You know what I learned today? Harry Dodge is surprisingly cute in person. Not that ze isn't great and charming in By Hook or By Crook, but ze is delightfully handsome in real life.
What do you do when a friend writes to say that there's a fabulous queer femme performance artist you don't know about who wants to perform in LA?
It's so frustrating to me that after 4 years in LA, I have no way to make a performance happen when the opportunity arises. While I don't want to spend my life as an event planner (I can't handle the stress), I want to have the time and access to be able to point cool queer performance artists to cool queer venues to do their thing. I want there to be theaters (or bars, or coffee houses) that will open their doors on off hours or off days to random performance artists. And I just don't know who or where these things are. I don't know who to talk to to make a show happen.
It seems like it's been a while since I've been to a night of queer femme performance. Certainly LA must be due for such a thing. But the who and the when and the where are so hard to make happen. I know perfectly well that if I wait for someone else to organize the events I want to see, they'll never happen, but I'm far too far behind on my school work to take on anything else. Who out there is doing this kind of work? It's so frustrating that I can think of events and locations and organizations appropriate to this kind of thing in San Francisco, and yet in LA, I'm drawing a blank.
I just received random notification that the Sex Worker's Art Show is in town today! It's my birthday, so I have other plans, but if you don't you should totally go. It's always a fabulous, delightfully queer, sexy show. This venue seems to be a change from planned performances that got cancelled (or censored?). I'm sorry I wasn't on top of this ahead of time.
Wednesday, January 23rd
Mountain Bar
Chinatown, Los Angeles
8pm $10
The show is a combo of over the top drag, spoken word, performance art, burlesque and shenanigans
featuring:
Annie Oakley
World Famous *Bob*
Dirty Martini
Kirk Read
Krylon Superstar
Erin Markey
Mistress Keva
Loralie Lee
Chris Kraus
Los Angeles is a strange place. We are, decidedly, a town that lives and dies by film, television, and automobiles. It's a decidedly entertainment industry town. I've lived other places (5 years in the Bay Area, brief stints in New York and Oxford) and never felt compelled to own a TV. But here in Southern California (including my suburban hometown), I couldn't imagine life without cable. As a result, I am fascinated by the writer's strike. I'm following it avidly. I've started reading the LA Times "Showtracker" blog for official news and I love Wired Magazine's Underwire blog which, among all the other things it covers, includes strike updates with writers' propaganda videos attached to the end of strike-related posts. And I must say, I've enjoyed several of the strike videos very much.
When the Daily Show and the Colbert Report came back on the air without their writers, I was profoundly disappointed that John Stewart and Stephen Colbert would cross picket lines, even though I was desperately craving their election coverage. I understand their predicament and that they might not have had much of a choice, and it was very clear that Stewart would have much preferred to make a deal with the writers giving them all their demands. I'm still very torn, but I'm watching both shows, and I have to say that I don't think they're doing too badly. The initial reviews were pretty scathing, but I must say that there's something charming about watching John Stewart trying his best and trying to have fun up there. He's a fascinating, smart interviewer and I very much enjoy him talking to authors and intellectuals - I don't miss the stars at all.
Now that the director's guild has settled, there's obviously a lot of pressure on the writers to make a deal before the Oscars, but there's a part of me that wants this strike to keep going. I want the strike to continue mostly because I think the writers are completely right, that the internet is clearly the future of television, and that the producers are trying to screw everyone else out of a fair share of the profits from the new medium. But part of me also wants to see what happens if the strike continues. Because I think there's a lot of hope out there for striking writers to change the face of the industry by working around and without the producers. There have been all sorts of rumors about writers starting their own projects, perhaps for internet distribution and it would be fascinating to see if it would be possible for some big name writers to transfer their TV and filmwriting talent to writing a high quality scripted internet content. How would it look different than TV or film content? Would it be shorter? Lower production values? What are the advantages of these formats?
I'm also fascinated by the other questions the strike raises. When the only new content on TV is reality programming, will people stop watching? Will people be cancelling cable subscriptions? Will the networks and/or the cable companies suffer? Moving Showtime content to network TV (Dexter will air on CBS in February) is a fascinating step. What else will the networks bring out of the vaults? Will we see old movies and premium cable programing in primetime? Will there be innovation, or just more of the same old reality shows? It will be a year or more until we feel the effects of the strike on films, but television will be suffering for quite a while, since already there are no pilots for next year's programming.
Of course, since this is an industry town, I know several screenwriters and aspiring screenwriters who are striking, and whose lives are profoundly interrupted as a result. For their sake, I hope business resumes soon so that they can pay their bills and so the local economy doesn't suffer more than it already has. But the strike makes very visible how the industry is changing, and I find that important and exciting.
Am I back? I don't know. Is this thing on? Does it matter?
