Partners in the Arts: Writers Topher Payne and Charlie Cote collaborate in theater and in life

Although writers and theater artists Topher Payne and Charlie Cote crossed paths professionally several times over the years, it was a dating app that ultimately brought them together. Cote was on the LGBTQ+ app SCRUFF near the end of the Covid lockdown when he received a message from another man nearby introducing himself as Topher Payne. “I thought he was catfishing me,” Cote recalls. “I thought he was not Topher Payne. He did not have a photo and messaged me on an app.” Yet Cote played along — and eventually discovered he was interacting with the real person. 

Cote was familiar with Payne’s work and had seen many of his productions. The two met in passing when Payne was starring in Horizon Theatre’s The Santaland Diaries in 2017 and had been in rooms together dating back to 2004 when Cote was involved with the children’s play Alana at Onstage Atlanta and Payne was in the cast of Eula Mae’s Beauty, Bait & Tackle. Still, their SCRUFF chat was the first in-depth communication. 

Payne can laugh at the situation now. “He genuinely thought someone else would pretend to be Topher Payne to pick up boys.”  For Payne, Cote’s description particularly intrigued him. “His profile said he was a playwright and — not to toot my own horn — some young handsome guy is claiming to be a playwright in Atlanta, and I had never heard of him?”

Cote came prepared for the first date. He brought dramaturgical notes about Payne’s play Angry Fags with him and brought up some issues he had with it — and the two moved forward.   

At the time the couple met, Cote’s mother had health concerns and Payne’s roommate was pregnant. “Both of us were living with vulnerable people,” says Payne. “Our courtship extended to Facebook Messenger, then texting and finally progressed to backyard dates.” The two got married on Groundhog Day — February 2, 2022. They now live in Decatur with one dog and one cat. 

Payne, 46, is one of the area’s busiest and most recognized playwrights and artists. His Perfect Arrangement made it to off-Broadway in 2015, received a positive review from The New York Times and has been performed around the world. He has segued into TV and written six films for Hallmark, including 2025’s Christmas Baby, which was nominated for a recent GLAAD Media Award.  

Cote, 32, attended Columbia College in Chicago, majoring in dramatic literature and minoring in acting and film production. “I remembered how much I loved theater while here,” he says. After school, he was involved with companies such as Chicago Dramatists and was awarded a fellowship in playwriting with Lambda Literary. He moved back to the area in 2018 and has worked behind the scenes for Horizon, where he was a playwriting apprentice, and Out Front Theater Company. 

Cote has been writing plays since he was 2 years old. “It’s always been my primary mode of expression and the thing I cannot stop creating, even when there are more lucrative [options] that seem like a good idea,” he says. 

As a gay/queer man of trans experience, Cote also offers gender inclusive consulting. 

The couple collaborated on the world premiere playYou Enjoy Myself at Local Theatre Company in Boulder at the end of 2023. Payne wrote the script, and Cote was the dramaturg. It was a partnership that grew naturally before Payne ever sought a producer. 

“I really wanted to explore the possibility of the lead character in You Enjoy Yourself being a woman of trans experience and did not feel remotely qualified to tell that story,” says Payne. 

He asked Cote for his thoughts, and the continuing development of the script was a series of conversations between the collaborators. “I could not imagine developing it without Charlie’s voice,” says Payne. “He’s been essential in the rebuilding of the text. It ended with something magical — you can definitely hear Charlie in it as much as you can hear me.” 

Both have individual projects as well. Payne recently wrote a new version of his own 2006 play, The Attala County Garden Club, for New Stage Theatre in Jackson, Mississippi, and his A First Lady’s Guide to Killing the President opens May 8, produced by Out of Box Theatre at Georgia Ensemble Theatre in Sandy Springs. Cote is working on a screenplay, and although he’s written several, his latest is perhaps his most significant — it’s a collaboration with the LGBTQ+ archive in New York City about historical figure Liz Eden, a transgender woman whose husband attempted to rob a bank to pay for her gender-affirming surgery. The film Dog Day Afternoon was based on Eden’s story. 

Both Payne and Cote are aware that inevitably there are times when one will be busy and the other not, and they are fine with that. Their work-life balances have changed, too, since the pandemic. 

The biggest shift in Payne’s career in the last decade has been moving into teaching, both at Berry College and Oglethorpe University, and being more selective in his projects. At one point, he wrote seven plays in five years, as well as scripts. “I feel I have gotten more intentional about how I am going to spend my time,” he says. “I am aware that work on a play is going to take me about a year-and-a-half, and, at my age, I am more aware of the cost of a year-and-a-half than when I was 25. I am pickier and more excited about what others are doing.”

Cote laughs in response because he still feels Payne is always busy. 

They do agree on one thing: that over the last few years, Payne has been focused on assisting fellow artists. “And that is Charlie’s bread and butter — supporting the stories of others, whether teaching or dramaturgy or other capacity,” says Payne. “So, when we met each other, it was this lovely point of intersection, trying to figure out what community was going to look like.”

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Jim Farmer is the recipient of the 2022 National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Award for Best Theatre Feature and a nominee for Online Journalist of the Year. A member of five national critics’ organizations, he covers theater and film for ArtsATL. A graduate of the University of Georgia, he has written about the arts for 30-plus years. Jim is the festival director of Out on Film, Atlanta’s LGBTQ film festival, and lives in Avondale Estates with his husband Craig.