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FREE | VOLUME FIFTEEN, ISSUE FIVE | MARCH 03 - 16, 2016

CRIME

COMMUNITY

Mark Carson’s accused killer claims self-defense

A boisterous reunion for WOW

05

11

FILM

OPERA

30 EDITOR'S LETTER

PERSPECTIVE

Punching down

Gottfried aims to fix med marijuana program

Clueless

Cavalli soars

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27

33

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KATHY GRIFFIN BOROUGHING THROUGH

Kupferberg Center for the Arts at Queens College

Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts

Saturday, April 9 Sunday, April 10 at 8pm

at 6pm

KupferbergCenter.org or 718-793-8080

BrooklynCenter.org or 718-951-4500

NEW YORK

Supported by:

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March 03 - 16, 2016 | GayCityNews.nyc

GayCityNews.nyc | March 03 - 16, 2016

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FAMILY

Lesbian Co-Parent Victory in Kentucky

State Supreme Court blocks adoption petition by ex’s new husband for now

BY ARTHUR S. LEONARD

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n a unanimous February 18 ruling, the Kentucky Supreme Court found that the lesbian co-parent of a child has the right to intervene in an adoption proceeding initiated by her former same-sex partner’s new husband.

In confronting a case of “first impression” — one with no established precedent in the Kentucky courts — Justice Bill Cunningham wrote that the state’s Court of Appeals incorrectly reversed a trial court’s decision to grant the co-parent’s motion to intervene and to dismiss the step-father’s adoption petition.

Cunningham’s opinion for the court refers to all the parties only by their first names in order to protect their privacy, as is common in family law proceedings.

Amy and Melissa began their relationship in Ohio in 2005 and decided to have a child together.

Melissa conceived through donor insemination and gave birth to Laura in September 2006. Amy was present throughout the delivery, and the women agreed that Laura would have Amy’s last name.

Until Melissa and Amy separated in 2011, they lived together with Laura as a family, Amy taking a full share of parental duties.

After the split-up, Melissa moved

with Laura to Kentucky. Amy continued to visit Laura after the move. The following year, Melissa married Wesley, and almost two years later, in 2014, he filed a step-parent adoption petition in the Kenton County, Kentucky, Family Court. When Amy learned of this, she filed a shared custody and visitation petition in Hamilton County, Ohio, Family Court, as well as a motion to intervene in the Kentucky adoption case. She sought to have Wesley’s adoption petition dismissed in light of her custody petition pending in Ohio.

The Ohio Family Court does not have jurisdiction over Laura, a resident of Kentucky, so the two cases were consolidated in Kentucky, where the trial judge granted Amy’s motion to intervene and dismissed Wesley’s adoption petition. In effect, the Kentucky trial judge decided to reorient the case away from Wesley’s adoption to Amy’s action for shared custody and visitation.

Wesley appealed and the Kentucky Court of Appeals reversed the trial court, holding that Amy did not have “standing” to seek to adopt Laura and so was not entitled to intervene in Wesley’s adoption case. The appeals panel ordered the family court to reinstate the adoption proceeding.

This time Amy appealed.

Supreme Court Justice Cunningham prefaced his discussion with the

assertion that the case “is not about same-sex relationships, changing social mores, or notions about definition of family, or life styles.”

He continued, “This case is about people and their ability to participate in a lawsuit in which the outcome may adversely affect their interest. What we write here today applies equally to a myriad of human relationships including heterosexual parenting, boyfriends, girlfriends, grandparents, and others. Most importantly, this case is about Laura. Sometimes the emotions which envelope these types of cases cause this primary concern to be overlooked.”

At its heart, wrote Cunningham, was the Court of Appeals’ mistaken conflation of the concepts of intervention and standing.

“Standing to seek adoption is not a condition for intervening in an adoption proceeding,” he wrote.

“Our analysis is concerned only with Amy’s right to intervene in the adoption proceeding.”

There, Cunningham found that Kentucky’s procedural rules allow an individual to intervene where they claim “an interest… [and] the disposition of the action may as a practical matter impair or impede the applicant’s ability to protect that interest.” If Wesley’s petition were granted, he and Melissa might have the power as Laura’s legal parents to exclude Amy from Laura’s life.

SEAN MALONEY RAISES QUESTIONS ABOUT RENTBOY PROSECUTION Interjecting himself into a federal law enforcement action that has stirred considerable controversy in the LGBT community, US Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, an out gay upstate Democrat, has written to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and Attorney General Loretta Lynch questioning the motivations and priorities behind a 2015 raid on Rentboy.com that led to a January indictment of its owner on charges of promoting prostitution.

Maloney conceded that federal officials “no doubt believe you have uncovered evidence suggesting Rentboy.com was profiting from illegal activity,” but went on to note that “this website has operated entirely out in the open for nearly two decades.”

Maloney quoted from a New York Times editorial about the raid which charged that “prosecutors… have provided no reasonable justification for devoting significant resources” to the case, particularly in light of terrorism threats facing DHS. He also noted a Gay

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City News editorial that highlighted how the original federal complaint played up salacious details about Rentboy.com in an apparent effort to “incite visceral homophobic attitudes.”

While saying he does not question “strong enforcement” in cases “where there is even a hint of minors being exploited,” Maloney reminded Johnson and Lynch, “In America, gay sex is not a crime… By elevating the investigation and prosecution of Rentboy. com into a matter of ‘national security,’ your departments run the risk of resurrecting discredited and discriminatory about the sexual activity of LGBT adults.”

Jeffrey Hurant, Rentboy.com’s owner, was indicted on federal charges on January 27 by the Brooklyn-based Office of the US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, and shortly after that charges against his six employees arrested at the time of last year’s raid were dropped. Hurant and prosecutors are continuing discussions about a possible plea agreement. — Paul Schindler

Amy, Cunningham noted, “is claiming a cognizable legal interest — i.e., maintaining a relational connection with the child, either through custody or visitation.”

Granting Wesley’s adoption petition “could impair or impede Amy’s proffered custodial interest since, absent her intervention, the adoption proceedings would have concluded before her custody rights were determined.”

On the other hand, if she gained joint custody before the adoption proceeding were concluded, she would “share the right to make decisions concerning the major aspects of Laura’s upbringing.”

So, the State Supreme Court concluded, Amy was entitled to intervene as a matter of right.

When Melissa and Amy planned to have a child, they executed a written agreement with their sper m donor that made clear they contemplated that Amy and Melissa would raise the child together as parents. Cunningham noted the parties’ disagreement about whether that document is an enforceable contract, but wrote that the issue was not “dispositive” in resolving the case.

Instead, he viewed the contract as “instructive evidence demonstrating the intent of Amy and Melissa to raise Laura as co-parents,” and so bolstering Amy’s claim to have a legal interest in intervening in the adoption proceeding.

The Supreme Court also found that the trial judge made a “logical decision” in finding that Amy’s custody claim should be resolved before addressing Wesley’s adoption petition. The Supreme Court sent the case back to the trial court, reinstating that court’s order granting intervention and dismissing the step-parent adoption petition.

Amy is represented by attorneys Margo L. Grubbs, Jennifer Blain Landry, Lisa T. Meeks, and Lambda Legal staff attorneys Camilla B. Taylor, Kyle A. Palazzolo, Christopher R. Clark, and Gregory R. Nevins. Counsel for Wesley are Jacqueline S. Sawyers and Amy Howard Anderson.