I've been MIA for quite a while, from both my blog and my life. Working 3 jobs in academia last quarter led right into family holidays, a chosen family wedding (maybe thoughts on that later), and then the inevitable exhaustion and illness that comes from too much work and not enough sleep. I was in New York when the Butchlalis performed Dickwhipped at Highways, so I was sad to miss the show and even sadder that I was too sick to be doing fun fabulous queer and/or theater things in NYC while I was there. I am perhaps not yet hardy enough to live in New York - the cold weather and my flu-like symptoms made me want to sleep and watch movies and play Wii and never leave Brooklyn, so I did.
Looking forward, there are some pretty exciting public intellectualism kinds of events going on in the near future here in LA and in blogworld.
As you may or may not know, I've spent a bit of time in the last five years hanging out with musicologists, who are suprisingly fabulous and interesting people. A few pretty cool musicologist friends of mine are keeping a group blog called Musicology/Matters which, so far, is a fascinatingly idiosyncratic collection of ruminations on music-related issues ranging from what's up with this week's column in the New Yorker? to the tension between academic interest and guilty pleasures. They're smart folks, and I'm interested to see what they have to say to each other and the world.
Speaking of group music/culture blogs, apparently the fabulous Karen Tongson of USC is collaborating with some other smart folks (Christine Bacareza Balance and Alexandra Vazquez) across the country to blog about pop music, culture, and taste, and whatever else comes to mind at Oh! Industry. For their mission statement, start here. Though the blog seems to be well underway and going strong, they're throwing a launch party here in LA on January 17.
And if you're looking for some good live discussion of popular music, head to the REDCAT on January 22 for Listen Again in which a bunch of scholars and journalists get together and talk pop. The LA academic community is well-represented by Alice Echols, Bob Fink, Josh Kun, Judith Halberstam, and Karen Tongson, several of whom aren't strictly music scholars, so there will be a particularly fun, approachable, interdisciplinary vibe to the event. I can't speak for the many journalists who will also be participating in the event, but the scholars are smart and cool and interesting to hear talk. Plus, it's only $8 ($4 for students), so it's finally an event at the REDCAT I can afford!
Speaking of events at the REDCAT that I can't afford, The Wooster Group will be performing their Hamlet there at the end of the month. This will sell out. It will be weird and brilliant and deconstructed. Kate Valk will be playing both Ophelia and Gertrude. I need to see it. Anyone care to join me?
Across the Universe. Dir. Julie Taymore. 2007.
I watched Across the Universe recently, not expecting to like it much. I had heard that the critics were split, that the plot devolved into chaos at some point, and in general that it was too sentimental and nostalgic. It is, indeed, an excercise in baby boomer musical nostalgia with some serious issues, but all honesty, I enjoyed it very much.
Based on what I had heard, I expected the plot to completely fall apart at some point, but really it carried through pretty well. There were moments that didn't make much logical sense, but that's OK sometimes. In this case it rather worked, though it was a little annoying. There were serious problems with the plot of Across the Universe, but I don't think there was a lack of plot. It was really about the wrong emphasis and audience investment in the characters. The film spent a lot of time assembling a large group of characters into an East Villiage apartment (a la Rent), but it didn't do anything with them as a group. There was no investment in these characters apart from their historical analogs. While I could recognize that these were John and Paul, Janis and Jimi and Yoko, I didn't know why I should care. If the film had spent some time establishing their relationship and their group dynamic, the rest of the plot would have had its climaxes and tragedies with some meaning.
In this case, it feels as if the film is relying on history to make the points and provide the investment inherently. Which is a problem for any audience member who isn't a baby boomer Beatles fanatic. I grew up with the Beatles as occasional background music - my parents weren't huge fans, but we listened occasionally. I had a couple of greatest hits albums on CD, but certainly wasn't invested in the Beatles history or tracking down their more obscure songs. As a result, all of the clever allusions and carefully thought-out historical analogies are lost on me, and presumably a large percentage of the audience.
I blame the editing, and a few small directorial decisions. There were many brilliant things about this film, but they weren't put together quite right. A little more plot/character development/explanation, and it might all have been delightful. Apparently, there was some dispute about the editing between Taymor and the producer; I would definitely like to see whichever versions did not end up being the final cut to see if some of these problems were fixed in a shorter or longer version.
