“Beat step kick kick over jump out fall down dead” is an installation and performance examining the social and cultural structures that influence and attempt to circumscribe the indefinable queer experience, including pop culture, religion, conservativism, and the academic institution. The work explores the aesthetics of theatre, specifically the curtain and stage, to examine how public spaces function in communal identity formation. Both the project and paper exist as accumulations of personal, political, and historical references I use to break down and reassemble my own mutable identity and question my position within greater queer histories.