March 03 - 16, 2016 | GayCityNews.nyc

CRIME

Mark Carson’s Accused Killer Claims Self-Defense Elliot Morales’ claim he saw victim pulling out gun not corroborated by any other witness or evidence

BY DUNCAN OSBORNE

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GayCityNews.nyc | March 03 - 16, 2016

JEFFERSON SIEGEL

he accused killer of Mark Carson testified that he shot the 32-year -old gay man because he believed that Carson was pulling a gun from his pocket during a fight in the West Village.

“I thought he was going to take something out and shoot me,” Elliot Morales said while being questioned by Adam Freedman, his legal advisor, in Manhattan Supreme Court on March 2. Morales is representing himself, but was questioned

by Freedman for his testimony.

Charged with second-degree murder as a hate crime, weapons possession, and menacing in the killing, Morales has suggested that Carson’s death came at the end of an alcohol-fueled fight and that he was defending himself from Carson and Danny Robinson, Carson’s friend.

This is the first time that any witness has claimed that Carson was armed.

Allegedly, Morales shot Carson just after midnight on May 18, 2013. Carson and Robinson were out partying and Morales was passing through the West Village with two friends, Joseph Matos and Oscar Robles. Both sides agree on the general outlines of the case, but disagree on many of the specifics that lie at its heart.

Morales and his friends were walking south on Sixth Avenue.

Carson and Robinson were heading north. Morales forced the two gay men apart and allegedly used an anti-gay slur, a charge that Morales has vehemently denied. The men argued while Robles and Matos tried to calm all three and urged Carson and Robinson to move on.

Morales headed north on Sixth Avenue and turned east onto Eighth Street with Carson and Robinson behind him. Whether they were following Morales or continuing on their original path is disputed.

“What did you perceive their actions to be?” Freedman asked.

“They were going to jump me,” Morales said. “Both people beating me up.”

Morales, Carson, and Robinson

Elliot Morales (l.), seated next to his legal advisor Adam Freedman, during his trial on charges of second-degree murder as a hate crime in the 2013 slaying of Mark Carson in the West Village.

were facing each other on Eighth Street, and Morales said in trial testimony that he displayed the gun he was carrying in a shoulder holster.

With Matos once again trying to calm the situation, Morales said he fired the weapon.

“Did you intend to shoot the gun?” Freedman asked.

“Absolutely not,” Morales said.

“I never aimed it at anybody at any time.”

While jurors can find testimony by defendants compelling, the problem with Morales’ testimony is that it requires jurors to discount the testimony of at least six other witnesses and the jury will, as well, have to ignore some evidence that came from Morales to believe him.

In Morales’ recounting, he was holding the gun at his side with the muzzle pointing down. As he perceived the threat, he raised the gun as he was turning away from Carson and Robinson and fired. The single shot struck Carson in the head, killing him.

Cross-examined by Shannon Lucey, the assistant district attorney who is prosecuting the case, Morales said he did not know if he had killed anyone or even hit anyone with the shot as he fled the scene. But when he was captured by police moments later holding the gun that was used to kill Carson, police recorded him

saying, “I fucking shot him dead.

Diagnosis dead doctor.”

Morales, who said he did not remember making those comments, made no reference to acting in self-defense in the police video.

Questioned by Lucey, Morales said he knew that there were only four bullets in the six-shot revolver and that the weapon fired on the first shot. Morales confirmed that the cylinder had been turned so that the gun was ready to fire on the first trigger pull.

Two witnesses, who did not know each other, testified that Morales made comments to them as he raced past them following the shooting. Morales denied speaking to those witnesses. And he disputed the account of the police officer who arrested him, saying he surrendered rather than being wrestled to the ground.

The menacing charges stem, in part, from his entering a West Village restaurant roughly 20 minutes before the Carson shooting. He is alleged to have used anti-gay slurs and displayed the gun there. Two employees testified to this. Questioned by Freedman, Morales said he never took the gun into the restaurant, never used anti-gay slurs, and only went into the business to ask employees to not call police after they saw him urinating in the street.

“I tried to talk to the individual, telling him please don’t call the police,” Morales said.

Matos, who testified for the defense, said he did not see Robinson or Carson holding any weapons.

Robinson said the same thing when he testified. Morales repeatedly said he saw a gun. The only gun recovered by police belonged to Morales.

“When he reached into his pocket and took the gun out, I reacted,” Morales told Lucey.

Morales’ testimony has him consuming far more alcohol than Matos, who was with Morales for nearly the entire time the day of the shooting, testified to or than Robles, who was with Morales about two or three hours before the shooting, testified to. The evidence is that Robinson had two drinks before encountering Morales and Carson had three.

The defense ended its case on March 2. Following closing arguments on March 3, jurors will consider second-degree murder as a hate crime, second-degree murder, second-degree manslaughter, and the menacing and weapons charges.

Jurors will also weigh a justification defense, or self-defense, and whether being intoxicated meant that Morales did not have the legally required mental state to be guilty of the criminal charges.

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COMMUNITY

A Boisterous Reunion for WOW

Book documenting East Village lesbian theater enjoys hell of a launch party

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BY KATHLEEN WARNOCK

Deb Mathers, Dominique Dibbell, Babs Davy, Margaret Healey, and Lisa Kron.

ing its homoerotic content as she took off her robe, revealing a luscious nightie, finishing with the caution: “…So don’t ever offend her, Remember her gender, The man in the moon is a miss!”

Kron reminded the audience that as a collective, WOW members took on all the production roles: Weiss was known for her photography, and other members were performers, designers, costumers, stage managers, and more.

Then the Useless Fems (a band consisting of Lynn Hayes, Debra Miller and KT Thomas on bongo, ocarina and electric guitar) reunited for a short set, performing in front of a video of themselves in their original incarnation. They got the crowd to sing along to the chorus of “It’s Hard to be a Dyke in New York City”:

JACKIE RUDIN

Holly Hughes.

“…To go around just trying to be true To the one that you’ve pledged undying devotion When there’s so many other gals looking at you…”

Tropicana introduced Claire Olivia Moed, who wrote plays and gave fashion shows at WOW, for some funny, feminist fashion critique aimed at a couple of volunteers.

In “Memories of the Revolution,” most of the WOW members cite seeing Split Britches as the moment they realized they could make and be in theater. The crowd gave a huge ovation to founders Weaver, Shaw, and Margolin as they wrapped themselves into one costume and performed “America” from “West Side Story” in Yiddish.

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WOW, continued on p.18

JACKIE RUDIN

GayCityNews.nyc | March 03 - 16, 2016

JACKIE RUDIN

ickets for the book launch party for “Memories of the Revolution: The First Ten Years of the WOW Café Theater” on February 29 at Dixon Place sold out almost as soon as they went on sale.

The demand was such that, if those standing in front of her hadn’t gotten in, playwright and co-host Lisa Kron commented, “there might have been a crowd of lesbians of a certain age burning down Dixon Place.”

The conflagration was avoided with an additional performance added on February 28.

But that was the second night, the organizers insisted — the premiere was still February 29.

So on Leap Day, Dixon Place’s lobby filled up with performers, friends, spouses, and families; and it wasn’t just the alumnae and old-school fans — the audience included a number of young (and younger) queer artists and writers.