I did, however, very much enjoy this film as a movie musical. By taking songs that are so familiar and reworking them, often simplifying them, I was forced to listen to the Beatles music again and to think about something that had been nothing more than background soundtrack to my life. In the songs where the reworking was successful, particularly toward the beginning of the film, it was an amazing experience. Similarly, the visuals to the songs included some amazing Taymor artistry. Production numbers in an Ivy League college and an army induction center were sheer delight, and I would have liked to see Evan Rachel Wood as Lucy have some similar big production numbers establishing her character. The initial reveal of John Sturgess as Jude with his giant Paul McCartney eyes at the beginning of the film was breathtaking, but its impact was ruined by being used in the trailer. The film definitely had moments in which Taymor's genius read loud and clear, but the overall product was problematic. I loved it anyway, though. I appreciate it for what it could have been, what it wanted to be, and what in its best moment it was: an affectionate, creative, visually stunning movie musical, in which the songs of the Beatles were (sometimes cleverly) recontextualized and reconceptualized.
The History Boys. The Ahmanson Theater. 11/20/07.
Ideologically, I should have hated The History Boys. It is the story of white working-class British boys struggling to get into Oxford and Cambridge (there is one black and one Muslim character, but they only have a couple of lines each). While it deals with issues of sexuality, it portrays its most overtly queer characters as repressed, tragic and/or unsuccessful. It also portrays a postmodern approach to history as ideologically suspect and opposed to an idealised "truth" and knowledge for its own sake.
It is a testament to playwright Alan Bennett's skill and insight, then, that I loved the play despite all of my theoretical objections. It is a beautiful, sensitive portrayal of characters wrestling with ideas of maturity, sexuality, and knowledge, questioning which knowledge is considered valuable and why. While I object to the portrayal of Irwin, the history teacher (played by Peter Paige), as advocating a deliberately provokative and intellectually suspect approch to history in the guise of postmodern skepticism of traditional histories, overall the characters and particularly the queer characters were interesting, complex, and actively engaged in a debate over what we value in education. I may not agree with Hector's (played by Dakin Matthews) methodologies as an English teacher, stressing memorization and appreciation without analysis and transcendent ideas of "truth" and "art," but I love the way the play established these ideas and displayed his truly entertaining pedagogy. It was all the more interesting against a the classroom backdrop of postmodern collage combining images from art history and pop culture. The actors playing the boys were all charming, especially Alex Brightman as Posner with his sweet voice and youthful innocence. I was also intrigued by Brett Ryback as Scripps, who often took a narrator role in the play and whose characterization as the religous one of the boys could have used more explanation/development.
The best moment by far intellecually was when Charlotte Cornwell as Mrs. Lintott, the more traditional history teacher and the only woman in the play, goes on a diatribe about history being 5000 years of men's mistakes and the women cleaning up after them who don't get mentioned. It's a great speech and a fun introduction to feminist historiography. Unfortunately, she doesn't get an opportunity to model this as pedagogy the way the men do. This speech gestures toward the way postmodern approaches to history can be done right, but Lintott remains outside the main discourse of the play nonetheless.
Overall, it was an entertaining and mildly intellectually engaging play. I enjoyed it very much, and it is rare that play manages to disarm me enough that my intellectual and ideological objections fly out the window so that I can sit back and enjoy the play uncritically as a solid, engaging, well-crafted piece of art.
The fabulous author and performance artist S. Bear Bergman is teaching workshops in San Francisco this weekend. I wish I could be there instead of grading quizzes and applying for jobs! Even the descriptions make me giggle.
All workshops take place at the Center For Sex And Culture in their new space at 1519 Mission. Please feel free to forward to repost as appropriate. All classes are pay-what-you-can.
Saturday, 1 Dec, 4pm-6pm
A Re-Introduction To The Only-Mostly-Dead Art Of Chivalry
(Now! With 200% More Feminism!)
Everyone's heard the stories: men who get kneed in the balls for holding open a door, youngsters who sprawl on bus seats while elders stand, the myth of the handkerchief-carrying gentleman, and all the rest. What, exactly, do girls women people want in the world of chivalry? How can a modern gentleperson be courteous without being sexist or a suckup? And while we're at it - who goes through the door first, again? Talk a little about the principles, and then learn a lot about the mechanics of walking in public (v. walking in private, natch), and a whole lot more.
Sunday, 2 Dec, 2pm-4pm
Writing With and About Gender
A 2hr. workshop designed to get writers thinking about the language of gender, its vernacular and lexicon and ways of making itself heard in writing, and then figuring out personal, useful ways to turn that to their advantage. This workshop is appropriate for any one who can form a sentence, regardless of hir experience as a writer: from novelists writing transgendered characters to transfolk writing about their experiences to academics tackling queer theory to people still
exploring the nature of their gender and sexuality in private writing to absolutely anyone else. Feedback opportunities will be provided but not required.
Sunday, 2 Dec, 7pm-10pm
Theater Skills For Better Sex
People with improvisational theater training know three things you don't about how to make a scene out of nothing, and/or keep one going if it gets away from you. Excellent for eager newbies and jaded ancients, the straightest of couples and the queerest alike will learn how to seamlessly become new characters, take old standbys in new directions, and incorporate new ideas, handy props, and changes of scene on the fly without missing a beat. Inventive, snappy, and lots of fun - even if you've never stepped on a stage in your life! Participation required.
