Doric Wilson

Giving Credit Where it Is Due

2011-04-10T18:08:00.003-04:00

Cover of Michael’s Thing, 1979
“Barry and Ward”
from Doric Wilson’s A Perfect Relationship

To the editors, New York magazine

Molly Young’s article on Freeman Gunter in the current New York magazine (April 11), makes a sad and dismissive mistake. She lists magazines that Freeman Gunter worked for, describing them as gay porn. She may be right about Playguy and Honcho, but she does a huge disservice to Mandate and Michael’s Thing. It was an era when publications like New York magazine dismissed the culture coming from the queer community with a sneer and a snicker. The New York Times refused to even use the word “gay,” and only mentioned our community if the article was derogatory.

Michael Giammetta published Michael’s Thing between 1970-2000 as a guide to cultural and social happenings of the GLTB community. It was the one of the main and most reliable sources of information. It also was a handy guide to the most important institutions of the early days of liberation, the gay bar. The covers of Michael’s Thing may have featured pretty boys almost in their all together but inside the focus was theater, dance, cabaret. They were all there, all the early voices of what would become queer culture. Freeman Gunter was an excellent critic. There are careers in the arts still going full force that began thanks to his taking notice of them.

Mandate magazine was started as an “out” version of After Dark in the early 1970s. It featured some of the early stars of GLBT photography, John Michael Cox, Jr., Jürgen Vollmer, and first and foremost, Roy Blakey. Under the editorship of John Devere, it contained thoughtful reviews covering all of the arts, and essential articles on the emerging gay liberation movement. John Devere’s coverage of the protests surrounding the filming of Cruising is still a high-water mark of gay journalism. Mandate did eventually deteriorate into a gay porn publication, but initially, it was a main source of considered reviews and serious reportage.

Plays of mine from the 1970s have become central to the gay literary canon and are still being performed all over the world. A Perfect Relationship is a huge hit in India where it is credited with recent political gains. Street Theater, my play about the Stonewall uprising, is presented yearly. Freeman Gunter, Michael Giammetta, and my good friend John Devere are real heroes of the movement, and were it not for publications like Mandate and Michael’s Thing, neither of these plays would have survived let alone prospered. Not when magazines such as yours and newspapers like the Times treated the queer community like a dirty little secret.

Doric Wilson, playwright

Move Over Merman

2011-04-02T19:16:00.005-04:00

You must see Harvey Fierstein and Christopher Sieber in La Cage Aux Folles. If you do not have the price of a ticket, hustle your body in Times Square. If you have passed the sell-by-date, hustle someone else’s body. Just get there. Not since Taylor and Burton has there been such a hot theatrical love affair! And this time there is no question about “the kiss.” The chemistry between the two of them is palpable. You could reach out and touch it were you not in danger of burning your fingers.

Harvey Fierstein was born a Broadway star; with La Cage he is now a certifiable Broadway legend. It seems I have heard everyone but Alvin the Chipmunk sing “I Am Who I Am.” I have never heard anyone sing it with the searing authenticity Harvey brings to it. A critic friend says he doesn’t sing it so much as act it. I suggest he more than acts it, he inhabits it with wrenching heartbreak and ultimate pride. Spending more than fifty years of my life dedicated to the cultural expression of the GLBT community gives me the authority to beg every gay person in this country to see Harvey in this role. (And if they are smart, the straights should also come along for the ride.)

Christopher Sieber is the perfect “straight” man. Time after time he sets Harvey up with the ease of a latter-day George Burns. He is the ultimate smalltime showman. I cannot imagine anyone else in the role. He owns the stage like the late Robert Preston. He seems born to sing love songs. You can feel the generosity of his love, both for his son and Zaza and how the circumstances of the script are wrenching him apart. It gives a convincing central energy to the play.

Years ago when I saw La Cage Aux Folles on Broadway I was very disappointed. The cast was fine, the production if anything too extravagant. Not to mention far too polite. The Cagelles were about as dangerous as Disney showgirls. (And, as Mark Finley points out, the “oh-so-clever guess which of the Cagelles is actually female” was ultimately demeaning) It just did not come together. There was no heart. And except for the big song, the score seemed generic. In fact this got me into trouble when I saw the road company in Seattle in the mid 1980s.

My old pal Keene Curtis was playing Zaza so I gathered together a theater party and off we went to the opening. In the lobby I was approached by the critic for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer who had interviewed me a week before. He knew the show and asked me how it had become such a big hit. I answered because the audience walks “into” the theater whistling the score. Early the next morning I got a phone call from a furious Keene asking what the fuck I was doing in his review! I was quoted in the very first line.

Shortly after I saw La Cage on Broadway, I moved back to the Northwest for family reasons. I ended up in Portland and met Darcelle, a drag performer with her own nightclub. Darcelle was a cherished landmark in Portland. She yearly had her own float in the Rose Parade, headed white gloved charity committees, was beloved by the community. Her club was seedy and down at the heels and packed every night with straight couples on their anniversary and secretaries having a gals night out. As I sat watching the show one night it hit me. This is what the club in La Cage should be like.

And this is exactly what Terry Johnson’s current production of La Cage Aux Folles has done. One look at the stage manager tells you these Cagelles are indeed dangerous. (Not to mention some of the hardest working dancers in this city) The club is such a comfortable old shoe, if it actually existed in this city, there would be nightly lines of tourist buses at the door. And suddenly the score seems fresh and joyous; you still walk in whistling it, but this time for a much happier reason. It is a cozy old friend you haven’t seen in a long while.

PS - I want to thank bon vivant and friend Jim Landé for being partly responsible for the revival of La Cage. Also thank you to marathon audience member Rick Hinkson, who took me as a belated birthday present. It was one of the best times I have had in the theater in a long while.

PPS - Harvey, I love you! What’s not to love about a kind and gentle legend?

Proud to Know You review:

2011-03-31T14:40:00.008-04:00

Proud To Know You

A Cabaret Celebration of
Doric Wilson's Fifty Years as a Playwright

Reviewed by Jay Reisberg - March 23

Proud to Know You is the kind of event that could take place only in Manhattan, and perhaps only be fully appreciated in Manhattan with its proprietary array of local luminaries on stage and in the audience. It was a unique evening honoring playwright Doric Wilson.

The Honoree, whose early work at Café Cino in the 1960s, subsequent plays, and his co-founding of The Other Side of Silence (TOSOS: the first professional theater company to address the gay experience openly and authentically) created his well-earned status as one of the pioneers of off-off-Broadway theater. The evening, hosted by Rick Hinkson and seamlessly directed by Mark Finley, included cabaret performances by long-time friends (not just acquaintances) of Mr. Wilson, interspersed with five scenes from Mr. Wilson's plays.

After introductions and a video tribute to Mr. Wilson, created for the New York Innovative Theater Awards in 2007 (where he received their Lifetime Artistic Achievement Award), Jamie Heinlein performed Eve's speech from And He Made a Her, Mr. Wilson's feminist take on the Adam/Eve tale.

The singing commenced with Michael Lynch (with his customary over-the-top glorious bombast and self-delight), singing an augmented version of Janis Ian's "Havin' a Party" from his autobiographical show Livin' on the Real.

Next, Morry Campbell sang "On My Own" from his CD A Long Way Home. Morry's performance was delightfully bonkers, real performance art, taking the folk genre into undiscovered country.

A brief scene from Wilson's A Perfect Relationship was up next, movingly performed by actors Aaron Tone and J.Stephen Brantley.

Steve Ross, a living cabaret institution, carried forth with a melodious "Here's to Us" from Cy Coleman/Carolyn Leigh's Little Me.

Cabaret diva, Lodi Carr followed Mr. Ross, singing "For All We Know," the 1934 song composed by Coots & Lewis. (Sorry, Carpenters fans!)

As Mr. Wilson is a lover of opera, so it was fitting -- indeed required! -- that the festivities included a dose of High Art. First, Zachary Stains, a young opera singer, performed Kern/Hammerstein's "All the Things You Are" twice -- and radically different each time. First he sang the song in the currently popular precious style with the well-known lyrics. Okay, I said to myself, yet another cute rendition ala Mandy Patinkin. But then Mr. Stains then announced he would now sing the original lyrics as they were written for the 1939 show Very Warm for May. Mr. Stains sang the vintage lyrics in full voice, devoid of all pretense. He took the high notes to the operatic ionosphere, revealing the first version as a jest. What a relief! What a fine singer!

Furthering the operatic agenda was Susan Marie Pierson, international dramatic soprano, who powerfully sang "Dich Teure Halle" from Wagner's Tannhäuser.

K.T. Sullivan, consummate practitioner of the nearly extinct genre of authentic cabaret, took the stage and declared that she would sing a medley of 29 songs from 1929 (with the exception of a few contemporary samplings tossed in for amusing good measure). Ms. Sullivan performed each snippet with the sincerity and presence of the highly polished artist that she is, and I was hypnotically pulled in each time. When she artfully -- though abruptly -- transitioned to the next song, it felt like the brakes were suddenly applied, and I mentally went flying. But one bar into the next song, I was entranced again, and so it went with tease/transition, tease/transition -- well, she was so incredible that I just wanted to hear her complete every song. Only a singer such as Ms. Sullivan, who intimately knows each of the songs, has painstakingly set them, honed them over time, could pull off this tour-de-force.

Christopher Borg then performed Lane's speech from Mr. Wilson's Now She Dances!, a take on Oscar Wilde's Salome which Wilson rewrote figuratively speaking as "The Importance of Being Salome." Mr. Borg is an actor so skilled that he could have entered in character, spoken not a word, held the stage and received an ovation. As it was, he spoke the words of Lane's speech, and did receive an ovation. Christopher Borg is a consummate actor!

Joanne Beretta took the stage to sing "My Favorite Year" and "My Shining Hour." In 1961, two Manhattan singers were the talk of the town: Barbra Streisand and Joanne Beretta. Ms. Beretta held forth at the long gone Showplace in Greenwich Village, where Johnnie Mathis and Carmen McRae were her fans. She disappeared in the '70s, but in 2006, with the prompting of John Wallowitch reemerged with her CD entitled Love Life. Writer James Gavin in his review of Love Life wrote: "To this day she has a knack of drawing a roomful of strangers into moments of such intimacy that time seems to stop." Time, indeed, did stop while Ms. Beretta sang.

The audience was then treated to another scene from Now She Dances!, this time performed by Karen Stanion. The eternally hilarious "Soup Speech," which in the play is delivered by Gladys the maid, describes her career as a "theatrical domestic." Gladys explains her arch "method-acting" procedure for serving soup.

Two songs written by John Wallowitch were heard next. For fifty years, Mr. Wallowitch wrote and sang in Manhattan, and to tell of his rich career would take up the entire space of this review and then some. I recommend viewing the very fine documentary This Moment about John Wallowitch and his partner, dancer Bert Ross, which was directed by Richard Morris. Wikipedia's John Wallowitch page is also informative.

The dashingly handsome and talented Robert Locke sang Mr. Wallowitch's plaintive "The World through Your Eyes." Robert Locke Trio will perform original compositions at the Thalia Café next month.

Playwright Chris Weikel followed with Mr. Wallowitch's "I Live Alone Again," which had a duel quality. The initial sing-through bemoaned in detail what it is like to be living alone after a breakup. The second emphasizes the words in such a way the very things bemoaned become sources of liberation and freedom. Weikel's play Penny Penniworth, about a short-staffed theater troupe trying to bring a "lost" Dickens novel to the stage, enjoyed a return engagement last year at TADA Youth Theater.

Steve Ross retook the stage with his customary panache, singing a New York song pairing, consisting of Cole Porter's "Take Me Back to Manhattan" and "I Happen to Like New York" from the 1930 musical The New Yorkers.

Playwright and actor, Charles Busch, then bounced on stage, announcing that he was to read what he purported to be a long unsent letter to Doric Wilson. (I believed him. Foolish me!) Mr. Busch proceeded to deliver a broad, affectionate, and absolutely hilarious adaptation of Judy Garland's "Dear Mr. Gable/You Made Me Love You" from the film Broadway Melody of 1938. This "Dear Mr. Wilson." could only spring from the unique mindset of and be spoken and sung by the enormously multi-talented Charles Busch.

Concluding with Doric's appreciative acknowledgment, the evening was capped with the full company singing Wallowitch's "This Moment." The audience was welcomed to join-in for the last chorus which commences with the words "It takes a life, to realize what life is all about, this moment."

Afterword: Several months ago I hosted a houseguest, a 33-year old singer/musician from Sacramento. My guest was very personable, intelligent, and talented -- but culturally illiterate. I kept wondering what he had been paying attention to for the last twenty years. Perhaps Sacramento lacks anything to securely hold one's attention, judged by the standard of the cultural hothouse/cloud-chamber that is Manhattan. My guest would ask innocent questions that, if answered properly, would require delivering an extended exegesis. Well-known names relating to music and performance history -- my guest's chosen field -- were unknown to him. Now, I concede one can live an almost worthy life lacking Manhattan-based cultural literacy, but goodness, who would want to? Proud to Know You, included personalities and songs that are well known to us, because we have for decades paid close attention to present and past theater, singers, composers, playwrights, as well as art, literature, design, and cultural politics.

I bring this up because the range of material in this tribute to Doric Wilson fully reflected the richness of the Honoree's knowledge, loves, and oeuvre, and likewise that of those honoring him. At the end of this honoring of five decades of work, Doric Wilson said he did not expect to be around for a second tribute in half a century. Now I ask: Does your own experience of the trends of our culture give you any confidence that we will have someone like Doric Wilson to celebrate fifty years hence?

[Mr. Reisberg is a UCLA film school grad, professional singer, comedian, assistant to the founder of New York's Love Street Theatre, and bon vivant at large.]

Dusty Wright's Culture Catch
http://culturecatch.com/theater/doric-wilson-tribute

And a Great Time Was Had by All

2011-03-19T16:08:00.003-04:00

Doric Wilson at the Caffe Cino, March 18, 1961
(Time Magazine photo)

On March 18, 1961, my comedy And He Made a Her, a feminist take on Adam and Eve, opened at the Caffe Cino on Cornellia Street. It was directed by Paxton Whitehead and starred Jane Lowry as Eve. It was a huge hit. The success, in the words of playwright Robert Patrick, “helped establish the Cino as a venue for new plays, and materially contributed to the then-emerging concept of Off-Off-Broadway.” It also began my career.

On Wednesday, March 16, 2011, Rick Hinkson produced for TOSOS, in association with United Stages, a cabaret celebration of my fifty years as a playwright at Phil Bond’s Laurie Beechman Theatre on 42nd Street. It was directed by Mark Finley with musical direction by Steve Ross. Jennifer Marie Russo was stage manager. The cast included some of this cities very best performers (they are all listed below) and anyone who was there will tell you it was an absolutely astonishing evening. (I have asked the cast and audience to comment below). What follows are my program notes (slightly amended) for the evening.

Proud To Know You Program Notes

I love many things and many people. I love New York City, literature from the Greeks to the late 1940s, old fashioned authentic leather bars, almost all paintings and sculpture, Terry Pratchett, all history ancient to modern, Manhattan cocktails straight up, Ben and Jerry ice cream, Jane Lowry, the list is endless. I only “like” theater, it is difficult to love an addiction. I do love doing it.

I particularly love cabaret and opera. My first night in this city I went to a club called the Living Room where Kaye Ballard’s accompanist picked me up. Since then I love all piano men. I also love all lady cabaret singers. Over and over again, they rip out my heart and shred it and scatter it asunder and then the opera singers thunder on stage and stomp all over the pieces! No wonder I have never had a lover. Reality could never compare with the Great American Songbook (not to mention Puccini).