Dixon Place artistic director Ellie Covan, who hosted the event on her stage, welcomed the audience, then gave the floor to the evening’s hosts: Kron, Carmelita Tropicana, and Lois Weaver.

Tropicana (the alter ego of actor, writer, and scholar Alina Troyano) is one of the book’s editors, along with performer/ writer/ teacher Holly Hughes and Dr. Jill Dolan, dean of the College at Princeton. The book celebrates the founding and first decade of WOW, still a going concern, with a permanent space on East Fourth Street, some 35 years later.

Weaver, one of the founders of Split Britches (with Deb Margolin and Peggy Shaw) welcomed the excited crowd.

“This is the high school reunion I always dreamt of,” she announced.

Weaver and Shaw were instrumental in the founding of WOW, organizing and producing the first two international WOW Festivals in 1980 and ‘81. The festivals grew into a permanent theater, first at a storefront on East 11th Street and eventually to its current home.

“WOW is still a resistant, functioning theater company,” Weaver declared. “It resists order and hierarchy.” There’s no artistic director, no board, and “no funding!”

Weaver introduced Kron and Tropicana, and the trio split the hosting duties to share more memories, introduce each round of performers, and vamp when needed during an act change.

Eva Weiss reprised an act from the variety nights at WOW with her performance of the song “The Man in the Moon is a Lady,” from the Broadway show “Mame,” gleefully claim-

Lisa Kron.

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HEALTH

GMHC Ponders a Post-Epidemic Future

World’s oldest AIDS agency looks to healthcare delivery to the HIV-negative and positive

BY DUNCAN OSBORNE

I

GAY CITY NEWS

n the 20 months since Kelsey Louie took the reins at Gay Men’s Health Crisis in June 2014, he has consolidated operations from two floors to one in the West 33rd Street building where the AIDS agency is headquartered, cutting its annual rent by 25 percent.

GMHC is looking for new space as its current lease ends in 2018.

Louie has “equipped the board and senior leadership teams with improved systems to ensure tighter management and efficiencies,” according to a memo he sent to the agency’s board that was shared with Gay City News in advance of an interview with Louie.

In addition to continuing to serve its HIV-positive clients, GMHC has expanded its HIV prevention efforts to promote pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), anti-HIV drugs used

by HIV-negative people preventively to keep them uninfected.

And by the end of 2016, it will open two clinics — one for mental health and another for substance use — because “untreated mental health and substance abuse are

Kelsey Louie, the CEO of GMHC.

major drivers in the epidemic,” the memo said.

Further down the road, GMHC’s future lies in delivering healthcare services to HIV-positive and HIV-negative clients.

“This may be the continuation of reaching out to the non-HIV population,” Louie told Gay City News on February 19. “What are we doing to keep ourselves relevant and sustainable as AIDS goes away?”

When he took over GMHC, the agency had seen its revenues decline from 2007 through 2011.

The move from Chelsea to West 33rd Street was controversial and expensive, as the agency was paying a high rent for space that it was not fully using.

In its 2014 fiscal year, 54 percent of GMHC’s dollars came from government contracts. That reliance on government cash can be dan-

gerous because that money can be cut by politicians who are hostile to public health spending or government priorities can change.

The ideal is a third from the gover nment, a third from private donations, and a third from private insurers or Medicaid, the government insurance plan for the poor.

“We need to diversify our funding,” Louie said. “If we can really move to what I think is that sweet spot of a third, a third, a third, then any of these changes will impact a third of the funding versus 75 percent of the funding.”

GMHC was on the 63-member task force that drafted the Plan to End AIDS, an ambitious effort that aims to reduce new HIV infections in New York from the current roughly 3,000 a year to 750 annually by 2020. GMHC was founded in 1981 during the worst years of the AIDS epidemic, and the end of the epidemic means it must either close or change its mission. Delivering healthcare services to more than HIV-positive people is that new mission.

“Creating a new clinic with an HIV specialty doesn’t make

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GMHC, continued on p.13

PrEP Screenings Seen as Tool to Combat STD Surge

Researchers say AIDS prevention drug not promoting infections; instead, identifying people most at risk

BY JD DAVIDS

W

ith just three minutes on the mic at the 2016 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI), Sarit A. Golub, a psychologist with a master’s degree in public health, said, “I’m going to cut to the chase, since my title is a big spoiler.”

And with that, she launched into the data from SPARK, a collaborative project between the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center and Golub’s Hunter HIV/ AIDS Research Team, making the case that gave her talk its name: “STI Data From Community-Based PrEP Implementation Suggest Changes to CDC Guidelines.”

The desired change — seemingly justified not only by the Callen-Lorde data but also in find-

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ings from a broader PrEP demonstration project in other cities and other data at the conference on rising STI rates in gay men — is for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to recommend that all PrEP users have routine testing for sexually-transmitted diseases every three months, rather than waiting for six months or until a person reports symptoms as indicated in the current guidelines.

But, according to Golub and other researchers and providers of care, the findings are not an indictment. Instead, they reveal that PrEP is reaching those who may be at the most risk of HIV infection, while providing a structure for ongoing care that can help them be quickly diagnosed and treated for STDs. “What this says to me,” she explained, “is that we are reaching the people who need PrEP. We

are reaching people vulnerable to infection.”

In the project, 21 percent of people had experienced an STD within six months preceding their screening to initiate PrEP. Then, between 11 and 21 percent of participants were found to have an STD at each quarterly follow-up visit.

The majority of STDs were anal gonorrhea or chlamydia, with lower rates of syphilis.

If the project had solely relied on screening for STDs only when participants reported symptoms, they would have missed 77 percent of STDs that were detected at the three-month visits and 69 percent of those detected at the nine-month visits.

Howard Grossman, MD, a gay doctor and PrEP user with a large medical practice in New York

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PREP, continued on p.13

March 03 - 16, 2016 | GayCityNews.nyc

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GMHC, from p.12

sense if new infections are going down,” Louie said.

Currently, GMHC serves 9,000 clients annually and has a staff of 160. The agency has an onsite pharmacy, a hotline, hot meals, counseling and support services, financial management services, a mobile testing van that operates four days a week, and a clinic that does sexually transmitted disease and HIV testing. Those who test HIV-positive are walked to Mt. Sinai Hospital, GMHC’s partner, for treatment. Ninety percent of the clients of the two entities are virally suppressed, meaning they are healthy and cannot infect others.

“I would like to think that with our own healthcare instead of saying go four blocks, we can go down the hall or go down the stairs and we can capture some of that 10 percent that isn’t virally suppressed,” Louie said.

Getting into the healthcare business would likely be pricey and the market in New York City is consolidating, with providers growing larger. GMHC, with an annual budget of $27 million, is small, but it is a recognizable brand with access to a population — gay and bisexual men — that few other institutions have. The agency performs roughly 3,000 HIV tests every year, and about two per -

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cent of those tested are previously unidentified HIV-positive individuals. That means GMHC is testing the right people.

GMHC could grow bigger or it could merge with another provider, which might be controversial.

As evidenced by the 30,000 people who joined GMHC’s annual fundraiser, AIDS Walk, last year, the agency enjoys a loyal following and those people may object to the brand being changed. Louie said there were currently “no serious conversations” about a merger.