Jill Dolan writes an extended critique on Wendy Wasserstein's Third, which she saw here in LA at the Geffen Playhouse. Go read her description and analysis of the play - she does it more thoroughly and better than I will.
The production is part of a season of the Geffen doing plays about women, only half of which are written by women. Two out of the three plays written by women criticize feminism, particulary academic feminism, and Third decidedly falls into that category. It's an intensely problematic play, Wasserstein's answer to King Lear reducing its female protagonist to begging forgiveness of a student in a dorm room and leaving academia. But while in Lear you witness the king's downfall and desperation as tragic, the play sets up Professor Laurie Jameson's humiliation as deserved and just, a victory over a too-rigid feminism. The play constructs this desertion of academia and feminism as a gesture of "hope" and a rejection of "irony" which is really intellectual critique.
In terms of the Geffen's production, I know several people who thought it was awful. Personally, I found it serviceable but in no way inspired. It presented without helping a problematic text. I was less disturbed than Dolan by the awkward blackouts and scene changes and transition music. I was, however, furious at Matt Czuchry's portrayal of Woodson Bull III. He came across as an overgrown frat boy completely without the insight and intelligence the character supposedly should have. He was awkward and arrogant. You'd think that my complete lack of sympathy for him would help me to identify with Christine Lahti's portrayal of Laurie Jameson, but honestly I spent a lot of time thinking about how her floral skirts and heels were completely inappropriate for New England in the winter and why in the world she was outside without a jacket. Because Bull was so utterly unsympathetic, there was nothing at the center of the play. If he is encouraging hope at the end, he has to offer some, but instead his moralism seems vapid. He doesn't offer a vision of a new kind of student with a critical awareness of privilege and lack of privilege but a resurgence of the Old Guard in a new skin, and that's where this play fails. It tears down feminism (without offering any sense of what feminism actually is), but offers nothing but a vacuum in its place. The "feminist" professors must be humilated, prostrated, and removed from the university, but what is left? Where is the "hope" the play espouses when no one is left? Everyone is removed from the university, but the institution stands, presumably in the hands of the old white men who were there first, but even this isn't seen as a tragedy in the play - it's almost seen as the way things should be .
I've been watching Elvis movies recently (for research purposes, of course) and I'm amazed at how often the entire focus of scenes is on Elvis' female costars' rear ends in tight pants and short shorts. This is most obvious in Viva Las Vegas where Ann Margaret's bottom is really the star of the film. I'm amazed at how blatently these women are portrayed based entirely on closeups of their behinds. In Fun in Acapulco, the blond girl who Elvis likes better is differentiated from the female matador who is also pursuing him by the fact that her pants are much tighter and her bottom gets much more screen time. That's how you know Elvis likes her.
This next week starting yesterday is comletely insane. Yesterday after class stopped in the conference on the American Musical at UCLA (where I spotted The Playgoer in person and it took me reading his bio to figure out why I recognized the name). I ducked out of there early hoping to have time to buy a costume for my party tonight, but didn't manage that before I had to be back to UCLA to see Bill T. Jones "Blind Date" which was awe-inspiring. It was a brilliant anti-war piece that felt nuanced rather than strident. I felt like it asked what it means to be patriotic when capitalism and government combine to make patriotism a bad thing. Even the images of death and destruction were beautiful and haunting. Today I have to find my costume and dress for Backyard Drag, which could easily take all day itself, but I hope to drop in on the musicals conference again for a panel on gender and sexuality. DA Miller's paper on the subject yesterday was fascinating and contentious and I would be glad to see more of the response it provokes. That makes a perfect theoretical frame for dressing up for a musicals sing-along in my friends' backyard. I'm still not sure whether I'm going to just wear underwear and be someone from Cabaret (I have to find a bowler hat somehow) or if I'm going to buy a shiny gold lame dress that I have my eye on and be a backup singer from Dreamgirls/Little Shop of Horrors (racial issues notwithstanding). I also have the perfect dress to be a Shark girl from West Side Story, but West Side didn't make the sing-along. And I'm not sure I have the right shoes for any of these outfits. I'm just going to put my whole wardrobe in my car and hope for the best.
Rufus Wainwright. Hollywood Bowl. 9/23/07.
