories and perspectives of trans people. When working with the cast, Neufeld said the group often had conversations about gender and sexuality, which helped him to integrate more personal perspectives from his colleagues into his writing.

The sense of community among trans people is a treasured aspect of both his time at UCLA and the play itself, Neufeld said. Bits of his experiences with attending trans groups’ meetings at UCLA inspired some parts of the play. For instance, in a stealth trans space, which Neufeld founded during his second year for those who chose not to disclose their gender history, the group drew anonymous questions out of a bucket and took turns answering them, just as characters do in his play.

“I feel extremely grateful for the trans community I’ve found here,” Neufeld said. “No joke, I did not meet a single trans person other than myself until I got to college.”

L Siswanto, a third-year education and social transformation student who plays “Pearl” and “Yellow,” has worked with Neufeld on this play as well as on Neufeld’s “Code Green” dorm escape room.

[Related: Dorm Scapes unlocks from-scratch escape room experiences for students]

Two different people originally played the characters in “The Man Who Ate Time,” but because of limited availability, Siswanto said they took on both roles. Siswanto added that Neufeld is always very passionate about and creative with whatever project he takes on.

“Everything that he comes up with … has this uniqueness to it that has this charm that he always puts into everything, a sort of whimsicality,” Siswanto said. “I just love whatever he creates because it’s always so attention-grabbing to me.”

Zoe Santos, who acted as the character “Purple” and was the stage manager for the play, said this was her first quarter doing theater at UCLA. The third-year statistics and data science student said it was impressive how the play melded together many different themes and elements, such as transgender identity, self-discovery, poetry and Tom’s inner thoughts represented as colors, like Santos’ Purple.

The performance, which was livestreamed at Beyond Baroque on May 24, was published on YouTube. After graduation, Neufeld said he will be working full time at Hatch Escapes and as a scenic painter for a children’s theater in Hollywood. Later on, he said he wants to explore immersive theater with his Dorm Scapes apocalyptic escape room projects, which he began last year, and integrate an immersive element to “The Man Who Ate Time.” As for the live performance on May 24, Neufeld said he hoped to create a sense of community for a queer audience.

“I’m hoping people get to experience a few hours’ worth of joy and just be able to be in a room with a bunch of other queer people and just have a good time,” Neufeld said.