SD: When the film Brokeback Mountain came out in 2005, did
you feel vindicated — or that it had stolen your thunder? WF: Actually, it was interesting to learn that copies of the book had been given to [actors] Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as they were preparing to play those roles. I think that’s wonderful, that two actors would have been given some pretty basic source material to get a sense of the cultural and historical context out of which these characters were arising. SEVEN DAYS: David, did you see the previous stage production of Farm Boys or read the script? DAVID ZAK: I read the script. I knew it had been adapted, but it was not very satisfying. We all grew up on The Laramie Project and other documentary pieces where you hear the original voices. When I went back to Will, I said, “This needs to be a group of voices of people baring their souls, in the same way they did when you were interviewing them.” SD: How did you structure your version? DZ: It’s pretty conversational, people talking about family and the seasons, and a lot about religion and how religion impacted people, as well as the usual topics: school, sex, relationships with parents and children. It’s quite rich in terms of the variety of details.
SD: How does the play unfold? DZ: Some of it is literally them enacting the oral testimonies that were recorded. Others are thematically interwoven, dramatic interactions between them. It’ll be entertaining, I think, and there will be moments when someone sits down and tells a story that just breaks your heart. And it breaks your heart because you know it’s exactly the way that story was told to Will Fellows. SD: Did you talk to any of his original interviewees? DZ: I didn’t want to go there. Almost
Contact: ken@sevendaysvt.com
INFO Farm Boys premieres Sunday, July 20, at 7 p.m., at Chandler Center for the Arts in Randolph; second performance on Saturday, July 26, 7:30 p.m. A discussion with the audience and cast follows each performance. The play is part of the Vermont Pride Summer Theater Festival. $17 in advance, $20 day of show; students, $12/15. Pride Pass available online. Info, 728-6464. chandler-arts.org
FEATURE 43
SD: Do you think farm boys’ interviews today would be very different than they were in 1992? WF: I do. All these interviews I did over 20 years ago. The general cultural environment is so drastically different. Back in the early ’90s, a major propelling force for many of these men to contact me and tell me about their lives came out of the whole HIV hysteria, and not just the demonization [of gay men], but also the vast dying that was under way, and the need to tell the world who we are, where we come from and what we’re about. As I look back on it now, I’m more aware of the influences of time and how it shaped what the book became.
SEVEN DAYS
SD: What most surprised you about their stories? WF: Even though most of the men I interviewed were no longer farming — it’s not a book about gay farmers — I was struck by how often they exhibited a certain longing for a return to that life and, sometimes, even had little fantasies about perhaps one day being able to have some land in the country.
Even though they felt that who they were and the nature of their lives were at odds with being part of those kinds of communities.
SD: Does the play present these characters as they were, or them looking back, removed from rural life? DZ: A little of both. I think some people look back and say, “Thank God I got out of there.” There are others who look back at that experience and realize that’s home. So one of the characters talks about how he and his partner raise pigs, and none of their gay friends can believe that they love their pigs. [They say,] “And we never take vacations, because, if the pigs get sick, we’ve got to be there for them.” So there’s a real pride that “This is who we are and this is where we’ll stay.” That’s a really strong message. Home is home and, for some people, the farm is where your heart tells you to be. m
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SD: Were your experiences as painful as some of theirs? WF: There were quite a number of very difficult and awful experiences represented in the book. That wasn’t my experience. My farm upbringing was, if not an idyllic, then at least [an] extremely nurturing space for me, and I’m grateful for it. I don’t romanticize it, but I do recognize that my experience was much more benign than many of these individuals’.
SD: Tell me about the cast. DZ: I’ve got seven men who are really an interesting group. One of the actors is still in high school, but this will be his second summer with Chandler Pride. One of the guys is in college. A couple of the performers are at the opposite end of the spectrum — they’re retired. So they range in age from 17 to 70, which is part of what this whole experience is: old people and young people telling stories.
SD: Anything that really surprised you about the book? DZ: The different experiences people had with their families and their religion. In some of the stories there’s this [sense of ] “We’re working with the animals. We know what happens with the birds and the bees.” There’s a frankness about how Mother Nature works. And yet, in our house, nobody talks to each other.” So that’s a theme that comes back a lot, that being a part of the cycle of life outside the house doesn’t necessarily make for peaceful relations inside the house.
SEVENDAYSvt.com
Chandler Center’s Farm Boys cast
everybody in the book is given a different name, though I know the names of the original people because I got access to the original documents. Some people think this is some sort of a dig against rural life, that things must be really horrible [for rural gay men]. But what I find really exciting about the book is how much joy there is for people talking about the animals or the land or the seasons. For some of these guys, rural communities really are their home, and they hate the city. I always picture these characters at the Chicago Pride Parade, which had, like, a billion people watching the drag queens. They’d be horrified and running in the other direction!