A more immediate goal is getting the Plan to End AIDS funded. In the current fiscal, the Cuomo administration spent just $10 million on the plan. Charles King, the chief executive of Housing Works, an AIDS group, said last year that $104 million would be a “dream number.”

For the state fiscal year that begins on April 1, the Cuomo administration at first seemed to say that it would spend $200 million, but when Governor Andrew Cuomo released the proposed budget that commitment was for $40 million a year for the next five years. The plan’s “ambitious goal” can be met “with the proper funding,” Louie said.

“I think $104 million could be right,” he said. “I think $200 million sounds better. I think $40 million isn’t enough… More money needs to come upfront now.”

PREP, from p.12

GayCityNews.nyc | March 03 - 16, 2016

HUNTER.CUNY.EDU

who said he is “beginning to get freaked out about the tidal wave of STDs I’m seeing in my practice,” also echoed the call for more frequent screenings. He explained that in 2014, he might see one new STI every week or two, but in the past nine months, he’s been seeing three or more infections in my patients nearly every day.”

Grossman noted that “some people have theorized that the STD increase is a statistical artifact caused by increased surveillance testing that we’re doing in our patients on PrEP. But I have been prescribing PrEP since 2013 and I can tell you that something very different is happening.”

Grossman said what he’s seeing does not support a causal link between PrEP use and STD incidence. Instead, he sees STI rates

Dr. Sarit A. Golub, who presented her team’s findings on STD infections at the 2016 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections.

growing across the board and, like Golub, believes screenings undertaken by PrEP users can help address that epidemic.

He explained, “Others have blamed PrEP use for this, but this STD spike is not just happening

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PREP, continued on p.14

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HEALTH

Will Rare Seroconversion by PrEP User Slow Uptake?

Researchers argue drug-resistant fluke caused infection, challenge opponents seizing on it

BY DUNCAN OSBORNE

W

hile a recent case of a Toronto man who was infected with HIV despite adhering to pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) will likely not be replicated, it could have an impact on PrEP uptake by causing some who are considering using the anti-HIV drug regimen to have second thoughts.

“It might,” said Peter Staley, a longtime AIDS activist. “There’s been a not always healthy debate about PrEP from the beginning and this will certainly fuel the PrEP denialism movement, which is an anti-science movement.”

PrEP, which was first approved by the federal Food & Drug Administration (FDA) in 2012, involves HIV-negative people taking an antiHIV drug, Truvada, to keep themselves uninfected. PrEP is highly effective when taken correctly.

At the annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI), which was held in Boston in February, Dr. David Knox from the Maple Leaf Medical Clinic in Toronto presented the case of a 43-year-old gay man whom was infected with HIV “after 24 months of successful PrEP, despite clinical and pharmacokinetic data suggesting long-term adherence” to Truvada. The infection was possible because the virus was resistant to the drugs that comprise Truvada.

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“This patient’s clinical history, pharmacy records ,and [dried blood spot] results consistent with long-term dosing of [Truvada] suggest that HIV infection is possible despite adherence to daily oral PrEP when exposed to [Truvada]-resistant virus,” read the abstract of the case study.

This kind of drug-resistant virus is relatively rare. In multiple press reports and online discussions, activists and researchers are expressing the view that while they might see a second case, they do not expect to see many cases or perhaps even a third case.

“It can happen, but what is the likelihood it can happen?” said Damon L. Jacobs, a leading PrEP educator who takes PrEP. “It was a confluence of extremely rare factors that contributed to this one infection in Toronto.”

Of greater immediate concern is the impact that news of this one case might have on PrEP uptake.

Initially, men and women who could benefit from the protection PrEP offers were slow to adopt the drug, but data from Gilead Sciences, the company that manufactures and markets Truvada, suggest that uptake is increasing and the pace of that increase is growing as well. PrEP — alongside post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) and treatment as prevention (TasP) — is a central component in efforts across the country to substantially

PREP, from p.13

in people on PrEP, who are actually leading the way in getting tested more frequently. I am also seeing the STD surge in patients who are not on PrEP, and in people who are HIV-positive and HIV-negative. Nor do I think it’s just that some have stopped using condoms. I am seeing spikes in oral infections as well as in anal ones, and no reasonable person has suggested condoms for oral sex for years.”

Grossman added, “The real problem, in my view, is that adequate screening and treatment for STDs is often not available. For the last 30 years, the only message about sexual health that many young people have gotten was either abstinence-only or, in more liberal venues, wear a condom every time to prevent HIV. The lack

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reduce new HIV infections, among gay and bisexual in particular.

PEP and TasP use anti-HIV drugs, respectively, to prevent infection in HIV-negative people or to treat HIV-positive people so they are no longer infectious. A number of jurisdictions across the country, including New York, are spending significant amounts of cash to increase PrEP use.

“ There’s been a not always healthy debate about PrEP from the beginning and this will certainly fuel the PrEP denialism movement.”

But there has also been resistance to PrEP. In 2012, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), which is headed by Michael Weinstein, mounted a vigorous effort to stop approval of T ruvada for PrEP at the Food and Drug Administration. Weinstein has continued to oppose PrEP, drawing the ire of many pro-

of knowledge about STDs, their transmission, prevention, and treatment is a damning indictment of our education system.”

In a PrEP-focused plenary at CROI 2016, Sheena McCormack, from the University College of London, who spoke on “Sexually Transmitted Infection Control in the Era of PrEP,” also gave the thumbs up for PrEP as a way of identifying and tackling STD risk, as part of a thorough presentation showcasing a range of new approaches to STD detection and treatment. Those approaches ranged from geospatial modeling to peer navigation of services to the use of private “self-swabbing” stations in stylish clinics where patients can submit samples via pneumatic tubes and await results via text message.

Using data across global PrEP studies, she con-

PrEP activists. The Toronto case prompted more opposition.

“Due to issues surrounding medication adherence with PrEP, AHF has always been concerned about the potential for overall spread of the virus as well as other STDs for which PrEP offers no protection,” Weinstein said in a February 25 statement. “Now, on the heels of this drug-resistant infection found in one individual who appeared to be adherent with the drug portion of his PrEP regimen, a larger concern is about the potential for a more drug-resistant strain of HIV entering the community-at-large.”

Some pro-PrEP activists charge that PrEP opponents bear some responsibility for the slow uptake, and opponents seizing on the Toronto case was just more of the same.

“PrEP denialism has slowed uptake from day 1,” Staley said. “A lot of people saw the anti-PrEP folks on social media saying, ‘I told you, I told you so.’ We’ll just have to fight back with science and reason like we always have.”

Jacobs said that if the Toronto case has any impact, and it may not, it will not last long.

“I think in the long term, this will not impact uptake because this is a single case out of at least 50,000 consumers in the world,” he said.

“This has never happened before.

As we go through this, it will be evident that this is an anomaly.”

cluded, “I hope I’ve convinced you that STIs were very high before PrEP and increasing… In this explosion of STIs that’s going on at the moment, there’s no need to see an explosion in HIV.” In making her rapid-fire case for routine quarterly testing, Golub urged providers to get it right in PrEP programs from the start, saying, “It’s so incredibly important right now as we see tremendous increases in PrEP implementation across the country, as folks are starting to write their PrEP protocols, we need to get this message to them. Because you know it is a lot easier to have people start doing behavior correctly than to try to change it afterwards.”

