We’re Here, We’re Queer, We Have Petals: The Lily’s Revenge at the A.R.T.

Cara’s Team Pick:

Last weekend I went to a show at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge that was five hours long, but felt far shorter than my 40-minute high school health class, or either presidential debate. It’s called The Lily’s Revenge, it’s by Obie-winner Taylor Mac, and it’s kind of impossible to explain, but I’ll do my best! I’ll start by listing. I spent those five hours in the company of characters including (but not limited to) a heroic lily, Time Herself, a villainous curtain, an idealized groom in boxers and a necktie, a swingin’ four-piece daisy band, and literary theorist Susan Stewart. During the acts, I found myself thinking about the tyranny of nostalgia, the limits and joys of iambic pentameter, the surprisingly similar limits and joys of the marriage equality movement, and the unjust sidelining of baby’s breath by the bouquet industry. In between them, I got a lesson on digital communication from some drag queens, danced with an overly officious sunflower, had a haiku written for me by a stagehand, and watched some interns grill sausages in the alleyway behind the theater. You should go to this show, is what I’m getting at, and if you’re not convinced yet, have a look at these costumes, designed by Sarah Cubbage.

AND THIS IS LITERALLY IN THE FIRST TEN MINUTES {VIA GRETJEN HELENE}

Whoa, right? If you’re still not convinced, I suppose I’ll try the more traditional review-route. A bare-stems plot summary of The Lily’s Revenge leaves out so much that it’s barely worth writing, but here goes: Two gods, The Great Longing (representing nostalgia) and Dirt (representing “the here and now”) are battling for the hearts and minds of humanity via the staging of a wedding; victory rests in the petals of our hero, the Lily, who is variously tempted by both sides over the show’s five acts. The queer bent of the show should be obvious from that summary (it’s obvious as soon as you walk in – I’m still exhaling glitter a week later). But Mac manages to break newer ground than I’d expected with his eventual message, which verges on the post-political, and the reasoning behind it, which borrows heavily from cultural criticism and the ethos of community theater rather than the historical, logical and legal arguments we’ve all heard a million times before.

CONSIDER THE LILIES HOW THEY GROW: THEY TOIL NOT, THEY SPIN NOT, AND YET THEY ARE FABULOUS {VIA GRETJEN HELENE}

I’d be remiss as a reviewer if I failed to mention that the Lily’s temptations take the form of, among other things, a musical puppet show; a “dream ballet” that shows, through a mixture of pantomime, dance, and swirlies, the perils of monogamy; a panoramic short film about coming out in San Francisco; and a sexy haiku-off between seven different flowers, all played by local drag queens, and oh God I’m listing again. (And I’d be remiss as a friend if I didn’t point out that if you still, somehow, get bored, you can always turn your attention to the facial expressions of the unsuspecting older couples who got season tickets to the A.R.T. for Christmas, and came into the city to see a nice play about horticulture – it’s a show all on its own.) Each act is also staged differently, making great use of Oberon’s malleable space, and giving you a chance at better seating every time you re-enter.  Between the show itself, the sideshows, the healthy dose of audience participation, and the going in and out, the whole thing is basically a mostly-scripted party, like the best wedding you’ll go to all season.

ONE OF THOSE GUYS IN THE FRONT ROW IS ABOUT TO GET HIS HEAD LICKED {VIA GRETJEN HELENE}

If all this seems dizzying, it is. And like anything that shoots this many arrows, it’s a little hit-or-miss – the show’s reliance on lesbian and drag stereotypes is particularly grating given its overall progressivism. But the excesses make sense when you think of them as mirroring the show’s main idea – there is so much out there; why restrict yourself? Try to kiss it all, or at least build a world in which everything has the freedom to, as Dirt puts it, pucker up. My main critique of the show mirrors my main critique of its message – when you allow yourself to sample everything equally, you lose your chance to dig deeper. But there’s plenty to dig, and plenty of time for digging, later – first, root down with this Lily for five hours and let yourself wave around. I’m glad I did.

THE AFOREMENTIONED DAISY BAND TAKES US OUT {VIA GRETJEN HELENE}

The Femme Show Effectively Showed, Told About Femme Visibility

The Femme Show put on its annual fall performance in Cambridge last weekend, and if you missed it, you might not want to do that again! But even still, you can read this recap, and check out all the performers when they come to your town, and buy them drinks and say they’re from me. This slightly labelphobic queer went into The Femme Show full of unaddressed preconceived notions about the word, and left with a brand new appreciation for it – the hip-cocked stance it takes; the power it confers; and, above all, the incredibly talented multitudes it contains. For example, this Show alone had four very different but equally mind-blowing burlesque performances. The Bitches of Destiny kicked things off with a version of “Mein Herr” that made everyone in the audience wish they were stage chairs and caused Liza Minnelli to pause and smile in the middle of polishing her EGOT.

A TIGER IS A TIGER NOT A LAMB, MEIN HERR (PHOTO CREDIT: ALLIE T)

Self-described Burlesque impersonator GeeGee Louise transcended impersonation with his two numbers, embodying red-dress sensuality during “Tribute to the Ol’ Bump N Grind,” and taking on (and then literally stripping down) a charged and flowery innocence for “The Woman Behind the Man,” which ended the show.

AGAIN, ALL CHAIRS SHOULD BE SO LUCKY (PHOTO CREDIT: ALLIE T)

In between, “critically fierce” New York burlesquer Bikini Thrill blew it all up with “Take Back the Night,” shedding her clothes, her inhibitions, the binds of the patriarchy, and a lot of fake blood all at once to the tune of “Suck My Left One” (by the cathartic and carnage-filled end, everyone in the audience would have gladly obliged).

THIS (BURL)ESCALATED QUICKLY (PHOTO CREDIT: ALLIE T)

Of course, you don’t have to strip down in order to bare your soul, and the spoken word elements of the evening were every bit as graceful, vulnerable and strong as the dancier parts. In “More than Yes,” Gigi Frost talked candidly about the evolution of her relationship with sex and sex toys. “Sexy Spoken Word Poetry by a Queer Latina Femme” was exactly that – through multilingual rhymes, a sultry flow, and magnetic stage presence, Idalia let her experiences as “a walking contradiction” coalesce into a real piece of art.

WALKING CONTRADICTION; STANDING OVATION (PHOTO CREDIT: ALLIE T)

amyrain’s “Letter to a Life as Good Lesbian” described the ups and downs of a love story we all know well (driver of Subaru Forrester meets wearer of tinted chapstick; cat-adoption planning and label-related confusion ensue) and gave some advice that I wish I had heard earlier in my life (for example, do not ask a girl preparing to leave the house in heels whether she can “really walk all that way in those shoes”).

“I’M KINDA LIKE, LIFE IS JUST OK.” (PHOTO CREDIT: ALLIE T)

And then there was the always enlightening Society for the Preservation and Promotion of Sapphic Social Mores (SPPSSM), who provided timely and well-worded tips for jet-setting queer ladies everywhere – I now know the best way to remove a BDSM collar in an airport-security-related pinch (bobby pin + helpful TSA officer), the right people to flirt with at the airport (“purveyors of caffeine and cinnamon pastries are the most accessible options”), and how to gracefully go through an x-ray machine while “personally pierced” (smile; own it).  Between their instructions and those of other Autostraddlers, I now feel completely ready to Travel While Queer.

SPPSSM HELPS YOU PACK (PHOTO CREDIT: ALLIE T)

As always with queer events like this, the awesomeness of the show itself was matched by the awesomeness of the community that sprang up around it – the bake sale to benefit the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition (side note: who made that salted caramel bread pudding, and when can you come to my house); the loud walk down the street to the after party; the effective transformation of Cambridge sports bar Tavern in the Square into Tavern in the Pink Triangle. It was also a lot of fun to be part of an audience with pitch-perfect participation skills. I heard war whoops when Dean James exhaled smoke, silent reverence as Gigi Frost stepped calmly into a harness during her monologue, snaps when Rachel Kahn talked about recruiting femmes for the Thunderdome, and then of course the collective sing-alongs to the between-act music, which was carefully selected from the canon. The show’s ability to celebrate a particular identity, recognize the many (and sometimes contradictory) facets of that identity, and still cultivate an overall commitment to diversity and inclusion was even more swoon-worthy than the burlesque. I was touched (personally pierced, even). Can’t wait till next year.