I am very honored by the line-up for tonight’s entertainment. Not only because they are all extremely talented performers, but because they are all my friends – some of them almost forever. I am also proud that the actors and some of the singers come from TOSOS, my theater company. If the evening seems to slip and slide on the edge of rampant nostalgia, that’s what happens when you celebrate a person who just turned 72 years of age.

Mark Finley, artistic director of TOSOS, and director of this evening, starts the show. Mark is by far the best director I have ever met. And the only director I know who can make play readings exciting. Stop by one of the Chesley/Chambers evenings and you will see what I mean. He is also a very talented playwright. He also owns Simon, the cat who rules the world. (To get on the TOSOS list, email tosos@nyc.rr.com.)

I met Rick Hinkson, tonight’s producer and master of ceremonies, in Seattle in the 1980s when I convinced him to play a villain in my play Street Theater. He was heart broken if the audience didn’t hiss him as he exited the stage. His most recent credit was directing The Best of Jim Caruso's Cast Party, produced by musical theater hero Scott Siegel, at Town Hall in mid-February. It starred Liza Minnelli (looking spectacular), Chita Rivera, Lucie Arnaz, and Marilyn Maye among many others. It is already near the top of legendary NYC evenings. Trust me, no one hissed.

Tribute Video. Created by New York Innovative Theatre Awards in 2007 when they presented me with their lifetime Artistic Achievement Award. (This was followed by a surprise video from the Holy High Gate Keeper of the Cino Legacy, Robert Patrick - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-WpgBLYIyc)

1.) Jamie Heinlein, Eve’s speech from And He Made a Her. I cannot even begin to say how much I love Jamie Heinlein. I only need to think of her name and I smile. And if I think of her on stage I smile even wider. As And He Made a Her began my career, it is only appropriate that a speech from the play opens this show. Critic Jonathan Warman wrote of the recent revival “Many, many plays and musicals have been written about this duo, most of them beyond dreadful. And He Made Her is easily the best play on the subject I've ever seen.” And He Made Her is published by United Stages and includes a 1961 recording of the Cino production with Jane Lowry, Gary Filsinger, and Paxton Whitehead and an announcement by Joe Cino. Tonight Eve expresses her profound disappointment at Adam’s refusal to play “the game.”

2.) Michael Lynch, “Havin' a Party” (Janis Ian, additional text Michael Lynch). In 1983 in the bowels of the notorious Mineshaft, Michael took permanent possession of the role of Boom Boom in Street Theater, a role he will be repeating this summer at the GLBT Center as part of Pride Week. A loyal friend and confirmed vegetarian I know of no one with more dignity nor determination nor generosity of heart. The song he sings is from his autobiographical show Livin’ on the Real, a HUGE success at this year’s HOT! Festival at Dixon Place. He is accompanied by his long-time collaborator, Steve Kaufman.

3.) Morry Campbell, “On My Own” (from his album long way home) I respect few people more than I respect Morry. Over a decade ago he survived a life shattering experience that more or less forced him to reinvent himself. This he did with such ease only his lover, Barry Childs, knows the real price he paid. With the help of Ronny Lee he perfected his guitar playing and began writing fiercely original songs. His album long way home is available from cdbaby.com and a new collection is due shortly. Or search for him on iTunes. ( http://morryc.com/bio.html)

4.) Aaron Tone and J.Stephen Brantley, in a scene from A Perfect Relationship. Aaron and J.Stephen were both in David Parr's hysterically funny Slap&Tickle last summer in Provincetown. Aaron was also featured in James Edwin Parker's internationally acclaimed 2 Boys in a Bed on a Cold Winter's Night. Everything you could possibly want to know about J.Stephen may be learned by visiting www.jstephenbrantley.com or www.HardSparks.com. A Perfect Relationship is the least political of all my plays. In the early 1980s it was to open off-Broadway at the Lortel with plans to move it uptown. It was to be first the big gay “crossover” play and my at long last big break. And then AIDS hit, and it was far too sexually explicit for the times that followed. Oddly it has become a huge hit in India for the last few years where it has become very political indeed, partly responsible for some major liberation gains there. Ward (Aaron) and Greg (J.Stephen) are strictly roommates, no love, no nothing. And then a trick named Barry moves in on their lives and tears their non-relationship apart. Not to mention taking over their apartment. Ward has just discovered that Greg and Barry have...well you get the picture. (PS - the play could have been written for Aaron and J.Stephen)

5.) Steve Ross, “Here's to Us” (Cy Coleman & Carolyn Leigh, Little Me, 1962). Cabaret legend Steve Ross is everyone’s favorite piano man. In the best show rooms of London, Paris, and New York City he is called the “crown prince of cabaret.” He just finished his annual run at the Algonquin and has generously not only volunteered to be Music Director for tonight but also accompanist. Look up words like class, charm or debonair in any dictionary – you should find his name is the first definition. His upcoming schedule is far too busy to fit here. Instead go to http://www.steveross.net/

6.) Lodi Carr, “For All We Know” (J. Fred Coots & Sam M. Lewis, 1934). Stand next to Lodi and her joie de vivre will surge through you like a lightning strike. She has lived a life that makes Auntie Mame look like a recluse. She has so much energy, just thinking about her as I write this makes me need a nap. She has had a long career as a jazz ballad singer. You can hear her most every Monday night at Jim Caruso's Cast Party. Also keep an eye on Don’t Tell Mama for a possible show. Her album (Lady Bird) is available from cdbaby.com. She is accompanied by jazz piano great Jon Weber.

7.) Zachary Stains, “All the Things You Are” (Jerome Kern & Oscar Hammerstein II, Very Warm for May, 1939). Zack showed up at my birthday party two years ago and we have been friends ever since. Opera fans know him in the role of Hercules on the DVD of Vivaldi’s Ercole sul Termodonte at the Spoleto Festival (get it on Netflix). He is busy working on Victor Herbert - Never Before Recorded Songs. This is a huge project which includes singers like Rebecca Luker, cellist Jerry Grossman, and award winning sound engineer Judith Sherman. New World Records plans to release the first CD in the fall of 2011. (http://www.zacharystains.com/)

8.) Alex Bond, Muriel’s speech from A Perfect Relationship: Alex is my most recent “bff.” In June she and David L. Carson will read selections from her novel Late Nights with the Boys: Confessions of a Leather Bar Chanteuse as part of the 2011 Planet Connections Festivities as a fund-raiser for PFLAG. In A Perfect Relationship Muriel makes her living renting and then subletting apartments, until Barry manages to get the lease for Greg and Ward’s apartment in his name. When Barry offers them his old apartment, it is the last straw for Muriel. (http://www.alexbond.org/)

9.) Susan Marie Pierson, “Dich teure Halle” (Elisabeth's aria from Wagner’s Tannhäuser). I met Susan at the Met. Where else do you meet a Wagnerian soprano? If you know me, you knew there had to be opera here tonight (pace, Janet). Susan’s credits include seven separate Ring Cycles. Her debut as Isolde in Tristan und Isolde is recorded by Titanic Records. She is one of those flawlessly perfect people who, like Rick Hinkson, Zachary Stains, and myself, are products of the Pacific Northwest. (http://www.susanmariepierson.com/piersonbiography.htm)

10.) KT Sullivan, (a medley of 29 songs). I am going to quote my blog post for March 26 of last year: “KT Sullivan may very well be the last of the Great Dames of the New York stage (Lillian Russell, Anna Held, etc.). She is by far the sultriest. She has eyes that would force Hoffmann to write a whole new tale, a complexion to shame a porcelain doll, and what a voice. If Cleopatra could sing like this, Caesar would never have gone back to Rome. There should be baskets and baskets and baskets of Cartier, Van Cleef, and Tiffany trinkets waiting for her nightly at the stage door. She has a long list of CDs. Buy them all. Tonight’s medley is from “Rhyme, Women & Song” her upcoming engagement at the Algonquin’s Oak Room Supper Club May 3rd to 28th. She is accompanied by Jon Weber.

11.) Christopher Borg, Lane’s speech from Now She Dances! Borg’s subtle, quiet, understated, low-key performances explain a recent review that described him as “over the top and half way up the next mountain.” He is also one of my all-time favorite actors. If I were smart (and younger) I would write all my plays for him (and his lover Desmond Dutcher). Now She Dances! is by far my strangest play and perhaps my best. It began at the Cino as a one act and after almost 40 years of rewrites, the two act version opened in 2000 in Glasgow. (Steve Bottoms directed) It is a nightmarish metaphor for the trial of Oscar Wilde, blending characters from Wilde's Salome and The Importance of Being Earnest with a Post-Modernist America. Lane, the butler from Ernest, here acting as the major domo from Salome, reminisces on his childhood at “Palestine Walk,” Sir Herod’s stately home. (Now She Dances! is published by United Stages.)

12.) Joanne Beretta, “My Favorite Year” (Michele Brourman & Karen Gottlieb); “My Shining Hour” (Harold Arlen & Johnny Mercer). In 1961 I walked into the Showplace in the Village. At the piano sat John Wallowitch playing “Mona Lisa” with an enigmatic smile on his face. They announced Joanne Beretta, she walked onto the stage and my heart never belonged to me again. For the longest time I never got much past her eyes. Watch out for them, they will take you to a world far far away and you will never come home. (I love you, Miss KK).

13.) Karen Stanion, the “Soup Speech” from Now She Dances! It is a wise playwright who casts Karen Stanion. You don’t really need even write the play because the moment Karen walks on stage, the audience more or less stops listening and just looks. Throughout the 1960s the “Soup Speech” was such a popular audition speech eventually casting notices asked actors to refrain from using it. In the play, Gladys, the maid, describes her career as a “theatrical domestic.”

I knew the late songwriter John Wallowitch since 1959. I first saw him sitting at a table with Marlon Brando in the legendary Baq Room of singer Janice Mars. In 2006, Mark Finley conceived a brilliant revue of John Wallowitch’s songs for TOSOS called New York Minutes. It was a huge hit, got rave reviews and John adored it. (Phil, it is ripe for revival.) Two of the original cast reprise songs they sang in the show.

14.) Robert Locke, “I See The World Through Your Eyes” (John Wallowitch) If I hadn’t gone to Billy Hoffman’s birthday party I would never have met the ever jouvenesent Robert Locke who would not have later introduced me to Mark Finley. The revival of TOSOS would never have happened. And I would not now be finishing a new play. And we would not be here tonight. So you can thank Robert for your being here. In fact you should have the waiter hand him your check. Thursday, April 7th, at 10:00-midnight the Robert Locke Trio will be performing at the Thalia Café, 2537 Broadway at 95th Street (thaliacafe.com)

15.) Chris Weikel, “I Live Alone Again” (John Wallowitch). This is perhaps the song by John I love the most. (Remember my shredded heart?) Mr. Weikel is right next to Lanford Wilson (and Noel Coward) as my favorite playwright. He is also a great actor and singer and costume designer. Along with Jamie Heinlien, Robert Locke, and Karen Stanion, he is a founder of the revived TOSOS. (PS - I should have added G. B. Shaw to my list of playwrights.)

16.) Steve Ross (New York medley ) “Take Me Back to Manhattan;” “I Happen to Like New York” (Cole Porter, The New Yorkers, 1930)

17.) Special guest star Supreme Diva and Divine Sister Charles Busch introduces Doric Wilson with a brilliant take-off of the Judy Garland "You Made me Love You" fan letter to Clark Gable.

Doric Wilson jumps out of the window. As this is the basement, I don’t go far. Much like my uptown career. In 1961, Bernie Hart warned me not to get involved in Greenwich Village, he said I would never make it back uptown. I guess tonight doesn’t really count.

18.) Steve Ross and company, “This Moment” (John Wallowitch).

Tonight is dedicated to Jane Lowry who walked down the aisle between the tables as Eve and and made this all begin. And to Gary Filsinger who played the right-wing angel Disenchantralista, anticipating the Tea Party Movement by almost 50 years. (They are both in the background of the cover photo.) And to Janet McHugh who was sitting in the audience at the Caffe Cino in March 1961. And to Joe Regan who saw a performance even before the Cino when And He Made a Her played a block and a half from here at a gathering of a theater group called New Voices. (Paxton Whitehead came from the curtain of The Importance of Being Earnest to join us.)

Perhaps I can make it for another 50 years. We all went upstairs to the bar and tried to swipe money from the tip jar of TOSOS playwright member and West Bank Cafe bartender David Bell.

Like it says at the top, a great time was had by all.

Give a girl a ride

2011-02-24T15:03:00.007-05:00

Harvey Fierstein - a friend for years - has just gone into the cast of his show La Cage aux Folles. I saw the show in the 1980s and through I liked the cast I hated the production. From what I had been hearing about this new version, it sounded as it they had at last gotten it right. So I was very pleased when a nameless person (who invested in the show) offered to take me two nights before my birthday. He also offered to take me to dinner after.

I left my apartment at 7 to go down to Ninth Ave to get a cab. (They aren’t all that easy to get before show time) I had the email with the address the nameless person had given me - which at the time seemed a bit odd for a theater, but I stupidity didn’t check - clutched in my soon to be frozen little hand. It was very cold, and what little is left of my heart began muttering loudly.

There were no cabs. And even more no cabs. At the last possible minute a car service stopped and offered to take me for $15. I had no choice. We arrived at the address nameless person had given me exactly at 8 pm. I go out, he drove away, I looked around - and realized why the address (48 btw 6th and 5th) had looked odd. I was on the side street next to Rockefeller Center. Instantly my chest got tighter that it has in years and I couldn't stand up. So I sat down on the pavement.

I discovered in this city the moment your butt hits the pavement you instantly become invisible. A faceless invisible homeless person. If I were dying, and I was not sure I wasn’t, lots of luck. Suddenly a pigeon landed next to me and looked very concerned for me and I stared laughing which made me even more invisible. They don't like hearing laughter coming from invisible people.

As soon as I could I got up and into a cab and got home still with the very tight chest. I sat on the steps in my hallway for about a half of an hour until I could go up. After I got warm the chest relaxed, still muttering about going out in the first place. I didn’t get to see Harvey. And I still did not get dinner! The moral is simple, when a nameless person gives you an address, double check it. And pack a lunch.

To the disappointment of my cousin Rae, no firemen were involved.

The Winter of My Disconnect

2011-01-15T15:33:00.004-05:00

About a week before Christmas the hard drive of my computer decided to go bye-bye, taking all my files with it. And it seems my back up system, with out informing me, had stopped backing over a year ago. I got a loaner computer from Super Hero Ed (my computer guy).

Two days after Christmas I woke up to no television, no online access and no phone (except my cell phone). It took five days before I could actually get through to a human being at Time-Warner (my server) to discover somewhere in the city someone demolishing a building cut the cable and brought down a large chunk of the west side of Manhattan. So here I sat, somewhat stranded, no TV, no Internet, no regular phone, and a loaner computer.

And then the snows came. And came. And came. I did make it out Christmas day to dinner with Zachary Stains and an inadvertent "All About Eve" holiday party at Charles Busch’s Abington Square apartment where he and Michael Riedel faced off in the middle of the room and...(but you have all seen the film)

The day after Christmas, Leicester Landon took me to see Brian Bedford, a long time acquaintance, in an historic performance as Lady Bracknell (photo above) in The Importance of Being Earnest. He and it were wonderful, a must see. Paxton Whitehead, my director and roommate from 1960s, is also in the production as the Rev. Chasuble and at the top of his form. All he is missing is the biretta.