JD Davids is the managing editor for TheBody. com and TheBodyPRO.com. Follow @JDAtTheBody on Twitter.

March 03 - 16, 2016 | GayCityNews.nyc

RELIGION

Foreclosure Auction on Anti-Gay Church Stayed for Now Unrepentant bigot stalls potential property loss to LGBT youth shelter or congregation

BY PAUL SCHINDLER

tion. It took AFC barely a week to hit its target, and its executive director, Carl Siciliano, told Gay City News that several donors have signaled interest in participating in the purchase effort.

AFC already runs a drop-in center just blocks away, at the corner of 125th Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard.

In the wake of Jaffee’s stay, Siciliano issued a written statement, saying, “This development gives us more time to research the conditions of the Atlah building and assemble the most advantageous financial package possible prior to making a bid for the building at auction.”

Siciliano had earlier stated that should AFC not succeed in acquiring the Atlah site, it would funnel the funds raised into purchase of another property to expand its inventory of youth housing units.

A second LGBT group has also shown interest in the Atlah

MICHAEL SHIREY

T

he Blood of Jesus A t l a h Wo r l d M i s sionary Church on 123rd Street and Lenox Avenue in Harlem — which for the past several years has posted viciously homophobic messages on its outdoor marque sign — blocked, temporarily at least, plans for a public auction of the property, which had been set for February 24.

In a February 18 order, New York County Supreme Court Justice Barbara Jaffee issued a stay barring the auction, giving the church and its pastor, James David Manning, the opportunity to make their argument that the foreclosure, based on a city lien of more than $1 million for unpaid water and sewer charges, is not justified, given the church’s tax-exempt status.

Manning several weeks ago was

unable to provide Gay City News with information about when the church applied for such an exemption, and, on numerous occasions, he has talked about the other services provided in the building separate from worship activity.

Jaffe ordered the matter put over for a hearing on April 21.

Manning is facing off against a city tax lien trust and the Mellon Bank.

The delay and possibility that Atlah could avoid an auction altogether temporarily blocks efforts by at least two LGBT organizations to step in to purchase the property. When the February 24 auction came to light, the Ali Forney Center, which provides housing and social services to homeless LGBT youth across the city, undertook an online fundraising campaign with a $200,000 goal, in the hopes of leveraging that amount against support from major donors to put up a bid for the building at auc-

The marque outside Pastor James David Manning’s Blood of Jesus Atlah World Missionary Church.

property. The Rivers of Living Water Ministries, an LGBT congregation led by African-Amer ican Reverend Vanessa Brown and Bishop Joseph Tolton, is currently without a home and launched a fundraising drive to mount a bid at auction.

The lien that brought Atlah into court does not include a $13,000 liability owed to the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, which has fined the church for its inflammatory marquee, which was mounted on the building in defiance of historic preservation guidelines imposed on the building.

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AUDRE LORDE’S MEMORY HONORED DURING BLACK HISTORY MONTH Photo Essay by Donna Aceto In honor of Black History Month and what would have been Audre Lorde’s 82nd birthday, Hunter College’s Kaye Playhouse was the venue for a book launch party for Dr. Gloria Joseph’s “The Wind Is Spirit: The Life, Love and Legacy of Audre Lorde,” Joseph was Lorde’s surviving partner when the famed poet succumbed to cancer at the age of 58 in 1992. Joseph’s book, told in the griot style of African oral tradition, is a combination anthology and biography that brings together a wide range of prominent authors and activists who submitted essays, reflections, stories, poems, memoirs, and photos that illuminate how Lorde’s literary

16

vision and her turbulent and triumphant life inspired so many. The book also includes conversations with Lorde and Joseph’s own personal photos of her life and travels with Lorde.

The February 18 event drew a distinguished roster of guests including (top left) New York City First Lady Chirlane McCray, (middle left) Lorde’s daughter, Dr. Elizabeth Lorde-Rollins, (above) poet and performance artist Stacyann Chin, and author and journalist Linda Villarosa (seen below with Joseph), whose family’s new publishing house was responsible for the publication of Joseph’s book.

Musical entertainment was provided by the Dream Spinners.

March 03 - 16, 2016 | GayCityNews.nyc

HENRIETTA HUDSON V-DAY BASH BENEFITS SAGE

Photo Essay by Donna Aceto Minnie Rivera and Lisa Cannistraci (seen above with successful DOMA litigant Edie Windsor) opened up their Henrietta Hudson bar in the West Village to a Valentine’s Day

GayCityNews.nyc | March 03 - 16, 2016

Benefit for SAGE, Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders. Besides Windsor, other marriage equality activists on hand included Cathy-Marino Thomas (lower left), sharing an intimate moment with wife Sheila.

17

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WOW, from p.11

JACKIE RUDIN

Eva Weiss.

Lois Weaver and Deb Margolin.

Alice Forrester.

The evening concluded with Tropicana introducing “the crème de la crème… born on East Fourth Street… The Five Lesbian Brothers!”

The Brothers (Moe Angelos, Babs Davy, Dominique Dibbell, Peg Healey, and Lisa Kron) performed a piece called “From Sorrow River to Shame Town,” a tour-de-force of their classic sendups of lesbian stereotypes, which concluded with a full musical number, the Brothers wearing white jackets with purple lapels and sparkly top hats.

After a final bow, the audience and the performers merged into a happy crowd talking, laughing, and embracing. Some retreated upstairs to the lounge for more talk, drinks, and to make sure they got a copy of the book and Olnek’s DVD.

JACKIE RUDIN

JACKIE RUDIN

Eileen Myles.

“This night was amazing,” Hughes said after the performance. “The spirit of WOW was alive, in our anarchic, feminist, fierce, in-yourface thespian love.”

Some of the Wowettes have left town, taken up different professions, from drama therapy to raising quarter horses. Many still make art, wherever they are. Some of the founders have pushed from the fringes into the mainstream of American theater — and not without a fight.

Hughes was one of the NEA Four, whose federal funding was vetoed on the basis of her subject matter in 1990 (an outrage successfully challenged at the US Supreme Court). Hughes remains a working artist and a professor at the University of Michigan.

Angelos just finished playing Ellen DeGeneres in Casey Llewellyn’s play, “O Earth” with

JACKIE RUDIN

Lois Weaver.

JACKIE RUDIN

18

JACKIE RUDIN

The founders’ scene was followed by an excerpt from Alison Rooney’s “Waaay Beyond the Valley of the Dolls,” performed by Lucy Austin, Diane Jeep Ries and Kron (who put on a large winter hat to portray Ingmar Bergman).

Kron took off the hat to introduce Alice Forrester, the longtime stage manager, designer, director, and performer, who had put together a Power Point presentation, complete with a quiz, in which the audience was asked why socks were so important at WOW (because members would stand outside and yell, and whoever was in the space put the door key in a sock and threw it down); and also to recall Skyway Plumbing (a firm whose truck WOW members would sometimes chase when the employees harassed them). Forrester concluded with a lip synch to an Adele song, accompanied by Moe Angelos doing a nude interpretive dance, much to the crowd’s delight.

Weaver and Shaw returned to the stage to perform one of their classic routines about adultery, as engaged in by Americans, English, and French people.

Songwriter, playwright, and storyteller Sharon Jane Smith (recalled as “The Lovely Sharon Jane”), who both performed and tiled the bathroom at WOW, took the stage with her mandolin, to sing and remark that at WOW she’d learned to both talk and play at the same time.

