I Stay With Me

About the Show

I STAY WITH ME

A One-Woman Show Written & Performed by Markeitra “Queen Key” Gilliam

What do you do when you no longer recognize the life you’re living—and you have no idea what comes next? I Stay With Me is an intimate one-woman journey through the experience of feeling completely lost, exhausted, and defeated—and finding the courage to keep moving anyway. Through storytelling, poetry, music, humor, and reflection, Markeitra “Queen Key” Gilliam takes audiences through the moments, people, choices, dreams, and unexpected turns that shaped her journey. There is no perfect roadmap and no miraculous moment when everything suddenly makes sense. Instead, there is a woman learning to face the unknown while carrying everything that came before it. At its heart, I Stay With Me asks what happens when the plans disappear, the familiar no longer feels like home, and the person you must learn to trust is yourself.

It is a story of wandering, becoming, beginning again—and discovering that even when you don’t know where you’re going, you don’t have to abandon yourself to get there. Sometimes you don’t have the answers. Sometimes you don’t know the way. But wherever life takes you, you stay with you

About the Artist

Markeitra “Queen Key” Gilliam is an actor, director, writer, singer, songwriter, poet, and theatre artist from New Orleans, Louisiana. She has trained at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre, developing a multidisciplinary approach to performance and storytelling. Her theatrical experience extends both onstage and behind the scenes. Markeitra has worked in performance, directing, assistant directing, production, and stage management on productions in New York City, California, Louisiana, and Alabama. These experiences have shaped her understanding of theatre not simply as a performer, but as an artist who appreciates every element required to bring a story from an idea to the stage.

Her original one-woman show, I Stay With Me, brings these worlds together as Markeitra serves as both writer and performer, blending theatre, storytelling, poetry, and original music to explore what it means to feel lost, face the unknown, and continue forward.

Following her Birmingham performances, Markeitra will embark on the next chapter of her artistic journey, traveling to London to continue her professional acting training at the Giles Foreman Centre for Acting.

For Markeitra, theatre has always been more than a stage—it is a place to explore, connect, question, play, and tell the stories that remind us of our shared humanity.