UNTIL NEXT TIME! (PHOTO CREDIT: ALLIE T)

The Femme Show Is Sexy Queer Visibility, and You Should Go

Hey, Boston-area Straddlers! Have you been reading a lot of articles about femininity and queer femme identity lately (or do you live them all the time)? Do you feel like kicking off your weekend with an entertaining and eclectic celebration of the diversity of such identities? Perhaps you want to work up a physical and mental appetite before hanging out at Monday night’s Team Pick with Laura. Or do you, like most of us, simply enjoy watching hot queers be variously smart, talented and funny on stage? Good news! The Femme Show is coming to Cambridge, and you are going to it. No, seriously! This is ninety minutes of self-described “queer art for queer people.” It’s “challenging, introspective, brazen, funny, sexy, and gritty but always powerful” – that sounds like a killer cocktail, but it also sounds like you, right? Get over there.

I KNEW IT: THE CAST OF THE FEMME SHOW CLEANED UP THE CHARLES

The precocious brainchild of dancer and activist Maggie Cee, The Femme Show was born in 2007 and baptized in a sold-out Jamaica Plain church hall.  Since then, it has glitterbombed the Northeast, busting genres and stereotypes everywhere from the DC Center to New York’s Queer Spirit Camp. The latest incarnation begins this weekend at the Cambridge Family YMCA Theatre, and features a crack team of new and returning performers doing everything from comedy to spoken word to drag. After inhaling the press release, I’m particularly looking forward to new cast member Bikini Thrill’s politically charged burlesque dancing, and to a segment called “Letter to a Life is Good Lesbian,” in which Show veteran Amy Raina “gently explains life, good and otherwise, to a cute lesbian in a hat and a shirt with a stick figure on it.” There will also be a charity bake sale (fits the venue!), and a slamming after-party (does not, so it’s down the street at Tavern in the Square).

Like all the best things, this show is e-femme-eral – it’s only here this weekend, September 21^st and 22^nd. Grab tickets for yourself and whomever you want to bowl over online for $12 or at the door for $15; you can also volunteer and get in for free! Show starts at 8:00 PM (look for me in the “Life Is Good (Tonight)” t-shirt). See you there!

How About a Little LGBT History With Your Theater

I become as excited over LGBT history as the average American kid does over Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride. While I’ve never been too keen on John Smith or Christopher Columbus, I am obsessed with Pat Parker and Anne Kronenberg. Revolving around  the right to love, queer history is deeply personal. Exploring it exposes the links between past and present struggles for equality, and reaffirms that progress is possible if we are willing to live a little more fearlessly.

Basically, it’s some inspiring sh*t.

Cast of “The Tempermentals” (2010) Via The New York Times

After a successful run in 2010,  a play centering around the lives of the members of America’s first pro-gay organization, The Mattachine Society, is making its off-Broadway return:

“The Temperamentals” tells the story of two men – the communist Harry Hay and the Viennese refugee and fashion designer Rudi Gernreich – as they fall in love while forming the first gay-rights organization in the pre-Stonewall United States. “Temperamental” was a necessary code word in the early 1950s – danger was always an underlying presence but with it, a heady, intoxicating secrecy also hung in the air.

Dubbed as “Mad Men meets Milk,” The Temperamentals caters to society’s inexplicable desire to watch European-American men smoke cigars and sip gin while wearing Italian suits. But more importantly, the play schools audiences in 1950s LGBT history. As marriage equality becomes an unprecedented talking point at the Democratic National Convention, these stories about gay pioneers could not be more timely.

Even if you can’t make it to New York to catch a performance of The Temperamentals, the history behind the Mattachine Society and its sister organization, The Daughters of Bilitis, are definitely worth a second glance.

Be it in the form of an HRC bumper sticker or a Gay-Straight Alliance meeting, most of us come into contact with mainstream LGBT organizing on a gay-to-day basis. However, were it not for Harry Hay‘s founding of the Mattachine Society in 1950, this reality may have been an even longer time coming.

The Mattachine Society, Christmas 1951 (Hay’s in the upper-left corner)

During his youth, Hay discovered his sexuality like so many of us did: Through reading Autostraddle. Having ran across a copy of Edward Carpenter’s The Intermediate Sex at the public library, everything suddenly made sense:

As soon as I saw it, I knew it was me. So I wasn’t the only one of my kind in the whole world, and we weren’t necessarily weird or freaks or perverted… the book… even named some who believed in comradeship and being everything to each other. Maybe, someday, I could… meet another one.

Mattachine was born smack-dab in the middle of McCarthy Era Los Angeles. At that time, homosexuality almost always resulted in termination of employment, not to mention endless harassment. Today, the organization’s original goal of “unifying the isolated” may seem simpleton. But in doing so in 1950, Mattachine’s  five original members also created community that continued to build upon itself. The organization would grow and eventually fragment; chapters became commonplace in many American cities.

The Playboy Club

Despite being overwhelmingly ignored by history books and the media alike, NBC’s The Playboy Club (RIP) paid homage to Mattachine Chicago in several of its episodes. Alice, a closeted Playboy Bunny, is lavender married to a gay man. At a Society meeting, her husband introduces her to Frances, a lesbian socialite. Sparks fly.

Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, c. 1955

Even after the Mattachine Society dissolved in the 1980s, Hays’ fierce grasp on the intersectionality of oppression did not lax. A longtime opponent of cultural assimilation, he continued supporting the rights of migrant workers and Native Americans, all while remaining at the forefront of the queer liberation movement. He railed against the Reagan administration’s refusal to acknowledge AIDS, and was a long-term critic of both Bush administrations until his death in 2002. If one takes anything away Hay’s life, it should be the awareness that the struggle for equality is universal, spanning multiple groups and generations. In order to fight, we must grow and adapt with the times.

It’s impossible to condense the legacies of Hay and the Mattachine Society into a two-hour play, but by simply getting these stories out there, The Temperamentals does a great job with the time that it’s been allotted.

“June and Nancy” Reminds Us What It Was Like to Be An American Lesbian in 1958

1958. When thumbing through the pages of that year in queer history, it’s hard to not feel nostalgic for the sense of urgent activism and forbidden love. Ann Bannon‘s newly-published lesbian pulp novel, Odd Girl Out, was being read under dinner tables everywhere. America’s first pro-gay publication, ONE, Inc., had sued for its right to exist, and actually won. Meanwhile, Phyllis Martin and Del Lyon‘s lesbian organization, The Daughters of Bilitis, was in the midst of celebrating its third anniversary.

June and Nancy

The new off-Broadway play June and Nancy explores a lesbian relationship taking place in Manhattan during that same year. June (Michelle Ramoni), an aspiring visual artist, is struggling to market her work while dealing with a decade-long unfulfilled marriage. The time spent with her husband is seen through a tense June Cleaver veneer. Meanwhile, Nancy (Gabrielle Maisels) is worlds more independent. Confident in her lesbianism and her loner status, she’s reminiscent of Joyce, the Life Magazine photo editor on Mad Men who attempted to seduce Peggy. But unlike Joyce, Nancy is successful in winning June over:

Nancy is a lesbian who met June, a woman married for ten years, at an art museum, where she worked as a volunteer guide. June has had two miscarriages and is in a frustrating marriage to a man who only sees her as the woman who provides meals, housecleaning, occasional sex and nothing more. She has no love and no future and has started to hit the bottle. Nancy, for her part, is out of work, has no partner and is thinking about moving to San Francisco.

The two women fall in love and tumble into a lonely, sad and harrowing “life in hiding” as lesbians in a world where women in general are hopelessly repressed by society, much less lesbian women.