The back screen displayed a color film by Tropicana and Uzi Parnes, beginning with a performance of “Yes, We Have No Bananas,” sung by Kron, featuring Hughes, Angelos, Margaret Healey, and others dressed as various pieces of fruit. In the film, Tropicana appeared as her alter alter ego, Pingalito Betancourt, then suddenly was onstage, in costume, as Pingalito today. The 2016 Pingalito showed no loss of energy, and pulled out a placemat with a map of Cuba as his 20th century counterpart did the same twice as large behind him.

While the pre-Internet/ early video era meant that a lot of performances were never recorded, Kron introduced a Wowette she referred to as an “auteur,” Madeleine Olnek, now a Guggenheim Award-winning indie filmmaker. Olnek presented clips from her film “Foxy Merkins” (available on Netflix streaming), her buddy comedy about two lesbian hookers. Attendees also received a DVD of Olnek’s “Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same,” the 2011 film she adapted from her play at WOW. Hughes talked about her introduction to the theater when, as an aspiring artist from Michigan, she walked into WOW and knew she had to be a part of it. She said she looked around for someone to ask, and gravitated to the “tallest person in the room,” a James Dean-lookalike — Shaw. She was given a date to present her first show, which she said was about

casual dining and coming out from the point of view of the lobsters at the restaurant. She continued with a story about her family involving her mother, a porcupine, and an ax.

Tropicana then spoke of WOW as a family, and how she came to it from her own Club Chandalier, and spoke the names of members who are no longer living.

When Downtown icon Eileen Myles was introduced, she said she thought of herself first as a fan of WOW and loved going to the shows, and she eventually ended up writing and performing her poetry and writing and performing in her play “Feeling Blue.” She read a short piece about how she realized that not all queers were cool, and not all queer venues friendly… and that at WOW, she didn’t have to worry about that.

Madeleine Olnek.

the Foundry Theatre at HERE. Tropicana/ Troyano continues to make theater and art all over the world. Shaw’s “Ruff”, a solo performance about her experience of having a stroke, was presented at La MaMa, down the street from WOW. She’s also the recipient of the Doris Duke Artist Award. Weaver is a professor at Queen Mary University in London, and Margolin continues to write new plays and teaches at Yale.

Kron was the first out lesbian playwright to have a show on Broadway with “Well.” “Fun Home,” with book and lyrics by Kron, made its way from the Public Theater to Broadway, winning five Tony Awards, including Best Musical in 2015.

She said it doesn’t feel like such a long journey to her, because “I never went away.”

March 03 - 16, 2016 | GayCityNews.nyc

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19

SAT.MAR.5 READINGS Queer Memoirs on First Saturday

The Photography of William Gedney William Gedney, a Kentucky photographer who died of AIDS in 1989, was highly regarded in his lifetime, though his work was not well known beyond a small circle of colleagues and curators. In 1968, John Szarkowski curated “Eastern Kentucky and San Francisco: Photographs by William Gedney” at the Museum of Modern Art. In a release for that show, Szarkowski wrote, “Gedney’s pictures make it clear that the individuals are more complex and more interesting than the clichés.” A new exhibit, “All Facts Eventually Lead To Mysteries: The Photographs and Notebooks of William Gedney,” presents the artist’s intimate portrayals of out-of-work coal miners

Contemporary Dance at 92nd Street Y

MICHAELURIE.NET

GALLERY

DANCE

MICHAELURIE.NET

The March First Saturday program at the Brooklyn Museum is dedicated to Women’s History Month and the day includes a session on Queer Memoir that will include a reading by Gay City News’ own Morsels columnist Donna Minkowitz, who will read from her story of an undercover, five-day visit to scary homophobe Reverend Fred Phelps (of God Hate Fags infamy) at his Topeka, Kansas, home. 200 Eastern Parkway at Washington Ave., near Grand Army Plaza.

Mar. 5, 8:30 p.m. Admission is free on First Saturdays beginning at 5 p.m., and tickets to the reading — no charge, just to make sure you have a seat — are available beginning at 7:30 p.m. For full information on this month’s First Saturday events, visit brooklynmuseum.org/visit/first_Saturdays.

and their families in rural Kentucky, hippie culture scenes from San Francisco, and his lonely-streets-atnight pictures from his travels around the US. Howard Greenberg Gallery, 41 E. 57th St., Suite 1406.

Through Mar. 19: Tue.-Sat., 10 a.m.-6 p.m.

The Harkness Dance Festival is a celebration of innovators and history-makers from today’s contemporary dance scene. On Mar. 5, 3 p.m., Pilobolus presents “Rules @ Play.” And to close out the festival, Mar. 18-19, 8 p.m.; Mar. 20, 3 p.m., Tina Croll + Company presents “One Rhinoceros, 3 Birds and a Pineapple.” 92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Ave. at 92md St. Tickets are $250$35 at 92y.org/harknessfestival or 212-415-5500.

PERFORMANCE Celebs Spoofing Celebs Who Tell All In 2016 first performance of “Celebrity Autobiography,” Michael Urie (“Buyer & Cellar,” TV’s “Ugly Betty”) is joined by Rachel Dratch (“Saturday Night

Live”), in which they act out hilarious out-takes from celebrities’ tell-all books. The Triad, Stage 72, 158 W. 72nd St. Mar. 5, 9:30 p.m. On Mar. 7, 7 p.m. Broadway’s Renee Elise Goldsberry (“Hamilton”) is joined by Tovah Feldshuh (“The Walking Dead”), and Maulik Pancholy (“30 Rock”). Tickets are $40-$80 at CelebrityAutobiography. com, and there’s a two-drink minimum.

CABARET One Sordid Room North of Chelsea Rick Skye’s work as a Liza Minnelli impersonator has earned from MAC (Manhattan Association of Cabarets and Clubs), Dublin Theatre Festival, and Backstage Bistro Awards. On three Saturdays, Skye brings his “Liza Live! In Concert” to Don’t Tell Mama. His parodies of songs from “Mein Herr” to “Sara Lee” have left audiences weak from laughter, and this show includes a “new” Charles Aznavour song, Liza’s concert version of “The

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SAT.MAR.5, continued on p.22

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Niagara Falls State Park, Niagara Falls

Empire State Building, New York City

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Americana Vineyards, Interlaken

Ellicottville Window Shopping

Tempo Restaurant,

Olana State Historic Site, Hudson

Rafting the Hudson River Gorge, The Adirondacks

Tulip Fest, Albany

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Single Ladies Song,” a “Happy Endings” production number, and a tribute to “one of her famous parents.” (Which, we wonder.)

Ricky Ritzel is musical director. 343 W. 46th St. Mar. 5, 12 & 26, 8 p.m. Tickets are $20 at tellmamanyc.com or 212-757-0788, and there’s a two-drink minimum.

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BROOKLYN The Community News Group is proud to introduce BROOKLYN PAPER RADIO. Join Brooklyn Paper Editor-in-Chief Vince DiMiceli and the New York Daily News’ Gersh Kuntzman every Monday at 4:30 for an hour of talk on topics Brooklynites hold dear.