Last night, Rufus Wainwright performed his last concert in a series that started over a year ago when he did a tribute to Judy Garland's performance at Carnegie Hall. The series began with two performances at Carnegie Hall on June 14 and 15, 2006 and ended at the Hollywood Bowl. He recreated both Garland's set list and even his gestures evoked Garland's performance style. He also performed the concert at venues in which Garland gave famous performances (the London Palladium, L'Olympia in Paris, and the Hollywood Bowl). A friend of mine commented that performing Judy's songs, re-creating her performance, is an awfully ambitious project. It's true, and it could have gone horribly wrong, but Rufus made it a beautiful tribute to an amazing performer.
The concert was quite fabulous, and fascinating to think about as an artistic tribute to Judy Garland as a performer and as a symbol of queer identification. First and foremost, it was a good show. Wainwright's voice is well-suited to Garland's music. He's the kind of singer I would gladly hear recreate standards and old favorites in his own style anytime. And this was a lovely mix of Wainwright's distintive voice and Garland's dramatic performativity. He made the songs his own, but used her arrangements. While he was by no means impersonating Garland, he used his hands and elbows in a way that suggested without mimicking Garland's expressive theatricality.
The highlight of the show for me was "The Man That Got Away," in which Wainwright captured the smokey darkness of Garland's voice and the strength and fragility of the song itself. The second half featured appearances by Lorna Luft in a fabulous bright pink gown, Rufus' mother, Kate McGarrigle, playing piano for "Over the Rainbow," and an absolutely beautiful rendition of "Stormy Weather" by Rufus' sister, Martha Wainwright. Rufus also sang one song, ("Do it Again," I think) in Garland's original key. His falsetto was strange and haunting and somewhat painful.
The closest Wainwright got to impersonation was in the encore, in which he sang "Get Happy" in an imitation of Judy's iconic outfit, a costume that was almost drag on her but certainly was on him in stockings and heels. But even then, he was performing himself, not her; he wasn't trying to pass as Judy or become her - he was citing her as an inspiration, a symbol, a patron saint, a diva, and perhaps a goddess. He was still very much Rufus under that hat, not a boy in a halloween costume or a drag queen camping for an audience.
The fascinating thing about the show was the way in which the crowd was behind it. So that it didn't matter when Rufus' voice cracked and failed toward the end of the show, or when "Putting on the Ritz" felt just a little off tempo to me. It didn't matter that while Wainwright took full possession of the big, tragic numbers, some of the smaller and quieter pieces got lost in the hugeness of the venue and the undertaking. What mattered is how much the audience wanted to love Rufus and love Judy and love them together. The fact that this was happening was more important than the exact details of how it was happening. The whole audience was caught up in the process of identification and celebration of an event that happened 45 years ago, and it was wonderful. I'm sad that the DVD of the performance at the London Palladium and the CD of the show won't be available until December - I want to take them home and relive this performance now. I've been playing the Judy Garland CD, but I'd like to have them both.
For a full accounting of the concert, read this very detailed Yahoo Music review or Harp Magazine's detailed description of the Carnegie Hall show. There's something off about the LA Times coverage of the concert - halfway through, the reviewer gets caught up in being condescending about drag rather than talking about Rufus and Judy. What the LA Times reviewer missed, and I probably won't be able to explain well, was that this both was and wasn't a camp performance. The show claims and embraces a culture that has claimed and embraced drag performances of Judy Garland as loving tribute and mocking mimickry at the same time. But this was about the music, and about a single performance that has been called "the greatest night in show business history". It was a challenge and a performance accomplishment and a tribute. It was a heartfelt embrace of Garland and queerness and the ways in which they go together.
Wainwright says "I've thought a lot about this, and I think the secret" to Garland's effect on listeners decades after her death, said Mr. Wainwright, "is that, when she sings, she is beautiful without being actually beautiful." In this TONY article, Rufus imagines Judy as an alternative to a Frank Sinatra swinging masculinity: "There’s nobody being the flip side of that, which is the hungry, lonely, desperate, crazy-person singer. So I wanted to pick up that mantle and try to be a little less cool." I think that these quotes, and his performance, demonstrate a wonderful, respectful appreciation of Garland, her music, and her life. Recreating that iconic performance and making it his own was a brilliant tribute, as well as a the ulitimate performance of gay male identity.
Forgive me if my posting is light for a while. My computer isn't feeling well, and has thus been sent in for service. As a result, I'm temporarily using my mother's geriatric powerbook. Apparently, the version of Safari it runs doesn't get along with blogger. As in, I can write entries but not post them. I discovered this after losing a long post on feminism and theater that I may or may not feel inspired to recreate. This means that I can only blog on Firefox, and must log out of my email to do so (GRRR! I HATE this about blogger). Blogging becomes much more of a hassle and I'm much less inclined to do it. Hopefully my real computer will be back soon.
"We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home."
I'm in the middle of watching The McCarthy Years, footage of Edward R. Murrow's See It Now episodes relating to McCarthyism (much of which was portrayed in Good Night and Good Luck. It's amazing how contemporary so much of the footage feels.