Theatrical coming out stories have criticized for being peppered with tropes (“the lesbian who sleeps with a man,” “the lesbian who dies,” “the intolerant relative,” “the inevitable coffee-on-a- park bench moment”) and also failing to explore the other challenges of queer relationships. Yet June and Nancy works because it’s set in a critical time period for America’s gays, one which hasn’t really been explored at length on stage or on-screen. The challenges the characters face aren’t plot devices; they are historical fact.

Additionally, as an out-of-the-closet cisgender lesbian in 2012, there is something remarkably fascinating — even erotic — about the idea of a closet. Discreet affairs between women behind closed doors are illicit, and rife with tension. This is only heightened by the cultural and aesthetic period in which June and Nancy is set. The stageplay is the lesbian equivalent of a Mad Men affair, but with less misogyny and so much more at stake.

1958 was so much more than high-waisted trousers and KitchenAid mixers, however. On the eve of the Sexual Revolution, the intersection of womanhood and unorthodox sexual desire was still a very slippery slope. Female sexuality was still a largely misunderstood concept. The rigid femininity of the 1950s reassured the rest of the world that you were heterosexual and obedient. Blending in was esteemed. Queer women frequently walked a fine line between bringing too much attention to themselves, or none at all. As a graduate student at UC Berkeley in the late 50s, Mildred Dickemann experienced this nuance firsthand:

Fearing for her professional reputation, Dickemann said she restricted herself to going to bars and reading lesbian pulp novels she bought at the old California Book Co. on Telegraph Avenue.

“The code was in those days that you could be what you wanted to be as long as you kept it a secret,” she recalled in her oral history. “And the violations of the code were what did you in.”

This is also thoroughly explored in June and Nancy:

Nancy, a lithographer, fully understands discrimination against lesbians and women. At the start of the play, she delivers a talk at a lithographers’ convention but nobody pays any attention because she is a woman.

There were grave consequences for sticking out too much. The year prior, Arthur Mathews, a New Jersey doctor, claimed to have cured a lesbian by “getting her hair professionally styled, teaching her to apply cosmetics, and hiring a fashion expert.” Others took more drastic measures. While the Red Scare-spawned connection between homosexuality and communism had waned, the homophobia still existed. Queer people were still regularly institutionalized for “mental illness.”

Secrecy is a doubled-edged sword. The relationship depicted in June and Nancy is salacious one moment, solemn the next. The crippling side effects of living two lives, including marriage, childbearing and loneliness, are explored throughout the play. We’ve seen glimpses of this before in theater and films — in The Hours, Mona Lisa Smile and Common Ground–but never to this degree.

The Hours

It’s nice to witness June and Nancy‘s main characters living and breathing on-stage as opposed to within the pages of a pulp fiction novel; not only for entertainment’s sake, but because they draw the spotlight onto the oft-unrecognized generation of gay women who elbowed their way through society before us. They are a testament to progress, not to mention a visual affirmation that things can, and do, get better.

Uganda Doesn’t Want You To See “The River and The Mountain”

The River and the Mountain, by British playwright Beau Hopkins, might be the most dangerous play in town. That town is Kampala, Uganda. We all know Ugandan parliament wanted to kill the gays and no one can forget the brutal murder of David Kato, a prominent gay rights activist. We have an entire tag dedicated to Uganda. Uganda is not the safest of places to produce a play about at 29-year-old gay business man. But that’s what The River and the Mountain is about.

The play has been banned from Uganda’s national theatre because some government officials objected to it. David Cecil, one of the producers, told Associated Press that they were even banned from hanging posters there because the play had not been approved by the government. As a result, it is being performed at a little-known theatre in Kampala, the largest city and Uganda’s capital.  The protagonist, Samson, is a good man and a gay one. When his mother learns of his homosexuality, she tries to cure it by hiring a pastor, a private dancer and finally a witchdoctor. The play ends with his murder at the hands of his co-workers. Samson is a character that can be approached with empathy: “This could be your brother, your neighbor, your cousin,” said Cecil. And this in a country where homosexuality is illegal and the LGBT community is forced to live in almost absolute silence. The Washington Post highlights that there exists the constant fear of police raids that will shut down the production. Talk about a dangerous game.

Samson from The River and the Mountain. via The Advocate.

Plays have a long history of inciting fear in governments and other powerful people that results in banning – look back as far as Molière and even farther. Molière, a French actor and playwright, wrote Tartuffe in 1664 and that was banned after being performed at Versailles for attacking and exposing the hypocrisy and deceit of the upper classes (aka, the King’s court.) People were afraid it would affect change, and wham, it was gone. And as you look through the history of theatre, you begin to realize that a playwright wasn’t tackling enough daring subject matter if they hadn’t been banned in some theatre somewhere. Theatre-goers have historically been a riotous bunch, so you can see where the fear would come from.

A modern audience member really recognizes the power of work on the stage to change the course of politics and daily life off the stage. Playwrights like Bertolt Brecht based their entire body of work off that power. And shows like The Laramie Project (about the murder of Matthew Shephard, a show that brought the discussion of hate crimes and trials to the nation) or The Vagina Monologues (dedicated to ending violence against vaginas and female-identified people) were written to directly engage with politics and to change the mindset of the culture around them, to explore territory that had not yet been explored. And by the way, both have been banned. And according to this article, banning may have helped the Vagina Monologues reach a wider audience. After all, what’s the first thing that happens when you forbid someone to take an action? All they can think about, all they want to do, is take that action. Banning a play is one way to get said play a lot of publicity. So is The River and the Mountain the next Laramie Project? I don’t know, it’s not available to read or see yet outside of their only production in Kampala (and believe me, I tried.) I’m not sure if the play is good, I’m not sure if the actors are good, but what I’m pretty positive about is that this work could play a part in affecting a slow, steady change in Uganda, if theatre history is to be believed. Someone is certainly worried about it.

So The River and the Mountain is the most dangerous play in town–for the status quo. For the oppressors. For every cog in the governmental machine that wants to kill the gays and for every negative opinion that keeps gays silent and gets them murdered. And if you want to find out where this production may lead,  you can go over to their We Fund page and suppor them.

Queer Up History: Maggie Keenan-Bolger Wants Your Stories

via Queering History’s facebook

Maggie Keenan-Bolger is a powerhouse actor and artist, and she’s taking over history! With a BA from Oberlin in both theatre and gender studies and numerous performance credits, it’s no wonder that she’s putting together a project that fuses the two. She’s interviewing a ton of LGBT people about both their histories and their concepts of what queer history is and, in partnership with homeless LGBT youth from Green Chimneys, she’s writing a play with all that material. I saw her YouTube video call for submissions and immediately knew I had to Skype her to get these gay deets.

via wikipedia

Maggie’s Queering History project is a chance for LGBT people to tell their own history and to decide how they (or we, as it were) want to be represented in history. “This is our chance to take the reigns and figure out  how we want to be represented, what we want to have represented.” And the way that Keenan-Bolger’s project let’s us do that is through telling our own story.  Whether you’ve lived through Stonewall or you’re just working on living through eleventh grade, Maggie insists that “history is also still in the making, and that we are part of it right now.”

Keenan-Bolger said that she came up with the plan after getting a scholarship from the Point Foundation and the Pallet Fund to work with an LGBT non-profit. “I was thinking about work that I could do with LGBT youth and particularly LGBT homeless youth who’ve been kicked out of their homes because of their sexual orientation, and who’ve not had for the most part a good experience with adults and people who are around them supporting who they are. I wanted to figure out some way to make sort of the intergenerational gap come together, so they could meet people who are older people who are gay and who are of all ages, and so older other people could see these awesome young people who right now are in dire need of resources and funding.”

So Keenan-Bolger settled on Green Chimneys and hosted intergenerational workshops to talk about history and to fulfill her mission of closing that generation gap.  Representations of queers in history, the kinds of history everyone learned in high school, is basically non-existent.  “There’s a lot of information about bullying and violence against LGBT youth, but I think that one of the ways we could help combat that is to have LGBT history as a part of our curriculum. We need to have those things normalized in the way we get to learn about African American history and Women’s history — for the most part — and we get to learn about lots of dead white guys. To be able to say that Walt Whitman and Tennessee Williams were gay, and have that be part of the general discourse, is really important in terms of people — especially young people — being able to make connections to gay people from history and their own positions in history right now.”