Sunnyside Is Inclusive Every March Even as LGBT groups struggled year in and year out to break into the March 17 St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Manhattan — and appeared to have finally won that right in 2016 — for 17 years, the St. Pat’s for All Parade in Queens, co-founded by longtime gay Irish-American activist Brendan Fay, has opened its arms to all. The parade kicks off from Skillman Ave. & 43rd St. in Sunnyside at 1 p.m., Mar. 6 and march to Skillman & 56th St. in Woodside. For complete information, visit stpatsforall.com.

TUE.MAR.8 NIGHTLIFE Tropical Time Tripping “The Grand Paradise” is a fully immersive, multi-sensory experience in which visitors travel to a tropical paradise. Set in those hazy and culturally liminal years of the late 1970s becoming the ‘80s, the experience begins as you are handed a vintage plane ticket by a polyester-clad airline attendant. On the

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MON.MAR.7 NIGHTLIFE Isn’t that Drag Queen on the Tube Standing Right Over There?

Each show will feature in-studio guests and call-out segments, and can be listened to live or played anytime at your convenience.

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Watch the season premiere of “RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 8” with your favorite New York City drag queens from the show. Bob the Drag Queen, Thorgy Thor, and Acid Betty will all be on hand, as will DJ Rico Alexis. Highline Ballroom, 431 W. 16th St. Mar. 7, 8:30 p.m. showtime. Doors open at 7:30. Tickets are $40-$70 at highlineballroom.com.

THEATER A Horse, Not a Unicorn According to the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, “What The Horse Saw” is the funniest play Tennessee Williams never wrote. The company’s sketch team One Idiot (featuring

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COMMNITY

David Ebert) began the project as a standard show, but it soon blossomed into a hilarious homage to Mississippi’s most famous playwright. Leaning heavily on Tennessee’s tropes with a heavy dose of NSFW comedy, the show is equal parts witty and vulgar. Between the sexually repressed men, scheming matriarchs, beautiful 24-year-old spinsters, and titans of Southern industry, fans of Williams, American drama, or even just pretty horsies will find something here to enjoy (preview the show at https://youtu.be/oIQcSfagJTw). Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, 307 W. 26th St. 15, Mar. 7 & 21, 8 p.m. Admission is only $5 at ucbtheatre.com or at the door.

March 03 - 16, 2016 | GayCityNews.nyc

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TUE.MAR.8, from p.22

island, you encounter a rogue’s gallery of eccentrics, gay hustlers, eternal youths, gods, monsters, disco queens, and sexy con men.

383 Troutman St. at Wyckoff Ave., Bushwick (just off the L Jefferson St. stop).

Through Mar. 31: Tue.-Sun., 7 p.m. & 10 p.m. Tickets are $115; $95 for late shows at thegrandparadise.com.

SPORTS Jocks Mixing and Mingling “Jock-a-Thon Ball: The Men Event” is a networking party for all New York City gay sports teams and leagues — a huge schmooze fest where everyone can mix and mingle. Dave and Busters, 234 W. 42nd St. Mar. 9, 6-9 p.m. For more information, email hughhysellnyc@gmail.com.

Field, with entertainment by billboard idol Robin S., drag superstars Dame Ariel Sinclair and Logan Slaughter, and DJs Ultra Nate and Sir Johnny Dynell. Marriott Marquis, 1535 Broadway, Times Sq. Mar. 12, 6 p.m.

Tickets are $450-$550 at icny.com; $150 for standing room only beginning at 10 p.m.

music direction by Gary Adler and orchestrations by Matt Aument. Feinstein’s/ 54 Below, 254 W. 54th St. Mar. 12, 9:30 p.m.

Admission is $40-$80 at 54Below.com, and there’s a $25 food & drink minimum.

TUE.MAR.15 SUN.MAR.13

CABARET

PERFORMANCE

This Time Seth Sings Liza

Party with Gilbert & Sullivan

Seth Sikes, who as a young boy in Paris, Texas, was captivated Judy Garland, returns to the New York cabaret stage, this time to sing the songs of Liza Minnelli, in honor of her 70th birthday. “I couldn’t be more excited to celebrate our greatest living legend’s birthday, through her incredible music,” Sikes said. “I’ll be singing some of Liza’s signature tunes along with some little known gems.” The evening was conceived by Seth Sikes and Tony-Award winning lyricist Lisa Lambert, and will feature

The New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players hold their 2016 Gala, with a special performance of their award-winning cabaret “I’ve Got a Little Twist!,” where “The Mikado” meets “The Music Man.” The afternoon also includes a live auction, hors d’oeuvres, and drinks. Leonard Nimoy Thalia at Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway at 95th St. Mar. 13, 4 p.m. Tickets are $50 at nygasp.org or 212-769-1000. $100 VIP tickets include a 3 p.m. lecture by Scott Hayes, Sir Arthur Sullivan’s great grand nephew, and a pre-show champagne & dessert reception.

SAT.MAR.12

PERFORMANCE Orchestra of St. Luke’s Joins Paul Taylor Dance For a second season running, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s provides live music for the three-week season of Paul Taylor’s American Modern Dance at Lincoln Center. The orchestra’s contributions will include work

by Donizetti, Gilbert & Sullivan, Poulenc, Schubert, Bach, Offenbach, Debussy, Beethoven, Brahms, Schoenberg, and Radynski.

Mar. 15 – Apr. 3. Ticket are $10-$175 at boxoffice.dance or 212-496-0600.

FRI.MAR.18 POLITICS

NIGHLIFE

MON.MAR.14

Imperial Court at 30 COURTESYL SCOTT GORENSTEIN

The Imperial Court of New York is celebrating 30 years of serving the LGBTQ community and persons living with HIV/ AIDS its annual charity gala, Night of a Thousand Gowns, this year benefitting ICNY’s Youth Scholarship Fund. The evening’s chairs are actress and singer Christin Milioti, actor Michael C. Hall, and costume and fashion designer Patricia

Awakening”). 348 W. 52nd St. Mar. 14, 10 p.m. No cover charge. More information at facebook.com/TherapyLoungeNYC/?fref=ts.

NIGHTLIFE Cumming & Cummings Marti Gould Cummings’ weekly interview/ performance party at Therapy Bar, which gives audiences a backstage pass to the best in the local entertainment scene, welcomes Alan Cumming and Matt Doyle (“Spring

Can Fran Lebowitz & Frank Rich Sort It All Out? In the midst of an unprecedentedly strange and disturbing presidential primary season, cultural critic Fran Lebowitz and journalist Frank Rich come together for a lively discussion about everything from culture and politics to race and gender. BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, 30 Lafayette Ave. at Ashland Pl. Tickets are $28-$45 at bam.org.

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23

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Punching Down PUBLISHER JENNIFER GOODSTEIN

jgoodstein@cnglocal.com FOUNDING EDITOR IN-CHIEF & ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER PAUL SCHINDLER

editor@gaycitynews.com ASSOCIATE EDITOR

DUNCAN OSBORNE

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

CHRISTOPHER BYRNE (Theater), SUSIE DAY (Perspective), BRIAN McCORMICK (Dance)

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Seth J. Bookey, Anthony M.Brown, Kelly Jean Cogswell, Andres Duque, Michael Ehrhardt, Steve Erickson, Andy Humm, Eli Jacobson, David Kennerley, Gary M. Kramer, Arthur S. Leonard, Michael T. Luongo, Lawrence D. Mass, Winnie McCroy, Eileen McDermott, Mick Meenan, Tim Miller, Donna Minkowitz, Gregory Montreuil, Christopher Murray, David Noh, Sam Oglesby, Nathan Riley, David Shengold, Yoav Sivan, Gus Solomons Jr., Tim Teeman, Kathleen Warnock, Benjamin Weinthal, Dean P. Wrzeszcz

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CO-FOUNDERS EMERITUS Troy Masters John Sutter Please call (212) 229-1890 for advertising rates and availability.