So on New Year’s Eve here I sat on Ninth Avenue my thumb in my mouth as the mob hooted and tooted beneath my window on their way to Times Square. I decided to call people I knew and loved to wish them a happy New Year! What a great idea. Except I no longer have an address book. It was on that hard drive. (Along with the TOSOS mailing list)

An half hour before 12 I decided to play a CD on one of my single last connections to civilization, my CD player. My sound system swallowed the CD and suddenly stopped working. You would have been amazed how calm I remained (after I kicked my foot through the wall). I unplugged the player and upended it, shook it, and the CD slipped out. (The machine now whimpers whenever I walk past it) One minute after midnight I went to bed with a book. And I can not tell you how happy it made me that it was a book and not some electronic substitute!

The next day my apartment had no heat nor hot water. The day after for no reason and with no warning the power in my building went off for five hours. And I was right back where I started. No television, no online access, no phone, and this time no CD player, DVDs, or even the ability to read a book in bed.

But by Saturday with heat and power I was online again. And it was snowing again! But Leicester Landon and his semi-spectacular BF were back in town and invited me out to dinner (Zuni!). I was just finishing my shower when suddenly the full force of the cold water gushed from the shower head - the faucet was broken and it would not turn off. So freezing and sopping wet I stumbled around my apartment searching for my pliers - my mother’s voice echoing in my ear "If you would just put things back where they belong..."

I live in an old railroad apartment. Back in the 1960s the tenant (an actor) threw out the old bathtub in the kitchen and installed (on cinder blocks) an ancient fiberglass shower stall. I was sure replacement parts no longer exited. That the plumber would smile patiently at me and suggest I become friendly with my next door neighbor. So I opened my door to the reality that I would never ever have a shower again. Before me stood a young man from Guatemala with a tool box and very little English. He took one look at my fiberglass monstrosity, and tears filled his eyes and he said "home! I am home!" He had it fixed in five minutes.

So as of yesterday I have my old computer back and today I am reinstalling (etc).

Just to be safe I am in the market for one or two virgins to sacrifice to the Gods of Technology! (And I have promised never to use the name of Bill Gates in vain. Or Thomas Edison, for that matter!)

Very Funny

2010-10-28T15:33:00.005-04:00

David Parr

Last Monday evening at the TOSOS Robert Chesley/Jane Chambers Playwright Project, forever elfin David Drake presented a reading of David Parr’s Slap&Tickle. It had a perfect cast: Stephen Bienskie, J. Stephen Brantley, Todd Flaherty, Joseph Mahan, and Aaron Tone (Drake also stood in for a role). It was a HUGE hit. A sold out audience roared its approval. But the star of the evening was the playwright David Parr. He is a very funny playwright. A very, very funny playwright. A very, very, very funny playwright. An extremely very, very, very funny playwright. Perhaps even too funny. Perhaps even way too funny. As one funny playwright to another, perhaps Parr should concentrate on blank verse drama. Symbolic blank verse drama. Tragedy even. In Sanskrit.

Take One for the Team

2010-10-18T21:07:00.008-04:00

Asher Brown, 13, Seth Walsh, 13, and Justin Aaberg committed

suicide in 2010 in the face of anti-gay bullying.

Something about my past I was sure I would never consider telling, I am now going to write about. Only a very few people know a small part of this. It seemed far too private and it was so very long ago. It did have a huge impact on who I am now, but recounting it seemed to serve no purpose and was best just forgotten. The suicides and bashings of the past few weeks have made it imperative that I reconsider. In fact it has become impossible for me not share.

This is just for background: The important matter comes later. My freshman and sophomore years of high school were spent in a private school on the west coast of Washington State. I came home to Kennewick for my junior and senior year. Kennewick High was a bit of a shock after St. Martin’s, but I was making great grades and I had some great teachers. And it seemed that it would be OK.

It was the great grades that started the whole problem. I have no idea how people are graded now, but back then it was “on the curve.” And it seems I was setting the curve high. Some of the school’s best athletes were in some of my classes. And because of me bumping up the curve, they were dropping a whole grade and therefore ineligible to play sports. And they were not happy Jocks.

One of the coaches (he was also a teacher of mine) was equally not happy about losing players he had been depending on to win games. So one day in class he must has looked at me and realized I was letting down the team. He took some of his players aside and suggested that they should take me aside and “convince” me to not be so “smart in class.” So they waited after school and beat me up.

I should mention I had been out since I was 13, but not necessarily obvious. And this attack was not overtly homophobic. That I was different was crime enough. I loved to read, I painted pictures, I acted with the local theater group, I was not athletic as either a participant or a supporter. Horror of horrors, I even liked opera! In other words, I was different. And I did get great grades and that alone deserved a kick in the head.

Now this was the 1950s and to paraphrase the song, “folks were if not dumb where I come from, they weren’t really all that smart.” They probably didn’t know the word “faggot” back then, they certainly didn’t use it. The worst they could come up as they kicked me was “smart ass” and “egg head.” They took special pleasure with “egg head,” snarling it at me as if it were the nastiest insult of all. The number of kicks that actually connected were few and far between. (Emplaning a lot about their competence on the playing field.) I survived. (I told my Mon I had fallen off my bike.)

I was told to stop getting good grades or this just be my first of many “workouts.” A girl who had been jilted by one of my “new found friends,” ratted on the cause and source of my encounter. I immediately failed the coach’s class to get away from him. And I pulled back in my other classes. Not that this was difficult, as I was becoming so active with the Richland players, and painting, and cruising the toilets of the Pasco train station, I had almost no interest in school work.

[sidebar: On two separate occasions I saw two of my “new found friends” enter the toilets late at night and stay a good forty-five minutes. There was probably a perfectly innocent explanation why at 2 a.m. they needed to use a john in a train station on the far side of a town across the Columbia River from where they actually lived. I did not let them see me. I did make a mental note of the furtive way they left.]

For two years my “new found friends” continued to wait for me after school. I was so clever in finding secret ways to get home from school they only caught me twice again. And their aim had not improved. I was so tempted to mention the Pasco train station. But I didn’t. Not only was I clever, I was smart.

The above is only prologue to my post.

The second person I ever had sex with was 17. I was 15. We had one happy summer riding our bikes. I suppose in an adolescent way, we were in love with each other. (Or as close as you could get to love in the Tri-Cities in the 1950s) I will call him Tim. He lived in a righteous God-fearing American family. His father (a proud member of the NRA) was a hunter and had bought Tim a shotgun when he was ten. Tim got very good with it and won a number of marksmanship contests. He became the apple of his father’s eye.

Or until his father and mother caught him being fucked in the family rec room. Being good Christians, they knew exactly what to do with an errant apple. They made plans to send him off to a hospital near Tacoma where he would be given a lobotomy. (A popular curative of the period for uppity women and non aggressive boys—I am told the tea-baggers are eager to reestablish this particular procedure.) Tim would come home no longer a fruit. He would come home no longer much of anything.

As soon as Tim could escape the loving concern of his parents, he came to warn me that what he and I were doing was wrong and a sin and an abomination and that if I did love him I would stop doing it immediately because he could not bear to think what his family was about to do to him would ever be done to me. He then went home and shot himself in the head. Tim’s father proved the old adage right: guns don’t kill people, people kill people. And he should know–he had caused his son to die, not the shogun.

Tim’s death was explained as a hunting accident. A common yearly occurrence where I grew up. Exact what he had been hunting in the family rec room was never fully explained. The coach later moved into our neighborhood, almost next door. His son grew an extensive crop of healthy marijuana plants behind the roses. He was to became one of the town’s major drug dealers. I heard he went to prison for rape.

As for Tim, I don’t even have a photo of him.

Please consider supporting the Trevor Project:

http://www.thetrevorproject.org/

PS - Years later I discovered that my mother (one very smart cookie) did not buy my “bicycle accident” explanation. She knew exactly what had happened and went to the high school to complain. She was told that a little bullying was healthy for a growing boy. What she didn’t know at the time was that the vice-principal she confronted was the same coach who had set the “dogs” on me in the first place.

Man walks into a bar with a pineapple...

2010-07-31T16:04:00.004-04:00

Honorary Golden Pineapple Awards presented by N Y Artists Unlimited (23 July 2010)

l to r: Sherry Eaker, Israel Horovitz, Tony Spinosa, Melba LaRose, Doric Wilson, Ellie Covan and Charles Busch (Photo by Joseph Marzullo/WENN)

A Shoe Full of Champagne

2010-03-26T13:01:00.009-04:00

Mark Nadler & KT Sullivan

“Gershwin…Here to Stay”

When the Stature of Liberty climbed out of the ocean in 1886, she found a Manhattan that already had an abundance of dames. Which explains why she wisely constrained herself to an island out in the harbor. Way back to Jenny Lind, this city loves its theatrical ladies. I just spent a week indexing a book on the Flatiron Building* which focused me on the Gay Nineties to the Grim 1930s. So Lillian Russell and Anna Held were much on my mind (and in the book) when I joined Rick Hinkson and Zachary Stains in the Oak Room of the Algonquin last Saturday night.

I vaguely remember hearing a recording of Lillian Russell and seeing a glimpse of Anna Held in an old film. I have no clear idea what either lady was like except that everywhere they went they were bombarded with orchids, drenched in Champagne, and followed by gentlemen offering them bushel baskets overflowing with diamonds. But regardless of what you may have heard to the contrary, when it comes these legendary ladies, the furthest I go back is to Sophie Tucker, Pearl Bailey, and the ever diffident Miss Merman. (I WAS NOT at Castle Clinton the night Jenny Lind made her debut.)

KT Sullivan may very well be the last of these Great Dames of the New York stage. She is by far the sultriest. She has eyes that would force Hoffmann to write a whole new tale, a complextion to shame a porcelain doll, and what a voice. If Cleopatra could sing like this, Caesar would never have gone back to Rome, Salome could gather her heads where she may without removing a stitch, and Delilah would have no need for scissors. There should be baskets and baskets and baskets of Cartier, Van Cleef, and Tiffany whatnots waiting for her nightly.

Mark Nadler has arranged and directed this George Gershwin evening. The Oak Room is long and narrow with the piano against one wall in the middle and most of the audience left and right. Not exactly audience friendly, it can have an isolating effect. The Caffe Cino, much smaller, presented the same problem. Nadler’s solution was much the same that I used downtown fifty years ago. He wisely employs the whole room from entrances at either end to the aisles, even to the tables. (Miss Sullivan occasionally prowls about, a leopard off its leash) The result was to draw the audience in to a warm and intimate embrace. We were at his private party.

Mark Nadler is the quintessential stage door Johnny (complete with spats). To be in the same room with him is to be dressed in white tie and tails out on a night-on-the-town. He managed to conjure everything but a chorus line. He did pull a second pianist (the marvelous Jon Weber) out of his top hat. And together they performed an astonishing moment of music. Perhaps the most important moment of music heard in this city on that night. Jon Weber joined Mark Nadler in his piano-four hand arrangement of Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F. And the world stood still to listen.

A footnote: Speaking of music that stops the world in its tracks, I had been at the Algonquin a few weeks earlier for "Puttin' On the Ritz," piano man Steve Ross’s celebration of songs associated with Fred Astaire. Steve Ross is the toast of cities major to minor from here to the Antipodes. He also may be the nicest person I have ever met. He is such a perfect fit to this music, by the end of the show, it was as if his piano was dancing with Astaire.

KT Sullivan & Mark Nadler:

“Gershwin…Here to Stay”

Tue–Thu at 8:30pm , Fri, Sat at 8:30pm & 11pm

ongoing through April 10.

The Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel

59 W 44th St (212-419-9331)

Tickets: $50 plus $30 minimum.

There is an earlier post on KT Sullivan in this Blog for September 30, 2008, under the title “Come to the Cabaret.”

*If you love the history of New York City as much as I do, I recommend The Flatiron by Alice Sparberg Alexiou, St. Martin’s Press, 2010.

From This Moment On

2010-03-23T15:52:00.007-04:00

Over the years whenever I am being interviewed, someone will ask me how and when I was first aware that New York City was to be my future. Until last night, when Bernard Belasco took me to Town Hall for Broadway by the Year 1948, I did not have the vaguest idea. Hearing the songs from Kiss Me, Kate and Where’s Charley? began to stir the memory stew. The Cole Porter score and the song “Once in Love with Amy” have always been rooted deep in my consciousness. I never knew quite why.

I had a non-traditional relationship with recorded music. As I have mentioned before, on the ranch growing up our only radio was a crystal set. Thanks to the war, replacement crystals were impossible to get. Radio listening was strictly limited to Gabriel Heater and the agricultural report. Luckily for me, down in the basement was an old Victrola and a huge pile of records from the 1920s, when my mother and her brothers were kids and lived there. “How Could Riding Hood” and “She Knows Her Onions” and “Who’s Taking Care of the Caretaker’s Daughter While the Caretaker’s Taking Care?” were the songs I grew up with. The singers I knew were Ruth Etting and Rudy Vallée and Libby Holman etc.. Ruth and Libby still top my list of favorites. (Another reason I was not a popular teenager in the 1950s.)

Last night when Scott Siegel (who deserves a yearly special Tony Award) was introducing the year 1948, he mentioned it was the year the long playing record was introduced, and it all came flashing back. In 1948 I was nine. For the first time I began to venture out of the kid’s section of the Kennewick public library. I discovered this whole room with current magazines and newspapers that I had never noticed before and as I walked in, there HE was, on the cover of this magazine called Theatre Arts.

OK, maybe he wasn’t on the cover but this very handsome man was smiling at me and if I remember right he was wearing an earring. The neck of his shirt scooped to the right showing a wicked wink of flesh, something I had never seen before on a man. There was a look in his eyes also not all that common among our local men folk. Reading the magazine, I discovered he was Alfred Drake and he was staring on Broadway in a show called Kiss Me, Kate.

In our town in the late forties you bought records in the same appliance store where you bought the phonograph. I knew the lady who ran it, and she would let me play the records. Imagine my joy when a few weeks later I walked in and there HE was again, on the cover of one of those new long playing records. I would come in and play it day after day. No one minded because there was almost no demand for this sort of record in a wheat ranch town. They were there primarily for display. As to when and where I heard “Once in Love with Amy” from Where’s Charley?, I still don’t know. (I don't think a cast album was recorded.)

But I started spending a lot of time in the magazine section of our library. I religiously read Theatre Arts, and religion it was and still is! The only one I ever subscribed to. I also discovered The New Yorker magazine, and my fate was sealed. 1948 was indeed a very good year, one which would forever change the direction of my life. (It was right about then that I became addicted to opera, but that is for another post.)

Broadway by the Year 1948 was wonderful. There was an amazing song that I had never heard before, “Is It Him or Is It Me,” from Alan J. Lerner and Kurt Weill’s Love Life sung by Farah Alvin. Bobby Steggert broke hearts with “Nobody’s Heart But Mine” from As the Girls Go by Harold Adamson and Jimmy McHugh. But the show stopper was (as it always is) Cole Porter’s “Brush Up Your Shakespeare” presented by Jeffry Denman and Bobby Steggert. These two stars from the current hit YANK!, had so many encores I stopped counting at about one hundred. Well, maybe not one hundred, but a lot. I take back what I said about Scott Siegel deserving a yearly special Tony Award. He deserves two yearly.

Love Among the Palms

2010-03-14T12:20:00.003-04:00

I received an email from Arch Brown whose Thorny Theater in Palm Springs just opened a run of my play A Perfect Relationship:

“The Preview and Opening Night were huge successes. Big laughs throughout and the audiences got every nuance of your script. Jim Strait has sucked every little detail out of the actor's performances and brought them front and center. I think you would be thrilled. The Muriel (Linda McGraw) is simply hysterical and the Barry (Marc Wasmund) is a comic wonder ...and very butch. Even I was stunned by the production and its multitude of facets. This is the eleventh production Jim has directed for us and he just gets better and better, as do our actors. Bravo!”