When asked about Green Chimneys, Keenan-Bolger pointed us to their website, which states that this organization provides a safe space for LGBT youth in foster care or who have been ejected from their homes due to their sexual orientation, and helps provide a stable education free from problematizing their identities. She reminds me that “40% of homeless youth identify as LGBT. As a community, we’ve been so good about rallying around things like gay marriage, and fighting for our rights, and it’s so important to turn some focus to the young people who don’t have the same sort of political pull that LGBT adults have.”

via kosherdelight.com

Keenan-Bolger didn’t just invite these kids to participate in the pre-planning phase of the project; they’ve collaborated every step of the way.  From selecting the stories, to structuring the material, to performing and even costume design.  They’re going to be performing a staged reading of the piece on August 19th, at the Producers’ Club in Manhattan, at 8:00 pm. I wondered what kind of stories she got, and how she got them — were the intergenerational workshops between homeless LGBT youth and queer adults the only source? Maggie grinned and said no, of course not.

Keenan-Bolger put out a survey a month ago and received over 260 responses from around the world. “We had folks from China who have submitted responses, and folks who grew up in Germany, and rural Africa. It’s been an amazing response to these ideas about history. It was a 10-question survey, and people were able to answer it in whatever way they saw fit. I’ve really been excited to gather a diversity of stories, and experiences, and opinions about what LGBT history should look like.”  She also told Autostraddle that she’s done extensive interviews with people, some in person and some using video. She’s including allies in the piece as well.

Though the staged reading is fast approaching, there are tickets available if you live in the New York area and Maggie Keenan-Bolger is still looking for your help today! They’re on their final push for stories, and today — August 5 — is the last day to submit them! When I asked her how Autostraddle community members could help her out, she replied, “We’re looking for stories of all kinds, from people from all backgrounds and diversities of experience, especially from people who aren’t usually represented in history. People of color, transgender individuals, older people who’ve lived through events they don’t see represented in history, things like that — we’re always looking for their ideas and experiences. They can email any stories they have either by video or written to queeringhistory [at] gmail [dot] com.”

Though she is looking for stories of all kinds, she’s got a special emphasis on living through the AIDS crisis and stories from countries other than the USA. She tells Autostraddle that if you can’t make it out or send a story, you  donate to Green Chimneys. “It’s a super important organization. They are facing some pretty severe cuts, and are having to shut down one of their main organizations. Now is a really useful time to send some support financially or volunteer-wise their way.”

My last question for Keenan-Bolger was this: Did this project teach you anything unexpected about yourself or about the community?  What surprised you?

“The variety of experiences and histories that I didn’t know anything about. I studied Gender and Women’s Studies in undergrad and I’ve been working on LGBT issues my whole life, yet there is so much I don’t personally know about it. There’s something really magical about getting a diverse group of people together to talk about it, because you find out so much that has been thrown under the rug, or that hasn’t been addressed yet, and there’s so much rich history in our community — so many exciting stories and things that people just don’t know about — that I think are really important to get out there and make people aware of.”

Playlist: Tony Award Musical Nominees 2012

Kelli O'Hara deserves a Tony for this picture

Tony Award season is upon us! In less than two weeks, the American Theatre Wing will hand out a bunch of statues to a bunch of really good-looking people who danced and sang better than anyone else did this year! I love the Tonys, and despite not living in New York and having seen exactly zero of the nominated shows this season and not actually caring about who wins, I am absolutely watching the awards. I’m a sucker for a good musical number, and Neil Patrick Harris hosting doesn’t hurt either.

So here’s a playlist of some of the notable songs from some of the nominated musicals this year. Not all of the nominees have released cast albums yet, so some of these tracks are demos or ripped from live performances, but they’ll all give you enough fuel to whine about whoever eventually wins. That’s what’s really important here.

Tony Nominees 2012 [on 8tracks]

Falling Slowly – Once (11 nominations)
Carrying The Banner – Newsies (8 nominations)
Santa Fe – Newsies
How ’bout a Dance – Bonnie & Clyde (2 nominations)
Don’t Cry For Me Argentina – Evita (3 nominations)
Summertime – Porgy and Bess (10 nominations)
Someone To Watch Over Me – Nice Work If You Can Get It (10 nominations)
Step Into The Light/Leap of Faith – Leap of Faith (1 nomination)
The God-Why-Don’t-You-Love-Me Blues – Follies (8 nominations)
Could I Leave You? – Follies
If The World Should End – Spider-Man Turn Off The Dark (2 nominations)
I’m Outta Here – Ghost the Musical (3 nominations)
Superstar – Jesus Christ Superstar (2 nominations)
Give It Up – Lysistrata Jones (1 nomination)

The Tony Awards are on June 10 at 8 p.m. EST on CBS! I requested off work. That’s how excited I am.

Want to suggest a playlist theme? Hit Crystal up on Formspring and someone on the team will make it for you.

6 Bizarre Barbra Streisand Performances That Are Weirdly Endearing

Barbra Streisand is a powerhouse. Her rendition of “Don’t Rain On My Parade” made Funny Girl a show worth watching and gave Lea Michele something worth covering at the Tony Awards. Also, say what you want about Carol Channing, but Barbra owns Hello Dolly!. Some people even like Yentl, probably.

There’s a reason why every thrift store has at least four different Barbra Streisand records: because she’s ridiculously talented and record players are way too expensive for non-hipsters. I have nothing but respect for her. That being said, you can’t be in the business as long as she has without having moments that seems strange in retrospect. So happy belated 70th birthday, Babs. Here are some awkward things you were a part of.

“I’m Five” and “Sweet Zoo”

This is actually one of my all-time favorite Barbra performances. “My Name Is Barbra” was her first television special, and you should definitely watch the whole thing if you get a chance, but this is my favorite part. It’s just so madcap and strange and wonderful, it’s hard to dislike. Sidenote, this is also the special that gave the world “People.”

Color Me Barbra

Barbra on the TV, Special #2: Now with animals!

A Star Is Born

This video is 1976, and it’s not sorry about it.

The Belle of 14th Street

I feel like the general concept of this video is “Barbra being Barbra and also vaudeville!,” and it kind of works, but it mostly gives me second-hand awkwardness.

You’ll Never Walk Alone

I would give you context if I had it. I feel like somewhere, someone’s good idea went horribly wrong.

“Tell Him” with Celine Dion

When she was 21, Barbra recorded a duet with Judy Garland, and it was basically flawless, and eventually Glee covered it, so I think we could call that one a success. This video, however, is a totally different story. It’s like they had a meeting and decided that they’d be harder to impersonate if they were singing together.

Ok, tell me all about your Barbra feelings!

Playlist: Women Write Musical Theater Songs Sometimes

Kait Kerrigan

Because of the patriarchy, there are significantly more men who write musical theater than women. This Tony season, for instance, didn’t include any eligible shows with music by women. Not even Spider-Man. Harumph.

To celebrate the successful women composers and lyricists and to keep myself from getting too depressed about it, my genius friend Drew (“Jeanine Tesori is boss enough for all of them”) and I put together a pretty thorough list of musical theater songs with lyrics and/or music by women. It was a lot more difficult that either of us were expecting, which is unfortunate on several levels. This is by no means a comprehensive playlist; for example, songs from Quilters and Grind could also be here, but it’s easier to pretend that 1985 didn’t exist on Broadway and also they’re really terrible. Anyway!

