Theater Series, Vol. 3: Doubt

Last October, I was fortunate to see Cherry Jones lead the original Broadway cast of John Patrick Shanley's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Doubt. The play focuses on a Bronx catholic school in the 1960s, where Sister Aloysius struggles with a difficult decision. "Should she voice concerns about one of her male colleagues, even if she's not entirely certain of the truth?" as the play's literature reads.

It seems so rare these days that one goes to the theater and be expected to participate on such an intellectual level. Not just participate, but be challenged, to have your own ideas of right and wrong be so forcefully questioned. When the play ended, everyone had something to say. Families were broken up, couples were polarized. (Well, basically. I mean, not really.) Everyone was sure that they were in the right as to whether 1) Father Flynn was guilty, and 2) The mother of the boy was right or wrong, and 3) Sister Aloysius made the right choice, or was irresponsible. There are so many questions raised.

Ultimately, the play is not only about if he did or if he didn't. It's about the fragility of faith, and the strange nature of justice. Or rather, is there justice?

I heard Cherry Jones talking on the radio during the show's run, about the mechanics of acting in Doubt. She said that the director, Doug Hughes, had a private conversation with Brian F. O'Byrne about whether or not his character, Father Flynn, was indeed guilty or not. After all, as an actor, you can only play intention, you can not play "maybe I did, or maybe I didn't." Ms. Jones didn't want to know his final choice. She thought her performance would be more believeable if she genuinely didn't know.

It was more believable. She went home with the Tony, the Drama Desk, the Outer Critics Circle Award, and the Lucille Lortel. Plus! Ms. Jones is an out lesbian, and she's from Tennessee.

Taken by Kip in Trenton, NJ

From Boys to Men: in Time Out NY

The little anthology that could--From Boys to Men--in which my essay, "Inheritance," appears, has just been featured in the Gay & Lesbian section of Time Out NY. Hooray for Rob & Ted, our delightful editors. Read the Time Out article here.

There are currently readings scheduled in Los Angeles on Nov. 17 at 7:30pm at A Different Light; and in San Francisco on Nov. 27 at 7:00pm also at A Different Light. New York readings to be determined at this point.

The books are flying off the shelves--I only have the two copies I bought because they're going so fast. And we're getting good reviews in Library Journal, Insight Out, and The Bay Area Reporter, in addition to this most recent Time Out article.

The Frenchies, Part 1

On Monday afternoon, I helped facilitate an apartment exchange for my friend John, who rents his place out to vacationing Europeans when he is on vacation. It basically means handing over the keys, taking the payment, showing them around the apartment, etc. No problem, right?

Philippe and Catherine arrived right on time, but with a minor glitch--none of their credit cards would give them money from ATMs. They could purchase things from stores, and even got $100 from a cash machine at the airport, but suddenly every bank was telling them they had insufficient funds.

They were mortified. They promised they were good for it. "I will stay in a hotel, is no problem." Of course, two hours later, all I wanted to do was go home. But I couldn't let them wander around looking for a hotel after they'd been flying all day, hungry and tired, thirsty, getting ornery. "I think now I am beginning to stress," said Philippe.

Back at the apartment, he made me look over his shoulder at his bank balance on line, as if to prove that with some fiddling once the banks in France were open again--the time change was certainly against us--all would be remedied.

They were grateful that I allowed them to stay--this was after getting the final okay from John, of course, who I called in Italy to discuss their plight. He agreed that they were most likely legit. And then I walked them to the grocery store and the drugstore, where they later told me they bought some kind of washing detergent that cost them nine dollars.

The punchline of this story comes when, on the way to the store, Catherine asked me "Do you have a girlfriend?" "I have a boyfriend," I told her. A look of excited recognition flashed across her face and she hugged her shoulders. "OH!," she spouted. "I am a hairdresser!"

A Suggestion

All elevators should have mirrors.

Mistaken: A Smattering

Over and over tonight, I keep mistaking the grey guitar pick on my desk for a cockroach. I want to move it so I can finally relax about it, and yet I don't.

How late is too late to call someone? Eleven? What if they are an hour behind you? What if they are over fifty? What if they are over fifty and adhere to the status quo--at least on the outside? (I'm not talking about you, Mom, in case you were wondering. I'd call you whenever I needed, despite.)

My first New Yorker arrived today, a magazine I used to read all the time, borrowed from friends, from office buildings, from street corners where they lay in trash cans. Now my very own. What a treat. And yet. Another something to throw in the garbage.

Still no job. And the gnawing contiues. One wonders what else to DO. Because I've always gotten by from doing. And relying on the friendship of italics.

And then this, an old Ani D song which creeped its way out of my hard drive and slid into my ear as I listened to the rain on the sill: "and did i tell you how i stopped eating? when you stopped calling me, and i was cramped up shitting rivers for weeks and pretending that i was finally free."

Pissed

A photograph appeared in this weeks' issue of Entertainment Weekly which pissed me off considerably. It's a picture of John Travolta in the film version of the musical (based on the John Waters film) Hairspray. He's dancing and singing. (This isn't that picture, by the way.)

In 1988, John Waters--a cinematic genius, and a queer--made this incredibly entertaining movie that was actually about bringing people together, about moving society foreward, using the integration of a popular television dance show as the backdrop. Then in 2002, a musical version of the film opened on Broadway to critical and audience acclaim. The musical starred Harvey Fierstein (a queer,) with music and lyrics by Marc Shaiman and Scott Whittman (queers who are married to each other and who proclaimed their love for each other and even kissed on the Tonys.) The whole thing is just crawling with gay from beginning to end.