Drum, Drum, Drumming

2010-03-03T12:52:00.004-05:00

Cast of Yank!

I am very proud that some songs from Yank! got their first hearing in Look Askew, a revue that Igor Goldin presented with TOSOS in 2003. There is no point in my writing anything about the show when David Cote says it all.

“They just don’t make old-fashioned musicals anymore, do they? …. Actually, they still do. Yank! is solidly in the Rodgers and Hammerstein tradition. Only difference: it’s about two male soldiers in love. Director Igor Goldin pulls it all together with a fluid staging that even includes a dream ballet. ….Most impressive is the Zellniks’ jazzy, swoony score…. And while the musical conventions are familiar, it’s new to see a retro-style tuner treat this potentially controversial topic with such humor and humanity. Now the season isn’t over yet, but I’d go so far as to say that Yank! could be the best original musical so far. If there’s any justice it will have a life beyond the run at the York Theatre. I’m not asking, I’m telling you: go see Yank!“ - David Cote, NY1

Theatre at St. Peter's Church

Citigroup Center, 619 Lexington Ave (at 54th St)

212-935-5820 - Tickets: $67.50

Fri 8pm , Sat 2:30pm, 8pm , Sun 2:30pm , Tue 7pm Ongoing through Mar 21.

The Belles of Saint Veronica’s

2010-02-25T16:02:00.005-05:00

Charles Busch & Julie Halston

As a birthday present to myself, I bought tickets to Charles Busch’s new show, The Divine Sister. It may be his best ever. At least it felt that way last night. He went back to his downtown roots to revitalize himself and boy did it work. Vital doesn’t come close to describing what I saw. From nun nonsense to Dan Brown to Anastasia to Rosalind Russell shouldering Loretta Young out of the frame, it does not let up for a minute.

At the first sound cue the audience roared with laughter and the decibels built from there. I suspect we may have moved the building on its foundations. Julie Hysterically Funny Halston and the rest of the cast (Alison Fraser, Amy Rutberg, Jennifer Van Dyck & Jonathan Walker) were right up there with Charles, nose to powered nose. No funnier cast is performing in NYC. You could light up the city with all the energy.

I heard a rumor that the run of The Divine Sister is sold out. Should this be true, the solution is simple. You need to use a little initiative and go down to First Avenue and when you see someone about to enter the Theater for the New City, mug them for their tickets. You get to see the show while adding to the ambience of the East Village. Or you can wait for the probability of a move.

In the curtain call Charles spoke about coming back downtown and what it meant to him and his company. At the end of his speech he dedicated the show to playwright Doric Wilson and then wished me happy birthday. There was HUGE sustained applause from an audience who for the most part did not know who the fuck I was. But never have I had a better birthday!

Feinstein’s Fables

2010-02-22T14:05:00.011-05:00

Ayers Rock

And so the cobra and the mongoose sat down to rehearse their upcoming Broadway show when suddenly the grossly garish snake quite without provocation bit the mongoose on the butt for no other reason than the butt was there to be bitten. Whereupon the wee beastie feeling this pricking pain so close to his family treasure proceeded to bash the snake on the head with the Complete American Song Book. Whereupon the director yelled “Stop.” He had been staring wistfully out the window at a marquee being erected across the street proclaiming the arrival of The Addams Family. And so the director with a sigh stared at the murderous menagerie before him and wondered once again why he had let his agent delete the "no animals" clause from his contract.

Of Michael Feinstein, the mongoose, I know little. I think I have heard him sing and play. But if so I remember him as a sort of Uta Lemper, a crinkly carbon facsimile of an actual entertainer. I seem to recall my friend John Wallowitch had some choice if corrosive words that he would sputter at the mere mention of "fingers" Feinstein. I sometimes wonder why Muzak doesn’t sue for copyright infringement. Mr. F’s concept of an elegant piano man is strictly Wal-Mart when placed next to say the Tiffany class of cabaret’s true crown prince, Steve Ross.

Which bring us to the snake. Once again visiting NYC is Australia’s Mount Edna, the traveling version of Ayers Rock, another sacred lump. Billy Blackwell and I first encountered this invasive species Off-Broadway in the early 1970s. He threw wilting gladiolas at an empty house for about a week and then slithered back down under. While he was here he patiently explained to anyone he could corner how straight he is. In fact that was the only time he ever showed any energy, chasing innocent strangers thru the Village, forcing them to look at photos of his wife and kids. It never occurred to me at the time that he would ultimately become the media’s darling.

I deeply and profoundly disdain the Dame. And now the Mountain has once more returned to Manhattan with his new understated and self-effacing show called All About Me. Whatever Michael Feinstein might be guilty of, he does not deserve this hell. I suppose it makes perfect sense that an audience who cheers on the disintegration of actual human beings on Reality TV, is willing suffer sophomoric insults while waiting to be impaled by a gladiola. I only wish someone would borrow the Alaskan Moose lady's shotgun and punctuate this Australian landmark in his heterosexuality!

An Artful Play

2010-02-14T13:49:00.003-05:00

Cast with Chris Weikel (dressed as a grape) in the center

Last night the TOSOS Robert Chesley/Jane Chambers Playwrights Project presented a reading of Chris Weikel's new play Provenance. At the top of the play, a character significantly mentions Rubens, but the play itself is pure Monet - a maze of shimmering colors and incandescent flashes of light. It may be the healthiest and least sentimental gay love story I have ever seen on a stage. (I just heard Weikel’s Penny Penniworth may be coming back in the fall. GO! And then GO AGAIN!!)

Mark Finley directed a perfect cast: Timothy Babcock, Desmond Dutcher, Shay Gines, Lee Kaplan, Leicester Landon, Robert Locke, Catherine Porter and Tim Seib, lead by the wise and heart touching performances of James Nugent and Blake Walton. It is amazing how effortlessly Mark manages to turn readings into ensemble performances. Evenings like this totally validate why I stared TOSOS 30 plus years ago. And Provenance is the best 71st birthday present I could ever hope to receive.

PS - Check out the IT Awards blog for the next week” http://nyitawards.blogspot.com/

Charles Nolte (1923-2010)

2010-01-15T08:31:00.005-05:00

Charles Nolte as Billy Budd (c1950)

Charles Nolte, playwright, director, actor, educator and long time friend of my beloved Jane Lowry, died January 14th in Minneapolis.

“Born 3 November, 1923 in Duluth, MN, Charles Nolte was easily the best-liked professor in the Theatre Department at the University of Minnesota during his many years there from the mid-1960s into the 1990s. He was very approachable, warm-hearted, a good listener and he had succeeded on Broadway. Other professors had only visited Broadway but Chuck Nolte was Billy Budd for one year on the Great White Way which he followed with another long run in The Caine Mutiny Court Martial (1953-55).

His film debut came in War Paint (1953). Other films included The Steel Cage (1954); The Vikings (1958) starring Kirk Douglas, Ernest Borgnine, Janet Leigh, Orson Welles, and Tony Curtis (Here Charles used his muscles, height, blond hair, and Nordic-blue eyes to great advantage.); Ten Seconds to Hell (1959): Under Ten Flags (1960), starring Charles Laughton and Armored Command (1961) starring Howard Keel and the young Burt Reynolds.

Charles spent much of his time doing theater work in Europe. In Rome he appeared with leading lady Katherine Cornell in Under Ten Flags. In Paris he was in Medea with Judith Anderson, Christopher Plummer and Mildred Natwick. On the London Stage he appeared in The Summer People (1961). The time spent in Europe had changed him, however, and when he returned to the States in 1961 he found the theater scene "hopelessly parochial."

Nolte began to write plays, and in 1962 he returned to the University of Minnesota, earning his M.A. in 1963 and his Ph.D. in 1966. At that point the U offered him a sweet contract under which he was required to teach for only six months, leaving the rest of the year free to spend writing, acting and directing.

In 1965 his play, Do Not Pass Go was produced on Broadway and was favorably reviewed in the New York Times. Charles not only wrote but also acted in the two-person play, and with expenses being quite modest, it actually made money.

The University of Minnesota honored Charles in 1997 by naming a theater space within the Rarig Center the Charles Nolte Experimental Theatre.”

[above notes edited from the University of Minnesota Web site.]

In the late 1950s, many men of my generation cherished (so to speak) the photo of Charles as Billy Budd. He is survived by his longtime companion, child actor Terry Kilburn, who ran Meadow Brook Theater (Michigan) for many years. They met in the 1950s when Charles was playing in The Caine Mutiny Court Martial and Terry was in The Teahouse of the August Moon.

I met him only once for about three hours. He was one of the smartest, nicest, most open and generous people I ever met. It is as if I have lost a close old friend.

For his complete acting credits http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0634511/

More Central than Christopher Street

2009-08-30T13:18:00.006-04:00

From Headrack to Claude

I do not remember not knowing Howard Cruse. He has always seemed more central to queer life in NYC than Christopher Street. His art work personifies the gay world from the joyous high of Stonewall to the lower depths of Log Cabin Republicans. Since the very beginning of TOSOS back in 1974, Howard has been our main and most generous supporter, contributing his amazing talent to countless productions, including title graphics for all but three of my major plays. (www.tosos2.org) He has just published a new collection of some of his greatest cartoon strips. I asked David Stern, Webmaster for TOSOS, and a huge fan of Howard’s, to review From Headrack to Claude for my blog site:

David Stern:

I came out over the first collection of Howard Cruse’s Wendel.

It belonged to Yolanda, my oldest friend and one-time girlfriend. I was visiting her in Boston in 1987, the summer after I came out as bisexual at college with the requisite awkward preliminary adventures. I was devouring this book of hers that had caught my eye, a wonderful book of comics whose characters were somehow more real -- no, more possible for me-- than any other gay representation I’d seen before. I hadn’t known how hungry I’d been for a picture of a real gay life—how much I’d been trying to find some sense of who I could be, surrounded as we all were by the old jokes and the new plague. I marked my place in the book without thinking, looked up at Yolanda, and blurted out, “you know, I think I’m actually gay.”

She said, “I know.”

I’ve read a lot more of Howard Cruse’s work since then, and I could say a lot of amateurish things about how much I admire his technique, how the whole space is used but the page never seems crowded. (Could he help me with my apartment?) Nothing is “just background” in his world, not the panels, not the speech balloons. Thoughts become solid; cartoonish characters become startlingly three-dimensional …you’ll just have to see it for yourself.

But what’s stuck with me about his work is what I saw that first time—it’s that he gets our lives right. He gets to what’s important, what we have in common, what we’ve been through in one moment of history or another, however different our stories are. When he’s outraged, he always shows the real and vulnerable minds who feel the outrage. It’s what his work and Doric’s share, an allergy to characters who are just talking points in disguise. Even in a work as emotionally and politically wrenching as Stuck Rubber Baby, Cruse never lets his characters become less than humans you could know, and probably do.

From Headrack to Claude is the latest collection of Cruse’s work, and it’s a wonderful set of mostly self-contained works originally published in anthologies of gay comics, from 1972’s “Gravy on Gay” to his most recent, “My Hypnotist” and “Then There Was Claude.” Some were old friends to me; others, like “Penceworth” and “The Woeful World of Winnie and Walt” were great stylistic surprises and intensely funny and disturbing.

Cruse gives some background for each of the pieces, and his introduction tells his artistic coming-out story, starting with his forbears, and sampling his earliest approaches to gay subjects. Nice to read from the artist who nudged me out.

To purchase From Headrack to Claude: http://www.howardcruse.com/howardsite/aboutbooks/headclaudebook/

In Honor of Loraine Larson

2009-08-25T23:25:00.005-04:00

2009 ATHE Career Achievement in Professional Theatre Award

August 10th, I received the ATHE (Association for Theatre in Higher Education) Career Achievement in Professional Theatre Award. I shared the honor with Judith Malina, the founder of the Living Theater.

Robert Schanke’s introduction:.

Marshall Mason calls him “a pioneer of the alternative theater movement.” Craig Lucas remarks that “Wilson has devoted his life to the once-radical notion that gay lives deserved true representation.” Bud Coleman: “This trailblazer literally changed the trajectory of American Theatre.” Sameer Thakur in India writes "We chose to bring [Doric Wilson’s A Perfect Relationship] to the Indian stage [in 2009] because it is relevant in the context of a litigation at the Delhi high court." The production had an impact. On July 2, New Delhi’s highest court decriminalized homosexuality. I am thrilled to present this award to Doric Wilson for his career achievement in professional theatre.

My acceptance speech:

In Minnesota in the early years of the last century, a young woman named Loraine Larson, enrolled in a University Law School. The dean of the school informed her that no woman would ever graduate from HIS school with a law degree. Four years later after graduating with top honors, she walked back into the dean’s office, tossed her degree on his desk, and walked out. She never did practice law.

In the 1940s in Eastern Washington Miss Larson was stranded by the Chautauqua unit she was performing with - she specialized in Scandinavian monologues. The town she ended up in was a small wheat town called Kennewick. She got a job in the local high school teaching English and Speech and directing the school plays.

My earliest years were spent about thirty miles away from Kennewick on my grandfather’s ranch in the Columbia River Basin. My first theater ventures took place in the barn on the ranch where I staged my younger cousins in plays based mainly on two books I had read. King Arthur and a book about the Vikings. Lots of sword action. I also costumed the productions. I also made and sold the tickets. A penny each. You could almost say I was born for off-off-Broadway.

At the end of World War II, I moved into Kennewick to live with my mother. My father had died in the war. I really didn’t play with the other neighborhood kids so much as organize them into performances and pageants. One Saturday afternoon when my radio programs were over, I was turning the dial and I stumbled upon this strange, wonderful, extremely dramatic singing. And in that instant I became - to avoid the common more derogatory term - an opera enthusiast of regal personage. I even built a model of the Met stage in our garage. I think I learned dramaturgy from Milton Cross.

By 16 I attached myself to the Richland Players, a local amateur theater. I was busy building sets, making costumes, and acting. I was a bad actor. Tall and not necessarily bad looking, and eager, and orange-red haired, but bad. Although near the end of my acting career I did play Valère in Moliere’s Tartuffe opposite the Mariane of Dawn Wells later of “Gilligan’s Island” fame.

I started high school and signed up for the debate team and met Miss Larson. And she did what most of you do, she proceeded to teach me everything I would ever need to know about theater. After High School, she got me into the Drama Department of University of Washington during the last days of Glen Hughes.

I was hardly there a month before there was a bit of a fracas over my one-person demonstration protesting the shootings of gays in a near-by park. (this was 1958) The U was not happy with my political action (the stench of the McCarthy era still lingered) so we agreed I should leave after one semester. It was Miss Larson who convinced my Mom that it would be best for all concerned for me to move to New York City as fast as I could pack.

Had I not been forceably removed from academia, I would not have been in this city the night an actress took me down to a coffee house in the Village to introduce me to Joe Cino. I offered him my play, he politely turned it away, handed me my first cappuccino and asked me my astrological sign. He then gave me a date for the opening night of And He Made a Her. He wouldn’t read the script. My Cino success introduced me to the great producer Richard Barr who in turn introduced me to “uptown” theater. But the more I was around “show biz,” the more I realized it probably was not for me.