Women Write Musical Theater Songs Sometimes [on 8tracks]

1. Forget About the Boy – Thoroughly Modern Millie (music by Jeanine Tesori)
2. Lot’s Wife – Caroline, or Change (music by Jeanine Tesori)
3. Run Away With Me – The Unauthorized Autobiography of Samantha Brown (lyrics by Kait Kerrigan)
4. Taylor, The Latte Boy (music by Zina Goldrich, lyrics by Marcy Heisler)
5. Paw Paw Michigan – Dear Edwina (music by Zina Goldrich, lyrics by Marcy Heisler)
6. Shy – One Upon A Mattress (music by Mary Rodgers)
7. We Just Had Sex – Passing Strange (music partially by Heidi Rodewald)
8. Mama Will Provide – Once On This Island (lyrics by Lynn Ahrens)
9. New Music – Ragtime (lyrics by Lynn Ahrens)
10. Show Off – The Drowsy Chaperone (music and lyrics partially by Lisa Lambert)
11. Step to the Rear – How Now, Dow Jones (lyrics by Carolyn Leigh)
12. I’d Be Delighted – Little Women (lyrics by Mindi Dickstein)
13. New York, New York – On The Town (lyrics partially by Betty Comden)
14. Ohio – Wonderful Town (lyrics partially by Betty Comden)
15. Just This One Time (Reprise) – The Battery’s Down (lyrics by Kait Kerrigan)
(Haviland Stillwell sings this song)
16. Best Summer Ever – Bunked! A Camp Musical (lyrics partially by Alaina Kunin)
17. Nobody Does It Like Me – Seesaw (lyrics by Dorothy Fields)
18. What About Love? – The Color Purple (music and lyrics partially by Brenda Russell & Allee Willis)
19. Exiled – A Girl Called Vincent (music by Carmel Dean, lyrics by Edna St. Vincent Millay)
20. Get Out And Stay Out – 9 to 5: The Musical (music and lyrics by Dolly Parton)
21. Eyes Wide Open – The Battery’s Down (lyrics partially by Kirsten Guenther)
22. Lullaby From Baby To Baby – Runaways (music and lyrics by Elizabeth Swados)
23. Oh, Look at Me – Salad Days (lyrics partially by Dorothy Reynolds)
24. The Bull-Frog Patrol – She’s A Good Fellow (lyrics by Anne Caldwell)

Add your favorite lady-written theater tracks in the comments below! Also, how excited are you for Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron to adapt Fun Home into a musical! Because I am excited enough to sneak it into this article!

Want to suggest a playlist theme? Hit Crystal up on Formspring and someone on the team will make it for you.

Playlist: Broadway Breaks Your Heart

Sorry, one foray into theater-geekdom was clearly not enough. We return with a playlist of Broadway’s most stirring ballady situations, the songs that make your heart feel things like pain, loss, hope, hope against all odds, grief and love. I recommend this playlist for long drives in the rain or any time that you feel like really just wrapping yourself in a blanket of multi-colored dorkiness. Like Rachel Berry and Kurt Hummel as twelve-year-olds at a sleepover. Are you with me?

I Dreamed a Dream (Les Misérables)
Close Every Door (Joseph & The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat)
Origin of Love (Hedwig and the Angry Inch)
The Letter (Billy Elliot)
Without You (Rent)
21 Guns (American Idiot)
Touch Me (Spring Awakening)
Maybe/Tomorrow (Annie)
Defying Gravity (Wicked)
The Movie in my Mind (Miss Saigon)
Send in the Clowns (A Little Night Music)
Maybe This Time (Cabaret)
And I Am Telling You (Dreamgirls)
Memory (Cats)
Wheels of a Dream (Ragtime)
On My Own (Les Misérables)
Some Things Are Meant To Be (Little Women)
Where is Love? (Oliver!)
Still Hurting (The Last Five Years)
What I Did For Love (A Chorus Line)
Somewhere (West Side Story)
A Quiet Night at Home (Bare)
Don’t Cry For Me Argentina (Evita)
I’ll Cover You (reprise) (Rent)

Your Show Is Breaking My Heart from Autostraddle on 8tracks.

Playlist: Broadway Belters

One of life’s many great epic tragedies is that I no longer live in New York City and my Dearest Eternal Intern Grace also does not live in New York City, which means neither of us are present in New York City for the just-extended-’til-August Broadway run of Newsies, based on the best worst film of all time!

It’s especially fun because two people I actually know in real life are in Newsies and they’re constantly posting about it on Facebook and making me more jealous than I am of the people posting about going on vacation and buying things.

Where was I? Oh yes, sad that the Broadway Cast recording of Newsies hasn’t come out yet, because that’d be fun to listen to today as I undergo a massive apartment/cleaning project including a former tenant that got dumped on my face unexpectedly yesterday but is far too complicated to explain.

Anyhow, Grace and I made you a playlist of some of our favorite Broadway big group chorus numbers! You can listen to it while dancing around your room like the hooligan you are!

Cell Block Tango – Chicago
Totally Fucked – Spring Awakening
La Vie Boheme – Rent
Ease on Down the Road – The Wiz
Anything Goes – Anything Goes
Time Warp – Rocky Horror Picture Show
Aquarius – HAIR
I Hope I Get It – Chorus Line
Don’t Tell Mama – Cabaret
King of New York – Newsies (movie)
Omigod You Guys – Legally Blonde
You Can’t Stop The Beat – Hairspray
21 Guns – American Idiot
Go Go Go Joseph – Joseph & The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Pinball Wizard – The Who’s Tommy
One – Company
The Telephone Hour – Bye Bye Birdie
Big Spender – Sweet Charity
Tonight (Quintet) – West Side Story
The Ladies Who Lunch – Company
Ain’t Misbheavin’/ Lookin’ Good But Feelin’ Bad/’T Ain’t Nobody’s Biz-ness If I Do – Ain’t Misbehavin’
One Day More – Les Miserables

Great Big Broadway from Autostraddle on 8tracks.

9 Underrated Kristin Chenoweth Performances That Are Not From Wicked or Glee

Kristin Chenoweth is a pretty lady that you probably know from Wicked and/or Glee, but really, she’s a great person/performer who you should probably know from other things too. For example, once upon a time, Newsweek said some nasty, homophobic things about her Promises, Promises co-star Sean Hayes, so she submitted a response to them, and then she won a award from GLAAD, and then she talked to us and is basically our bff.

Before Glee was a fetus-thought in Ryan Murphy’s mind, Kristin Chenoweth was scraping by doing musicals like A New Brain and Steel Pier. Fast forward 14 years, and she’s starring in ABC’s new comedy GCB (formally Good Christian Bitches). It premiered last night, and I haven’t watched it yet, but Television Without Pity said it was pretty good.

Here are eight performances by Kristin Chenoweth in the order that I thought of them!

Candide

Cunégonde

Let Yourself Go

Sometime between winning a Tony and starring in a musical normal people care about, Kristin’s solo album “Let Yourself Go” happened, and trust me, it is 16 tracks of amazing. She has so much vocal control, you guys! I especially recommend the title track, “How Long Has This Been Going On,” “If You Hadn’t But You Did,” and “Daddy.”  Also, “Taylor the Latte Boy” is not on this CD, but you should listen to that one too. Sidenote, this album was released around the same time as NSYNC’s “No Strings Attached.” Guess which one I owned!

Sesame Street

Ms. Noodle

Standing on Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays Makes West Village Gayer Than Usual

Standing on Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays is comprised of eight short plays by an amazing lineup of award-winning playwrights including Mo Gaffney, Moises Kaufman, Neil LaBute and Wendy MacLeoud. Originally planned as a series of benefits around Los Angeles, the event  spread across the U.S. to 40 different theaters in 19 states performed simultaneously last weekend as part of a cultural movement.

With marriage as a unifying thread, each 10-minute vignette explores a different facet of same-sex relationships, including Joe Keenan’s “This Marriage Is Saved,” in which an evangelist decides his tryst with a hustler has actually strengthened his relationship with his wife, Macleod’s “This Flight Tonight,” featuring a lesbian couple boarding a plane to their wedding in Iowa, and Doug Wright’s “On Facebook,” adapted from an actual Facebook wall thread chronicling one long fight among friends on the subject of gay marriage. My favorite short of the evening would probably be Paul Rudnick’s ”My Husband,” in which a liberal Jewish mother laments her gay son’s single status, going so far as to Photoshop a New York Times wedding announcement (the ultimate status symbol) to brag to her friends.