And the musical was about being who you are, to the fullest extent, your race, your class, your size, your sexuality, embracing the whole of everyone. It filled the theeater with love over and over again. It was sheer joy. And now we have Travolta, who I refer to as John Trevolting, playing the role of Edna Turnblad--and he's one of the most closeted people in the history of history. The whole thing makes me want to puke.

I've looked throught he IMDB message boards and Googled the hell out of it, but I'm not sure why Harvey's not in the film. He's an icon, a supreme talent. He's got four Tony Awards in four categories from only four nominations. He's a hero. Oh, and he's out.

So here's this other picture, which appeared in the Enquirer about a month ago, just because I can.

Theater Series, Vol. 2: Mythos

In October 1999, my then-roommates and I went to La Mama to see the Odin Teatret's original production of "Mythos," which they have described as a "performance about the value and death of the myth." It was one of the most extraordinary evenings of theater I've ever seen.

The entire floor of the stage was covered in gravel, smooth river rocks. And at some point a banquet table appeared, maybe it was there from the beginning, I can't exactly remember--one of the most amazing things about the performance was the way objects and scenes somehow appeared out of nowhere, like in a Richard Foreman show, or in the opera.

Here is a description of the show's action and content, from their website:

"Oedipus appears. The protagonists of the ancient myths--Medea, Cassandra, Daedalus, Orpheus--meet him in order to arrange a ceremony, the Great Funeral of History, which is thus transformed into myth. They prepare to bury the last representative of the twentieth-century dream of Revolution. And make it immortal. The wake takes place in Colonus, in Canudos, in Kronstad, on the remote shore of an ocean, at the end of a millenium.

During the vigil, the mythical characters relive the dark night of history, the lies and the horrors which made them eternal: the incestuous and murderous son of the couple who ruled hebes; the slaughtered children of Medea; the rape of Cassanda, the clairvoyant; the shadowy kingdom of death and the headof Orpheus singing as it floats downstream; the deadly wings of aedalus, the inventor of flight. While the petulant Odysseus comments with doubts and mocking remarks on the blind vitality of the living.

What is myth for us today, and what could it be? An archetype? A voice from the unconscious? A tale full of wisdom? A dark and dazzling clot of contradictions? A value to be desecrated? Nothing?

The darkest enigma shows itself through the contradictory survival of the myth, the enigma of its absence-presence. Where does a myth hide? Where do we bury it? How do we keep it alive?"

The audience was sitting on steep bleechers on each side of the long central stage, so that we could see eachother, and so that the action all took place in this kind of trough. I remember there was text in different languages, different scenes happening at the same time, and it took work to follow along--something I like. There were real elements in the show: fire, water, earth. There was an immense sense of breath, of watching actors--athletes--doing the best work they can do.

At the end of the play, the actors pulled huge white scrims, like curtains, in front of the audience, so that the stage was then shrouded, the candles still flickering behind it. It was one of only a few--a very few--times that theater has created for me an actual catharsis. There was love and there was a great warning, and I was there to witness it all.

Excerpts in Limbo, Vol. 6

--Daniel paused a moment, lingering in the past, in the bed with that man he could hardly recall. If memory could be extracted as matter, culled out from our tragic brains, what would it look like? If you held a vial of the clear, vital liquid, full of everything you remember about all the men you had loved in your short, desperate life, would it spray colors across the wall, splitting light into rainbows? Would faces appear, scents and textures? Would it be too heavy to lift?

--He stood on the platform watching the airplanes come into LaGuardia to land, watching the separated by hundreds of feet of airspace, hanging like Christmas lights on an invisible thread.

--Helena hires a driver with pock-marked face. A small man with a bulbous forehead and eyes spaced just slightly too far apart.

--They went home together, to the most recent banged-up house ??? was inhabiting for the time being. They laid together on the bed, so close that they were breathing the same air. Then they spent hours talking. In the morning, neither could remember who fell asleep first.

Super Celebrity Friday

Today at the Greenmarket, there were celebrity sightings one after another, it was like some strange alternate dimension where they were the norm.

Appearing today were:
-Frances McDormand
-Lee Anne Wong
-David Rakoff
-Parker Posey
-Will Arnett
-Tracy Chapman
-Kate Valk
-Whoopi Goldberg

Heard on the V Train Tonight

"Ladies & Gentlemen, this is a reminder that it is illegal to panhandle on the Subway. Please do not give to criminals, and instead give to the charity of your choice. That includes anybody playing horrible music."

Theater Series, Vol. 1: The Symptom

In the past two weeks, I have twice had the conversation I sometimes have with theater people, which is the conversation where you talk about the five theatrical experieces which affected you the most. So over the next few weeks, I'm going to chronicle them here, starting with the smallest.

In the spring of 1998, Clare Dolan, Meredith Holch and Susie Dennison created a show called "The Symptom," which was based on Checkov's "Three Sisters." It was performed at the now-drastically-different Los Kabayitos Puppet Theater in the CSV Community Center on the Lower East Side, then parented by Michael Romanyshyn. I hadn't been in New York for very long--a few months maybe--and here was this quiet, intimate show, so full of desire and feeling that surely would eclipse any standard "Three Sisters" performance.

Each sister was portrayed by a doll made of wood and fabric, and each actor was similarly dressed, so that as they spoke the lines of the play, they moved the puppet. The men in the play were played by lifesize dummies made of crumpled brown bags filling dusty suits. And what followed was a dreamy, setlist-kind of acts which showed the sisters in all their malaise-filled glory: staring into the snow, lamenting their lack of love, and in one ridiculously luminous scene, sobbing and sobbing and sobbing to the point of...dare I say, catharsis? Haven't we all struggled to find meaning? Isn't that struggle so narcissistic sometimes?

I spoke to Meredith Holch about the show recently, rather accosting her with my memories while we were talking about my Collection, among other things, and I'm not sure I was able to express to her what the show meant to me at the time. And now.