Walking along Christopher Street one night I suddenly found myself in the middle of yet another fracas - this one in front of the Stonewall Inn - and the rest, as they say, is the main reason that each year in the last weekend in June many residents of the Village desert this city. I was involved with Circle Rep at the time when it suddenly occurred to me that I could use the Cino experience to combine my talents with my politics. I could focus my life and abilities to promote a theatre dedicated “to an honest and open exploration of the GLBT life experience and cultural sensibility.” (I really do prefer the term Queer) TOSOS - The Other Side of Silence was born. And because of Mark Finley and Barry Childs and a long list of playwrights and actors and directors, TOSOS is now going stronger than ever.

People are forever asking me - rather smugly if not snidely - why there even is a need for gay theater any longer. And I suppose in a way they are right. I mean just think back over this last season on Broadway. All those wonderful lesbian plays. And all the positive depictions of transsexuals. Seems to me there are still a lot of untold stories out there and someone has to make a space for them to be heard.

In the meantime, my least political play, A Perfect Relationship, is a HUGE hit in India where it is being used to promote gay liberation. And Street Theater, my play about Stonewall, is more or less constantly in production somewhere - next month it opens in Wichita almost under the nose of the good Reverend Phelps. Street Theater is also beginning to make inroads into in the collage and university circuit with a very successful recent production at Oregon State University at Corvallis.

And all of this, because Loraine Larson decided not to practice law. And all of this because of all you sitting in this room who also try to teach all you know to someone like me.

It was suggested that we not thank people in our speeches today. I intend to slightly ignore that suggestion. This award belongs to you, all the Larry and Loraines here and everywhere AND I thank you for making me who and what I am.

It’s a Hit

2009-08-18T08:58:00.004-04:00

Top: Elizabeth Whitney; L to R: Katherine Williams, Jacqueline Sydney & Birgit Darby. Photo: Kelly Campbell www.kellycampbellphoto.com

The TOSOS production of Meryl Cohn’s And Sophie Comes Too in the 2009 New York International Fringe Festival sold out all of it’s performances and have been invited to be part of the Fringe Encore series in September. Directed by Mark Finley with Birgit Darby, Lué McWilliams, Karen Stanion, Jacqueline Sydney, Susan Barnes Walker, Elizabeth Whitney and Katherine Williams in the cast, the play was already a hit even before it opened.

Well-observed and Wise

2009-08-07T19:01:00.011-04:00

Seth Numrich (left) and MacLeod Andrews in Slipping

I had intended to post a rave about Daniel Talbott’s Slipping but Erik Haagensen’s review in Back Stage says exactly what I would have said and says it a lot better that I would have:

Plays about dysfunctional families, abusive relationships, or gay youths dealing with their emerging sexuality are rampant, not to mention all those indie films and TV dramas. How do you reinvent such subject matter? Well, in the words of Stephen Sondheim, "Anything you do/Let it come from you/Then it will be new." And that is exactly what Daniel Talbott has done in the well-observed and wise "Slipping."

Set in a suburb of Des Moines in 2006 and also earlier in San Francisco, "Slipping" slips nimbly back and forth in time to follow the emotional trajectory of 17-year-old Eli, who is experiencing a critical mass of psychological damage. The boy's problems include the recent suicide of his beloved father; a troubled, distant relationship with his workaholic mother; a forced relocation from hip Frisco to the vast, unwashed Midwest; an abusive first-time Frisco affair with a closeted, self-hating jock; and a possible Iowa duplication of that affair with another closeted jock. The smart but sensitive Eli can't handle it all and copes by emotional shutdown, turning everything inward at great risk to himself.

None of this is new, yet all of it is compelling due to the specificity of character and emotional complexity of Talbott's script. The bifurcated structure helps enormously; we are only given pieces of the puzzle and must work to put them together. What is particularly gratifying is that when that puzzle fills in, it doesn't feel in any way pat or reductive, just true.

Kirsten Kelly's sharply focused direction guides us confidently, and she even manages to make a virtue out of a debit. "Slipping" is a bit hemmed in by the tiny Rattlestick space; it needs the ability to move away from Eli's suburban bedroom, however nicely realized by designer Lauren Helpern. With no place for that bed and room to go, Kelly is forced to rely on her actors to move set pieces to ch ange locales. They do this resolutely in character, so much so that the scene changes actually tell us more about them, keeping the action hurtling forward when it all too easily could have halted.

The four-person cast is ideal. Adam Driver is scary and heartbreaking as the Frisco jock, who will eventually marry and create his own damaged family. MacLeod Andrews makes the Iowa athlete's journey of self-discovery authentic and surprising. Meg Gibson excels at registering Eli's mother's confusion at her conflicting feelings regarding her son. Best of all is Seth Numrich's troubled teenager. Numrich's emotional transparency provides us intimate access to Eli, and he also convincingly captures the boy's restless physicality. Finally, his subtle differentiation between the 15-year-old and the 17-year-old is extremely effective.

One of the hallmarks of this production is its pitch-perfect use of pop music to underline and reinforce character. Talbott's stage directions specify many of these choices, and Kelly orchestrates them beautifully. They make a great team. All I can say is, "Give us more to see."

Presented by Piece by Piece Productions and Rising Phoenix Repertor y in association with Rattlestick Playwrights Theater at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, 224 Waverly Place, NYC. Aug. 4–15. Mon.–Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 5 and 9 p.m. (No performance Wed., Aug. 5; first performance Sat., Aug. 15, at 6 p.m.) (212)

868-4444 or www.smarttix.com.

Erik Haagensen’s review online: http://www.backstage.com/bso/reviews-ny-theatre-off-off-broadway/ny-review-slipping-1004000045.story

The “Snap” Heard Round the World!

2009-06-13T12:13:00.003-04:00

Sronewall - Larry Morris - 1969

Historian David Carter, author of Stonewall

will discuss myths and facts pertaining to the the Stonewall Riots.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009, 6:00 p.m., Berger Forum

The New York Public Library - Fifth Ave at 42nd Street

The Emergence of Gay Liberation in New York City

Explored in Exhibition at The New York Public Library

1969: The Year of Gay Liberation

on view June 1, 2009 – June 30, 2009

The exhibition features original photographs, pamphlets, police reports, newspapers, and letters. Included are materials relating to activist groups formed between 1969-1970 such as Gay Liberation Front, the Radicalesbians, Gay Activists Alliance, and Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries. Other materials that can be found in the exhibition include a letter to Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller by Jim Owles, President of the Gay Activists Alliance, asking to meet to discuss gay rights. Many of the photographs featured were taken by activist Diana Davies who captures events such as a march by the Gay Liberation Front in Times Square and protests by gay NYU students for equal rights. The exhibition shows that while each activist group fought for gay rights differently, with some more radical than others, they all shared the unified goal of equal treatment in society.

The LGBT collections at The New York Public Library are among the largest and most thorough in the country. The collections include the archives of pioneering LGBT activists, such as Morty Manford, and Barbara Gittings and Kay Tobin Lahusen; the papers of scholars, such as Martin B. Duberman, Jonathan Ned Katz, and Karla Jay; organizational archives of pivotal civil rights groups, such as the Mattachine Society of New York and Gay Activists Alliance; and the papers of LGBT writers, such as W.H. Auden, Virginia Woolf, and Joseph Beam. The Library’s collections also include major archives in the history of the AIDS crisis, extensive holdings in the history of LGBT theater, and the Black Gay and Lesbian Archive.

1969: The Year of Gay Liberation will be on view from June 1, 2009 through June 30, 2009 in the Stokes Gallery (third floor) at The New York Public Library’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, located at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street in Manhattan. An accompanying online version of the exhibition will be launching in June. There will also be a traveling panel exhibition throughout the branches. Exhibition hours are Monday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Tuesday and Wednesday, 11 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.; Thursday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Admission is free. For more information, call 917-ASK-NYPL or, for more information about the Library's LGBT collections and resources,visitlgbt.nypl.org

The Ghost in the Room

2009-06-11T11:56:00.008-04:00

Jack Logan’s poster - TOSOS - 1974

Robert Patrick is high on my list of favorite playwrights. He arrived at the Caffe Cino just I was leaving and it wasn’t until November of 1974 when TOSOS, as it’s second production, presented The Haunted Host, that I met his wonderful, wicked and wise plays. Peter del Valle directed, and Joe Pichette, the Olivier of off-off Broadway, was Jay, the host. Joe had played Frank, the guest, in various productions before, and he was determined to have his way with Jay. His performance indeed haunts me to this day. William M. Hoffman, the playwright, (way back when he was pretty and blond) was the first Frank. The TOSOS Frank was Jeff Morehead (also pretty and blond).

The Haunted Host premiered at the Caffe Cino in 1964. Along with my Now She Dances! (1961), Lanford Wilson’s The Madness of Lady Bright (1964), and Robert Bob Heide’s The Bed (1965), these plays heralded the beginning of a new theatre liberated from self-hate and self-destruction. Modern Queer Theatre had been born. The prevailing stereotypical characters which had amounted to little more than nasty nelly jokes were about to become real people who had to be reckoned with. As was made abundantly clear a few years later at Stonewall

(visit Robert Patrick's Cino pages - link at the right)

TOSOS

Robert Chesley/Jane Chambers Playwright Project

Kathleen Warnock, director

presents

6:30 - Saturday, June 20, 2009

in honor of the 40th Anniversary of Stonewall

Christopher Borg (Penny Penniworth)

& Jesse May (Pig Tale)

in a reading of

Robert Patrick’s historic comedy

The Haunted Host

directed by Mark Finley

admission free - ART/NY - The Mitchell Room, 3rd floor

520 Eighth Avenue (between West 37th & 36th)

SEATING IS LIMITED

Please reserve by email: tosos@nyc.rr.com or calling 212 563-2218

Freedom of Speech

2009-06-07T13:08:00.001-04:00

complements of Robert Patrick

Benton County Harriet Beecher Stowe

2009-05-24T09:51:00.004-04:00

"I talk to my plants"

Tri-City Herald

May 24, 2009

Tri-City native has play making waves in India

by Dori O'Neal

Tri-City native Doric Wilson found his writing niche in New York City a half-century ago.

Though his playwriting has been well received on off-off-Broadway for many years, one of his plays is packing a punch half a world away.

A Perfect Relationship is having a stirring effect on the human rights movement in New Delhi, India, where the production opened about a year ago.

The play focuses on the gay lifestyle, which presents a problem in India. Archaic Indian penal code makes it a crime to engage in homosexual activity, explained the play's director, Sameer Thakur, in an e-mail to the Herald this week.

"We chose to bring this play to the Indian stage, especially at this time, because it is relevant in the context of a litigation at the Delhi high court against section 377 of the Indian penal code," he said.

In addition, the gay rights movement in India has picked up momentum over the last few years, he added.

"We had our first gay pride in Delhi last year and the second one is scheduled for June 29," Thakur said. "There have been other plays and even Bollywood films with gay characters in them. However, most portrayals of gay persons have been stereotyped, comic roles that the audience has always laughed at rather than Mr. Wilson's play that provided us with the opportunity to portray people with whom urban, educated audiences in Delhi could identify with."

Wilson is thrilled his play has found a new audience in India.

"It is humbling to realize that a 10-year-old kid who organized his first plays with his cousins in a barn on his grandfather's Plymouth ranch 60 years later would have a script that is actually affecting human rights in a country halfway around the planet," Wilson told the Herald on Thursday.

Wilson couldn't resist making this humorous comparison: "Makes me sort of a Benton County Harriet Beecher Stowe."

Wilson has become a staple in New York City theater, having several of his plays performed in the off-off-Broadway district. He's also the co-founder of the theater group The Other Side of Silence, known more commonly as TOSOS.

He was honored last year by New York's theater community with the 2007 Innovative Theater Award for Artistic Achievement.

Wilson said A Perfect Relationship is one of his least political plays.

"It's about relationships," he said. "But it seems relationships between same genders turns out to be the most political of all! How empty people's lives must be for them to waste so much of their time on this planet hating other people.

"I know my mom and my old Kennewick High teacher, Miss Larson (who was the inspiration behind Wilson's writing career), would be proud," Wilson said.

Thakur couldn't be happier with the success of Wilson's play and it's impact on Indian theatergoers.

"The audiences come away with having enjoyed a comedy in which the characters happen to be gay," Thakur said.

The largely heterosexual audiences don't appear to feel disconnected to the play's characters despite their lifestyle differences, he added.

Most importantly, the director and Wilson are hoping to hear good news in the near future from India's high court regarding the outdated penal code.

"We are hoping to hear a favorable verdict from the high court to abolish the old law," Thakur said. "In the meantime, the theater is full, and the audiences are roaring for more. For us it's a personal satisfaction of speaking our minds in the best way we can.

STONEWALL + 40

2009-05-20T10:36:00.007-04:00

It seems unreal that Stonewall was forty years ago. Sometimes it seems like it’s been 100 years, sometimes only last week. I wonder if I will be around for the fiftieth anniversary. My remaining days seem to be numbered like the grains of sand in a goldfish bowl.

For the past few months I have been interviewed by everyone from a straight clueless kid from the BBC to a very smart and prepared Ronnie (“Make Me a Supermodel”) Kroell for his new “Straight Talk” program. I’ve been filmed for a documentary on Stonewall being prepared for “The American Experience” with a planned airing on PBS in April 2010, and featured in a David Carter article in the June/July issue of The Advocate with a great photo by Shen Wei (see the post for April 10th below). “In the Life” is even presenting a dialogue between literary giant Edmund White and me this August on PBS. (And you thought the Museum of Natural History had a lock on the dinosaur market!)

And the more I get interviewed, the less I know where we are at. A few years back I lost all hope for the future of the two movements I more or less dedicated my life to, alternative theater and the queer community. Both were reeling from burnout and AIDS and the intramural sniping of political correctness. But suddenly I started meeting theater people like Mark Finley and Barry Childs and Kathleen Warnock and Chris Weikel and Shay Gines and Jonathan Reuning and Frank Kuzler and Jamie Heinlein and Mark Waren and Christopher Borg and the list goes on and on. And I know there is indeed a new generation more than willing and able to grab the torch and carry it high. With people like Ronnie Kroell, writer Kirk Reed (How I Learned to Snap), photographer Shen Wei, the same seems to be happening for the GLBT family.

I also discovered something important about Stonewall. For years I have heard people describe the event as angry and I suppose in a way it was. But that was not the main emotion I remember experiencing that night. I could never seem to find the right words. While filming the “American Experience” documentary it suddenly came clear to me. The first reaction that night was shock and then awe that we were coming out of the “twilight” and actually standing up to authority—fighting back. And what followed was a giddy and joyous glee. And somehow we knew nothing would ever be quite the same again.

Modern gay theater has an earlier natal day. Playwright Robert Patrick dates it to the Caffe Cino in 1961 and my play on the trial of Oscar Wilde, Now She Dances! This was quickly followed by wonderful plays by Lanford Wilson (The Madness of Lady Bright) and David Starkweather (The Straights of Magellan) and Robert Heide (The Bed) and William M. Hoffman (Good Night, I Love You) and Robert Patrick (The Haunted Host) This list also goes on and on.

This June I have three plays in production and an appearance pending (details below):

June 5 thru 28 - Fri & Sat at 8 pm, Sun at 2 pm

2009-05-20T10:11:00.009-04:00

Arch Brown is a true GLBT cultural hero. As film maker, playwright, producer, and director he has spent almost as many years promoting gay theater as I have.

Doric Wilson’s

Forever After

Presented by The Arch & Bruce Brown Foundation, Arch Brown, producer, directed by Jim Strait, with Kyle Bradford, Terry Huber, Philip Sebastian Petrie and Tedd Zzenia on a double bill with Robert Askins’s Clean Living. The Thorny Theater, 2500 N. Palm Canyon Dr., Palm Springs, CA. Tickets: $18, reservations: (760) 325-0853.