There's a point at which McCarthy questions State Department employee Reed Harris about a book he wrote in 1932 about higher education. Apparently, in that book, Harris suggested that professors should have the right to teach that marriage "should be cast out of our civilization as antiquated and stupid religious phenomena" if that's their educated and considered opinion. This, apparently, made Harris a communist.
It's interesting that even at the height of McCarthyism, the president (Eisenhower) defended due process of law and the right of defendants to face their occusers. If we could even have that much committment to liberty and democracy now, I'd be impressed.
I was personally amazed that McCarthy accused the left wing media of unfairly persecuting him. I thought that the accusation of liberal bias in the media was a recent fallacy, but apparently happened in the 1950s.
It all feels very familiar.
Invasion! The Musical. Hudson Backstage Theatre. 9/9/07.
Invasion! The Musical is, as one might suspect, a musical (very loosely) based on Invasion of the Body Snatchers. More than that, however, it is an evening of dirty jokes and foul language that are sometimes hilarious and sometimes completely nonsensical. As potty humor isn't exactly my style, I found myself cringing as often as laughing, but I feel that the musical is perfect for perhaps slightly immature frat boys. The production seems to have originated as a project among USC undergrads and recent graduates; most of whom are quite talented and seem to be having a lot of fun with the show, but I definitely felt too old and too queer/feminist to be the ideal audience. Variety calls the show "the latenight handiwork of a team of drunken frat boys trying to top each other's nominatiosn for Ultimate Grossout between extended bong hits" and I think that's about right. It's also the intended audience.
While the show was dirty fun, where it fell disappointingly short was as a satire. The program claims the show will be "innovative material that is going to challenge contemporary social constructs." It fails, however, to set up those terms clearly so that when it tries to claim that it's ridiculing ideological extremism of all sorts, it ends up feeling just plain reactionary. It feels like conservatives trying to be campy, which strikes a sour note for me. At all points, the writers seemed to avoid plot development, character development, satire, and logical consistency in favor of disgusting or unpleasant side notes.
The production fails to use the sci-fi genre or the 1950s setting to develop its ideas. If it employed the 1950s small town setting as a shorthand for conservative values, racism, hypocracy or sexual repression and established that at the beginning, then the ending would feel less reactionary to me, but as it is, the ending is just plain offensive and I find myself agreeing with the show when one of the characters jokes that it's not well-written. I guess I'm disappointed because the production has a lot of potential to be clever and interesting as well as just funny, and it at every point turns away from being intelligent as well as humorous.
For such an aesthetically heterosexual show, there was a good deal of queer content, including Emily Pennington as Spencer Brewster, a possibly transgender-identified 10-year-old-boy with a crush on his babysitter. Pennington as Spencer was adorable and he and his babysitter, Steve Thompson (played by Cory Bretsch) were the two characters I would have been happy to see more of in the show.
My feelings about the butch/femme lesbian couple, newscaster Gloria Parish (played by Jenny Weaver) and her girlfriend/camerawoman, Janelle (Danielle Faitelson) were much more mixed. Janelle was portrayed as "a butch dyke with no future" content to follow around (and be mildly abused by) the high-powered femme newscaster. Their relationship was loving but dysfunctional, which unfortunately can sometimes ring true for lesbians and they did get a roll in the hay at the climax of the show. Unfortunately, butch seemed to be defined by a tool belt, flannel, a bad wig and large fake eyebrows. They were distinctly out of period, which is odd since the '50s is often considered the height of butch-femme bar culture. These two have their moments, but personally I would find it more entertaining if the point of the jokes surrounding them went beyond "she's a butch dyke with no future" and perhaps implied that someone in the cast had actually met a butch lesbian rather than just heard of them.
I did, however, actually like the random side plot of two National Guardsmen (Ben Giroux and Al Rahn) who arrived randomly, and did nothing, but had a lovely moment of Don't Ask-Don't Tell discovery of their love. The lack of queer sensibilty in this relationship made sense, and even though there was absolutely no need for these characters in the plot, I rather enjoyed their appearance.
I actually enjoyed writer/director Aaron Matijasic's appearance in the play as a nerdy scientist, but I wish the character had something better to do than sing about Toxic Shock Syndrome and get the girl. Will Harris as Sherrif Brewster actually managed to amuse me while singing an offensive anti-feminist hoe-down song. And Ian Littleworth, Carl Petrillo, Al Rahn, and Gabriel Oliva made a wonderful barbershop quartet who were tragically underused.
Basically, there were some good people and good moments in a show that desperately needs to be rewritten with more attention to a humor that goes beyond gross-out jokes. The best word to describe the show is sophmoric, but there's a lot of potential for something better. At the moment, there's no point to this play at all, and its vapid attempt to be postmodern and irreverant makes it, at best, offensive and reactionary.
