Jump Into Devised Theater: An Interview with Maggie-Keenan Bolger and Rachel Sullivan

At Autostraddle, we love Maggie Keenan-Bolger and her work. So when Honest Accomplice Theatre landed another surprise run of The Birds and the Bees (a devised theatre piece about sex and sexuality from a queer perspective) and released their new survey (which you should totally take), I decided it was time to catch up with Maggie Keenan-Bolger and Rachel Sullivan about their non-profit theatre company, their show and their process. Both amazing women answered the questions together. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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First, we’d love to hear a little bit about the Birds and the Bees — what is the project? What does it mean to y’all? And how has it changed since we last chatted about it on Autostraddle?

The Birds and The Bees: Unabridged explores the unique – yet interwoven – life circumstances of eight people forced to confront their own sexuality, realizing that sexuality itself is not simple or clear-cut. Through dialogue, movement, song, humor, and multimedia, the performance examines such themes as partner communication, sexual identity, the de-sexualization of aging women, today’s “hook-up” culture and sexual health.

The show was created with the process of devising where the script is developed from the ideas, opinions, stories, and efforts of over 50 performers, audience feedback, as well as over 2,000 respondents to a nationwide survey we launched in 2012. We believe the creation of new work is vital to counteract mainstream art, which often ignores, or misrepresents the voices and interests of our diverse participants.   

We’ve actually been working on this piece for the last four years and the show has seen many incarnations.  It started when we were frustrated by the limited perspectives and representations of female sexuality in our world.   When we first began the creation process we didn’t have a script, a cast, or even an outline; we just knew sexuality was a topic that interested us and seemed rich for exploration. We reached out to friends and colleagues to see if they were interested in discussing the topic as well. It turned out that, when given the opportunity, people could talk for hours. After holding some preliminary workshops, we disseminated a survey to see what people around the country were interested in seeing discussed and to get the stories of those outside of our social circles. We were hoping for 500 or so responses and we got 2,000!  The survey also made it clear that people wanted us to include trans issues in our exploration as well. So, from there, we created a community of both cis and trans people of varying genders (some professional actors, some who had never been on stage before) from a variety of backgrounds.  And after many many hours of rehearsal we developed the first performance.  

The show has changed quite drastically from our first run.   The performance began as “a quilt of scenes” loosely held together by the theme of sexuality. This version was well received, but we realized the audience was craving more narrative and connection to characters.  In 2014 we adapted the script to include 8 characters who grow and develop through the story and are impacted by the interactions they have with the other characters on stage.  Finally, we’ve incorporated a lot of fun multimedia components which have allowed us to showcase performers from even more backgrounds and identities.    

We work for people to see, share, and celebrate the options of being and living one’s life.  We push our audiences and artists to ask difficult questions and present difficult situations on stage, offering entry points for empathy and awareness. We want to give our audiences and company members a chance to be part of a group/collective and to challenge people’s views on the world and each other.  We hope that our artists and audiences are stimulated to make the small changes in their life that lead to the big global shifts. We create to see the small, beautiful moments between people and hope our audiences leave a performance or work feeling enriched, intrigued, and a little less alone in the world.

One of our audiences members wrote:

“I cried on the subway the first night I saw it (The Bird and the Bees: Unabridged). Just knowing people want to talk about this removes such a burden from me.” 

This keeps us going.  

Could you explain the process of devising a piece of theatre? Would you call Devised Theatre a genre unto itself, or something else entirely?

There is no one way to devise a show, so we can’t speak for everyone, but our process of creating The Birds and the Bees: Unabridged looked something like this:

We started with idea for a show (female sexuality), began researching, talking and asking questions of anyone who would speak with us, we disseminated a survey, and formed a creative ensemble to devise the show with us.  

During the rehearsal process we brainstormed for weeks, created many different characters, moments and scenes.  We offered prompts to the group (shocking statistics about sexuality, provoking sexualized images, a pile of products traditionally seen as ‘feminine’ or ‘sexual’) and had the ensemble develop scenes. From those scenes, we found snippets of inspiration that we worked with to turn into a full fledged theatre piece.  

Then we tossed about 90% of the work we developed (a normal part of the devising process) mourned those losses, and began to explore the 10% we kept.  Every rehearsal would involve new ideas, new moments, and then post rehearsal meetings where we (Maggie and Rachel) would make edits and suggestions.  These edits were shared with the cast and we made more edits off of their recommendations.

We shared the work with trusted colleagues, received feedback, made revisions, and continued the process.

There’s no definitive end point because the work is always shifting if ever so slightly.  Just this past week we changed some lines.  It’s always being shaped by our performers, current events, and more.

Devised Theatre is really a melting pot of many genres. We use theatre, dance, music, multimedia, writing, clowning and so many other techniques to create our shows.  We often include whatever skills are held by the performers in our ensemble. We have a singing/dancing group right now so Birds and Bees has a big ol’ musical number.  And we also have some folks who are great at miming and movement work, so you’ll see those styles too.   The options are endless and we are excited to see what styles we’ll be able to utilize in the next show!

https://vimeo.com/76830596

Maggie, correct me if I’m wrong, but this isn’t the first piece of Devised Theatre you’ve helped create that speaks directly to and about the queer community. Is there something about the practice of devising a piece of theatre that is especially effective to the queer community, or to marginalized communities in general?

Both of us have done extensive work in the queer community. With the company Urban Stages we created a theatre program for LGBT homeless youth at Green Chimneys.  We’ve produced two shows (Queering History and Not Just Another Coming Out Story) written with LGBT homeless youth where they performed alongside Broadway actors!

As with so many marginalized communities, the mainstream narratives for queer characters (when they exist) have been written for us instead of by us. Devising offers the chance for queer people of all backgrounds and identities to decide what issues they want to see, who they want to see representing the issues, and how they want those issues to be shown.  Similarly, there is a long history of heterosexual actors playing queer characters and, in particular, cisgender actors playing trans characters.  While this is often necessary in the progression of marginalized characters represented on tv and in movies, we’re getting to the point where we don’t think we should settle for only seeing straight and cis performers on our stages or screens!

Theatre has traditionally been very welcoming to the LGBT community, but most often the perspectives shown are those of white, cis, gay men.  They are also the people usually given the opportunity to produce, direct, write, etc. As a result, the scope of how the LGBT community is portrayed has been pretty limited.  With devising, we have the chance to cast and present characters who are queer black women, non-binary trans people, and other intersectional identities that are not usually given a voice. Even better, it’s not just the two of us creating those characters from our own limited perspectives. Cast members in a devised show are able to create and develop honest depictions of characters who hold the same identities as the actors. These representations are far more complex, interesting, and truthful than characters we as directors and creators could develop on our own.  

If any of our readers wanted to jump into devised theatre as a means to express their own community’s collective wants and needs, where should they start?

Listen and begin conversations! It’s important to find out what your community wants to discuss and explore.  The best devised theatre comes from topics that elicit strong feelings in people, be it anger, excitement, confusion or fear. Stay tuned into the world and recognize when those feelings come up for you. Chances are good you aren’t alone.  Find a community of people who feel similarly. We would never be able to do our work without the incredible support of over a hundred performers, volunteers, designers, and more.

While working on a piece, find a sense of humility and realize that you need to let go of what you originally thought the project would look like and leave room for the participants to add their mark and shape to the piece. (It’s usually better than what you could do on your own anyways.)  

Ask trusted artists you know for help, feedback, ideas, and more.  We were lucky to build a community of trusted colleagues and receive training in devising through the Applied Theatre program at The School of Professional Studies at CUNY. Honest Accomplice is also here to help with one-on-one meetings and workshops; we have advised other companies and artists who are delving into devised work.  

See as much original, devised, and community based art as you can pack into your schedule! Discover what you like and dislike, what techniques are exciting, and brainstorm how you can borrow and alter ideas to put into your own practice.  

Do it! There are many great books that can give you the foundations of devising, but ultimately you just need to get out there, try, fail, try again, and begin to find your own way of making the work.  If you’re interested in becoming an actor who devises, get involved with companies and artist who utilize this method of creation.  We are constantly holding auditions and opportunities for actors and non-actors to participate as performers, volunteers, designers, and more! 

Is there anything you hoped I would ask that I didn’t? If so, please share anything you want our readers to know!

If you are reading this article, our guess is that sexuality and/or theatre is important to you. We’d love to hear your thoughts about topics for our next show! Honest Accomplice released our Survey for New Work on Oct 5th to determine our upcoming season! It only takes 5 minutes and your responses are crucial in our development process.  

We also invite everyone to join our Queer Women and Trans People in the Performing Arts group, a networking group that meets for lectures/screenings/shows/get togethers. 

Top 10 Plays I’d Like To See With An All-Black Cast

I’m a theatre major about to graduate this year (#blessed) and I’ve been thinking about some of my favorite plays and what I might want to do as a thesis project. I’m primarily interested in directing, specifically using non-traditional casting — which got me thinking about some of my favorite plays, and how much better they’d be if they were ever cast with Black people! So I asked my Facebook friends which of their favorite plays they’d like to see with Black casts and got some greats suggestions. Without further discussion, here are 10-ish plays that would be better with a Black cast.

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1. reasons to be pretty

Okay, so before I say anything I guess I need to say that I think Neil LaBute’s plays suck. I think he’s able to capture human speech patterns in a way that I wish I was able to, but his plays feel like the least exciting version of contemporary realism to me; I can’t stand his work. But when I asked this question on Facebook and a friend suggested this one, I thought about it — what if what I dislike so much about his plays are that they’re always cast with white people? Like, completely white casts. reasons has the opportunity to be a really wonderful examination of how important physical beauty can become in a romantic relationship. Thinking about reasons with a Black cast already makes me like the play so much more. Think about it: instead of just relationship pressures, there’s the societal pressure for Black women to conform to white standards of beauty. There could also be a really interesting subtextual discussion about misogynoir between the two main protagonists. Casting Black actors in reasons to be pretty transforms it from an okay play that’s overdone in Acting 101 courses in theatre departments throughout the country to one that initiates important conversations about race and beauty in relationships.

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2. Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes

I love Angels in America. You should love Angels in America. I am almost willing to say that Angels in America is the best play written in the past twenty-five years, but that feels like a lot of commitment and I might change my mind. There are a few roles that are race-specific (The Rosenbergs, Roy Cohn) but why couldn’t Prior be Black? Or Harper? Or Joe? Or even Louis! There are Black Jewish people! Who wants to direct this? I would buy a ticket every night to an all-Black production of Angels in America.

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3. August: Osage County

August: Osage County is really just a story about family. And if anything is more interesting with Black actors, it’s family drama. August Wilson knew this when he wrote his plays, and the same can be true for Tracy Letts’ play. In centering it around a dying matriarch, Letts has unintentionally given the play the perfect setting for an all-Black cast by centering it around a dying matriarch (A Raisin in the Sun is my favorite example of another play that deals with Black matriarchs). Plays like this are not just “good,” they’re important, and a Black cast would only highlight its importance!

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4. Uncommon Women

Ever since reading Uncommon Women, I’ve wanted to direct it because the play is so malleable. The play follows a group of gal pals from their all women’s college days into adulthood. The play is supposed to be partially autobiographical, with the college in the world of the play being based off of Wendy Wasserstein’s alma mater Mount Holyoke, but the actual college is never specified in the world of the play. I want to direct it with an all Black cast and base the college off of Spelman College. It would be like A Different World but better. Also, personally, a play written by a Jewish lesbian and cast with Black women that centers around women and their relationships with their friends sounds like the only play I’d want to see for the rest of my life.

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5. Stop Kiss

So if you’ve been in a college theatre program in the past ten years and read this website, you have undoubtedly read Stop Kiss, performed a scene from it with a girl that you crushed on, and googled Diana Son to see if she was a lesbian (she is not). This is another one of those plays that I am baffled by that the cast is almost always white. Nothing about this play says white people, and yet every version I’ve seen resembled the Wonder Bread of my youth. And I kid about it, but I’m so frustrated by this because as a Black queer person, I have literally never seen myself onstage. I cannot think of one play where the main character is a self identified Black queer non-binary human. And I think a lot of times we say, “Oh, well, let’s wait for someone to tell that story,” and it’s like, we don’t have to wait! It’s right here! Diana Son literally wrote it for us — you just have to cast a Black person in the show and then you can tell the story of a Black queer person! It’s that simple!

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6. The Seagull

This is one of Anton Chekhov’s greatest plays and it’s a family drama. And we already know how well family drama and Black characters mesh! Plus, I recently reread The Seagull for class, and it’s 100% just a story about posh rich people with too much on their minds. Why don’t we ever get those stories with Black folks? Why can’t Konstantin be a struggling Black artist? Why can’t Nina be a young Black actor whose parents don’t support her choices who works her ass off, falls in love with the wrong man, and ends up unhappy? Y’all, I’m getting chills thinking about this. This could be SO GOOD. SO GOOD.

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7-9. Everything by Tennessee Williams

Seriously. It’s been done before. Have you seen a Tennessee Williams play with a Black cast instead of a white cast? It’s AMAZING (Check out pictures from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and A Streetcar Named Desire — you will fall in love). I can’t articulate why, but the stakes feel so much higher when Black actors take on these roles for me; I’m so much more invested in the show. Williams is one of America’s most prolific playwrights; and one of the things I love about his work is the malleability of it, from a director’s standpoint. I love directing Williams because it can become whatever you want it to be. He tells American stories. Period. And guess what? Tons of Black Americans go to the theatre and would LOVE to see themselves on stage in some of America’s greatest stories.

