Evan Quarles
I'm Evan Quarles. I'm from Amherst, Virginia, where I grew up as a creative black sheep among deer hunters, glue factory workers, and a culture shaped by Blue Ridge based masculinity. I spent my childhood catching rattlesnakes and training mixed martial arts. But what I really wanted to do was write.
In childhood, I became obsessed with The Twilight Zone, Rocky, and bands like The White Stripes and DEVO. They shaped my voice. I was drawn to stories about outsiders, pressure, and transformation. I wrote relentlessly. By fourteen, I stopped going to school so I could watch films and train myself as a writer. I saw myself as the Rocky of Screenwriting. In fact, I still do. Eventually, that obsession got me into SCAD. When I arrived, I felt like I had something to prove. Not just that I could compete technically, but that I had a voice no one else had. That hunger led to a collection of award winning short films and a feature produced by Richard Linklater.
More importantly, it led me to my creative partner, Toby. Together we created an original four act play that sold out three shows. After that, we started our production company, The Pumpkin Prophets, a place where messy, human, brand new art has somewhere safe to go crazy. In a world where spaces for original expression feel like they are shrinking, we decided to build our own.
In the wise words of Mos Def,
Listen, people be askin me all the time
"Yo Mos, what's gettin ready to happen with Hip-Hop?"
(Where do you think Hip-Hop is goin?)
I tell em, "You know what's gonna happen with Hip-Hop?
Whatever's happening with us"
I believe that to be true in all forms of art.