Cohn, Rachel and David Levithan. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
This is a book about two people meeting cute, then spending a delirious night doing and saying all the wrong things. Over the course of a single evening, they learn and change and grow and fall in love in a way that's full of youth and hope and passion. It's sweet and beautiful and perfect. I loved it. I loved it so much that I immediately sent it to my gay best friend (who doesn't have time to read blogs anymore, so he won't know 'til it shows up on his doorstep). I thought about sending it to two other boys I know and love, but I'm not sure I could get past their skepticism to get either of them to read it. Anyway, it was one of those books that's so simple and evokative that I just want to hand out copies to everyone I know.
Now, I love David Levithan and I have since Boy Meets Boy
I don't know what it's like to be a teenager reading this book, but with my cynical adult perspective the book feels bittersweet both for how honest it is with the disconnections and miscommunications and bad decisions and for how hopeful it is. Because I want, with all my heart, for Nick and Norah to be together and stay together and never break each other's hearts. Because this book is just the beginning of their story, one perfect night with the future purposefully blank so that they never have to break up, grow up, change or move away. Even as I'm applauding their bliss, though I'm also mourning an inevitable loss that is beyond the scope of the book but looming nonetheless. It's a good thing when I worry about the future of fictional characters. It means that in the few hours when I was savoring the book (and it wasn't very long - it's a quick read), they felt like real people to me. I like that.
It's also a book that made me think about the people I've spent a perfect night (or perfect afternoon with). It made me treasure all over again the nights staying up late in cars and coffee houses in the suburbs with Prophecyboy just talking, not yet understanding that my love for him wasn't attraction. Or dancing to Madonna in a dorm room with a girl to whom I didn't understand that I was attracted. Or that trip to Santa Cruz with my first girlfriend where we got lost and flirted and ended the night with that first awkward kiss that changed my life. Or the afternoon I spent running errands with a performance artist I barely knew but with whom I talk so easily. Or those coffee dates that lingered for hours all last spring. Each of these moments is perfect unto themselves, whatever the future brought. They are moments of genuine connection with people who are in one way or another kindred spirits and any book that reminds me to appreciate them is genius in its own special way. And I want to give that book to each of them, and to everyone else who matters in my life. That's the kind of book this is.
There are two very exciting shows that I want anyone who happens to be reading this in New York or Seattle to know about. If I could afford to, I would be booking plane flights for both of these shows.
New York:
Wolves in the Walls
New Victory Theater
Oct. 5-21
This is the Improbable Theatre Company (who did Shockheaded Peter) and the National Theater of Scotland collaborating to adapt a children's book
Seattle:
Becoming a Man in 127 Easy Steps
Capitol Hill Arts Center
Oct. 26-27
The Pat Graney Company and the National Performance Network present the world premier of Scott Turner Schofield's Becoming a Man in 127 EASY Steps. This piece is going to be amazing. Turner is my favorite transgender performance artist. He's a delightful human being, a true gentleman, and a fabulous storyteller. I've had the extreme privilege of reading an early text for this show and I'm super excited about it. Excited to the point that I've cleared my schedule just in case I can find a last minute cheap ticket to Seattle to go see it. If you happen to be in the area, you must go and report back to me. I insist.
So, if anyone out there feels like flying me all over the country to see shows (and review them, stage manage them, whatever), these are two that I'm dying to see. If they happen to be local for you, there's really no excuse to miss them.
Zorro in Hell. Ricardo Montalbán Theatre. 9/6/07.
Culture Clash's Zorro in Hell is part folklore, part history lesson, part political rant, and part stand-up comedy, but it's all extremely entertaining. It draws on traditions of Chicano agit-prop theater (I particularly enjoyed the reference to The Shrunken Head of Pancho Villa) in order to dissect pop culture iconography. Plus, it was a love song to old California with its checkered history of exploitation, oppression, and revolution. While not every line was perfect, the fast-paced wit ensured that I laughed so much my face was sore.
Zorro in Hell is the story of a writer (Richard Montoya) who finds himself in a hotel that serves as a museum of old California with a proprietress (Sharon Lockwood) who claims to have seduced and inspired historical and liteary greats from Joaquin Murrieta to Jack Keroac. She and a cast of very queer characters seek to teach the writer the story of Zorro, taking him from a cynical aspiring screenwirter to a revolutionary in the Zorro mold.