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10. Grease

So, I haven’t included any musicals up til now because they feel, even for me, so much harder to re-imagine to me than plays. But, someone on Facebook suggested Grease and, well, duh. Grease is the perfect option. Because Grease is white as hell. I think we all know that. I remember counting the Black people in the last scene of the movie when Sandy discovers she can be a sexual being, but unfortunately chooses Danny instead of Rizzo. There are a total of three. I say we take those three Black kids and make them the stars of Grease. Grease has been done over and over and over and it’s always the same. Why do people think about white people when they think about the 50s? Black kids weren’t falling in love in the 50s?

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Loving theatre can be hard for a Black person. Especially a Black queer person. I support the arts because I think they’re important, because my friends have something to do with the production, or just because I love live theatre, but it hurts that I have to wait until August every year to go to the Black Theatre Festival before I’m positive that I’ll see Black people on stage. It makes no sense to me that in 2015, I have seen over 15 plays so far, and only one of them has had a single Black person in them. And what kills me is that so much of the argument that I hear from regional theatre directors is “Oh, Black people aren’t writing good enough plays,” which, A) is a lie (Have you read Suzan-Lori Parks? Lynn Nottage? Lydia Diamond? Lorraine Hansberry? August Wilson?), but it’s also just lazy. It’s one thing to say that Black people aren’t writing plays — it’s another not to hire Black actors.

I asked if anyone on the Speakeasy wanted to talk about their experiences in the theatre, and Leticia R. and I had a really amazing conversation about blackness, queerness, and theatre. Something she said that I really appreciated was, “The landscape of theatre is an interesting one to me, as a place that has been open to white male queer bodies, rarely do we look it as a place that needs to be critiqued in its handling of individuals that don’t fall into the white cis male parameters.” I think it’s that caution to critique that has theatre in a stagnant state, though. People see theatre as this thing that’s for the underdogs or the outcasts to come and find a home, but look at the stage. The way that it’s functioning right now, it seems unlikely that a Black person, let alone a Black queer person, could go to the theatre and see a community that they’d assume would openly embrace themselves. The thing about being ahead of the game is that you have to stay ahead of the game for it to matter. So what if the theatre accepted white cis gay men in the 70s if Black queer women don’t feel like they have a place in 2015? The past is only useful to us as a catalyst for better theatre in the future; right now it feels like we’re stuck in the past.

Being able to make a list like this was really exciting while also being really depressing. On the one hand, now I have all these awesome ideas for reimagining great plays. But on the other hand, why does it seem like I’m the only one thinking about this? In the grand scheme of capital-A American capital-T Theatre, me casting Black actors in and directing a 10 minute Neil LaBute scene for a workshop performance that’s only seen by my 150 person theatre department probably isn’t going to make a big deal. I guess I just want to know what needs to happen for this to be something people want to talk about. Why are we so complacent, and so willing to keep doing the same thing?

What are some of your favorite plays that you think would be better with Black actors? Give me some more thesis ideas, y’all!

Watch Beth Malone Figure Out She’s a Lesbian In Her One-Woman Show “So Far” at Joe’s Pub

Luther Ingram, Jodie Foster, Kristi McNichol, and Connie Chung all play crucial cameos in Beth Malone’s So Far, and that’s all in the first fifteen minutes. The Fun Home star returned to her roots at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater in New York City on August 31st to perform a one-woman cabaret show following a rural lesbian through her tomboy childhood, an engagement (to a man!), her first stint as an actress in New York, another marriage (to a woman!), and her ever-tense relationship with her Colorado cowboy father.

Malone is slight in stature, but commands the stage with epic confidence, opening the act with Luther Ingram’s “If Lovin’ You Is Wrong (I Don’t Wanna Be Right)” — a song I didn’t know was so gay until Malone sang it. Her wit is biting, her story relatable, and her voice is like an angel’s. Using the storytelling aid of paper-plate puppets of Jodie Foster, Kristi McNichol and Connie Chung, we are transported through the countless childhood “aha” moments that should have led Malone to realize she was a big, fat, bleepin’ lesbian, but which only served to leave her confused into early adulthood.

Though it takes Malone until she’s already promised to a man to finally sleep with a woman for the first time and fully realize her lesbianism, her awkward and uncertain stumble toward this conclusion is one most queer women will recognize. A smaller (though, I imagine, still quite large) contingent will relate to her tragic and estranged relationship with her right-wing, Rush Limbaugh-enthusiast father, with whom she was once inseparable.

Malone tells us about getting an on-stage kiss from Barbara Mandrell at eleven — “on the LIPS!!!” — exchanging Christmas gifts with her mother in a parking lot, and getting type-casted on the New York musical theater scene: “‘Scrappy’ is a euphemism.”

With impeccable comedic timing and an ear for the queer in almost every musical genre, Malone is able to process in one show what many people are unable to process ever in their lives. It’s a lot. So much, in fact, that we are rewarded with a short reprieve from all the feelings with a mid-show interactive theatrical break called “Ask a Lesbian a Question,” during which Malone and Fun Home book writer Lisa Kron answer the audience’s most pressing questions as can only two very sarcastic lesbians can. When asked by a gay man about lesbian “labels,” Kron says she self-identifies as a “femme, top, coupon-cutting, childless MILF.”

So Far was written by Beth Malone and Patricia Cotter. Musical direction is by Susan Drausstrong and directed by Peter Schneider. The show is produced by LezCab, whose mission is to “create an accurate and meaningful representation of queer women in order to foster equality and community.” They accomplish this task through the magic of theater. They also host social networking events for queer women in the theater, which can be found on their events page.

Top Five Musical Theater Songs About Misandry

Man-hating songs have fallen out of style now, but back in the golden age of Broadway, they were a common comedy trope.

Two quick notes:

A) In order to make the final five, the song has to be an indictment of all men, not just one, although a number of those songs can be found in this playlist, which also includes a few “women are better than men” songs.

B) Some of the musicals on this list have some fucked up social commentary going on, particularly with regard to race. Calamity Jane is a good example. Kiss Me Kate is very misogynistic. These singular misandrist songs do not excuse that, but they are still enjoyably misandrist.

5. “One Hundred Easy Ways (To Lose A Man)” – Wonderful Town

Lyrical highlight: Just throw your knowledge in his face / He’ll never try for second base

4. “Forget About The Boy” – Thoroughly Modern Millie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GVVpzTNEpA

Lyrical highlight: And in the moonlight, don’t you think about him / Sister, you’re much better off without him / You can blow the blues a kiss goodbye / And put the sun back in the sky / For when he comes crawlin’ / I’m not fallin’

3a. “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair” – South Pacific

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=030YgzGQ34o

Lyrical highlight: If you laugh at different comics / If you root for different teams / Waste no time, weep no more / Show him what the door is for!

3b. “Many A New Day” – Oklahoma!

Lyrical highlight: Why should a woman who is healthy and strong,
blubber like a baby if her man goes away? / A-weepin’ and a-wailin’ how he done her wrong. / That’s one thing you’ll never hear me say!

I’m combining these into one number because I’m a cheater, but also these were written by the same guys! Rogers and Hammerstein!

2. “Men! (Horrible Men!)” – Calamity Jane

This doesn’t have a recording on Youtube, but you can listen to it here.

Lyrical highlight: Men men, horrible men / I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again / What I think of men you can’t print in a book / Lucky the girl who has never been took.

1. “I Hate Men” – Kiss Me Kate

“Fun Home” Made History Last Night and This Is Entirely About That

On the evening of June 7th, The Tony Awards were broadcast into a whole bunch of homes via teevee.

On the evening of June 7th, history was made when Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori became the first entirely female writing team to win for book and score; when Sydney Lucas sang “Ring of Keys” to theatre enthusiasts across America; when the only show ever on Broadway about a butch lesbian won Best Musical. Fun Home took five total Tony Awards: Michael Cerveris won for best actor in a musical, Sam Gold won best director of a musical, and Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron KILLED IT as previously mentioned.

On the evening of June 7th, I sobbed uncontrollably on my couch, refreshing my Twitter feed and various live blogs because this is a day I legitimately never anticipated.

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Fun Home is a show about memory; about writing memoir. There is no such thing as truth when human beings are involved: everything is wilting flowers and a writer (or a cartoonist) is constantly grabbing at thoughts and events that decay so much faster than we expect them to. I had the opportunity to see Fun Home, a musical based on the graphic memoir by Alison Bechdel, before it opened. They invited every lesbian in New York that has ever written words, I think. No expectations attached. We wound up sitting next to friends we hadn’t seen in a while (queers) and we screamed when we saw them squeeze past knees to sit in the two empty seats adjacent. But I digress. Which is perhaps appropriate, given the show is a show about memory. Digressions become the story.

I was, oddly enough in retrospect, worried the show wouldn’t pass The Bechdel Test. I’ve just become so accustomed to Broadway’s particular brand of misogyny — one which we all know and excuse, one which hasn’t stopped me from loving Broadway — that I couldn’t imagine any other kind of show. I was worried even though Fun Home originally opened at the Public, off-broadway; even though Lisa Kron did the book and lyrics; even though Jeanine Tesori wrote the music; even though it’s based on Alison Bechdel’s memoir in comics and that the book certainly passes. That’s how strong the flower-fication is with Broadway.

The show passes, of course it does, it has to, the show is centered on the character of Alison Bechdel. Three extraordinary people play Alison at various points in her life—Small Alison (Sydney Lucas) paints us a picture of childhood; Middle Alison (Emily Skeggs) is going to college (and coming out in college); Alison at age 43 (Beth Malone) is trying to string all the flowers together, to find the inbetweens that are memory. Not only does Fun Home have a named female character who talks to another named female character about something other than a man, it has a woman so dynamic and multifaceted that it takes three actors to play her. Watching someone harmonize with oneself, reverberating through the past and the future, is the closest thing I’ve ever seen to the experience of memory in performance.

My name is Alison, too, and I’m not the same person I was when I was Small Alison. I’m not even the same person I was five years ago, as Middle Alison; no one is.

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I found reminders of who I used to be when I reread the book before seeing the show—not just in memories (which are never to be trusted), but in the physical evidence. Like when I discovered I’d left a streak of blood at the bottom of page 14, despite having promised myself that I’d resist my typical urge to gnaw at my cuticles while reading this time, and then realized that the streak was dry. I’d bled on it five years ago, back in 2010.

In the middle of the chapter titled “In The Shadow of Young Girls in Flower” (borrowed from Marcel Proust with his tea-soaked madeleine memory), I found a leaf.

“Look at this!” I said to my fiancée Abby.

“You don’t remember that?”

“Not at all.” It wasn’t surprising—I have a memory like a wiffle ball.

“I found it there when I was reading your copy—I showed it to you. It’s from when you first read it, I think.”

Right! Yes, I’d been sitting on a stone bench in a grey henley outside Scott Hall, for once actually washed, dried and groomed because I had a raging crush on Professor A, the first masculine-of-center queer woman I’d seen regularly with my own eyeballs since coming out. A leaf fell into my book, like something that would happen in a stock photo.

I first read Fun Home while taking Professor A’s creative writing class at Rutgers University. I was twenty-two. The pages were xeroxed because it was a 101 class and we couldn’t be trusted to purchase anything. I don’t remember which chapter was assigned, but after reading it, I immediately went out and bought the whole thing.

I was newly out, newly heartbroken and newly back from Paris. I had newly beaten my disordered eating (sort of—at least I was putting food in my mouth again) and despite having cut a full two feet off my hair, I still managed to look like a cast member from the musical Hair— still soft like petals in the eyes, patchouli-scented, earnest and often reading in the grass. I still thought I was going to be an actress forever and I was about to graduate with a degree in theatre.

It was an exciting time full of great change; I was panicking. This is how I was, as Middle Alison.

My problems were tiny buds in comparison to those of Alison Bechdel’s. Her problems were in full bloom. I devoured the book in a time where I was barely eating, when I was trying so hard to be girly — I don’t do that now. I am now what so many women fear becoming: a masculine woman with short hair and a perpetual button down shirt. The leaf fell in the shadow of the young girl in flower and it stayed there. I probably hoped Professor A would pass by and see me reading it. I was probably wearing tie-dye under that grey henley. I was probably still wickedly skinny, pitching my voice higher and trying to laugh softly. Femininity was important, especially as an actress.

One of the last images in this chapter is young Alison as she sees a butch woman for the first time — her father, Bruce Bechdel, asks her if that’s what she wants to look like. It is a question loaded with shame, as most girlhoods are. She lies, “no.”

Five years ago, the panel struck me. But it didn’t reach me. It’s been a journey. Middle Alison didn’t recognize the message: this is you, this was you, this will be you. This is how you will look; you will look this gay. Alison today can’t figure out how she didn’t: the professor was a masculine of center woman; the leaf fell on these pages in particular; she (me) was so uncomfortable in her (my) body because it was undesirable for theatre and she (I) sought out this book when it called. Christ, I even share the author’s name, which has the curious effect of convincing me that all the characters are speaking directly to me, through the pages and into my world. That was me, but I couldn’t see it yet.

A different person would certainly have to play me, were this a musical of my life. I went from straining to be a flower-child in a flower press to comfortably taking up space in the men’s department; getting my hair cut with clippers; laughing like a barking dog instead of like a sighing plant, making noise only because it was moved by the wind. Now, people call me “sir” and get flustered when I open my mouth and sound a lot more like Glinda the Good Witch than they expected. But I don’t mind. I’m Alison, now. And I recognize just how damn hard it is to be Middle Alison.

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Perhaps saying “no” to masculinity wasn’t a lie. I wanted to be an actress, and actresses who are masculine don’t work. There are no roles for masculine woman. There are barely roles for women who take up space. So it wasn’t that I’d never seen a butch woman before these pages and didn’t know that masculinity was possible in women. It just didn’t occur to me that it was a possibility for me. So I kept trying to fit my body into clothes and plays that weren’t made for it.