October 8 thru 10 - Thur, Fri & Sat at 8 pm

2009-05-20T10:06:00.007-04:00

What a nice gift for Rev. Phelps. A new gay theater right there in his own back yard. I can hardly wait till he meets Boom Boom and Ceil! The production has been moved to October to coincide with National Coming Out Day.

Doric Wilson’s

Street Theater

Presented by Stonewall Players of Wichita; Travis M. Hooper, producer, directed by Dale Jones, with Doug Clark, Sean Clark, Justin France, Travis M. Hooper, Terri Ingram, Randy Irvin, Garrett Jeter, Dale Jones, Zach Lattimore, Vivianno Leggaretto, Rebecca Sibolic, Phil Speary & Micheal Tribue. Metropolitan Community Church, 156 North Kansas, Wichita Kansas. For information call (316) 992-7025 or email @ stonewallplayers@yahoo.com Tickets: $12 ($10.00 for groups of 10 or more), reservations 316-992-7025. All proceeds to be donated to Positive Directions Inc.

June 18-July 10, 2009 - Thur & Fri at 8 pm

2009-05-20T05:56:00.015-04:00

Ever since AK Miller read A Perfect Relationship more than ten years ago, he has tried to get a production of the play going in Chicago. He wanted the role of Barry, time passed and he has aged—like a very fine wine—into the lead role of Ward. He should be amazing in the part. If you live near Chicago, I am planning to attend the performces of June 25th and 26th, stop by and say hello.

Doric Wilson’s

A Perfect Relationship

Presented by The People's Theater of Chicago with MidTangent Productions, directed by Tony Lewis, with Thad Anzur (Greg), Andrew Kain Miller (Ward), Alex Polcyn (Barry), Partirick Serraro (Hank/Tom/Richard) and Bonnie Varner (Muriel). The Leather Archives Museum, 6418 N. Greenview Avenue, Chicago. Tickets: $10 available at the door.

A Perfect Relationship

continues to be somewhat of a huge hit in New Delhi. It seems to be one of the first “gay plays” to be presented in India. The production travels around to different locations in the city playing mainly to straights. To be out gay risks a ten year prison sentence. (See below)

I just received an email from Sameer Thakur about an upcoming perfroamce: “This is for the benefit of students who come to the American Center library. Around 300 young people will get to see the play. It is part of our campaign against Article 377 of the Indian Penal Code, a draconian law that makes any sexual act against the order of nature liable for imprisonment up to 10 years. We want sexual rights to be in the order of fundamental human rights. Just the fact that we are being invited by the American embassy is a big deal here."

Talk about a Stonewall + 40 moment! They wanted to bring me over, but I declined. I suspect India has a plethora of sacred white elephants. They certainly don’t need another.

A Perfect Relationship is being presented by Cathaayatra & the American Center, New Delhi on Friday & Saturday, June 12 & 13 at 6:30 pm at the American Center, 24, Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi 110001. Entry by invite available from 1st June 2009). Directed and designed by Sameer Thakur, with the following cast, Sukhesh Arora, Ajay Govind, Shiv Narayanan, Arushi Singh & Ranjan Sundaram.

contact Sameer Thakur at cathaayatra@gmail.com

Francine Trevens, another true GLBT cultural hero, also can give Job a run for his money when it comes to patience. She has survived me in full infantile rage with nothing but a smile on her face. She should have stuffed me in a burlap bag and tossed me into the Hudson. There is a long list of people who would have applauded!

STONEWALL + 40

including a scene from Street Theater

6 PM on June 18, Thursday

The art, passion, and soul of the GLBT Movement, in literature and performance, from books by members of The Greater New York Independent Publishers Association, directed by Francine L. Trevens, produced by Perry Brass, with Rhonda Ayers, Norman Beim, Perry Brass, Robert W. Cabell, John Finch, Steven Hauck, Fred Milani, Jeanne Pearson, Alyssa Robbins, Francine L. Trevens, Kay Williams, and special guest, Doric Wilson. Barnes and Noble Bookstore Lincoln Triangle, 1972 Broadway, NYC (212) 595 6859. Free, first come first seated.

For the best history of Stonewall, read

David Carter’s Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution

($10.85 on Amazon)

For an excellent overview of Stonewall:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_riots

2009-04-10T11:06:00.006-04:00

photo by Shen Wei - NYC - 9 April 2009

face by William T. Long, M.D.

The Advocate is doing a special article for the 40th Anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in their June/July issue. As I am a vet of all three nights I am to be featured in the article so they sent a photographer (Shen Wei) to take some photographs. We wandered around Hell's Kitchen (my neighborhood) with him taking photographs and then came back to my apartment on Ninth Avenue.

My Mom used to keep a crystal in her kitchen window. When she died, I took the crystal which is now hanging in my front window and in the late afternoon the sun shines through it making rainbows. It always reminds me of her.

As Shen and I were drinking diet-Coke (I am an addict!) he suddenly grabbed his camera and moved right up on me—inches from my face—and began snapping away in a frenzy. The photo above was the result.

Shen Wei emigrated from China and is primarily an art photographer. Here is his Web site: http://www.shenphoto.com/index.html

Three Score and Ten

2009-02-24T16:20:00.006-05:00

My father and me - L.A. - 1939

I was born in Los Angeles on February 24, 1939. My Dad was working temporally in the city, my mom took the train down from Seattle to visit him. I unexpectedly decided to join them. In the back of a taxi cab. I am told dad jumped out of the cab and made it into a nearby bar as fast as he could as mom made it to French Hospital barely in the nick of time. Dad made up for his cowardly departure. According to family legend, from that point onward until he died in 1943, whenever he was near me, dad had me in his arms. Mom said it was almost impossible to get me out of his arms, even to put me to bed. She would wake up at night, to discover she was in bed alone. She would find my father asleep in a chair in the nursery, with me asleep in his arms.

My father died of a heart attack as a captain in the Army Corps of Engineers on Wednesday, May 5th, 1943, the night before he was to ship out to the African Campaign of World War II. The "heart attack" is a long story, better told at a later time. I never really knew the date he died until I had my heart attack Wednesday, May 5th, 1993 and a cousin of mine pointed out the coincidence of the day and the date. Seems dad had some message for me from the beyond and couldn’t be bother knocking on a table. It also seems I had inherited from him the heart condition.

Tonight I go to Zuni’s where 50 plus of my family of friends will be waiting for me. I am very lucky. Perhaps that was the gist of my dad’s message.

Relationships from Chicago to New Delhi

2009-02-03T14:25:00.006-05:00

Ward and Barry in India

Thirty years ago when I wrote A Perfect Relationship, I had two main objectives in mind. First, to preserve a record of the first decade of liberation and the difficulties the male ego presents when a man loves a man. I also hoped that the humor of the play would disarm some small bit of the bigotry that we even now all encounter. Comedy unites. Or so I have been told.

But I had another sort of secret agenda. While I wanted to capture in amber queer NYC in the late 1970s, I also wanted the script to have an extended shelf life. Mark Finley’s flawless revival of A Perfect Relationship here in the city in April 2003 proved the play still has legs, as they say. (http://www.tosos2.org/Perfect.htm ) It also showcased some of the best performances I have ever seen in a play of mine.

Eileen T’Kaye, who picked me up at a burrito stand on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood in the late 1980s, flew East to play a memorable Muriel. Christopher Borg, the single most versatile actor I have ever seen, played Tom, Dick and Harry. (He is waiting for me to make a nasty dig, but I’m not gonna.) As for Barry, one of my all time favorite character inventions, I have been lucky enough to see two actors give definitive performances: the late Adam Caparell back in the 1970s, and Kevin Held in this production. I suspect Kevin would excel in any role in any play I could ever write.

The 2003 TOSOS revival of A Perfect Relationship opened the same night Bush threw his temper-tantrum in Iraq. His war got the audience. There have been other recent productions, including the 2008 Gay and Lesbian Theatre Festival in Colorado Springs; William Prater’s production initiating the Black Box Theater in Nashville; and a reading last fall presented by the People’s Theater of Chicago as part of their Legacy Project (http://www.peoplestheaterchicago.org/# ). I watched a DVD of the reading and could not be happier with the cast. (See AK Miller’s reports from Chicago below)

I have just received news that the Chicago reading has developed into a full production of A Perfect Relationship, planned to open June 18 and play Thursdays and Fridays until July 10. Co-produced by People’s Theater and the Leather Archives & Museum, it will be performed in the Etienne Auditorium at the Archive located at 6481 Greenview Avenue, Chicago, IL. (http://www.leatherarchives.org/ ). If I can find a packing crate large enough, I intend to ship myself out to see it. (The last time I was around the leather scene in Chicago was way back in the days of the Gold Coast!)

Of all my plays, A Perfect Relationship, is the most site specific. It is clearly set on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village in the late 1970s. Or it was until about four years ago when Sameer Thakur contacted me via the Internet. He asked my permission to relocate the play to New Delhi. What little I know about Indian culture made me more than a mite doubtful. But, hey, I always say my plays belong to the community they were written for, so I gave my permission. And actually sort of forgot about it. After all, it wasn’t possible, was it? Or was it?

Earlier this year, Cathaayatra (I am told "cathaa yatra" means "journey of stories" in Hindi) presented A Perfect Relationship in New Delhi, hoping the localization would broaden the Indian view of alternative sexuality. Seems it worked and the production directed by Sameer Thakur (Sukhesh Arora, Zain Bhana, Arushi Singh, Shiv Narayanan and Vikrant Yadav in the cast) has proven to be a huge hit. (review links below). As I understand it, they perform the play when and where they can. I am told the audience in New Delhi finds my play very funny. I doubt they realize their laugher reaches all the way from India to New York City where it gives me a very warm feeling on a cold winter night.

This is why I write the plays I write. (And I suspect Marge would be very pleased.)

Reviews for the Indian production:

Press: http://www.hindu.com/fr/2008/10/03/stories/2008100350060200.htm ;
TV report: http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=37713516

I have never been prouder

2008-12-20T00:03:00.006-05:00

Actor wins part by a nose - Photo by Matt Cohen.

The late gay theater pioneer Terry Helbing holds the all-time record for conflict of interest. Not only was he the agent for my play Street Theater, he published it under his imprint of JH Press, produced it at the Mineshaft through his theater company Meridian, acted as one of the political activists in it, and was highly insulted when the gay newspaper he wrote for refused to allow him to review it. Today I am determined to challenge this record.

When I started TOSOS (The Other Side of Silence) in 1974, it was dedicated to "an honest and open exploration of the life experience and cultural sensibility of the GLBT community and to preserving and promoting our literary past in a determined effort to keep our theatrical heritage alive." At the time this was not all that easy. The new plays simply weren’t there. There were sad "coming out plays" and funny "coming out plays" and earnest "coming out plays"— and none were very entertaining. Marshall Mason once described them as "very very soft porn." We had to concentrate mostly on revivals.

Since Mark Finley, Barry Childs and I resurrected the company in 2000, it has been a different story. We have presented a long list of wonderful new scripts: Chris Weikel’s Penny Penniworth; Kathleen Warnock’s Rock The Line, Mark Finley’s adaptation of Young Stowaways in Space, Robert Patrick’s Hollywood at Sunset, David Bell’s Bernadette and the Butcher of Broadway to name but a few. Two of our company playwrights are well-deserved recipients of the Robert Chesley Award for Emerging Gay Playwrights, Kathleen Warnock in 2006 and Chris Weikel in 2007.

Which brings us to the TOSOS production of Chris Weikel’s Pig Tale directed by Mark Finley at Wings Theatre. Last week, walking past a book rack, I noticed a paperback blazoned with review quotes: "Fabulous," "Enthralling," "Captivating," "Novel and Surprising" — which more or less sums up my feelings about Pig Tale. It is an impossible premise, made totally believably by Chris Weikel. It has joy and wisdom and laughter and tears and an ending that...well, that you just will have to experience for yourself. As for the plot, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. (Check out the review quotes below.)

Mark Finley’s direction, as usual, makes the complex seem so easy and simple. Tina Howe (the play’s fairy godmother) nailed it when she described Mark’s work as stylish but at the same time real. Mark’s ability to seamlessly mix these two supposedly incompatible elements is why no one else will ever direct the NYC production of any of my plays. With essentially no budget, Mark and the designers have made a small miracle. (Thank you Ray Klausen, Liza has no idea how lucky she is.)

The cast could not be better. Patrick Porter is a romantic leading man right out of the films of the 1930s-1940s. He will steal your heart as he slowly transforms from self-centeredness into the caring lover of the final curtain. But when it comes to transformations, Jesse May wins the Golden Carrot. He spends the play giving a porcine performance with charm enough to challenge the best of the Disney barnyard. Tim Dietrich slipped in under the wire to win the role away from about 30 other very good actors. He takes a pot high to an even higher new high with unerring comic instinct! Moe Bertran (forever Auntie Mayhem) plays a whole parade of characters, lead off by the sweet and demure and splendid Mother Truth.

Which brings us to the person I always consider essential to a successful production. Back when I still directed, Billy Blackwell was my stage manager. He anticipated what I wanted before I even knew I wanted it. He died and I stopped directing. Jennifer Marie Russo is an even better stage manager. Perhaps the best I have ever encountered. To read her daily notes to the company is to know the true purpose of poetry! Her cheery demeanor and technical competence has guided this production through unreliable lights, bleeding actors and flying feet.

Pig Tale was first performed as a reading earlier this year as part of the TOSOS Robert Chesley/Jane Chambers Playwright Project. I have never particularly liked readings, I tend to hopefully count the remaining pages. But thanks to Kathleen Warnock and Mark Finley (and the Dramatists Guild Fund), this year’s Chesley/Chambers series provided some of the most exciting theater I have seen in years. The roles that Patrick Porter and Tim Dietrich now play, were read by TOSOS company members Steven (Confessions of a Mormon Boy) Fales and Kevin (America’s oldest living juvenile) Held. Both were wonderful but ultimately not available.

Finally, I personally would like to thank Jeffery Corrick and the people of Wings for inviting TOSOS to participate in their Gay Play Series. They have been very generous with their help. But there are dark clouds ahead for them. After twenty-two years of presenting new plays and musicals by American writers and composers, they are in danger of being forced out of their space. One more OOB venue might bite the dust. It would be wonderful if the GLBT community would rally round to save this important institution, but having dedicated fifty years to this community, I tend to suspect it is very unlikely.

It is not a conflict of interest to say that Pig Tale is what TOSOS is all about. What TOSOS was in fact created for. And that answers the question I get almost daily since I first started TOSOS. This is why there needs to be "gay theater." I doubt Pig Tale could have been presented with any more honesty and integrity than TOSOS has provided. The people and events and productions of TOSOS are why I do what I do. They are in fact what I am all about. Mark Finley’s production of Chris Weikel’s Pig Tale and the TOSOS family and friends validates me. And my life. And like I say at the top of this post, I have never been prouder.