Cast of Standing on Ceremony: The Gay marriage Plays

The initial New York City cast features a mix of Broadway and TV vets including Mark Consuelos (aka Mr. Kelly Ripa), Craig Bierko, Polly Draper, Harriet Harris, Beth Leavel and Richard Thomas. Hopefully some openly gay actors & actresses will join the cast as they rotate every six to eight weeks (similar to Love, Loss and What I Wore).

If you happen to be in New York City for the holidays you should absolutely put this on your itinerary and after walk mere blocks to Marie’s Crisis to cement it as the gayest night of your life.

Check out standingonceremony.net for cast and ticket information.

[yframe url=’https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2dIF3sdRw4′]

Our 17 Most Favorite Musical Cast Recordings Of All Time

It takes a special kind of idealistic geek to really love musical theater, which means that we have lots of in-house musical theater fans. When we did The Top 10 Greatest Movie Soundtracks Ever In The Whole Entire World, some of you asked us if we could whip up a similar feature about our favorite musical theater soundtracks. Here’s 17 of our favorites, please feel free to share yours in the comments!

Crystal, Music Editor

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Joseph & The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat – London Palladium Cast Recording

I haven’t listened to this soundtrack in nearly 20 years and yet the songs get stuck in my head on a weekly basis, that’s just how damn catchy they are. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Joseph was my first ever musical experience; after seeing it I insisted on spinning the soundtrack daily for a number of years, until one day it not-so-mysteriously disappeared. I downloaded it today to make sure that my 27 year-old self agrees with my 8 year-old self’s previous assessment and I do, songs like “Jacob & Sons” and “Poor, Poor Joseph” are still my jam. I love every track except for “The Joseph Megamix”, I don’t know what’s up with that.

The Phantom of the Opera – London Cast Recording (1988)
For me, the Phantom soundtrack is one of those albums that needs to be blasted real loud. Every time the Overture kicks in, Major Tom, my cockatiel, starts freaking the f*ck out, which is the exact same reaction I had when my father took me to see the musical as a child. Phantom‘s music is so dark and sinister, for a long time it scared the life out of me. Now as an adult I adore it.

American Idiot – The Original Broadway Cast Recording (2010)
Did you know that an album by Green Day was turned into a relatively successful Broadway musical? Weird, right? Last year I dragged some of Team Autostraddle to see the production in New York City and that inspired me to write 1,000+ words about how much I loved the musical and its music. The soundtrack’s since won a Grammy for Best Musical Show Album. Fyi.

Brittani, Writer

Spring Awakening (2006)

Despite 90210’s continued attempt to ruin “Mama Who Bore Me,” Spring Awakening remains my favorite cast album of all time. A lot of times I find there are a few songs from productions that are seated dance party worthy but the rest of them can be boring or really hold no meaning for me outside of the show itself. Not the case with Spring Awakening. I love every single song. So much that I can’t pick a favorite and if I did, it would change in about five minutes. At this very moment it’s “And then there were None.” How could I stick to just one when I’m suddenly bombarded with “The Dark I Know Well“, which is the saddest shit in the world, BUT gently massages my ear drums until all I can think is “Lilli Cooper let me love you.”

Spring Awakening is the single most important reason I decided to watch Glee…the whole Lea Michele factor and what not. It’s also worth noting that if it were up to me, it would be mandatory to have a Spring Awakening sing-along any and all car rides that last more than an hour. No one would be allowed to exit the car in the middle of a song. No one would be allowed to do anything other than sing along to every single word. If there came a moment when you chose to nail your assigned part in “Don’t Do Sadness/Blue Wind” rather than swerve to avoid hitting a piece of debris and we get a flat tire because of it, I wouldn’t even be mad. I might even salute you. I guess I should mention this alternative rock pop folk fusion won 8 Tony Awards but really what’s important is I’m a black person encouraging you to listen to this cast album. As far as I’m concerned that is the most legit vouching there is when it comes to musicals.

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In the Heights (2008)

Let’s begin with the fact that Lin Manuel’s rapping voice might be my favorite voice of all time. Then lets follow that with In the Heights taking everything you thought about show tunes and throwing it out the window. And let’s finish with this musical making it possible for me to appear I know way more Spanish than I actually do. The hip hop and salsa-infused score produced such gems as “96,000” which is one of those all consuming songs that you have to drop whatever you’re doing to fully enjoy its dopeness. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been loading the dishwasher only to realize I no longer am in possession of a single dish and apparently I really “want the brass ring like Frodo.”

In the Heights shows it’s possible to have a show about minorities or ethnic communities that’s not rife with stereotypes or screaming, “look at me as I make this socially conscious point.” It’s a musical. It’s a story. And often people forget the luxury of being able to tell a story on stage just for the sake of telling it. The characters may feel like they have the weight of the world on their shoulders but listeners doesn’t. You don’t feel weighted or obligated when you finish. You feel happy and free and alive.

The songs are about community and what ifs (“Carnaval del Barrio”, “When You’re Home”). They’re about responsibility and love (“Breathe”, “Sunrise”). But most importantly, they’re about jamming the fuck out. The music of In the Heights is about finding a place to call home when no matter what you do or where you go, there’s an uneasy whispering that you don’t quite belong. All of us have probably felt that at one time or another; I’ve felt it my whole life. This cast album makes me feel a little better about the search. Maybe one day while listening I’ll look around and realize I’ve found it.

Julia, Miss February 2011

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Hairspray (2002)

This is the happiest music you will ever hear about civil rights. Tracy Turnblad, her friends, and the mean popular kids sing and dance through issues about race, weight, age, love and any other issue one might encounter in a Baltimore high school in the 1960’s. Tracy is a big girl who dreams of dancing on the “Corny Collins Show”. Her optimism and talent take her beyond her dreams and pave the way for social justice and equality for everyone in her community.

Hairspray won 8 Tony Awards in 2002, including best original score. The lyrics by Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman are clever and humorous. The music by Marc Shaiman utilizes the sounds of the ‘60s and ranges from bouncy to soulful. Really, it is the perfect music for dancing around the house in your underpants and singing at the top of your lungs.

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Gypsy (1960)

This show is based on the stripper Gypsy Rose Lee and focuses primarily on the relationship she had with her mother. The mother is the ultimate stage mother, so this role has provided a nice place for some of Broadway’s biggest divas. Ethel Merman starred in the original production in 1959, Bernadette Peters in the 2003 revival, and Patti Lupone in the 2008 revival. I recommend the 2008 version as I think Ms. Lupone was born to play this role and I’m a little bit in love with Laura Benanti as Louise.

This show is a true work of art, with music by Jule Styne and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. It is beautiful classical musical theater, but also has Sondheim’s lyrical genius. After listening to this show, you will start to recognize the music used and the show referenced in T.V. shows, movies, and commercials.

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Ragtime (1998)

This musical tells the stories of three different groups of people in New York in the early 20th century: wealthy white folks, African-Americans in Harlem and Eastern European immigrants. Every group has its own internal problems, as well as problems with one another. Historical figures like Harry Houdini, Evelyn Nesbit and Emma Goldman make appearances throughout the musical, so you can learn all about history while listening to music! AREN’T YOU EXCITED!!!!!!!!

Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty create beautiful songs that speak of history and humanity. There are various styles of music from the early 20th century that Flaherty invokes in his songs. Ragtime won best original score at the 1998 Tony Awards. Also I recommend the original cast recording because the singers are phenomenal. You will agree after listening to Audra McDonald sing “Your Daddy’s Son”. I swear.

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Sweeney Todd (1979)

This festive musical tells the story of Sweeney Todd, a barber, who decides to turn his clients into meat pies! Mr. Todd feels he has been betrayed which develops into his utter lack of faith in humanity and his need for revenge. So he slices up people’s necks and gives them to his neighbor to cook into nice pies. The subject matter is dark and the music follows suit.