There is a lot right about theatre culture, but there’s a lot wrong with it too—I felt the pressure, and when I was unhealthy-skinny I got cast so much more. Small is feminine, said the numbers to me. Broadway musical theatre was never meant to grow roles for women other than those of delicate flowers.

In the days leading up to seeing Fun Home at Circle in the Square, I tried to think of Broadway roles for masculine-of-center women in musicals. I’m no theatre historian, but I’ve taken so many Theatre History classes that knowledge has fallen on me like so many watermelon seeds, spit from the mouths of those who know better than I; they took root and planted jazz-hands in my heart forever.

And I could think of only one role: Shirley, from The Producers. She sings one phrase (“keep it gay”); she is fat, speaks in a humping voice with her thumbs in her tool belt; she’s a punch line, held up against the glamorous (feminine) gay men.

I’m not a person who gets upset with jokes made at my expense—I see nothing inherently wrong with Shirley in The Producers. To any person who’s spent time in technical theatre, that joke is about the business and the stereotypes therein (many lesbian electricians). But with an average audience, this subtlety might be reduced to laughing at a manly dyke. A woman who takes up space. Even so, I have no issue with it. My beef is that it’s the only role I can think of.

If I stretch real hard, I can include Joanne from Rent. But I have to stand on my tip toes to come close on that one — she is a lesbian, and androgynous, but not masculine. If I reach around in the other direction, I can include Peter Pan — but that character is a boy and I’ve reached too far again.

Maybe I’m forgetting someone, but that’s not really the issue, even though memory is the star of the show. The issue is that, whether the role exists or not, I couldn’t access it.

When I quit theatre, I was allowed to change; I didn’t have to reach, to contort, to shrink, to press. I didn’t have to bloom into a flower. But listen, here’s the point: if I had stuck with acting, to the point where I was maybe really good, or even great, and I auditioned for anything on Broadway there would only be one role for me to play. And that role didn’t exist when I left.

That’s why it’s hard to be Middle Alison, trying to figure out who you are in a culture where no mirrors reflect you. That’s why it’s hard to be Small Alison, and reach your roots into soil without having all the information.

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When Beth Malone stepped onto the stage as Alison Bechdel on the night I first saw Fun Home, I wept. I cried for almost the entirety of the performance. I tell you this because I missed things. I might have missed a connection, the stability of a lyric, the soft scent of a leitmotif sprouting. Such delicacies might have gone under-appreciated with tears and snot running down my face.

The only thing I could see in front of me was me. Even with our lives so vastly different, this was the mirror I never had in the place I wanted it most five years ago. I can blame the tears on the uncanny coat of pollen that is the personal intersection with a piece of art; I am allergic to something I’ve never been exposed to before and it feels so good. I could curl up in the shadow of this tree forever.

I saw myself in Malone’s portrayal of Alison—a walk with legs far apart, leaning forward; a tee-shirt and jeans; short, short hair. And I saw myself as a writer there, too— pen always between her fingers as she gestured, and toward the end of the musical frantically trying to draw things out as they vanished from her memory. Malone captured the experience of flowers dying in her hands: “What’s this? ‘Table in the living room with / jack in the pulpit.’ Oh. Oh. I was going / to draw that in this panel.” Oh. Oh. Why am I crying again at this musical? I can’t quite remember.

I saw myself in Small Alison, too. The song “Ring of Keys” illustrates the moment where Alison sees the butch woman for the first time. I knew what was coming when the clank and noise of the diner began and I grabbed my fiancée’s hand, expectantly. It opens with Small Alison arguing with her father, as she has been the whole show, about wearing a barrette. He argues the barrette can suitably function to keep her hair out of her eyes.

“So would a crewcut,” Small Alison replies. It was a song about desire sung by a child; not sexual, but physical. The desire to know, to understand. To find one’s reflection in a sea of people not like you. I understand that—every gay person understands that. It’s not a song I ever thought I’d see on Broadway, a song about seeing yourself in adulthood (“It’s prob’ly conceited to say / But I think we’re alike in a certain way,” she sings), for finding a woman “handsome.” That is how I was, as Small Alison.

And it was just broadcast during The Tony Awards.

And Middle Alison. Gosh. Middle Alison. We get to see Middle Alison realize her first crush, on a woman called Joan (Roberta Colindrez). We see the first time they have sex, the aftermath — Middle Alison sings that she’s changing her major to Joan, still in white underwear and socks. Joan remains asleep as Middle Alison whisper-trills, “So by the time you’ve woken up / I’ll be cool, I’ll be collected / And I’ll have found some dignity / But who needs dignity? / ‘Cause this is so much better.” I remember stepping into the hallway in my underwear, bare feet on cold tile, after I slept with my version of Joan and jumping around. I was confused but optimistic and I liked it. That is how I was, as Middle Alison.

They were all there, all together, all singing, all occupying the same space on the stage. All these Alisons who are one person. Broadway grew up. Broadway presented everything in a woman that it had been distilled to laugh at. The show already made history without the Tony Awards. And then.

Tonight, this kind of representation was awarded. Tony history was made with the first all-female team winning for best score — women take up space with their songs and stories. Children who saw Sydney Lucas sing might have found a mirror; every gay adult found a mirror for the kid they once were. Actresses who might have otherwise sent themselves through the flower press can point to this musical and say, there. There. It is the Best Musical. For once in our damn lives, something made for mainstream labeled the masculine queer woman as “best.”

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This is a show about memory. If singing with yourself works backwards, could it work forwards too? Since my Middle Alison and my Small Alison live in me though they are long gone, does that mean they saw this? I’d have to assume yes—that they took note of the remarkable resemblance between Joan and the woman who broke our hearts back then; that they know we have a song to belt out while doing the dishes that does not require the suspension of our own disbelief; they can see we quit acting for so many reasons, and that if this show — the only show about a masculine-of-center lesbian on Broadway ever — had won a Tony back then, that would have been one less reason. One more road sign. One more way we could have seen ourselves in the world while we were panicking. It is so hard to be Middle Alison, to be Small Alison, but I think they feel better, somehow.

I would’ve saved so much time I lost in searching. But mostly, I think, my Alisons are excited to feel the cartoon tap tap on her wrist and the un-shy, un-floral and unabashed belted song: “I think we’re alike in a certain way.” Tonight, the theatre world just told us they know us. They sang it to us. Thank you, Alison Bechdel. Thank you, Fun Home.

“It Shoulda Been You” Is Heartwarming, Relevant To Your Interests

feature image via shutterstock

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If you’re going to see a show on Broadway this season, go see “Fun Home,” the much talked about, Tony nominated play that Kaitlyn promises will remind you how hard it is to understand who we are. That’s a no-brainer. However, if you’re going to see two shows on Broadway, I strongly recommend “It Shoulda Been You,” the hilarious and heartwarming musical that opened in style on April 14. Because y’all: this show is highly relevant to your interests.

At first glance, “It Shoulda Been You” doesn’t seem like anything special. The first half of the hour-and-forty-minute long musical follows the wacky pre-wedding hijinks and relatively minor obstacles standing in the way of a seemingly picture perfect different-sex couple wanting to get married. The jokes all tread well worn comedic ground. For example, there’s deluge of one-liners from family members who object to the impending Jewish/Christian wedding — a storyline which harkens back to the 1922 hit “Abie’s Irish Rose,” still the third longest running play on Broadway. It’s well done, but simply by nature of the material, it’s nothing to write home about.

Yet a little over halfway through, an unexpected twist sends the expected story careening off the rails. I don’t want to spoil it for you, so I’ll just tell you this: I wish I brought tissues. Much to my surprise, I felt a deep emotional investment by the time they got to what the play is really about. I started crying as I watched the bride — played by Sierra Boggess of Russian Broadway Shut Down and a variety of much beloved Broadway shows — steel herself before sharing some very important personal information with her mother. My cheeks were not dry again until well after curtain call had ended.

Directed by David Hyde Pierce (who you probably know as Dr. Niles Crane on Frasier) with book and lyrics by Brian Hargrove (a television writer and Hyde Pierce’s husband), there’s definitely a sitcom-y influence that shines through. The jokes are more suitably described as “safe” than “clever” or “legitimately hilarious;” at times, you’d almost swear you could hear the echo of a laugh track being piped in. Characters are given all the depth of a sterling silver punch bowl, and in spite of the spectacular twist at the end, we don’t see an awful lot of growth. Although many critics panned the play for these reasons, I really appreciated it. To my mind, the stereotypical setup served as a rather aggressively normalizing backdrop. This play never would have made it in the time of “Abie’s Irish Rose;” to be honest, I’m not even sure it could have been done 10 years ago.

Regardless of any shortcomings in the script, the production more than makes up for it with its cast. Receiving top billing in this show are Broadway veterans Tyne Daly (of Cagney and Lacey, who publicly campaigned against Prop 8) and Harriet Harris (Desperate Housewives and “Standing on Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays“), whose impeccable comedic timing carried the entire first half of the play. “Jenny’s Blues,” sung by powerhouse Lisa Howard as the sister of the bride, was an absolute showstopper. And Montego Glover of Memphis (who performed at the Trevor Project’s TrevorLIVE last year) was hilarious too, even if her character was sadly underused.

Almost all of the action in this play revolves around women and their relationships, but if you care, there were also some men in the play that I didn’t find annoying! Notably: the wonderful Edward Hibbert (an out and proud actor and veteran of 11 seasons of Frasier), David Burtka (aka Neil Patrick Harris’s husband), and Josh Grisetti (Rent).

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“It Shoulda Been You” is currently playing at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre.  For tickets and information, visit itshouldabeenyou.com.

You Should Go: Help LezCab Have Their Most Amazing Year Ever

LezCab, Autostraddle’s favorite NYC-based queer non-profit theater company, is planning a party, and you’re invited! Join them at their 2015-16 launch party THIS SUNDAY, May 10th from 7-9 pm at The Stonewall Inn in NYC. The event includes a DJ, photo booth, and the chance to win amazing prizes including  tickets to Fun Home, The Tempest at Shakespeare in the Park/The Public Theater and a 30 day membership to Mark Fisher Fitness.

But wait, there’s more! The event is a fundraiser, so your attendance helps this incredible organization put together a new year of theater that amplifies the voices of queer women and honors our stories. They’ll also launch an IndieGoGo campaign that night to raise funds at an international level, with the hopes of creating a more robust online presence.

You can check out the event Facebook and buy tickets online. On Sunday when the IndieGoGo goes live, you can find that on LezCab’s website. Have fun!

“Fun Home” the Musical is Messy, Hilarious, Nostalgic, and Totally Worth It

The show is over, the lights come up. The actors take their bows; small Alison jumps on big Alison’s back, and they all run out of the room. Throughout the audience, people are sniffling, rifling through their bags for any tissues they may have missed. I almost ask the woman next to me if she needs a hug. Because while the last 100 minutes gave us plenty of opportunity for laughter, shock and nostalgia, the overwhelming feeling in the room that night is wistful sadness.

Fun Home, the musical adaptation of the Alison Bechdel graphic memoir that so many of us love, opened on Broadway on April 19. Since then, it’s received a dozen Tony nominations, among other awards and accolades, and many of its performances have sold out. The one I saw did; two empty seats in front of me appeared to be the only no-shows in the entire Circle in the Square theater. The crowd was diverse in age and appearance, but everyone seemed taken in by the story of an adult Alison (Beth Malone) remembering a chaotic youth marked by her father’s strange behavior and eventual suicide.

The three versions we get of Bechdel — “Small Alison,” “Middle Alison,” and just plain “Alison,” according to the playbill — are each in a discovery phase of their shared life. Both young Alisons are stumbling toward maturity, trying to express themselves to a father who has a wholly different vision of her. Adult Alison knows he won’t understand, but continuously kicks herself for not explaining better, demanding answers. Early on, she announces what those who have read the memoir already know: This story will end with her father, Bruce (Michael Cerveris), committing suicide. She has limited time to speak with him before then, to learn what she can about how his warped, intangible trajectory affected her own development.

Because Alison is a lesbian, as she discovers in stages charmingly familiar to queer viewers. She is also a cartoonist, drawn to a medium her father refuses to take seriously. She doesn’t know what she wants to be like as an adult, but it’s not reflected in any of the adults around her. Her mother, Helen (Judy Kuhn), is robbed of her own dreams and resigned to living with a man who has no affection for her. Bruce, a big, shouting, singing force, is nonetheless opaque, living with lies and loneliness. Middle Alison (Emily Skeggs) starts to get an idea of the right track for her when she falls in love with Joan (Roberta Colindrez‘s truly dreamy, self-described collegiate dyke) but even then struggles to really say the words: I am a lesbian. And when she finally does, her parents act like they don’t hear her. It’s the same struggle that millions of young queer people endure every day, one that I endured.

That’s why I felt stung during one of small Alison’s pivotal scenes. Eating in a diner with her father, who is busy reading, Alison notices a delivery woman no one else seems to pay much attention to. She is strong, a butch with short hair, boots and, Alison sings triumphantly, a large ring of KEYS! Alison, who has struggled to dress comfortably while her father pressures her to fit in with other girls, revels in the realization that a grown woman could dress like this and be okay. She has received the first piece of her role model puzzle. Sitting in the audience, hearing those around me laugh at an admittedly silly musical number, made me want to get up and defend the girl on stage. Her story is the one that’s still developing! I thought. This is a huge deal for her! Take this seriously! 