Of course, this plot is only an occasional accessory to witty one-liners and a postmodern exploration of California histoy and Zorro mythology. Culture Clash places Zorro in a geneology of tricksters, thieves, and freedom fighters. While they assert that he's directly descended from the Scarlet Pimpernel and an inspiration for Batman, they also implicitly or explicitly link him to Robin Hood, Joaquin Murrieta, and Hannibal Lecter, and perhaps even Br'er Rabbit. The play explores the character's inauthenticity from pulp fiction roots through children's memorobilia. Zorro represents a long history of white and nonwhite children alike nostalgic for a California history that never really existed, but Zorro in Hell comes to the conclusion that Zorro is a character worth emulating despite his problematic history, because first and foremost, he stands up for the people against an exploitative and authoritarian Gobernador. He's a graffiti artist and a one-man rebellion, a terrorist in the most necessary way. Refreshingly, this play embraced the bi-cultural, the alliance between white, Native American, and Mexican as the basis for chicanismo and as the source of potentially revolutionary alliance. It wasn't a piece about how Zorro wasn't authentic enough but rather about how authenticity becomes irrelevant in the face of oppression.
The play is wonderful and I love it and highly recommend it, but no review of mine would be complete without an analysis of gender issues, and this production had some weird ones. First there was the 200-Year-Old-Woman, who was kind of awesome, really. This weird muse/succubus figure isn't exactly a representation of the female experience (she's more symbol than character), but she was a lusty and fiesty old woman (with an occasional inexplicable Irish accent) and as such was kind of fabulous. Of course, she only had one bit, so it got old by the second act, but that's OK really. The real issue wasn't Culture Clash's problems depicting women (for once) but with homosexuality as the foil to masculinity. Our writer-hero was, until he became Zorro, constantly in danger of being sexually victimized. He was kissed by a gay cowboy (and boy can those Culture Clash guys REALLY not do gay right) and raped by Kyle, his bear therapist (the big furry kind, no the big furry kind that lives in the woods). I know that part of this was a humorous take on the tradition of Zorro (and the Scarlet Pimpernel) masquerading as an effete rich boy to hide his secret identity and a performed resistance to the demasculinization and infintalization of any non-white men, but it was also a disturbing depiction of homophobia as the source of all humor. In this world, only Zorro is really a man and everyone else is lesser, as demonstrated by potential homosexuality.
With that being said, the play is overall much stronger than its homophobia and I enjoyed it thoroughly. It just got extended until September 30th and it is very much worth a trip out to Hollywood to see this wonderful exploration of California mythology lovingly and irreverently exploded on stage. Director Tony Taccone and Culture Clashers Richard Montoya, Herbert Sigüenza, and Ric Salinas have a lot to be proud of in this one, and they're working hard up there on stage. The lease you can do is go see it.
P.S. The show also had the best intermission and post-show soundtracks I ever heard. Seriously. I laughed. I sung along. They were all wonderfully appropriate to the show.
I recently read a myspace bulletin from Curve Magazine in which they asked for lesbian theater critics or actresses involved in lesbian theater. If you happen to be either, please respond to them.
But the posting made me consider whether I would call myself a lesbian theater critic or not. It's a loaded question, regardless of the identity issues. I write about queer performance art, and as a result, I see quite a bit of performance by lesbians and other queer women, but it's been a long time since I've seen anything that could strictly be called be called lesbian theater. I tend to know things about lesbian performance art, music, spoken word, film, and sometimes even burlesque, but what exactly qualifies as a lesbian play? And have I been ignoring them in favor of other forms of performance?
Is there lesbian theater here in LA that I'm missing? I tend to skip a lot of the performances at the Celebration Theater and the LA Gay and Lesbian Center as too expensive and usually gay male focused. Theatre Out is a newish gay theater in Orange County that I have yet to check out and Rude Guerilla also in Orange County often has interesting gay [male] programming while not strictly a gay theater. The LA Women's Shakespeare Company is a theater company that may be of interest to lesbians, but isn't strictly lesbian theater as far as I know.
And that made me think about gay and lesbian theaters elsewhere. I'm certainly familiar with Theatre Rhinoceros and Brava! Theater Center in San Francisco and the WOW Cafe in New York (Shakespeare in the Nude on Sept. 8 sounds awesome!) as likely places to find lesbian theater, but I can't say I've spent much time at any of these. Are ther other lesbian or gay and lesbian theaters I don't know about? What makes lesbian theater?
For any New Yorkers among my readers, I highly recommend that you check out Mastering Sex and Tortillas by Adelina Anthony. It's a hilarious piece in which Anthony performs butch and femme gender roles, discussing lesbian sexuality in a rowdy, irreverant solo performance. The intended audience is clearly Chicana lesbians, but the piece is delightfully entertaining all around.
MASTERING SEX & TORTILLAS!
Sept. 5th-29th (Wed-Sat @ 8 pm)
Teatro LA TEA
Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center
107 Suffolk Street, 2nd floor
(between Delancy & Rivington Streets)
Tickets: $15