NY Blade’s Top 10 - 2008 / NY Theatre.com "Pick of the Week"

Quotes from the reviews:

"Let's face it: Men are pigs - and frankly, some of us have dated more than our fair share of oinkers. But none of us has been as bad off as poor Johnny Lovejoy when his long-term trick, Dave, transforms into an honest-to-goodness pig in Chris Weikel's charming queer confection Pig Tale; an Urban Faerie Story. Whether it's the snout or Dave's unseemly habit of rooting through the garbage, one fact is clear: The boy is swine....With witty banter, Weikel turns the notion of happily ever after on its well-worn head, injecting camp and fetish gags (furries, anyone?) into Pig Tale's fractured fairy-tale format....Weikel creates an engaging metaphor for modern relationships as Dave transforms from sexual object into human romantic partner." Paul Menard, Back Stage

"Pig Tale...is a very smart, witty, and funny play...Chris Weikel wrote a really sweet and honest play. His characters are fully developed and engaging. The story is also refreshing and it doesn't fall into the clichés that gay-themed often do. Mark Finley has done a stellar job directing this piece. The staging feels very organic. I also thought that the set was really great. Ray Klausen has a great eye for detail...Patrick Porter is terrific as Johnny...Jesse May is amazing as Dave...Tim Dietrich is hysterical as Kyle...Moe Bertran is extremely entertaining in his many parts...(Pig Tale)...is definitely worth the trip to the Wings Theater to see." Roger Nasser, nytheatre.com (http://www.nytheatre.com/)

"...Weikel subtitles his work "an Urban Faerie Story." Call it a sweet love story, as well, which deserves a place beside such seasonal fantasies as Hansel and Gretel and The Nutcracker...Pig Tale will warm your heart." - Bruce-Michael Gelbert - Q OnStage.com (http://www.qonstage.com/)

[Wings Theatre Company presents the TOSOS production of Chris Weikel’s Pig Tale, directed by Mark Finley. Playing December 5 to January 3; Mon-Thur-Fri-Sat at 8 pm, Sun at 3:30 pm (No performances Christmas Day or New Year's Day) at Wings Theatre, 154 Christopher Street in the Archive Building. Tickets: $20 (students & seniors: $16). Reservations: 212-627-2961.]

Marriage between brother and sister

2008-11-24T10:35:00.011-05:00

Medieval Christian wedding feast

(Notice groom on horseback chasing bride with dogs.)

Adulterer Newt Gingrich on religious values
and the reply of his sister Candace

followed by a few innocent suggestions by me

"I think there is a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us, is prepared to use violence, to use harassment. I think it is prepared to use the government if it can get control of it. I think that it is a very dangerous threat to anybody who believes in traditional religion.

And I think if you believe in historic Christianity, you have to confront the fact. And for that matter, if you believe in the historic version of Islam or the historic version of Judaism, you have to confront the reality that these secular extremists are determined to impose on you acceptance of a series of values that are antithetical, they're the opposite, of what you're taught in Sunday school." — Newt Gingrich

"Dear Newt,

I recently had the displeasure of watching you bash the protesters of the Prop 8 marriage ban to Bill O'Reilly on FOX News. I must say, after years of watching you build your career by stirring up the fears and prejudices of the far right, I feel compelled to use the words of your idol, Ronald Reagan, 'There you go, again.'

However, I realize that you may have been a little preoccupied lately with planning your resurrection as the savior of your party, so I thought I would fill you in on a few important developments you might have overlooked. The truth is that you're living in a world that no longer exists. I, along with millions of Americans, clearly see the world the way it as—and we embrace what it can be. You, on the other hand, seem incapable of looking for new ideas or moving beyond what worked in the past.

This is a movement of the people that you most fear. It's a movement of progress — and your words on FOX News only show how truly desperate you are to maintain control of a world that is changing before your very eyes.

Then again, we've seen these tactics before. We know how much the right likes to play political and cultural hardball, and then turn around and accuse us of lashing out first. You give a pass to a
religious group — one that looks down upon minorities and women — when they use their money and membership roles to roll back the rights of others, and then you label us 'fascists' when we fight back. You belittle the relationships of gay and lesbian couples, and yet somehow neglect to explain who anointed you the protector of 'traditional' marriage. And, of course, you've also mastered taking the foolish actions of a few people and then indicting an entire population based on those mistakes. I fail to see how any of these patterns coincide with the values of 'historic Christianity' you claim to champion.

Again, nothing new here. This is just more of the blatant hypocrisy we're used to hearing. What really worries me is that you are always willing to use LGBT Americans as political weapons to further your ambitions. That's really so '90s, Newt. In this day and age, it's embarrassing to watch you talk like that. You should be more afraid of the new political climate in America, because, there is no place for you in it. In other words, stop being a hater, big bro." — Candace Gingrich

[Doric Wilson: It occurs to me that the Christian right may in fact be right. That the whole institution of marriage is indeed under attack. I suggest a few steps to bolster and defend it:

Divorce must instantly be prohibited. Divorced couples who remain single must be forced by law to return to their prior cohabitation. Divorced couples who have made other "adulterous" marriages must be removed from their so-called "new" families and reunited with their original spouse. By force if necessary. And this only after a sensible period of confinement as punishment for displaying such a fascistic disrespect for the sanctity of matrimony—say two years.

Children from such unholy unions should be declared "inauthentic" (along with those who actually are little bastards) and must be housed in special institutions where they can be segregated from spiritually healthy society for the rest of their lives. Any person contemplating, let alone committing, either adultery or pre-marital sex should face a mandatory 20-year minimum prison sentence, no parole. Chemical castration might be considered.

People with a history of multiple marriages and numerous affairs should have their employment opportunities seriously restricted. We would not want them teaching impressionable young children. (They could be used to staff the Institutes of Illegitimacy) And should same-sex-marriage somehow become the law of the land, gay couples must face up to exactly the same regulations. If you want it bad enough, you must be willing to pay for it.

Not only will my suggestions strengthen the American family, just think of the effect on our economy. All the Prisons of Impurity to be built and maintained. All the investigators that will be needed to enforce the anti-adultery provisions. All the staff required to detain millions upon millions of illegally conceived children. We may even have to consider importing a foreign work force. And with marriage back on safe and sacred grounds, we should then take a long close penetrating look at pornography.]

[TOSOS member David Stern adds: There must be retroactive fines for parents of children who divorce for failing to set a proper example, plus late and non-marriage penalties (as per the Emperor Augustus's laws against bachelors). Since the institution of marriage is now to be considered to have rights in and of itself, any media that tends to denigrate or undermine the institution should be sued for libel by the state, with special fines for "hapless husband" comedies and imprisonment for "fulfilled singles" dramas. Playwrights who write about alternative lifestyles that do not conclude with an epilogue at the gates of hell are to be publicly impaled.]

And for your viewing pleasure: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=aPSfjReeC_k

Art for the artist’s sake

2008-11-21T17:29:00.006-05:00

Richard Taddei, self-portrait - 1996

My roommate back in the 1960, the composer Walter Torgerson (1940-1986), introduced me to Richard Taddei in the fall of 1967. For years Richard has been central to the gay art community. His paintings have been in countless group and one-person shows and he is widely collected (http://www.richardtaddei.com/) . He is a design consultant for TOSOS, providing the graphic for Mark Finley’s The Mermaid. He is also a member of our honorary board.

Recently a montage of his paintings has been posted on youtube: www.youtube.com/user/RichardTaddei . Accompanied by Leslie Ritter singing "When The Night Spills" (click "more info" for lyrics and how to purchase CDs). This is a beautiful introduction to Richard’s work. (remember to click "high quality" to fill the screen)

Always the bridesmaid, never the bride

2008-11-19T17:29:00.014-05:00

(Mom and me - Gay Pride March - NYC - 1974)

The two rallies last week in Manhattan in support of same sex marriage were both much larger than anyone anticipated. Wednesday night so many people gathered in front of the Mormon temple at Lincoln Center, they quickly overran the area set aside by the NYPD, forcing the cops to turn the event into an impromptu parade down Broadway to Columbus Circle. Steven (Confessions of a Mormon Boy) Fales described it as "beautiful men with creative posters." Susan* (my favorite Isolde) kept bumping into Whoopi Goldberg.

I joined pal Susan on Saturday afternoon at City Hall Park. This was a coordinated event, with similar rallies planned at the same time in cities all over the country. Here in NYC the rain had been pouring down all morning, but just as the rally started, the sun came shining through in a show of support. (Exactly as it did almost forty years ago when the first Gay Pride march stepped away from the relative safety of Christopher Street in the Village to proclaim ourselves out and proud to midtown Manhattan.) Again the crowd was far too large to be contained and the cops spent most of the afternoon moving the barriers to make room for more and more and even more people.

As to how many people were actually there, who knows. I have spent far too many years in too many under- and over-counted demonstrations to pay much attention to official numbers. Just say it was a very large crowd. It was young and old, and male and female (and all gender gradations in between), black and white and tan and yellow and pink (and perhaps even a purple)—a true rainbow coalition. And committed like I have not seen since the early 1970s. There may be a new movement afoot. The more or less perfunctory coverage the New York Times gave to the rallies is ultimately the proof of the importance of this day.

Starting in the late 1950s I spent a lot of my life marching and chanting: Ban-the-Bomb, Civil Rights, anti-Vietnam, the Women’s Movement, and ultimately, Gay Rights. As the infighting of political correctness in the late 1970s began to pollute the politics of liberation, I decided to drop out from dropping out. I stopped marching and chanting. Except for the Matthew Shepard vigils, it had been a lot of years since I joined the "madding crowd." Instead I decided to concentrate on what I do best, so I formed TOSOS and dedicated my career to queer theater.

But when Susan and I arrived at City Hall Park, a weird thing happened to me. I was suddenly no longer in the here and now. Suddenly I was surrounded by the ghosts of other times and other demonstrations. Billy Blackwell, Jim Owles, Mama Jean, Miss Martha Johnson, Bob Kohler, Morty Manford, Rollerna, Vito Russo, Jerry West, Waylan Flowers, Jack Logan, David Vangan (and Coco, the chimp), Ruth Truth, Jerry Fitzpatrick, Nancy from the One Potato, Rex and Sy and Tom Ross from the Roadhouse, Ty from Ty’s, Lou Thomas from Colt—the list is endless. Not all dead, but they were of another time come back, it seemed, to haunt me. And at my age it is not nice to find yourself up to your neck in ectoplasm.

To quote from my new play, "gay history is last week, but only if it’s longer than 7 inches." These were some of our true heroes, and for the most part they remain either forgotten or as footnotes. I haven’t felt so very alone in a long time. Nor so sad. Nor so out of it. Later that night after a reading at TOSOS, I was asked if I planned to write about the rally. I answered that I was still too spooked so to speak to write. That these manifestations seemed to be all about loss and friends and times long gone. Someone suggested I was looking at it all the wrong way. And I suddenly realized they were right. I had not gone back to the past, but the past had indeed come forward to join and support us.

And indeed there was that sort of feeling in the air. And for all the seriousness of the situation, there was a certain joy and a new sense of hope. And a new belief in the ability to effect change. Amazing what can happen when you elect an intelligent and caring man as your president. The two guys in front of me stood with their arms around each other’s shoulders, the ease of their affection impossible when I was their age. They seemed somehow so certain of the future. Next to Susan stood two young women with a wonderful dog and an obvious and equal commitment to each other and determination to move forward.

I have to admit when it comes to "gay marriage," I personally am a lot less than convinced. The atheist in me is very suspicions of religious "sacraments." The French (thanks to the Napoleonic Code) have a much better system. All contracts between couples are first and foremost civil. After you are joined together by an appointed official, you are more than free to find some church to bless you union should you want (and assuming the fun-loving Christians don’t toss you butt first out the door). The right to be a family should not depend on some primitive ceremony designed by a patriarchal society primarily to protect a husband’s control over the property, life, and very body of his wife. If civil unions do not cover all the necessary issues, then laws should be expanded to make them do so.

But matrimony is really not the main issue here. The passage of Prop 8 puts a spotlight on two far more important principles: the separation of Church and State and the idea that the majority can vote to limit the freedom of any minorities it finds distasteful. People should really watch out what they wish for. Majorities change. If Mormon fecundity procreates a population explosion, are Catholics really safe? Will the huge broods of full- and half- and out-of-wedlock born-again Evangelists multiply in sufficient numbers threaten to abort the very advance of science? When Hispanics become the majority, will they vote to replace Thanksgiving turkeys with tacos? (Actually, I’d vote for that!) There have been complaints about the tenor and bitterness of the demonstrations. Seems we should all go sit quietly at the back of the bus. Some people just don’t seem to get it. How polite and patient will our detractors be when their lives and families are threatened? (As I recall the election sparked a run on gun sales)

I have always suspected the real reason that separation of Church and State made it into our constitution was the keep the government from curbing the excesses of organized religion. God has always been big business in this country. And oversight and regulation is anathema to corporate entities however holy. As has been recently proven, the golden rule is "keep your eyes on the Good Book and out of my account books." The tax-exempt shearing of the faithful sheep has been funding political subversion and bigotry for more than a century. Sure wish Henry VIII would come back and dissolve our religious cartels. Think of all that money actually going to some good or useful cause, instead of wasted on eye liner, or a room in some warm sheet motel, or for theme parks that make the Flintstones seem downright educational. If we don’t watch them guys, we will be living on a flat earth again. And paying for it with our taxes!

One thing is for certain. Thanks to the Internet (the most important technical advance since the Gutenberg bible) the word is out. The times indeed are a’changin’. The recent election and the rapid way the Prop 8 rallies were organized proves the fat lady has yet to sing! And when she does, you will hear her loud and clear on youtube. Were I younger, I might seriously consider giving up playwriting in favor of becoming a gay divorce lawyer, all the Sturm und Drang of drama but a lot more lucrative. In fact gay divorce lawyer will probably replace hair dresser as the standard gay stereotype. As my friend David Stern says, "we should listen to the Mormons: marriage is a sacred institution between a man and several early adolescents."

Guess maybe I am not so alone after all. In fact what with the past and the present, and new friends and old, my days are pretty full.

(*not to be confused with the other Susan who is much much older and legally prevented from singing)

Speaking of youtube: some random rally site: Chicago (courtesy of AK Miller) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMEpCiC01pQ and Charleston, S.C. (courtesy of Kathleen Warnock) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byHvA-E_N2I

The Gay National Holiday

2008-11-01T12:57:00.006-04:00

Halloween used to be my favorite holiday. My first Halloween in this city I won a prize as the "Red Shoes" - don't ask - at a "come as a film title" party thrown by Howard Richardson (one of the playwrights of Dark of the Moon). It was my first and last time in drag - and it was gender-fuck far before its time!

My Latino upstairs neighbors are not the hot and sexy "Jonathan Cedano" types. They are short, round, and heavy of foot (and very loud of mouth!) Living under them is the punishment I suppose I deserve for my obscenely low rent.

And last night in honor of the Gay National Holiday they were even heavier of foot and in high heels. As were the thirty or so friends they brought home with them after the Village Halloween parade. At 5 this morning they rang my bell to get in the building. When someone finally buzzed them in, I stood at my door to eager confront the — what is the Spanish for "little darlings?"

I am not sure which was more frightening, the smeared and tattered and bedraggled leftovers of their splendorless drag or me in my less than attractive sleepwear with my hair askew and teeth out and seven nasty looking bandages on my face (thanks to my most recent visit to the skin doctor.)

It was ugly meets uglier. The Japanese could have made a film. When Faggots Collide! It is now past noon and they are still up there stumbling around. And thanks to the "boys" upstairs, I still have not had sleep. And I am not all that fond of Halloween any longer.

Claus von Stauffenberg

2008-10-23T11:16:00.009-04:00

Thom Gunn (1929-2004)

[I met the poet Thom Gunn in the late 1960s on Eighth Street in the Village. He introduced me to my first NYC leather bar and many years later while I was bartending at TY's, I introduced him to his last lover. The recent brouhaha about the new Tom Cruise film Valkyrie reminded me of one my favorite poems by him. I post it below plus two more from Thom’s collection My Sad Captains.]