Like many of my reactions to this play, this one came from a deeply personal experience as a queer woman. Which is great, and powerful, and exactly what good theater should inspire. But weirdly enough, it was a moment in which I felt othered — in a theater with visibly queer people! during a play about a lesbian and her gay dad! — acutely aware of all those in the audience who were there out of curiosity about something they had never experienced. It made me empathize even more with adult Alison, who throughout the play cringes and blushes at her younger selves’ more awkward moments.

Media representations of childhood are inherently revisionist — reproduced by adults, they search for complex meaning in youthful experiences that, while multifaceted and complicated, were lived by a less-developed mind. To a child, cause-and-effect reasoning is a blunt tool, and varied daily experiences are often viewed sequentially rather than in relation to one another: I didn’t eat my lunch; then I was starving all afternoon; then I had three servings at dinner; then I threw up on the carpet; then Mom got mad at me. An adult would see each situation as leading to the next (if I had eaten lunch, I wouldn’t have gotten sick; if I hadn’t overeaten at dinner, my parent wouldn’t be upset) but a child doesn’t necessarily connect the dots. And an adult looking back on a situation from their childhood may connect dots that shade experiences in a way their younger self never felt.

Fun Home gets that. Throughout the story, adult Alison wanders the set, observing small details and wondering aloud if she’s remembered correctly. At times, she rushes to sketch details before they disappear; in other moments, square lights appear around multiple scenes simultaneously, as if she’s viewing the comic strip in her head faster than she can transcribe it. Staged in the round, the play has just enough set detail to keep the eye bouncing while characters bound in and out through a multipurpose door. Scenes flow organically from one to the next, and bare-bones representations of Bechdel’s father’s same-sex dalliances inspire a truly impressive amount of discomfort. Small Alison never knew about her dad’s affairs, and middle Alison can only piece together the components her mother reveals. But neither she nor the audience needs a full play-by-play to feel how wrong the encounters are.

Bruce is the loudest character in the play, and it would be easy to think of him as its main character. He’s the only one whose story gets a beginning, middle and end. But that would be a shortsighted view of what Fun Home is, and why it’s so important. The play, like the graphic memoir, is not just Bechdel’s recounting of her father’s painful, semi-closeted life. It’s an investigation, a desperate search to pin down how who Bruce was made Alison into who she is.

It’s also a hilarious, emotionally sharp retrospective on growing up, from the delightful disco-themed commercial small Alison and her brothers record for the funeral home, to middle Alison’s declaration that she’s changing her major to Joan. The story interjects these joyous scenes with less comfortable ones of Bruce’s dalliances or family arguments, because that’s really what it’s like when you’re young. Good things happen, then bad ones, then funny ones, then awful ones.

Malone told the New York Times the story maintains that strict, investigatory sense as a reflection of Bechdel’s personal ethos: “Even her look is all about telling the truth — no ornamentation, nothing pretty. She hates lies — lies and embellishments are what got her dad killed.”

Without lies or embellishments, all Fun Home has is one woman’s messy set of memories. But those recollections are brilliantly recounted by actors who really seem like a family struggling to understand one another. Three representations of Bechdel feel both distinct and familiar, and the music is strong without overpowering the story. In the end, the play sticks with you for the same reasons the memoir did when you first read it: It reminds you how hard it is to understand who we are.

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Fun Home is playing now at Circle in the Square theater in New York. Tickets are available at Telecharge.

Fun Home the Musical Snags 12 Tony Award Nominations

The 2015 Tony Award nominations were announced this morning. Fun Home, the musical based on Alison Bechdel‘s celebrated graphic memoir, led the way with 12 nominations, including the coveted Best Musical trophy. (An American in Paris tied Fun Home with 12 nods, as well.) Is it a coincidence that a musical about a lesbian artist and her gay father received a nomination for Broadway’s biggest award the same morning the Supreme Court of the United States began hearing arguments about same-sex marriage? Yeah, but it feels serendipitous to pull up the New York Times home page and see the stories sitting side-by-side.

The fact that Fun Home is up for 12 Tonys is just another bit of happiness in a steady stream of good fortune the musical. It was also nominated for the Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History, nine Lucille Lortel Awards (of which it won three, including Outstanding Musical), the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, seven Outer Critics Circle Award, and two Drama League Awards. It also won an Off-Broadway Alliance Award for Best Musical and an Obie for Best Musical. It opened on Broadway to sell-out crowds last weekend and received the kind of glowing reviews NYT theater critics usually reserve for Neil Patrick Harris.

And it’s the first mainstream musical about a young lesbian. It’s a really good time to be Alison Bechdel, is what I am saying.

Here is a full list of Tony nominees.

Best Leading Actor in a Play
Steven Boyer, Hand to God
Bradley Cooper, The Elephant Man
Ben Miles, Wolf Hall Parts One & Two
Bill Nighy, Skylight
Alex Sharp, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Best Leading Actress in a Play
Geneva Carr, Hand to God
Helen Mirren, The Audience
Elisabeth Moss, The Heidi Chronicles
Carey Mulligan, Skylight
Ruth Wilson, Constellations

Best Leading Actor in a Musical
Michael Cerveris, Fun Home
Robert Fairchild, An American in Paris
Brian d’Arcy James, Something Rotten!
Ken Watanabe, The King and I
Tony Yazbeck, On the Town

Best Leading Actress in a Musical
Kristin Chenoweth, On the Twentieth Century
Leanne Cope, An American in Paris
Beth Malone, Fun Home
Kelli O’Hara, The King and I
Chita Rivera, The Visit

Best Revival of a Play
Skylight
The Elephant Man
This Is Our Youth
You Can’t Take It With You

Best Revival of a Musical
On the Town
On the Twentieth Century
The King and I
Best Featured Actor in a Play
Matthew Beard, Skylight
K. Todd Freeman, Airline Highway
Richard McCabe, The Audience
Alessandro Nivola, The Elephant Man
Micah Stock, It’s Only a Play

Best Featured Actress in a Play
Annaleigh Ashford, You Can’t Take It With You
Patricia Clarkson, The Elephant Man
Lydia Leonard, Wolf Hall Parts One & Two
Sarah Stiles, Hand to God
Julie White, Airline Highway

Best Featured Actress in a Musical
Victoria Clark, Gigi
Judy Kuhn, Fun Home
Sydney Lucas, Fun Home
Ruthie Ann Miles, The King and I
Emily Skeggs, Fun Home

Best Musical
An American in Paris
Fun Home
Something Rotten!
The Visit

Best Play
Disgraced by Ayad Akhtar
Hand to God by Robert Askins
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Simon Stephens
Wolf Hall Parts One & Two by Hilary Mantel and Mike Poulton

Best Book
Karey Kirkpatrick and John O’Farrell, Something Rotten!
Lisa Kron, Fun Home
Craig Lucas, An American in Paris
Terrence McNally, The Visit

Best Score
John Kander and Fred Ebb, The Visit
Wayne Kirkpatrick and Karey Kirkpatrick, Something Rotten!
Sting, The Last Ship
Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron, Fun Home

Best Scenic Design of a Musical
Bob Crowley and 59 Productions, An American in Paris
David Rockwell, On the Twentieth Century
Michael Yeargan, The King and I
David Zinn, Fun Home

Best Orchestrations
Christopher Austin, Don Sebesky and Bill Elliott, An American in Paris
John Clancy, Fun Home
Larry Hochman, Something Rotten!
Rob Mathes, The Last Ship

Best Scenic Design of a Play
Bunny Christie & Finn Ross, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Bob Crowley, Skylight
Christopher Oram, Wolf Hall Parts One & Two
David Rockwell, You Can’t Take It With You

Best Costume Design of a Play
Bob Crowley, The Audience
Jane Greenwood, You Can’t Take It With You
Christopher Oram, Wolf Hall Parts One & Two
David Zinn, Airline Highway

Best Lighting Design of a Play
Paule Constable, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Paule Constable and David Plater, Wolf Hall Parts One & Two
Natasha Katz, Skylight
Japhy Weideman, Airline Highway

Best Director of a Musical
Sam Gold, Fun Home
Casey Nicholaw, Something Rotten!
John Rando, On the Town
Bartlett Sher, The King and I
Christopher Wheeldon, An American in Paris

Best Scenic Design of a Play
Bunny Christie & Finn Ross, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Bob Crowley, Skylight
Christopher Oram, Wolf Hall Parts One & Two
David Rockwell, You Can’t Take It With You

Best Director of a Play
Stephen Daldry, Skylight
Marianne Elliott, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Scott Ellis, You Can’t Take It With You
Jeremy Herrin, Wolf Hall Parts One & Two
Moritz von Stuelpnagel, Hand to God

Best Lighting Design of a Musical
Donald Holder, The King and I
Natasha Katz, An American in Paris
Ben Stanton, Fun Home
Japhy Weideman, The Visit

Best Choreography
Joshua Bergasse, On the Town
Christopher Gattelli, The King and I
Scott Graham & Steven Hoggett, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Casey Nicholaw, Something Rotten!
Christopher Wheeldon, An American in Paris

The awards ceremony will be hosted by Alan Cumming and Kristin Chenoweth on June 7 at Radio City Music Hall, and broadcast live on CBS.

 

 

 

Teen Angst, Coming Out and Growing Up: “Secret Diaries” Touring the UK Now

Secret Diaries is an award-winning coming-of-age play by Manchester theatre company Art with Heart, based on the real-life teenage diaries of a friend of writer Sarah Evans. Set in both the present and the past, it spans decades in the life of a queer teenager/woman (Hayley) including experiences like coming out and the angst of teen crushes was well as adult relationships and parenthood.

It’s been featured as part of Pride, Queer Contact and LGBT History Month events and Sarah says that at every youth performance of the show, at least one young person has come out… which is pretty damn amazing.

I asked Sarah to explain a little more about the ideas behind the play and why she felt it was important to bring a queer teen’s secret diaries into the spotlight.

Hey Sarah! I heard that you came up for the idea for Secret Diaries one night when you were going through a friend’s hilarious teen journals — is that right? Why did you think it would make good material for a play?

Yeah! My friend had been given her old journals by her Mum and we sat around reading them. We laughed a lot, but it was also really clear that she really poured her everything out on those pages every day and used them to figure out who she was. The diaries were so honest and uncensored, they really stuck with me.

I suppose I saw me on those pages too; we all did! Growing up is such a mix of the good, bad, ugly and ridiculous. It make me think about all that time I’d spent fretting over if I was cool enough to wear a glittery dress, or practicing my dance moves to perfection, worrying if I would ever be happy.

The diaries inspired me and I felt like I had to write something that fused together the pressure cooker of the 80s — being surround by excess — from neon spandex and political darkness to now, where even though Section 28 has been repealed, and same-sex marriage has been embedded into law, it still feels like society has a lot of catching up to do.

I’m always really driven by the line between tolerance and acceptance and I struggle with why we encourage tolerance. Tolerance means that we are happy to encourage acceptance on the surface but behind closed doors reject people. No! We should be exploring why we’re not accepting of others, why we don’t feel like we’re all equal, not just tolerating difference!

So is the play totally autobiographical?

It’s a mix of being inspired by the diaries, my own life and fiction. You are always inspired by the world around you. Some of the fire for writing it came from working with young people in schools and an LGBT Youth Centre and hearing the most awful things that they have experienced. It was hard to stomach that still now there are young people going through hell because they are LGBT. I felt like I needed to do something.

Half of the play is set in the past and half in today. Hayley and her wife are looking to adopt a child, but in talking to her Dad about it, he opens up for her what her life was like growing up before she embarks upon parenthood herself. She has these ideal scenarios mapped out, as we all do, of being the perfect parent, but her Dad makes her open up the past to really deal with it before facing the world with a new challenge. It takes them both on a journey.

Our past absolutely informs who we are today, no matter how tightly you pack it away in a box, in a loft or a cupboard, we’re carrying those experiences round with us all the time. Including how much effort we put into getting that Bros dance routine absolutely perfect!

There’s so much pressure on you as a teenager to be in the right place, saying the right things, wearing the right clothes — and that’s just the easy stuff to deal with! Figuring out the bigger questions like who you are and who you want to be are always huge mountains that only you can climb.

What advice would you give your teen self now?

Listen to that Baz Luhrmann song ‘Everybody’s Free to Wear Sunscreen.’ Especially the bit about looking after your knees. “Do one thing every day that scares you. Sing.” And dancing. I always try and dance on my own in the kitchen when the kettle is boiling, it feels really liberating just to throw your body round when nobody is watching and not giving a shit if you look like an idiot. It’s the best way to start a day. In fact, I’ve still got that song on tape, I’m putting it on when I get home. Thanks ☺

What’s the overall message of the play?

It doesn’t have one. It’ll ask you to think and to question your own values and yourself. In society we’re told what to think, what to do and how to be every day of our lives, drama should be a space that asks you what you really think and challenge yourself. It should make you think about your world, how it looks and empower you to change your world for the better.

It’s easy to tell someone that we’re all equal no matter what, but life isn’t as simple as that, not if we really want to make change, if we really want to challenge people’s perceptions of equality we need to talk, explore, and be open to a conversation, that’s the way we change the world for the better. We can tell people what to think until we’re blue in the face but we need to do is listen, and talk with each other. With everyone around the table.

Secret Diaries is touring throughout the UK until 2nd April 2015

Information, dates and tickets are at artwithheart.org.uk/current and direct from venues.