Sondheim’s arrangements are eerie, delicate, and savage all at the same time. The lyrics are written as the character speaks and are not overly poetic. The music takes the character’s words and gives them that extra flourish and poetry. Sondheim’s writing makes this already dark show absolutely terrifying and captivating.

“Newsies” Musical on Stage: It’s an Exciting Thing

Intern Grace’s Team Pick

It’s time to make yourself aware of the stage adaptation of  Newsies because it’s running from now until October 16 at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, New Jersey and because it will rock the fuck out.

The film version of Newsies had a sad showing at the box office when it opened in 1992, but it gained a large cult following because it’s kind of spectacular despite it’s weirdness.

In the movie (which itself is based on an actual 1899 newsboy strike), Christian Bale stars as street-savvy Jack “Cowboy” Kelly, the informal leader of the newspaper-toting boys and the cutest lesbian you’ve ever seen. (Sidenote, Christian Bale singing is exactly what you’d think.) When the price of newspapers goes up a tenth of a cent, the boys go on strike. Hijinks and singing ensue, etc. It’s like Oliver! meets Pajama Game with the tiniest hint of Les Mis but also High School Musical.

Adapted largely by the original creative team, the new production includes both the songs from the movie and some new songs to flesh out the show a little more. The team also added an entirely new female character, which is good because, you know, there was like, one girl in the whole movie (Ann-Margret, though, for what that’s worth).

Relevant links:

+Jeremy Jordan is not only starring in Newsies, but he’s also in rehearsals for the new Bonnie and Clyde show.

+Also, Andrew Keenan-Bolger, who I adore and who is playing Crutchie, posted a video from the sitzprobe that features a lot of singing as well as a video of a behind-the-scenes tour you’d probably like.

+This.

+You guys, the opening song is the eighth most played song in my entire iTunes library. I love this show.

Seize the day, kittens!

‘110 Stories’ to Benefit the New York Says Thank You Foundation

Intern Bren’s Team Pick:

This weekend marks 10 years since September 11, 2001. To commemorate that date and benefit the New York Says Thank You Foundation, a star-studded performance of 110 Stories by playwrite Sarah Tuft is taking place tonight and if you’re in the NYU area, you should go.

The New York Says Thank You Foundation is a non-profit organization that sends hundreds of volunteers from New York along with disaster survivors from around the country to help rebuild communities around the United States recovering from disaster. They’re all about turning a negative into a positive. From their website:

It’s our way of saying “Thank You” for all the love and support Americans from across the country extended to New Yorkers in the days, weeks, and months following September 11.

Sarah Tuft gathered stories of people in healing, who were dealing with the tragedy through storytelling, and created 110 Stories. The play will be performed by celebrities you probably enjoy, like Samuel L. Jackson and Kathleen Turner, to name a few. Stephen Baldwin’s in it too, but if you squint really hard and cover your ears you can pretend like its Alec.

So we know the Who and the What, let’s get to the When and the Where. This thing is going down at the NYU Skirball Center for Performing Arts at 8 pm sharp. You can get your tickets online or call the box office at (212) 352-3101.

For more info on the play, the stories and the cause check out their website or follow them on the twitter. Or you can support the Foundation directly if you are so inclined.

The Pop-Up Museum of Queer History, With A Side of RADCLYFFE

This summer may go down in history as the summer of the pop-ups and here in NYC the gays have our very own thing going: The Pop-Up Museum of Queer History.

Following the initial one day showing of Pop-Up Brooklyn in Bushwick, Brooklyn, the second incarnation of  the museum was hosted by the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation and co-sponsored by CLAGS (The Center for Gay and Lesbian Studies at CUNY) and included several events in addition to the museum itself.

As described on the museum’s website:

The Pop-Up Museum of Queer History is a grassroots organization that transforms spaces into temporary installations celebrating the rich, long, and largely unknown histories of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.

We believe that our community – and especially our youth – deserve to know our history. If you don’t know you have a past, how can you believe you have a future?

Exhibit in the Bushwick Pop-Up

Featuring over thirty artists, archivists and academics,  the curators Hugh Ryan and Buzz Slutsky have created an exciting compilation of queer art and history. Personally I really enjoyed the exhibit by the Lesbian Herstory Archives which included a collection of saucy lesbian pulp fiction covers.

The opening reception of the Pop-Up Soho exhibit was reportedly attended by over 700 people. Check out some photos of the opening night and get a glimpse of the exhibits here. The closing reception I attended featured a performance of RADCLYFFE, by Kestryl Cael Lowrey, a self proclaimed dandy trans butch performance artist.

Lowrey’s performance of RADCLYFFE channels the English lesbian poet and author Radcylffe Hall’s persona and is described as follows:

Radclyffe Hall was a butch who swaggered her way through the early 20th century.She smoked green cigars, had innumerable illicit affairs, and penned the swiftly censored lesbian literary classic, ‘The Well of Loneliness.’ This pseudo-historical solo performance weaves together stories from Radclyffe’s life and times with what England’s second most notorious invert would have to say about queer life today, such as: “Whatever happened to ‘romantic friendships’? What the hell is a ‘genderqueer?’ And where can a butch get a good haircut in this town?!”

With over 1500 attendees to the three-week Soho Pop-Up, there are plans in the works to travel to other parts of the country in the near future. It was only this year that the first GLBT History Museum opened in the San Francisco, so this has been an exciting year for celebrating queer history.

Follow the Pop-Up Museum of Queer History’s facebook page for up to date info on future shows.

Opera’s Gay Character Panics UK School Officials, Leads to International Controversy

Lee Hall. Photograph: Felix Clay for the Guardian

After six months of rehearsal, a school in England pulled the plug on Lee Hall’s Beached, an Opera commissioned by Opera North and designed to be a collaborative effort between theater professionals and about 300 schoolchildren.

The schoolchildren in question come from a Bay Primary School in Bridlington and Opera North’s production was tailor-made for integration into their curriculum. Lee Hall is best known for writing the book and lyrics for Billy Elliot The Musical, which is arguably one of Broadway’s best family-oriented shows ever.

Here’s a brief description of Beached, for your reference:

The narrative revolves around a single father who, having been made redundant, is forced to take a holiday at home instead of in Ibiza. However, he is completely unable to have a quiet day beside the sea as he is assailed by schoolchildren on a biology field trip, local yobs – and the entire Bridlington Amateur Dramatics Society, who are rehearsing the Bridlington Pageant. There is high drama: at one point, his son is swept out to sea. Essentially, though, it’s a comedy about tolerance and inclusiveness.

When he got the news, Lee Hall immediately contacted The Guardian and submitted a letter which was published on Friday. Hall said that two weeks ago, officials from Bay Primary suddenly came to him with a list of concerns, threatening to pull the kids, who are between the ages of 4 and 11, from the show, if he didn’t make some changes. It was no big deal, really — things like using “stupid” as an insult and the very existence of the word “pee-pee.” (Really that should never be in any opera ever, it’s weird.) Hall reports that “The composer and I worked with the school and Opera North to reach a version that would work for everyone.”

But then there was the gay thing. The opera’s main character is a “gay, retired painter” and Hall was willing to tone down some things, but refused to eliminate “the character’s straightforward defense of his sexuality.” The school’s main objection was the following line, sung by an adult during an all-adult scene:

“Of course I’m queer/That’s why I left here/So if you infer/That I prefer/A lad to a lass/ And I’m working class/ I’d have to concur.”

Racy stuff, I know.

An ultimatum was set forward: remove the lyric or lose the kids. Hall refused to remove the lyric. In his aforementioned letter to The Guardian, Hall wrote:

“The request seemed to come from a completely different era… I thought there must be some mistake and that Opera North would support me by finding a way round this completely outdated hysteria. I was amazed when they accepted the school’s position. I was repeatedly asked to excise these references to the adult character being gay.”

The Guardian later reported that school official Mike Furbank said aspects of the production were “offensive” to young children. He added that “the concerns are not fundamentally about the equality issues the author is trying to raise but the way in which they are represented with children as young as four being involved in the production.”