Claus von Stauffenberg
—of the bomb plot on Hitler, 1944

What made the place a landscape of despair,
History stunned beneath, the emblems cracked?
Smell of approaching snow hangs on the air;
The frost meanwhile can be the only fact.

They chose the unknown, and the bounded terror,
As a corrective, who corrected live
Surveying without choice the bounding error:
An unsanctioned present must be primitive.

A few still have the vigor to deny
Fear is a natural state; their motives neither
Of doctrinaire, of turncoat, nor of spy.
Lucidity of thought draws them together.

The maimed young Colonel who can calculate
On two remaining fingers and a will,
Takes lessons from the past, to detonate
A bomb that Brutus rendered possible.

Over the maps a moment, face to face:
Across from Hitler, whose grey eyes have filled
A nation with the illogic of their gaze,
The rational man is poised, to break, to build.

And though he fails, honor personified
In a cold time where honor cannot grow,
He stiffens, like a statue, in mid-stride
—Falling toward history, and under snow.

Innocence —for Tony White

2008-10-23T11:00:00.003-04:00

by Thom Gunn

He ran the course and as he ran he grew,
And smelt his fragrance in the field. Already,
Running he knew the most he ever knew,
The egotism of a healthy body.

Ran into manhood, ignorant of the past:
Culture of guilt and guilt's vague heritage,
Self-pity and the soul; what he possessed
Was rich, potential, like the bud's tipped rage.

The Corps developed, it was plain to see,
Courage, endurance, loyalty and skill
To a morale firm as morality,
Hardening him to an instrument, until

The finitude of virtues that were there
Bodied within the swarthy uniform
A compact innocence, childlike and clear,
No doubt could penetrate, no act could harm.

When he stood near the Russian partisan
Being burned alive, he therefore could behold
The ribs wear gently through the darkening skin
And sicken only at the Northern cold,

Could watch the fat burn with a violet flame
And feel disgusted only at the smell,
And judge that all pain finishes the same
As melting quietly by his boots it fell.

[I post the last Thom Gunn poem for a writer friend of mine at Sarah Lawrence Collage]

Readings in French - 2

Nothing Unusual about Marcel Proust
All are unmasked as perverts sooner or later,
With a notable exception—the narrator.

Come to the cabaret

2008-09-30T12:20:00.008-04:00

KT Sullivan is a wonder.

But first a bit of background:

In my high school days back in the late 1950s, I was out to anyone who actually knew me. I grew up in a wheat ranch town in south-eastern Washington State. Think Brokeback Mountain. And, yes, I "made it" with actual cowboys and sheep herders, but trust me, in no way were they Jake Gyllenhaal or Heath Ledger (I didn’t run into cowboys who looked like them till many years later at The Mineshaft). Not that the rustic life appealed to me all that much. I was more a Noel Coward wannabe. Keep your roaming buffalo, give me Manhattan straight up with a cherry.

Since I disdained the safety of the closet, for self-preservation I tended to avoid the kids I went to school with. Instead I socialized with adults from our local amateur theater, the Richland Players. If I wore a suit and tie I could easily pass for legal age even in a state with determined restrictions against underage drinking. So after a show with the Players, off we would go across river to the Top Hat Café, the only "night club" for miles. While my school fellows were up in the Horse Heaven Hills with a six-pack of beer, I would sit at a table sipping a bourbon and 7-Up (yes, I know), the very epitome of sagebrush and cactus sophistication. Or so I thought at the time. (accordion ensembles, an occasional female impersonator, and as I recall, a trained dog act.)

On a trip to NYC in 1958 I finally encountered the real thing when a cabbie dropped me off at the Living Room and I heard Kaye Ballard (later she and I had a running gag about Coos Bay, Oregon). Her accompanist took me down to the Village for my first encounter with a big city gay bar. (Mary’s on West 8th Street–Seattle at the time had a much better bar scene.) He also took me to hear Mabel Mercer sing the "Ballad of the Sad Young Men," a homosexual rite of passage back in the day. When I arrived for good in 1959 I was eager and ready for New York City night life. (And more than a trifle "piss-elegant") I had been here less a year when some actor types took me to an Irish Bar on Sixth Avenue (now the site of CBS) where we pushed past construction workers sloshing beer and munching corn beef (always rotating on a spit in the window) and stopped in front of what looked to be a blank wall.

They pushed, and part of the blank wall became a door into a back room appropriately called the BAQ Room. It was all Chinese red and bamboo framing wall to wall amber mirrors (rumor had it that Cecil Beaton had personally decorated the room). And in a corner, singing without amplification was Janice Mars, considered by many (myself included) to be "America's answer to Edith Piaf. " Rex Reed wrote of her, "If Sarah Bernhardt could sing, she would have been Janice Mars." A few of her pals (Marlon Brando, Judy Holiday, Tennessee Williams, etc.), had put up the money to open what was a de facto private club. I don't recall there was ever a sign. You had to know just where to push on the wall to get into the room.

The clientele was either rich and celebrated or young, unknown, and very poor. There were no B&T. Us "babes in the woods" drank for free thanks to the waiter, who would pad the bills of the unsuspecting VIPs with the cost of our drinks. We would get there early and take over the best tables and the celebs would have to sit with us. It was a popular hideaway for star couples coupling with the wrong person. The still married Rex Harrison perused Kay Kendall here, Bacall dated Robards, Richard Burton (pre-Taylor) snuck around with just about everyone else. Tennessee Williams was usually the only innocent person in the place.

The BAQ Room quickly became my home away from home. It was Janice who introduced me to brandy stingers (an addiction I had for many years). I even bunked for a year with Don Evans, her accompanist . Suddenly the room closed, I never quite knew why. A recording of Janice (with arrangements by Don) had been made but it remained an urban myth until just a few years ago when the master tapes were discovered in Marlon Brando's study. Her nephews (true heroes) released the session as a CD. (http://cdbaby.com/cd/janicemars ) A trifle overarranged by my old roommate, it still gives you the chance to hear the first of my three all time favorite ladies of cabaret. The disc ends with Janice singing "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," which she always did at last call. I was in the BAQ Room the night it closed forever. As Janice began the song for the final time, the air conditioner caught fire and filled the room with smoke. A fitting end. Janice ultimately disappeared to the seclusion of a trailer deep in the desert of New Mexico.

I spent the 1960s frequenting the almost endless list of NY cabaret clubs. Upstairs at the Downstairs (for quick, clever revues), The Blue Angel (to hear Bobby Short at the piano singing "The Motion Picture Ball"), The Bon Soir (for Jorie "I can’t cook" Remus–and to cruise the bar), The Showplace (to watch Ruth Buzzi invent the little old lady with a purse) and to the many clubs on Grove Street where Marie Blake reigned as the empress of the piano bar. My first night in the village I wandered in to Arthur’s and heard her; twenty years later when I briefly left NYC for family reasons, Lady Jane Lowry and I went to hear her my last night in the city.

It was at The Showplace, in 1961, where I met my next favorite lady of cabaret, Joanne Beretta, and one of my all time closest friends, her accompanist, the song writer John Wallowitch. (what can I say, I love a piano). I have had a serious crush on Joanne Beretta all these many years. Look into her blue eyes and it is instant servitude for life. She can make you roar with laughter and break your heart a moment later. She stopped performing in the early 1970s, but has recently returned to the circuit (http://joanneberetta.com/ ). She may well be the single most honest signer I have ever heard. Every song she sings instantly becomes my number one all time favorite. Until she sings the next one. Basically shy and diffident when it comes to patrician politics, she generally finds something to say. Plans are under way for a new show this season. The where and when will be listed here.

As to John Wallowitch, it is far beyond my abilities (and the resources of this blog) to do anything but barely scratch the surface (Wikipedia has an excellent article). I have had few better friends. He was loyal and generous and sweet and funny (and–I am also told– a Doctor Jeckel and Mr. Hyde–but I never met the monster). John trained to be classical pianist at Juilliard, you should have heard his Ravel. It was his elegant style at the piano that first drew me to him. No one was more supportive of my career than John. He was a huge fan of my plays. Whenever he spotted me in an audience he would introduce me as a major American playwright much to the puzzlement of most of the people in the room who of course had not the vaguest idea who I was.

In the last few years of his life, I took great pride that TOSOS (my theater company) presented New York Minutes, Mark Finley’s perfectly conceived revue of John’s songs. It opened to much acclaim and raves for a wonderful cast. John truly adored it (and even accompanied it one night on the piano). We brought the show back for a second run. When John walked into the Duplex it was clear the end was in sight. Plans are underway for the TOSOS Billy Blackwell/John Wallowitch Musical Theatre Project (Rick Hinkson, director) to revive New York Minutes next season as a memorial to John. With all the controversy surrounding "gay marriage," you should check out a DVD that tenderly documents the longtime relationship John had with Bertram Ross, star dancer for Martha Graham. (Wallowitch & Ross: This Moment - available on Netflix) No ceremony could add anything, their commitment to each other, to quote Robert Frost, "is the bond hydrogen makes with oxygen in a cup of spring water."

For my birthday John would give me Boss cologne for men. The last few months he was too weak to get out to buy it. Every time I saw him he would apologize profusely and I would tell him "not to worry." In mid June of 2007, Ann Ruckert (another hero) organized a session in her apartment to let him record what would be his last CD (A Miracle on 71st Street– www.amazon.com ) . As I was dressing I reached for my "substitute" cologne (Old Spice) and laughed. I suspected somehow John had managed to get me my birthday present. Indeed, as I walked in, John met me at the door with a wicked smile and a bottle of Boss. This island is somehow a lot less without him. Certainly large chunks of class and style is missing. To me he is still over there on the East Side, sitting at his piano in the"Manhattan Blue" twilight, composing his second thousand songs. You know you have achieved some sort of immorality when Elaine Stritch crashes your memorial service.

Which brings us to the last but by no means least of my three favorite ladies of cabaret. The elegant KT Sullivan. But before I go there, I should explain what I have recently discovered about myself. Cabaret seems to have dictated not only my emotional awareness but the very moral compass of my life. Everyone needs a Bible, mine, it turns out, is the "Great American Song Book." (You go to your church, I’ll go to mine) Cole Porter, Ira Gershwin, Dorothy Fields, John Wallowitch, Oscar Hammerstein II, Irving Berlin, Johnny Mercer, Irene Franklin, Stephen Sondheim (you fill in the rest), their lyrics gave me not only an essential point of view, they helped me develop my whole survival strategy. They are my chapter and verse.

Last Friday night, Rick Hinkson took me to the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel to hear KT Sullivan. She is currently performing All the Things You Are, her survey of the songs of Jerome Kern, and the ghosts of the Round Table could not be happier. In fact they are sloshing ectoplasmic gin all over the place in gleeful celebration. Her phrasing is perfect, her taste flawless, her courage amazing. When did you last hear a soprano knock it out of the park with "Ol’ Man River?" She is the most recent in a long list of great Gotham dames dating all the back to Lillian Russell. Someone should be showering her with diamonds! At the top of her set, KT sang "Land Where the Good Songs Go," as I left the Algonquin I wondered if a cab would know the directions to get me there.

She is accompanied by the amazing Tedd Firth (her Musical Director) on the piano, and equally awesome saxophonist, Andy Ferber, and bass player, Steve Doyle. Oak Room is a bit pricey, but you might consider selling your significant other or if you don’t have one, maybe your mother. It would be worth it. [KT Sullivan, All the Things You Are, Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel, September 23 to October 11. Tuesday-Thursday 8:30 pm; Friday & Saturday 8:30 pm & 11:00 pm. Reservations 212 419-9331.]

For by far the best history of cabaret I recommend James Gavin’s Intimate Nights: The Golden Age of New York Cabaret (www.amazon.com )

Paul Newman 1925 - 2008

2008-09-28T09:26:00.002-04:00

Gore Vidal introduced me to Paul Newman once many many years ago. He had the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen and was probably the gentlest person I ever met.

2008-09-24T12:25:00.013-04:00

Audience "Energized to the Max" at 2008 IT Awards
by Doric Wilson

"There are two kinds of theatre in this country. Commercial theatre ... and theatre that matters. You make the theatre that matters." – Edward Albee at the 2008 New York Innovative Theatre Awards

Monday night (Sept 22, 2008) was the fourth annual IT Awards. This year the New York Innovative Theatre Awards honored the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Caffe Cino, the birth of off-off-Broadway. IT Award founders Jason Bowcutt, Shay Gines, and Nick Micozzi presented another perfect evening.

Lisa Kron, part of the Five Lesbian Brothers for twenty years, was a charming host who even managed to get the playwright Edward Albee to autograph her arm. Blue Man Group offered very funny very loud very unnerving entertainment. They even spooked the people waiting back stage. (Playwright Tina Howe fell in love with their blue eyes!) The presenters represented a wide range of theatrical disciplines, from artistic to technical. The choreography award uniquely includes fight design, and indeed went to a fight coordinator. Don Moses Schreier let his laptop present the award for sound design. Tina Howe (TOSOS guardian angel) presented the Outstanding Script awards and Edward Albee (a long, long time friend) presented the Outstanding Production Award.

Doric Wilson (left) and Edward Albee
photo by Jamie Heinlein

The 2008 Artistic Achievement Award (which I received last year), was given by Olympia Dukakis to OOB pioneer, founder of the Living Theater, and lifelong political activist, Judith Malina. Boomerang Theatre Company deservedly received the 2008 Caffe Cino Fellowship Award. The Stewardship Award went to the mother and son team, Martin Denton and Rochelle Denton of New York Theatre Experience (http://www.nytheatre.com/). In the four years of the IT Awards, I can think of no one who embodies the legacy of the Cino more than Martin and Rochelle.

TOSOS people were all over the place, starting with Award founders Jason (I didn’t mean what I said!), Shay and Nick. Cultist Christopher Borg was in charge of communications, with buffed Desmond Dutcher doing some of the voice-overs, and debonair (Chesley Award winning playwright) Chris Weikel handing out the "envelopes" (Tina Howe remarked as she received hers, "they are real!"). Diminutive David Bishop was busy breaking my heart (among others), while statuesque (Chesley Award winning playwright) Kathleen Warnock gave networking a new depth of meaning. Aging juvenile Leicester Landon caught the eye of at least one celebrity while demure Jamie Heinlein was looking younger than ever.

Steven McElroy and Brett Douglas were there representing monogamy in the outer boroughs, while board members Jonathan Reuning and Ian Marshall (United Stages) stood about looking like the distinguished publishers that they are. Bob Lee (like myself) gave up the opening night of the Metropolitan Opera which is something Jason, Shay and Nick really need to work out. Opera first, then theatre! Last year I considered sneaking out of the ceremony after I received my award to hurry up to Times Square to watch the live broadcast. Prowling panther-like was the TOSOS resident blond, Karen Stanion, looking for a kill. Or a play.

TOSOS people also won and didn’t win awards. Outstanding Production of a Musical went to Yank! with book by David Zellnik, directed by Igor Goldin (both founding members of TOSOS). A love story between two men in World War II, plans are underway to move the musical for a commercial run. You must see it. David Pumo was nominated for his sweet funny play Auntie Mayhem. It was a real disappointment when he didn’t win. No play nominated this year had a larger heart.

The audience was energized to the max and very generous in their outpouring of love and fellowship. The "goodie" bags in our seats included a white frisbee. Bill Irwin caused an avalanche of chaos when near the end of the evening he directed the audience to throw them at the stage on a count of three. For a full list of the winners go to http://www.nyitawards.com/.