Find out more about Secret Diaries and Art with Heart:

Web: artwithheart.org.uk
Twitter: @artwith_heart
Facebook: /weareartwithheart
Hashtag: #secretdiaries

“Post Traumatic Super Delightful” Uses Laughter To Talk About Campus Sexual Assault

This past Saturday I had the rare and special opportunity to see a play called Post Traumatic Super Delightful [PTSD]. Rare, because there are only two performances left to be seen in NYC, but it was special for a number of reasons. PTSD is a one-woman show that uses humor to traverse the complex and frightening terrain of sexual violence on college campuses. Using a silent clown narrator to break the silence around personal and community trauma, playwright/performer Antonia Lassar tells the story of a campus sexual assault through the voices of a professor, Title IX coordinator, and a perpetrator. Though the performance itself tells a singular narrative, Lassar explains that the characters are actually an amalgam of stories she collected through extensive interviews with victims, perpetrators and faculty who have dealt with campus sexual assault.

Lassar was introduced to clowning in Boston University’s acting conservatory program where she received her BFA in Theatre Arts, and continued practicing with the Barrow Group in NYC. But, she says, “I studied (bunny quotes) in my bedroom.” When asked if the production has received any negative feedback for using humor as a vehicle to discuss such a taboo subject, Lassar says they haven’t, not yet, “but we’re prepared for a reaction like that, which is why we make sure to include resources in the program and we make sure to market ourselves very clearly, because we don’t want to trick anybody into coming to a play about sexual assault who doesn’t feel ready to come to that play.” And in fact, they take special care to ensure audience members that they are free to leave the performance at any time without judgment. When they take the show on tour to rape crisis centers and college campuses, Lassar says they hope to have a Title IX coordinator or crisis counselor present at every performance as a liaison.

Watching Lassar’s riveting performance — jumping effortlessly from Russian diva and Title IX coordinator, Lena, to alleged rapist and “southern gentleman,” Bryan, to the nervous and defensive professor defending him — the victim, Julia, is notably absent. In this world, Julia has refused to give an interview, probably for fear of her world falling apart even more than it already has. Given Lassar’s truthful and empathetic performance of Bryan the alleged rapist, one might begin to wonder just who this performance is trying to target, survivors or the community at large? “Both,” insists Lassar. “I think that both survivors and communities get different things out of it. I think that to target an audience of survivors is to emphasize the cathartic healing moments.”

These are represented in the silent clown, who is quite clearly an abstracted interpretation of Lassar herself. “And that came out of a ton of interviews with survivors, [where we] talked a lot about the pressures of fitting the survivor identity. And so, the clown is responding to that pressure… The interview moments speak more to community, because I also don’t think that community trauma has been addressed at all in the conversation around sexual violence.” Many people think this is as it should be. Why should we care how a perpetrator or community is feeling, when the victim is the person who has to live the rest of their life with this trauma? Lassar is concerned about the reproduction of sexual violence in a system that values loose punishment over healing — that includes healing for perpetrators. Lassar recalls the Hollow Water Indian Reservation’s solution to community trauma: a form of restorative justice that requires the perpetrator to sit down with the victim’s family, their own family, and the larger community to hear testimony on how their actions respectively hurt each group. Given that many of the people advocating for rape victims are the same folks who advocate for prison reform or abolition, it seems counterintuitive to suggest that we send rapists into prison where their behavior will likely reproduce itself in other harmful ways. Lassar thinks that because college campuses already deal with incidents of sexual assault outside the judicial system, it is the perfect testing ground for restorative justice techniques.

Angela Dumlao, PTSD’s director, has watched this play blossom over the course of the year:

This piece has evolved a long way to what it has become now… So, Lena the Russian character… before she became Lena the character she was a standup bit that Antonia used to do… I saw her do it before I was even on the team. So, that joke Lena makes in the beginning, ‘nobody wants to talk about sexual assault, god forbid we talk about the violence I went through, no let’s make sure you’re okay first.’ I watched Antonia slay that at an open mic. So even though we’re telling the story of Julia, I think there is a meta commentary going on about your [Antonia’s] survivorship.

Dumlao makes it clear that although the narrative arc of the play focuses on the case of “Bryan” and “Julia,” Lassar’s experience is the lifeblood of the entire piece.

Lassar and Dumlao are very vocal about the privileges that enable Lassar to put up this play: she is cis, white and able bodied: “the perfect victim,” and she has never named her rapist, which allows her to talk about her rape without being accused of lying. The characters in her play don’t necessarily have all of these privileges. Julia, the victim, is under enormous pressure to file a Title IX complaint against her rapist, which will inevitably result in unwanted publicity and further trauma, expressed succinctly by Lena in a moment of exasperation and anger: “What is point of justice, if victim is still hurting?” The hope is that through vocalizing our experiences, laughing about them even, we can begin to heal. Lassar recalls trying to talk about her own rape:

I like to approach my own trauma through laughter… What was interesting was that the natural impulse to want to laugh about it, and laugh with other people about it, was really hard to do. It was almost impossible to find somebody to laugh with! Because they were often so traumatized by hearing that I was a survivor that they totally shut down from laughing… Like faking tears when I talked to people, when I wasn’t sad! I just knew they would be able to hear my story better if I looked really sad.

She does want to make it clear, however, that her healing process has involved clowning and laughter, but “that’s not to say that everyone’s does. I don’t wanna make it sound like laughter needs to be in everybody’s healing process.”

Laughter itself may be a privilege Lassar can afford due to her status as white and able bodied, a concession the performer/director duo are adamant about making. “The movement #TheresNoPerfectVictim started trending on twitter recently,” Dumlao tells me. “It’s just the idea that there is no one narrative for the survivor and usually the narratives we hear are of white, cis, straight, able-bodied, class-privileged women. And there’s this amazing article on Al Jazeera about disability and survivorship that we’re obsessed with. It’s the best article we’ve ever read about sexual assault.” The two of them are gushing over Azmat Khan‘s recently published article, The Hidden Victims of Campus Sexual Assault: Students With Disabilities. The piece chronicles a six-month investigation into sexual assault on Gallaudet University campus, a university specifically designed for students with disabilities. According to Khan, the journalistic investigation “uncovers troubling allegations from students who said their disabilities made them targets for sexual assault; that their experiences reporting that abuse were complicated by factors like disability, race and sexual identity; and that in some cases, sexual assault was even the cause of a disability, such as depression.”

Most disturbingly, but unfortunately least surprisingly, we learn that one year “Gallaudet University received 18 reports of what are known as ‘forcible sex offenses,’ according to crime statistics required by the federal Clery Act… And Gallaudet’s forcible sex offenses rate — more than 11 per 1,000 students, according to a ‘Washington Post’ analysis — was the highest per capita of any federally funded university with more than 1,000 students in 2012.” The piece clearly lays out the ways in which students with disabilities, along with other intersecting factors are at the highest risk for sexual assault with the fewest options for recourse.

Lassar and Dumlao hope that their performance will not be seen as an attempt to singularize the survivor experience, but open a dialogue that includes the experiences of sexual assault survivors from every walk of life. “We had been addressing this idea of ‘What is perfect survivorship?’ and now it’s become part of the national conversation,” Dumlao says. “And it’s been so exciting to directly address it… Hopefully because this dialogue is happening and we feel like we’re on the cusp of this conversation, people will understand how complex it is and how the survivor has no obligation to be what anyone wants them to be.” In a few weeks, Lassar will be traveling to Rice University in Houston, Texas to develop the post-show discussions and workshops that will become a part of every performance.

To fund their US and Canadian tour, PTSD will soon be launching a crowdfunding campaign. “We want to make the play as free as possible for [rape] crisis centers,” says Lassar. They officially start their tour at Rice University in May, pit stop at the Minnesota Fringe Festival at in the first week of August, then make their way up to Canada for the Edmonton Fringe Festival. They are still in the process of booking colleges and crisis centers, but you can always check their website PTSDtheplay.com for updates, and information on contacting the team about booking the show for your very own college or crisis center. Follow the play on Twitter for more instant gratification. There are two performances left in NYC, as part of the FRIGID Festival. Performances are Wednesday March 4th at 5:30pm, and Friday March 6th at 8:30pm at the Kraine Theater. Get your tickets HERE.

Choose Your Own Dreamscape Adventure at “Sleep No More,” an Immersive Theater Production

“Seriously, stop pulling away!” At 3:30 PM on Halloween, I’m losing my patience with this boi, my life-partner-in-crime-spousal-unit-person, on whom I’m trying to apply smudgy black eyeliner.

“I’m sorry. I can’t help it!” he says, trying his damndest to keep his head still and his eyes open. It is an exercise in futility. We assume a weird position where I stand over him while he hugs my legs and I tip his head back with one hand while applying the eye makeup with the other. It sounds like a Kama Sutra position but it is actually just really uncomfortable. We are both giggling now.

A full hour later, his face is done and I’m pretty pleased with my work. I’m not going to quit my day job to go on Face Off or anything, but I did a fairly good job following KlairedelysArt’s Youtube makeup tutorial.

We both finish getting fixed up and head over to the McKittrick Hotel, where we have tickets for the Last Supper/Sleep No More/Inferno combo. This is not our first time to Sleep No More, a site-specific immersive theatre production based on Macbeth and Hitchcock and set in a 1930’s dreamscape. The promenade performance lasts for three hours, during which audience members, wearing ghostly white masks and having pledged to be completely silent, interact with the space and performers as they wish. It is a choose-your-own adventure for adults, with almost 100 lavishly dressed rooms to explore and 19 actors/dancers performing simultaneously throughout the multi-story, 100,000 square foot space.

Within the space there is a sanitarium, a forest labyrinth, a street with shops and offices, a speakeasy, a hotel lobby, and some rooms that only open for a few minutes at a time, that only a select few get to see. The McKittrick Hotel is not really a hotel, of course, but you do feel like you are checking in or, rather, checking out of reality. Sleep No More is a Lynchian lost world, a timewarp, and walking out of it, you feel like you might have just emerged from a fugue state.

The show is not explicitly queer, but it seems to have a lot of fans who are, including us. There is a lot of girl-on-girl and boy-on-boy action to be found if you know where to look. You don’t really have to look that hard. Follow any woman in the show and she’ll eventually be making out with another woman, or more.

Tonight is the infamous McKittrick Halloween party, one of the most talked about events of the year. It is our first McKittrick party and we are buzzing with excitement. It starts off with the Last Supper, for which we are seated at long tables in their on-site restaurant, the Heath. The theme of the evening is Inferno, the Seven Deadly Sins. We are dressed as “wrath” and “envy,” respectively. As we walk in, we pass be a strange sight of women in white dresses and red blindfolds, frozen in doll-like poses inside the windows of an old train car. At first, it seems they might be mannequins, but then I see the lip of one woman quiver, just slightly. During the meal, the guests of the head table, where a dark-haired woman seemed to be hosting, start bringing in the women in white one by one. The womens’ feet are bathed and they are seated at the table, still blind folded, to be fed slowly by the other guests, whose faces are covered in metallic gold. It seems these are the virgin sacrifices, the lambs for the slaughter.

The feminist side of my brain is reeling a bit at this whole virgin/whore/sacrifice thing. I mean, couldn’t at least one of the virgins be a dude? Isn’t this a tired trope? But the queer side of my brain is completely immersed in watching one woman slowly feed a blind-folded woman a bite of lamb. I’m sorry? What were you thinking feminist brain? Where you having thoughts? Have you seen what’s going on over here at this table, though?

After the dinner, a curtain is drawn around the head table and the Heath’s host sings us a song before sending us off to the Sleep No More show. We are given instructions and masks and descend into the McKittrick Hotel (remember, not actually a hotel). The show is fantastic in every definition of that word, as per usual. I won’t give away too many secrets and spoilers, but I highly suggest you go to this show if you are ever in NYC and can scrape together the pennies. Tickets are in the range of $80-$120. It is worth every dollar. Tourists, especially, I really must insist you see this off-off-broadway immersive performance instead of whatever broadway show you were going to get tickets to. I promise I wouldn’t lie to you. This night is my 14th show and I still have not seen it all. It is almost impossible to ever see it all, between the 19 different storylines happening simultaneously and the rotating cast of actors.

At the end of the show, we are herded onto the 2nd floor lobby, which has been redecorated to look like that gay dive bar you went to in college, complete with tacky Chinese lanterns and glittery curtains. There is even a sad hetero corner that no one wants to stand in.

Shortly after, other floors for the party are opened, including the huge ballroom, the 3rd floor Macbeth suite, and the 4th floor bar or, as we decided it was, the unofficial lez floor. Throughout the space, there are huge glass boxes set up in which the actors and dancers perform. Some are used like go-go stages. Others house performances (and slaughters). The entire scene is very Party Monster era club feel. In the main bar on the 2nd floor, dubbed Club Limbo, the Heathens play and cotton-candy-cloud lanterns dangle as though they are floating away from the low ceilings.

After watching some performances and doing some boogying in the huge ballroom area, we end up spending considerable time on the 4th floor, which you can only get to by elevator. Why, you ask? Well, specifically because of two actors, Leslie Kraus and Virginia Logan, who are steaming it up in their glowing triangular glass box (no pun intended). I mean, a cute woman in a tuxedo shirt and vest hitting hard is going to get me every time. The two actors playfully pass glow stick necklaces out to the crowd through tiny holes cut in the glass and pour blended drinks to the outside guests through a funnel system. They also scrawl things (backwards from the inside, very impressive) in chalk on the walls like, “I want to eat you,” and “What will you do for it?” There’s lots of people kissing Virginia through the dirty glass (eww, but also, hot). There are also absinthe shots on the side bar with two very adorable women pouring. We decide this is the queerest floor for the ladies (even though there is a wicked drag performance going on in the gay dive bar space on the 2nd floor that includes a striptease version of Let It Go). I mean, two women dancing in a triangular box and licking all the glow sticks and wanting to eat everyone. I’m into it.