Thus, the school withdrew its participation from the show, taking its 280 student participants with it. Unable to replace so many actors, Opera North was forced to end the production. Two years of prep work and more than £100,000 are down the drain, although the company remains optimistic that an agreement can be reached and the show can continue as scheduled later this month.

Hall accused Opera North of censorship and homophobia, saying he felt as though he was “not being allowed to represent a gay person.” While they had originally remained neutral, the theater company has now released three separate statements on their blog reiterating their position as Not Homophobic:

“Opera North does not consider the subject matter to require censorship nor do we feel that the inclusion of the themes was inappropriate to the intended audience and participants; and there was no attempt to excise a gay character from the piece … Opera North feels that the decision by Lee Hall to suggest that the production was cancelled due to a homophobic stance on the part of the company is unacceptable.”

Opera North director Richard Mantle said nobody wanted to get rid of the gay character and that everyone just wanted Hall to tone down his language.

“Nobody is seeking to cut this gay character – the school has asked that Lee tempers some of the language and we have asked him to and worked with him very closely over many weeks to address that point.”

Meanwhile, the story has gone mega-viral — there’s a Facebook group! Jeanette Winterson, who probably helped you realize that you’re gay, has written a long piece in The London Times that we cannot read because of the paywall! The Guardian has a full rundown of who’s said what, from commenters to celebrities, in this article.

Like most forms of theater, opera has always been pretty gay. Also, Beached is about tolerance and acceptance written by the man who wrote Billy Elliot, arguably the gayest musical involving children ever. If anything, the school should’ve been surprised the opera wasn’t gayer. Seriously, have you seen Billy Elliot? Really. Hall himself points out:

Having written Billy Elliot, which currently has productions all over the world featuring a gay, cross-dressing prepubescent, as well as scores of kids swearing and doing things they “shouldn’t” on stage, I was convinced that any disquiet in the parent body could be easily remedied.

The opera’s author certainly has a right to create the show in his own vision, but was Hall too quick to label “strong language” as “homophobia” and summon such media attention? It’s hard to argue that had a lad sung about liking lasses that the line would’ve required censorship, and that’s what’s really at stake here. This kind of innocuous institutionalized homophobia shows up in many permutations — like how advertisers aren’t put off by websites featuring a man kissing a woman, but a woman kissing a woman is instantly categorized as pornographic. It seems entirely possible school officials truly aren’t being consciously homophobic.

As Eleanor Turney wrote at A Younger Theater: “Sexuality and sex are different, and the school should have the wit to recognise this.”

It seems improbable anything anti-gay would come from Opera North (whose livelihood as an opera company is largely dependent on the LGBT community), but it’s not unheard of for schools to flip out over gay content on stage. The dulled-down school edition of Rent has repeatedly been the source of controversy, and The Laramie Project, which is about Matthew Shepard, sometimes comes under fire in conservative areas. Shows like Angels in America don’t even stand a chance with schools. The difference is that these productions have characters who are more than incidentally gay.

The latest from The Guardian UK:

A few minutes ago I spoke to Lee Hall, who says he’s heard a rumour – so far unconfirmed – that the performance may go ahead, involving children whose parents are happy for them to participate. “I’m cautiously optimistic, because everyone seems to be retreating,” he says. “They’re hiding, because they’ve got nowhere to go. It’s literally about nine words in the script. I’m hoping that this has stirred up enough for people to reconsider.”

Honestly, I still think the real issue is that they’re expecting four-year-olds to enjoy opera at all.

The 2011 Tony Awards Were Really Gay, Kinda Awesome

The Tonys are the perfect award show because there’s singing and dancing and it’s too gay to function. It’s a little bit about the awards, but it’s mostly about the performances.

Like any good non-New Yorker theater fan, I set aside a night to watch the Tony Awards every year, and I have to say, this was my favorite in recent memory. Yes, “Spider-man” was boring, “Memphis” was unnecessary, and Chris Rock needed to stop, but whatevs. There were a lot of great things that happened, too, especially if you like men’s choruses, which I do but for reasons which would not be appropriate to this situation.

Neil Patrick Harris was totally charming as the host. Everyone knew he was there to sing, and he did.

This year’s opening number was called “(Broadway Is) Not Just For Gays Anymore,” although a more appropriate titled might be “Not Just For Gay Men Anymore.” Not even Brooke Shields could ruin it.

This is one of those times when it’s important to separate the “G” from “LGBTetc.” Let’s be real: Out Lesbians, bisexuals, and trans* people haven’t been as visible both in scripts and behind-the-scenes, historically speaking, as the gay men. The Tonys were mostly for guys this year too, except for “Sister Act.” It’s not that the stories they’re telling are unimportant; they were just predominantly male-driven.

BUT I DIGRESS. Another topic for another day.

Neil Patrick Harris sang a duet with Hugh Jackman, who’s hosted the awards before and also was in “Oklahoma!” many moons ago in a far off place. In a night of gay things, this song may have been The Gayest of The Things. And “Priscilla Queen of the Desert” performed, so that’s saying something.

TV ACTORS IN OUR SHOW, WHAT COULD BE SWEETER?

Neil Patrick Harris was also a part of this random performance from “Company” that had a bunch of famous people in it, including Christina Hendricks. For like, half a second, it looks like there’s a lesbian couple! But there’s not, DON’T WORRY.

Eve Ensler was given the Isabelle Stevenson Award for “The Vagina Monologues” and for founding V-Day, which is kind of a big deal but they didn’t even mention it on TV.

In other news, Sutton Foster is the perfect human.

She won for Best Leading Actress in a musical for “Anything Goes” and for being awesome. Seriously, watch her tap dance (and then stand awkwardly at the front of the stage for a verse) and then mix/belt her face off. Woah.

This is how a dream comes true. Also, like she did in her first Tony acceptance speech, she gushed about her dresser. Guys, I teared up. It was great.

But the real star of the night was Frances McDormand, who won for Best Leading Actress in a Play for “Good People” and accepted the award looking like she just got off the subway. She’s my hero. She and Mark Rylance because who recites a poem instead of thanking people? Badasses, that’s who.

The other great speech of the night was Nikki M. James, who won Best Featured Actress in a Musical for “Book of Mormon” (over Patti LuPone!). She looked gorgeous and cried and refused to leave the stage when they told her to wrap it up.

Much to no one’s surprise, “Book of Mormon” cleaned up with nine awards, including Best Musical.

Like it’s closest relatives, “The Producers” and “Avenue Q,” it’s meant to be offensive, but here’s the thing: It’s really great that this won. The past decade or so of Broadway has become less and less original and more and more based on movies. People don’t want to invest in something they aren’t sure of, so if they have a choice between “Rocky” the musical and something unknown, “Rocky” will win every time.

“Mormon” has a lot going for it: catchy music, an irreverent story, and most importantly, a well-known creative team. Honestly, “South Park” is probably what gave the show the boost it needed to succeed. But the story is original and smart and funny, and that’s what American musical theater has traditionally been. It’s a nice change.

Daniel Radcliffe performed with “How To Succeed Without Really Trying” or “How To Succeed On Broadway Without Being a Broadway-Caliber Singer.” I know a lot of people liked it, but I was not one of those people. Harry Potter, I love you, but you’re not a good enough singer for that role. I’m not apologizing.

I don’t know very much about the plays this year, to be honest. “War Horse” won five awards, including Best Play and also has a giant puppet of a horse that looks like something from “Lion King.”

The other big winner among the plays was “Normal Heart,” which won Best Revival, Beat Leading Actor in a Play and Best Leading Actress. It’s about the AIDS pandemic’s effect on the gay community and is really heartbreaking. You should at least read it, I am thinking.

The show closed with Neil Patrick Harris doing a freestyle rap that made me miss “In The Heights” and Lin Manuel Miranda. It was a run-down of the awards, but the end was pretty relevant.

You can find a complete list of the winners here.

So what do you think? Were you OK with how everything went down? Were you following Gavin Creel‘s drunk tweets? I heard there was also basketball on last night, but that must’ve been on a different channel.