Around 2:30am, we head back to our hotel, exhausted and thrilled. At the McKittrick, the debauchery rages on into the wee hours.

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The Halloween party is over, but you can still have your own creepy adventure at Sleep No More any day of the week. Sleep No More is the work of Punchdrunk, a UK-based immersive theatre company, produced by Emursive in NYC. Performances happen every night, with two shows on Fridays and Saturdays. Tickets are between $80 and $120. Currently booking through February 2, 2015 (and likely to be extended after that).

15 Ladies Who Played Peter Pan: From Nina Boucicault to Allison Williams

Peter Pan holds a special spot in so many queer girls’ hearts. For example, I’m pretty sure that Mary Martin playing Peter Pan in the televised 1960 version of Peter Pan is my root? Also, I maybe possibly once published a (terrible) lesbian erotica story titled “Straight (On) ‘Til Morning” that indulged itself pretty intensely in Peter Pan imagery? Also, at least 25% of y’all have been Peter Pan for Halloween, don’t lie.

Peter Pan’s eternal youth and rascally, androgyne qualities are recalled in many modern conceptions of the term “boi,” as it is employed to describe a particular style and attitude of boyish masculinity as embodied by female-bodied queers. Peter Pan has a special place in queer theory and queer cultural critique, too, as in papers like Gay, Innocent and Heartless: Peter Pan and the Queering of Popular Culture and Queer Theory Wrestles the “Real” Child: Impossibility, Identity, and Language in Jacqueline Rose’s The Case of Peter Pan.

But perhaps most importantly, many of us are drawn to Peter Pan because she’s played by a woman who can pass as a little boy, like so many lesbians in real life!

Why has Peter Pan always been played by a woman? Well, back in 1904 when the show debuted, kids under the age of 14 were prohibited by law from performing on a British stage after 9pm. This wouldn’t necessarily be a huge problem for casting Peter — but if Peter was played by a teenage boy, then the rest of the cast would need to be “scaled down,” meaning that characters like The Lost Boys would need to be played by even younger boys, and Wendy by a girl rather than a woman, and inevitably we’d be dealing with kids under the age of 14. Casting a grown man in the part seemed a tad creepy, but also would’ve been a strain on the already-challenging affair of making Peter Pan fly using rope and stage wizardry. Thus playwright James M. Barrie requested that they cast a woman. This wasn’t an unusual practice in those times.

Things have changed over the years, of course, and now Peter Pan is often played by a male actor, as in the 2003 live-action version. The 1982 Royal Shakespeare Production was the first of many theatrical performances that went with a male lead, to very mixed reviews. (More recent productions have also attempted to dial back the blatant and gross racism of the original play.)

When NBC announced they’d be putting on a live-action performance of Peter Pan this December, rumors began swirling that a boy would be cast. Pretty much everybody was surprised when Allison Williams of Girls was announced as the new Peter Pan. NBC Chairman Robert Greenblatt enthused that Williams would “bring the perfect blend of ‘boyish’ vulnerability and bravado,” while producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron promised that “she will reinvent the iconic role of Peter Pan with her wit, her warmth, her dynamic flying and her wonderful musical abilities.” Then the first photos of Williams as Peter Pan were released yesterday and the lesbian internet lost its shit, including so many of us here.

So, in honor of those photos and this situation, there seemed to be no day like today to  look back on the many women who have played this iconic role and to talk about which of them were total lesbians. Also, I’d like to give a shout out to Peter Pan on Stage and Screen, 1904-2010, by Bruce K. Hanson, which was a huge help in putting this list together.

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1. Nina Boucicault, 1904-1905, London Play

When Peter Pan debuted in 1904, the title role was played by director Dion Boucicault’s sister, experienced stage actress Nina Boucicault. When Nina went to James M. Barrie, the play’s author, for advice on how to play Peter, he offered her only this: “Peter is a bird, and he is one day old.”

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2. Maude Adams, 1905-1907, 1912-1913, 1915-1916, Broadway Play

Maude Adams, one of the most successful actresses of her era, was Broadway producer’s Charles Frohman’s first choice for the role and thus originated it on Broadway a year after Nina’s debut in the West End. Adams designed her own costumes for the play and henceforth personally invented what is now known as the “Peter Pan collar.” She garnered rave reviews for her turn as Peter, which she prepared for by spending an isolated month in the Catskills running around in the woods.

It’s pretty much agreed upon that Maude Adams was a lesbian — she lived a very private life, never married, and was living with her “companion” of 46 years, Louise Boynton, at the time of her death (in fact, the two women were buried side-by-side with a shared gravestone). Mercedes de Acosta, the legendary “lover to the stars” who has been romantically linked to women including actress Greta Garbo and dancer Isadora Duncan, was twelve when she saw Adams playing Peter, and noted that “To me she was Peter Pan, and when I saw her in the part, I was thrown into a state of ecstasy.” Maude Adams, despite a twenty-year age gap, is one of a few ladies cited as an “early lover” of de Acosta, who pretty much hooked up with everybody.

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3. Cecilia Loftus, 1905-1906, London Play

Loftus had just seen the Maude Adams production on Broadway when she was called to audition for the upcoming season’s production in London. She is credited with bringing a “boyish” and “elfin” quality to the role which her understudy, Pauline Chase, would echo when she took over the ensuing year.

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4. Pauline Chase, 1906-1913, London Play

Pauline Chase was a favorite of J.M. Barrie, which ensured she’d never “grow out” of the role as actresses had before her. Barrie has written, “There are only two possible ways of playing Peter. Either he must be the whimsical, fairy creature that Nina Boucicault made him or he must be the lovable tomboy of Pauline Chase. There is no other way.”

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5. Marilyn Miller, 1924-1925, Broadway Play

“She was the darling of the Jazz Age,” writes Bruce K. Hansen of Marilyn Miller in Peter Pan On Stage and Screen. “She possessed youth, beauty, a sparkling personality, and an enormous talent for dancing.” Miller had been working in vaudeville from a young age and appeared in The Ziegfeld Follies. Her production of Peter Pan wasn’t a critical success, with many lamenting that she was too “beautiful and graceful” for the role.

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6. Betty Bronson, 1924, Silent Film

The very first film adaptation of Peter Pan was a silent film released by Paramount in 1924. Bronson was only 17 when she went in for the role and her film experience was limited to a few spots as an extra, but Barrie personally selected her for the part.

“Indian Princess” Tiger Lily, a role which has offered producers the chance to make racially problematic casting decisions for over a century, was played by bisexual Chinese-American actress Anna May Wong in the silent film. Wong is widely considered to be Hollywood’s first Asian-American movie star.

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7. Eva Le Gallienne, 1928, Broadway Play

Eva Le Gallienne was only 29 years old when she directed and starred in a 1928 revival of Peter Pan. The New York Times liked her production a lot, although they noted that her costume “wears the limit of bare legs.”

Le Gallienne was also a lesbian, a fact she was “relatively open” about within Broadway social circles. Le Gallienne was involved with Mercedes de Acosta for a significant period of time, including a blissful period in Paris when the two shacked up in one of the rooms reserved for visiting lesbian couples at Sylvia Beach’s Hotel Foyot. According to The Sewing Circle, Mercedes and Eva broke up following a failed play production they’d collaborated on and partially due to “Eva’s need for new conquests.” Tallulah Bankhead once told Tennessee Williams that she’d been seduced by Le Gallienne when she was sixteen. Le Gallienne has also been linked romantically to Greta Garbo, Gladys Calthrop and Beatrice Lillie.

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8. Jean Arthur, 1950-1951, Broadway Play

The last Broadway production of this particular adaptation of Peter Pan starred film actress Jean Arthur as Peter Pan and Boris Karloff as Captain Hook. It was directed by British filmmmaker Wendy Toye.

Arthur, like so many actresses of her era often described as “reclusive,” was probably bisexual or a lesbian. She lived with her “unmarried army nurse” companion Ellen Mastroianni for decades at the end of her life, and also was married to a man for seventeen years, dated Oscar Levant… and told an interviewer in 1975 that “sex was something she could live without.” She also apparently possessed an “almost pathological refusal to wear a dress even when a role demanded it.” There were also crazy lesbian rumors about Jean Arthur and Mary Martin, which we’ll talk about in the Mary Martin section!

 

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9. Veronica Lake, 1951, National Tour

Lake’s casting was a surprise to many, and the actress cut out booze and took up fencing to prepare for the role. She loved the break from Hollywood and enjoyed being on stage. “Theatergoers were amazed to discover how gracefully Veronica moved across the stage as Peter Pan,” writers Jeff Lenburg in Peekaboo: The Story of Veronica Lake. “Especially in light of rumors that had her temper interfering with the show.” She was devastated when the run ended and became very depressed.

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10. Mary Martin, Broadway Musical and TV Broadcast (1954-1955), TV Movie (1960)

In 1954, Peter Pan debuted as a stage musical starring Mary Martin, who was already a well-established Broadway star. Martin had always wanted to play the part but figured she’d never get the chance until Edwin Lester, director of the San Francisco and Los Angeles Light Opera Company, invited Martin aboard as Peter Pan for what would be the excruciatingly long process of making the play into a hit Broadway musical. Variety raved that “Miss Martin is so completely right, so believable and infectious as the eternal boy that it seems incredible that Barrie didn’t write the original play for her.”

In 1955, NBC did a live broadcast of the show, making it the first-ever full-length Broadway production to air on color television. It was filmed straight through for a live audience on a set adapted for television cameras and was a huge hit for the network. In 1960, while Martin was on Broadway in The Sound of Music, she participated in the first-ever taping of the musical, which was eventually released on VHS so kids like me could watch it over and over and over again and wonder why we were so drawn to that woman.

As aforementioned, there were wild lesbian rumors about Jean Arthur and Mary Martin, who it turns out were actually good friends and neighbors for a while, apparently sharing “an obsessive love for Peter Pan.” They’d even fight over who got to dress up as Peter Pan at costume parties. (They must have been invited to a lot of costume parties?) Although Mary Martin married twice, she was involved with actress Janet Gaynor, according to Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons’ Gay L.A., in which it is noted that:

“When Janet Gaynor and Mary Martin, who were also lovers, took a vacation together (leaving their homosexual husbands at home), fan magazines considered it ‘charming for them to enjoy some time for ‘girl talk’ — as their desire to be alone was naively dubbed. Gender ambiguity and “romantic friendships” such as female stars could enjoy without suspicion were verboten for male stars.”

According to Stepping Out, Bob Fosse apparently called Mary Martin “Broadway’s biggest closet king,” declaring that “everyone thought that lovely little Mary was Miss Femme, and she was — except next to her gay husband.”

Watch The 1960 Mary Martin edition here:
http://youtu.be/hJFtCfHDFfw

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11. Hayley Mills, 1969 London Play

Peter Pan continued running every holiday season in London, and in 1969, film star Hayley Mills took on the titular role. It was her stage debut, but Mills was already well-known for her roles in Pollyanna and The Parent Trap, among other Disney live-action favorites.

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12. Mia Farrow, 1976 TV Movie

Mia Farrow embodies so many aspects of the androgynous woman we associate with the Peter Pan archetype. However, this 1976 Hallmark Production was a disappointment to fans of the story. “As Julie Andrews sang a beautiful song, “Once Upon a Bedtime,” over the opening credits, no one realized that they were witnessing the highlight of the evening,” writes Bruce K. Hanson in Peter Pan On Stage and Screen. He also notes that “the actors playing the Lost Boys were excellent, but they were also too old and, as costumed by Sue Lucash, they looked as if they belonged at a casting call for Hair. And their collective overt masculinity only added to Farrow’s femininity.” See it for yourself:

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13. Sandy Duncan, 1979- 1981, Broadway Musical

Esteemed actress Sandy Duncan was the longest-running Peter Pan on Broadway. “From the moment she flies into the Darling nursery and throws a tantrum because she can’t get her wayward shadow back on, Duncan alerts us that her Peter will be all boy,” wrote Marilyn Stasio in The New York Post. “An adorable boy, to be sure, with her grin-cracked face and graceful bounds in mid-air; but a boy, for all that, with ants in his pants and a nose that runs and a downright willful disdain for authority. Without losing any of the fun of the role, she avoids even the most tempting moments to be cute, or to signal a flash of grown-up femininity. Her Peter is, at all times, a tough little guy who literally dances with the itchy joy of boyhood.”

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14. Cathy Rigby, 1973 (Tour), 1986 (West Coast), chunks of time between 1990-1999 (Broadway), 2000 (TV), 2005 (Farewell Tour), 2011-2013 (International Tour)

Cathy Rigby was a world-famous American gymnast in the ’60s and ’70s who competed in the Olympics and the World Championships. After retiring, she was picked up for an NBC Arena Touring Production of Peter Pan that same year, going on to play the role on out west in 1986. In 1990, Rigby began what would become a periodic Broadway engagement as Peter Pan, usually running throughout the holiday season. She’s become iconically associated with the role, which she has played as recently as last year at the age of 60. She also appeared in the 2000 TV Movie on A&E.

http://youtu.be/NQDig7KAhlo

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15. Allison Williams, TV Movie (2014)

Which brings us to this very week, when those pictures of Allison Williams showed up and a bunch of lesbians had a party in their pants. Fingers crossed this TV Movie will be a shit-ton better than that Sound of Music nightmare!

 

“Fun Home” The Musical Is Officially Heading To Broadway, Thank Goodness

Feature image by Joan Marcus

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Hey, do you remember that book that changed your life, that book called Fun Home? You know, the Alison Bechdel comic book memoir about coming out and her relationship with her dad that launched a thousand queer book club discussions? Well GUESS WHAT, the musical adaptation of Fun Home will open at Broadway’s 700-ish-seat Circle in the Square Theater on April 22! The date is significant because it’s IMMEDIATELY before the normal Tony Awards cut-off date, so you know they’re gunning for Best Musical next year. But you guys. BROADWAY. The big time! The biggest stage a musical can aspire to play on, so to speak! This is an enormous deal!

Transferring from Off-Broadway to Broadway is notoriously difficult, particularly for shows that aren’t well-known properties, since it costs millions of dollars to mount each production and since it can be difficult to draw in large audiences. What that generally translates to, when you’re a queer woman who is a feminist and a fan of musical theater, is a lot of sighing and accepting the fact that you’ll almost never see yourself reflected onstage unless your sexuality is a punchline, Rent notwithstanding. (This applies to professional and amateur productions [and generally to queer women but not queer men, and to queer women of color waaaaaay more than white queer women], but that’s a much larger conversation for another day.) I mean, seriously, it’s rare enough to get a show that’s not based on a movie or music anthology to Broadway at all, let alone a show written by women, let alone a show about a masculine-of-center queer woman! What a time to be alive. This could be the start of something new, do you hear the people sing, let the sunshine in, etc.

Casting for the Broadway production will be announced at some point in the (hopefully near) future. In the meantime, I strongly recommend listening to the Off-Broadway cast recording, featuring performances from Beth Malone, Michael Cerveris and Judy “Pocahontas” Kuhn, among others. Also, you should watch this clip from the Drama Desk Awards of Sydney Lucas as Young Alison singing “Ring of Keys,” which is about her first encounter with a butch woman. You guys, I can’t even believe there is a song about that. This is so crazy, I can’t believe this show is transferring to Broadway, somebody hold me.

Rhymes With Witches: Broadway Badass Elaine Stritch

feature image from Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me 

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On Thursday July, 17, Elaine Stritch passed away at her home in Birmingham, Michigan. There have been some amazing and wildly talented women that have lit up the stages of Broadway but none were brassier or sassier than Elaine Stritch. I always thought of theater as one of the most magical experiences anyone can experience and Elaine Stritch was one of it’s most skilled sorceresses. At 89 years old, she has worked with everyone from Sondheim to Dean Martin to Tina Fey (with numerous Tony and Emmy nominations thrown in for good measure). She will be equally remembered for the brassy characters she played and her brassier personality. What I’m trying to say is that, Elaine Stritch was a bitch and she didn’t give a f*ck what you thought about her. She was outspoken, uncompromising and FIERCE. She was the director of her own life and her tenacity and strong spirit will be sorely missed.

To pay tribute to this amazing woman I have collected some of my favorite moments from Elaine Stritch’s amazing career and hope you enjoy.

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“The Ladies Who Lunch” from Company

Though Stritch made her Broadway debut when she was 21 years old, in 1946, she carved herself into Broadway history with Stephen Sondheim’s groundbreaking musical, Company.

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Acceptance Speech at the 2004 Primetime Emmys

Oh yeah, in case winning over theater audiences wasn’t enough, she also had an extensive career in the big and small screens. She was nominated eight times for an Emmy, and won three. In this clip she just won an Emmy for her one woman show Elaine Stritch at the Liberty and her acceptance speech is the best thing ever.

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Colleen on 30 Rock

Most of you probably know Stritch as Colleen, Jack Donaghy’s (Alec Baldwin) fabulous mother. It’s rumored that Stritch insisted on wearing her own fur coats and jewels to shoot the show, but was actually sending the bill to production and keeping her wardrobe! Oh Elaine, you sneaky little bitch.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15a5jz6J0lM

Elaine Stritch at the Liberty

For a better (and much more entertaining) telling of Stritch’s life and career check out her Tony and Emmy winning one-woman show. In it, she talks about overcoming alcoholism, dissing Marlon Brando, and failing the audition for Golden Girls all while wearing no pants!

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Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me

Thankfully, this past year someone was brilliant enough to dedicate an entire documentary that captures the complex and multi-dimensional woman that is Elaine Stritch. Along with interviews from friends and colleagues (including Tina Fey, Cherry Jones and James Gandolfini), the film follows Stritch (87 years old at the time) as she struggles with aging, diabetes and alcoholism while managing a packed schedule full of stage performances and guest appearances on TV. While I have not seen it (YET!) it’s been revered as a tender and intimate look of a complex woman and artist.

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Here I leave you with some of my favorite quotes from Elaine Stritch through the years:

“All you have to do is say, ‘I’m going home’, and you’re the most popular girl at the party.”

“I never found anyone who could look after me as well as I could look after myself.”

“You can’t be funny unless you’re tragic, and you can’t be tragic unless you’re funny.”

“This age thing is all up to you. It’s like happiness is up to you. You just have to understand what it is before you get it.”

Upon Going Home: Review of “The Messiah Complex”

The Messiah Complex. Here Arts Center, April 5th, 2014. Written by Nia Witherspoon. Directed by Shayok Misha Chowdhury.

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The Messiah Complex cuts deep into the emotional, spiritual, and literal incarceration of Black people. It’s about the residue from slavery that sticks to our skin and lives in our spirits. This play highlights the ways that systems beget other systems, and how this kind of social control seeps into our relationships and families, until we find ourselves reinforcing violence onto each other, as an attempt to try to protect ourselves from the same kind of violence. This play tugs at the seams of our solidarity. And it explores what happens to us spiritually, when we collectively try to stuff ourselves into boxes that were never meant to fit our beautiful Black bodies. This play begs us to challenge the ways that normative constructions of Blackness, influence the way we live and love as queer Black people.

Born with a veil on her face, Messiah (played by Kymbali Craig) is a caulbearer, destined from birth to transcend and transform in ways she will not understand until later in life. The child of an ex-Panther, coming of age during the crack epidemic, Messiah is also a revolutionary. Nearly bringing herself up since adolescence, she learns various ways to protect herself from the coldness of this world — mostly because she has to. She loves hard, cares deeply about the people she loves and feels very protective over them as well.

Not yet sophisticated enough to understand everything that’s going on, Messiah is also struggling with her own issues and is left to emotionally fend for herself. So she learns early on that passing protects her, while simultaneously erasing part of her. She learns the pain of feeling split apart and split in half; before she is old enough to articulate why this world feels like too much to hold. Still, there is a way in which she knows that her road is bumpy because she was meant to travel a more complicated path.

Frustrated at trying to make sense of the emotional loss of her mother and the physical loss of her father (who disappears, but returns to her life at later times) the one thing she knows for sure, is that both of her parents are suffering in a way that her child heart can relate to, but doesn’t quite understand. And she’s terrified of learning what it feels like. So Messiah vacillates between feeling angry about the things that have happened and pretending they didn’t happen at all. On some level, she knows that closed mouths lead to closed hearts, but she must go through a process before she can open up. So she carries her secrets in her back pocket, like a safety pin poking through to her skin. Her silence is full of stories and her smile is full of sacrifice.

The Messiah Complex is radical because it takes on concepts of beauty, class differences, gender roles, and navigates love and life in a trans or gender-nonconforming body, within a Black context. Never before have I seen so many nuanced themes in an all Black cast. This play explores the ways in which we’ve maintained constructions of Black masculinity that don’t necessarily serve us. It explores how so many of us interpret the masculinity we see in our blood families as the kind we should later embody or seek to have in our relationships. It highlights the ways that Black masculine bodies continue to be appreciated for their sex, their anger, and their ability to protect; while leaving little room for their sadness, their vulnerability, and their need to be seen as whole.

In an accurate portrayal of relationship dynamics within a masculine/feminine dichotomy, we see this play out in Messiah’s relationship with her long-term girlfriend, Basimah. Basimah appreciates Messiah’s love, commitment, protection, and loyalty, but she also longs for Messiah to give her more — more gentle rawness, more range, and a display of emotions that expand beyond anger. Likewise, Messiah wants to give more to Basimah but struggles with the fact that Basimah is fed by many things in her life — not just their relationship. She wants to be Basimah’s all. In a tender moment, we see Messiah soften as Basimah strokes her hair and reassures her, “I gotta take care of my dreams like babies, but you my man.”

The Messiah Complex speaks to multi-level experiences of Black life, focusing specifically on trans and gender-nonconforming bodies, but it collectively encompasses all kinds of Black bodies and relationships — whether romantic, sexual, parental, or platonic. It deeply explores how limited ideas of masculinity and femininity, and constructions of “man” and “woman” hit us doubly hard as Black people and hurt us immeasurably deep as queer Black people. This play spits up and spits out the idea that any of us can escape the oppression that tells us there is only one way to be man or woman, or beautiful or powerful. And it shows us what happens when those of us who are most affected by these rigid constructions, get caught up in reinforcing them, as a means to survive in this world. This play is about negotiating emotional and physical survival, when people around you are barely hanging on. It’s about negotiating solidarity, when we are taught that allying with others has to mean losing some of ourselves. This play is about struggling to be who you are, and letting yourself expand when you realize you’ve outgrown the act of inflicting pain as a way to avoid addressing your own pain. It’s about realizing that people grow in different ways at different times, and knowing that your most valuable growth will come at a time when you’re less focused on what other people think and more focused on your commitment to being who you truly are in this life.

At various times throughout the play we hear Jay Z’s D’evils playing in the background, with the hook, (which borrows from both a Snoop Dogg song and a Prodigy lyric) “Dear God, I wonder can you save me…Illuminati want my mind, soul and my body” repeating over and over. And it is this combination of grittiness and rawness of ’90s hip hop that penetrates the audience’s ears and takes us back and forth between childhood Messiah and adulthood Messiah, now a woman in her late twenties, struggling with the unfinished pieces she has tried to lose along the way. Messiah is guided by spirits, but like many of the people in her community, she feels like she must continually make devilish deals instead of saving her own soul. She is in desperate need of a retrieval. She wants to feel more present in her body, but feels as though some of her is left in the tangled pieces of her childhood hands. With one parent now incarcerated, and the other an alcoholic, she is very much in touch with her childhood self. Her loneliness is familiar. But her power is tight in her adult hands. She just needs to open up.

I guess I gotta go back home to my used to be

The beat from D’evils is sampled from Allen Tousaint’s Go Back Home and The Messiah Complex is very much about coming home. It’s about the painful places we have to go to retrieve ourselves, and the painful existences we suffer until we do that. It’s about the ways in which we collectively suffer, when we fail to understand how we’re all connected. This life can either be circular or linear, depending on our paths. But everything we leave does not disappear.

In a powerful and painful scene, The Messiah Complex shows the same hands that once held their own body during an attack, attack another body as a means to protect themselves. This theme of protection and survival is present throughout the play. Messiah’s younger self and her older self are not that different. She eventually realizes that her childhood hands are also her adulthood hands. They’re just bigger and stronger. And they can hold a lot more. So she eventually makes peace with herself through a spiritual awakening that both apologizes and forgives. Ultimately, this play reminds us that we are bigger than our isms; alcoholism, addiction, as well as the self-deprecation that presents as internal racism, homophobia, and transphobia. We are bigger than the pain we feel ashamed of. We are more than what we do, when we don’t know better. But still, we have to do better — for ourselves and for each other.

Messiah does go away for a bit, but she later comes back. Like the birth veil suggests, she radically transcends. She holds her hands inside the hands of her love, now changed; she looks at Basimah and says, “Can I need you? I need you too.” Messiah was put here to transform and love. And she suffers because she feels cut off from that part of herself. But after a long and windy road, she returns. She has come back home, to her used to be.

So You Wanna Write the Divine: Black LGBTQ Artists Talk Spiritual Practices of Community Building

Playwright Shirlene Holmes calls theater “a place to do divine things.” In that same vein, Holmes, who has authored the work A Lady and A Woman, strongly believes in the theater’s capacity to produce social change. During Brown University’s “Black Lavender Experience,” a week long festival that began on April 7th and ended on April 12th, Black LGBTQ artists gathered to perform and discuss their work with students, residents, and festival participants in Providence, Rhode Island. Holmes and a number of queer Black playwrights and filmmakers took the time to sit down with students and talked about the divine nature of their writing for marginalized communities.

For Yoruba Richen, the filmmaker and producer behind the documentary The New Black, social justice and creativity are ingrained within her. From her academic pursuits to her creative expression, Richen’s work exists to engage and impact her audience. Although she began her performance work in the theater, she found film work while she was studying urban planning in graduate school. Film provided her with an outlet, not only to communicate her own experiences or to tell stories she found interesting, but also to speak with marginalized communities and seek justice for those whose stories often go unheard. She explained that film requires her to think about how people will use and receive her work, demonstrating how as a queer Black artist, she has used work like The New Black to serve various communities that she belongs to. For artists like Richen, community uplift does not only complement the pieces they produce, but rather is very inherent to their work.

Likewise Dr. Charles Mulekwa views theatrical work as an opportunity to create new knowledge, benefiting marginalized communities by telling stories that have not been told at all. For example, the Ugandan playwright reflected on a controversial piece he had written in his home country. He described how in spite of some of the public criticisms that insisted that Mulekwa wrote about a taboo topic, privately some people would offer him perspectives that he had not realized before. Mulekwa asserts that a part of a writer’s obligation — if that writer wants to write to uplift oppressed communities or groups — is an understanding that the writer must be willing to take risks and even to fail. The objections and criticisms Mulekwa faced are all a part of a playwright’s experience. Mulekwa encourages young writers to keep perspective and to constantly legitimize themselves. “You have as much right as any [“famous”] writer to write a play,” he maintained, remembering his own intimidation when he read works by people now hailed as classical writers. He believes that we all have a story to tell.

It was fascinating for me to hear how many of these artists connected the community building and social justice efforts of their plays and films to the spiritual realm. Sharon Bridgforth, author of River See, the bull-jean stories, and dyke/warrior-prayers, uses her work to “serve the ancestors, who are also the future.” She describes her spiritual practice with respect to playwriting as a “theatrical jazz aesthetic” (which, in case y’all were wondering who came up with that bomb ass term, apparently traces back to Aishah Rahman). Bridgforth broke it down for us, explaining that this theatrical jazz aesthetic means that in her writing and acting, she focuses on working as a collective or as a gathering with her cast and audience, while being present (or serving) as she performs or writes the performance. (It’s kinda like what jazz musicians do when they’re jamming out.) Her work is beautiful, fluid, and incorporates a mysticism that somehow speaks to a multitude of experiences while never explicitly saying whose experiences its meant to represent.

You are more than just yourself when you write, these Black LGBTQ artists seemed to agree. Holmes summarized her feelings about writing for her various communities, stating, “It’s not your role to write something and keep it [for yourself]”. As a daily practice, she plugs herself into the Divine, which for Holmes is the god of her understanding. She advises young Black, LGBTQ and Black LGBTQ writers to find their own divinity as they seek to use their writing to not only reflect their personal experiences, but also to reach out and touch the experiences of others. “We make simplicity so deep when it can just be simple,” Holmes explained about divinity seeking. “Plugging into the divine can be drinking water, calling an ancestor’s name, … [it] can even be admitting that you don’t want to write today.”

These Black LGBTQ artists dedicate their work to sharing stories and also to engaging with various communities, whether that engagement means establishing a common ground for mutual understanding or airing out the “dirty laundry” that hinders a group from moving forward. They politicize their experiences and breathe life into the tragedies, victories, sorrows, and quotidian experiences of people of color and LGBTQ communities. Although none of these artists claim to speak the realities of all members of the communities or groups they belong to, they work through the divine and sacred spaces they create within themselves and their work to affect social change and uplift.

“Fun Home” is Relatable, Brilliant and Paving the Way for Women Musical Theatre Writers

Feature Image via BroadwayWorld

Every so often, I see a musical that changes my life. That’s a big statement, but my life revolves around musical theatre and the feelings it gives me, so it’s inevitable that I’ll be deeply affected by a musical. I’ve only seen three musicals that caused this life-changing sensation, so when I saw Fun Home at The Public Theater, sparks flew, and I saw fireworks. Fun Home is a new musical (!), based on Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel (!), written by two women (!), about a lesbian (!). I didn’t know much about the musical prior to seeing it for the first time (yes, there have been multiple viewings), as I had never read the source material (which is a fancy term for the book on which the musical is based).

Here’s the thing about musicals: it takes a long time, a lot of rewriting, and a lot of money to get one from page to stage. A musical can easily take ten years from its first draft to a major New York or regional production. Fun Home has journeyed through readings and workshops in different cities. In the fall of 2012, the musical was produced in the Lab Series at The Public Theater. This was my first exposure to it.

In the Lab Series, the writers were in the audience, making script changes on a daily basis. In labs, sometimes there are small changes: a line gets rewritten or a joke that doesn’t land gets cut, but sometimes entire songs and chunks of book (dialogue) are rewritten, cut, or added. You could see the show twice and it would be completely different. The writers take their cues from the audience. In the rehearsal room, a line, lyric, musical progression, etc. could seem great, but it may not work in front of the audience. This is one of my favorite things about live theatre: the audience is a player in the production.

After a year of revisions (and anticipation), Fun Home has returned to The Public Theater in a fully-staged Off-Broadway production. I saw the musical three times in previews (changes were still made until opening night), and once after it opened, and I felt all the feelings. Fun Home centers around the protagonist, Alison, in three phases of her life. There’s Small Alison (Sydney Lucas), who is in elementary school, Medium Alison (Alexandra Socha), who is in college, and Alison (Beth Malone), who is in her forties. At its core, Fun Home is about Alison discovering and accepting her sexuality and its relation to her father’s sexuality and his death. Lisa Kron‘s book and lyrics prove that no one is ever too young or too old to come of age. Jeanine Tesori’s music complements the tone and spirit of Alison and her family’s awakenings.

As every musical should, Fun Home has a mixture of light-hearted and heart-wrenching songs. My favorite is “Changing My Major,” which explores Medium Alison’s euphoria after her first sexual experience with a woman. Socha is wonderful as the college freshman, riding the emotional roller coaster of vulnerability, excitement, and nerves of discovering one’s sexual orientation. Small Alison has an inspiring song about seeing a butch woman for the first time, perfected by Lucas, who has more spunk than I’ve ever seen in a kid. Watch out for her; I see a big career in her future. Malone ties the piece together as the adult version of Alison, reflecting on her past and trying to make sense of her relationship to her father. Judy Kuhn, who plays Helen Bechdel, Alison’s mother, makes brilliant, subtle acting choices and broke my heart with her solo number. Michael Cerveris, who plays Bruce Bechdel, Alison’s father, is equally strong, as his relationship with himself, his wife and Alison play a key role in the musical.

In musical theatre, I am used to seeing straight female protagonists fall in love with straight men. There’s nothing wrong with that, but as a lesbian, it is nice to see queer protagonists struggle with issues that are similar to mine. Not only does Fun Home put a lesbian center stage, the lesbian character is a fully developed, three dimensional human being with thoughts, feelings, and complex issues. Alison is trying to make sense of herself and her family in different stages of her life, which is something to which I deeply relate. I have struggled with accepting myself and my sexual orientation, and I’ve discovered the complexity of how learning to love myself affects my family. I saw myself in all three Alisons, I saw my mother in Helen, and I saw my father in Bruce. I have a complicated relationship with my father, and every moment I witnessed Alison communicate with Bruce, I saw my relationship with my dad. The most beautiful part of a musical theatre, to me, is seeing myself on stage. As a writer, my goal is for audience members to see themselves in characters and situations I have written, as lived by actors.

As mentioned before, Fun Home is written by two women. The visibility of women writers is very important in musical theatre. The majority of musical theatre writers are white, gay, cisgender men. While musical theatre boasts a world of acceptance, rainbows, and unicorns, women writers are in the minority, and I have been discriminated against as a woman and as a lesbian. A well known television and theatre actor once told me that lesbians “belong on the softball field.” He was joking, but his comment was not abnormal. Women writers are seen as over-emotional creatures, and we’re not taken seriously.

Last Broadway season (2012-2013), pop icon Cyndi Lauper, who wrote the score for Kinky Boots, was the first woman to ever win the Tony Award (think Oscars or Grammys, but for Broadway) for Best Score without a male co-writer. This is big time. I can count on one hand the number of female Broadway musical theatre writers. Since Fun Home debuted Off-Broadway this fall, the visibility of women writers and queer women characters have been discussed. While I hope Tesori and Kron are paving the way for women writers, at least the conversation is being started.

The future of female musical theatre writers is looking up. Intern Grace compiled a playlist of musical theatre songs written by women, and there are many emerging female musical theatre writers. Many of these women are bookwriters, but more and more women are writing lyrics and music. As a female musical theatre writer who writes with a female composer, I’m excited for the continued growth of female musical theatre writers.

If you’re in New York City, please do yourself a favor and see Fun Home at The Public Theater. It’s an amazing piece of theatre, and it will touch your heart.

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Rachel Kunstadt is a librettist/lyricist, pursuing an MFA at the Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She is a founder and the Producing Artistic Director of LezCab, a cabaret series celebrating queer women in musical theatre. She resides in Manhattan with her shih tzu, Bernie. www.rachelkunstadt.com. Tweet her @rkunstadt.

IMPORTANT: Alanis Morissette Takes “Jagged Little Pill” To Broadway

First off, you guys, I have to admit something.  I’m not a theatre person.  I love the idea of musicals – I really do! – and I’ve watched Liza Minnelli in Cabaret approximately 96,345 times, but it takes a great deal of pressure, whining, and Jewish guilt to get me to agree to see a Broadway play.  In all my years growing up in the NYC metro area, I’ve seen probably five shows total, and one of them was Cats when I was nine.

All that is about to change, because Playbill.com reports that Alanis Morissette (patron saint of adolescent feelings) is adapting her classic 19995 album Jagged Little Pill into a Broadway musical.  Morissette is working with Tom Kitt (who also helped arrange Green Day’s enormously successful musical American Idiot as well as Bring It On: The Musical) to orchestrate and arrange all the songs you used to sing into a hairbrush when you were very angry at the world but not quite sure why into stage productions.  Yes, you read that right – songs like “You Oughta Know,” “All I Really Want” and “You Learn” are about to become showtunes.  The show will be produced by Arvind Ethan David and Vivek T. Tiwary, who also produced American Idiot.

“I look forward to taking the heart of Jagged Little Pill and expanding its story, fleshing it out into ever deeper layers of emotionality, specificity, humanity, power, physicality, spirit and fabulism,” Morrissette said in a statement. “I look forward to collaborating with Vivek and Tom and our whole inspiring team to create something greater than the sum of our parts.”  Enough about you; let’s talk about life for a while…

Will the Jagged Little Pill musical be as incredible and cathartic as the record was for all of us as angsty adolescents, or will it be colossally ridiculous?  Will Full House‘s Dave Coulier step in as the backstabbing ex-boyfriend?  Will any of the ironic plot twists actually be ironic, or just crappy things that happened?!  The future holds many mysteries, my friends.

You Should Go: Fun Home the Musical is Finally Real, Going to Be Magic

Musical theatre has more than its fair share of critics. I’m not sure whether I can even say “critics,” because it’s often less “reasoned, engaged analysis” and more “people laughing and pointing at other people singing and dancing onstage.” Some dude at The Evening Standard called musical theatre an “innately idiotic form” and I’m not immune to this kind of thinking either: I often catch myself justifying (to whom?) musicals as a guilty pleasure, uncritically and unthinkingly consumed.

Bleedin’ snobs, the lot of us.

I get it. When musicals are bad, they’re really bad. Both We Will Rock You and Rock of Ages made me want to bang a guitar repeatedly against my head, and I’m glad that I will likely not live to see Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark (at the rate they’re going, neither will some of the cast). Sometimes you’re into your third overwrought Queen rendition and you’re stuck between rethinking every life decision you’ve ever made that got you to this point… and trying to quash that little bit of you that wants to sing along.

Avenue Q piqued my interest in musicals, Wicked cemented it. The Phantom of the Opera gave me significant pause — perhaps all of this was really overrated after all? — but then The Lion King reminded me that masks can make magic, not just disguise stalking and jealousy as romance. Les Misèrables is my current reason for being. (If you’re ever in London, by the way, booking in advance can get you tickets for ~£15-25 and the view’s not half-bad from the upper circle. Unless you’re afraid of heights.)

See, done well, I dare say there are few things that rival the immersive experience of the musical. Sure, you can keep mocking “people acting and then singing at the same time, and quite possibly dancing too,” but I’ll just be here constantly in awe of people acting and singing and dancing all at the same time.

You leave the theatre and some people will love it, some people will hate it, but absolutely everyone will get the songs stuck in their heads. It’s a gift that keeps on giving, as my mother learns every time my youngest siblings (aged 7 to 18) happily and loudly garble their way through “Do You Hear the People Sing?”.

Now all of this has just been a terribly lengthy way to tell you why I’m really, really excited that Fun Home’s off-Broadway debut will take the form of — yes! — a musical.

From four-time Tony Award-nominated composer Jeanine Tesori (Caroline, or Change) and Tony-nominee Lisa Kron (In The Wake, Well) comes a fresh, daring new musical based on the acclaimed graphic novel by Alison Bechdel. When her father dies unexpectedly, graphic novelist Alison dives deep into her past to tell the story of the volatile, brilliant, one-of-a-kind man whose temperament and secrets defined her family and her life. Moving between past and present, Alison relives her unique childhood playing at the family’s Bechdel Funeral Home, her growing understanding of her own sexuality and the looming, unanswerable questions about her father’s hidden desires. Directed by Sam Gold, FUN HOME is a groundbreaking, world-premiere musical about seeing your parents through grown-up eyes.

With Fun Home, Alison Bechdel took the graphic novel — another medium that is similarly derided (and that I feel just as strongly about) — and spun a haunting emotional masterpiece. It was a book that not only reached into me with its words but left soft-edged, ink-washed images lingering at the back of my mind long after I’d left the last page. I’d held onto it in a new country then, newly alone, and all I wanted was to be able to share it.

So now I am so excited to see what Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron are going to do at the Public Theater, bringing Fun Home to audiences old and new. I can’t quite imagine how it’ll turn out just yet, I’ll admit, but that’s exactly what makes the thought of it so fascinating and I have high hopes. Maybe there will be dancing (sadly probably not). Most likely there will be new duets for you to sing along to with your human of choice. And if there weren’t enough reason for me to want to go already, Bechdel personally swears by Sydney Lucas‘s performance as “Small Alison,” and I am of the sort that is immediately charmed by anything done by anyone below the age of 12.

Except — due to fiddly matters of “being on the wrong continent” — I can’t actually go.

I briefly considered stopping over in NYC on the way to LAX for A-Camp 4.0, but my wallet (and sense) won’t allow it. So this is where you come in! NYC-based queers, watch this for me. Do it for everyone who loves musicals, queers, and queer musicals. I’m counting on you.

September 30 – November 3, 2013
425 Lafayette Street, New York City
$81.50 – 91.50 (regular price) / $45 (member price)

Purchase tickets online or call 212-967-7555. Accessibility information (as well as information on rush/student tickets) is also available on Public Theater’s website.