NATIONAL DISPLAY ADVERTISING Rivendell Media / 212.242.6863

Gay City News, The Newspaper Serving Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender NYC, is published by NYC Community Media, LLC. Send all inquiries to: Gay City News, One Metrotech North, 10th Floor, Brooklyn, NY 11201. Phone: 212.229.1890 Written permission of the publisher must be obtained before any of the contents of this paper, in part or whole, can be reproduced or redistributed. All contents © 2016 Gay City News.

Gay City News is a registered trademark of NYC Community Media, LLC. Jennifer Goodstein, CEO Fax: 212.229.2790; E-mail: jgoodstein@cnglocal.com

© 2016 Gay City News.

All rights reserved.

FOUNDING MEMBER

24

FOUNDING MEMBER

BY PAUL SCHINDLER Though much of the news media has rightly taken note of Donald Trump’s ability to surge to the top of the Republican presidential field without filling in more than a bumper sticker’s worth of detail about his many far -flung policy pronouncements, there is a grudging — though, to me, disturbing — respect growing among at least some pundits for what they believe he is doing right in this campaign.

According to these albeit reluctant admirers, Trump has an instinctive understanding of the frustrations felt by many Americans and is able to connect to that mood in a visceral way that is turning out huge campaign crowds and voters who follow through at the polls. In its most fanciful extension, this theory holds that Trump’s success serves as indictment of Washington, our nation’s leadership, and politics as usual.

The whole thesis might have at least some plausibility if Trump were not getting his most vociferous embraces at precisely those moments when he is punching down rather than taking on that most amorphous of political targets, the “establishment.”

Recall that when Trump entered the race last June — to be sure, as a household name from his days “firing” people on NBC, but hardly a clear favorite in the race — he ranted about Mexican “rapists” making a mockery of our borders and our criminal justice system. Not only was he going to get tough on these lowlifes, but he was going to make their home country foot the bill for the wall he promised to build, as well.

In early December, Trump upped the ante on his bigotry bet when he called for a “temporary” halt — until we “figure out what’s going on” — to entry into the US by Muslims. Such a categorical and arbitrary step, of course, is the very definition of invidious discrimination. It would also play havoc with our relationship with

Islamic-majority nations across the globe and poison the climate for winning over hearts and minds on the “Arab Street.”

But, it’s important to recall the context in which Trump’s call for the entry ban came up in the first place to realize just how far down he was punching. The proximate news event that motivated his statement was the flood of Syrian refugees pouring into Turkey and from there into Western Europe. There were very few profiles in courage coming out of his party when the refugee crisis mushroomed — and some Democrats proved themselves craven, as well — but it took a particularly ugly demagoguery to fashion the Trumpian response to a staggering humanitarian crisis.

Sprinkled in amidst the GOP frontrunner’s inflammatory racism came periodic outbursts of misogyny as well — going after women whom he alternately described as fat (Rosie O’Donnell), unfair of face (Carly Fiorina), menstruating (Megyn Kelly), or simply having to go to the bathroom during a debate television break (Hillary Clinton; “It’s disgusting, I don’t want to talk about it,” he said).

lina Republicans, while 80 percent of his supporters said Muslims should be barred entry into the US, 62 percent even supported a national database tracking Muslim Americans and 40 percent favored shutting down all mosques. A third thought Islam should be illegal.

And while they’re at it on securing the borders, 31 percent of Trump supporters endorsed keeping gays and lesbians out of the country, as well.

And 70 percent of Trump voters said the Confederate flag should still be flying over the South Carolina capitol.

To be fair, none of these five policies — as opposed to the entry ban — are anything that Trump has even hinted at. That’s not the point. Instead, the issue is the climate of intolerance that Trump is irresponsibly stoking. And his troubling unwillingness, at critical moments, to disavow the support of extremists like David Duke. Who is willing to say with certainty where all this ends?

And for a candidate who first came to the nation’s attention politically with his absurd birther claims about President Barack Obama several years back, is it any surprise that on the night that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died, Trump urged this strategy for responding to any replacement nominee on the US Senate: “Delay, delay, delay”?

The issue is the climate of intolerance that Trump is irresponsibly stoking.

Who is willing to say with certainty where all this ends?

Trump appears to draw political benefits from his bellicose rhetoric on immigration. In South Carolina, where he won by 10 points over his nearest competitor, Florida’s Marco Rubio, his margin was nearly 20 points — over Texas’ Ted Cruz — among those who support a temporary ban on Muslim entry into the US. Among those who favor deporting all undocumented immigrants, Trump’s margin — again, over Cruz — was 23 points.

Lest we think that the bigotry Trump enables merely extends to non-American citizens, we should consider some of the other attitudes held by the group of voters he is bringing together. According to a Public Policy Polling survey of South Caro-

Writing about African-American attitudes toward the Senate GOP’s intransigence on considering a nominee from the president, the New York Times quoted one black man noting that blacks were once counted as three-fifths of a person in tallying up congressional representation and now Obama is being denied the final quarter of his term as president. Opposing a judicial nomination from Obama doesn’t make someone a racist, but when politics is played purely as a game of defining and demonizing the “other,” poisonous racial division is the inevitable and tragic consequence for the nation.

March 03 - 16, 2016 | GayCityNews.nyc

PERSPECTIVE: Media Circus

If You Don’t Listen, You Can’t Hear

BY ED SIKOV

W

hen I was covering the media’s shameful response to the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, if you had told me that one day I’d be citing the New York Times as a model of fairness and forward thinking, I’d have said you were on crack.

Lo: it has come to pass. Not that you are on crack, but that the Times has evolved.

A recent story featured young Thomas Lewis, a trans guy who’s a senior in a South Dakota high school and was forced to wage a public fight over — yes, here we go again — which bathroom he must use. South Dakota and its legislature followed a lengthening list of locales and officials that are trying (as one hostile lawmaker claims) “to protect the innocence of children” by denying trans folks the right to use the bathroom designated for their gender.

“How do we protect their minds and hearts and eyes while they’re showering and changing?” he asked, expanding his roster of contested public spaces to include locker rooms, always known for their church-like propriety.

Let’s ignore the fact that the kids whose innocence he’s so tirelessly trying to protect are probably spending their evenings humping in the back seats of their parents’ cars, as high schoolers tend to do.

“Mr. Lewis said the onus was on others to accept his identity as a man rather than on him to conform to their expectations, and noted that locked stall doors already ensured a layer of privacy,” the T imes story reported. “‘Bathrooms don’t need to change,’ he said. ‘People do.’”

The Times continues: “In Watertown, high school students gathered more than 200 signatures for a petition saying the bathroom bill was discriminatory and should be voted down. And on the Rosebud Indian Reservation, where State Senator Troy Heinert once taught elementary school, Mr. Heinert said a transgender girl had attended classes years ago without any

GayCityNews.nyc | March 03 - 16, 2016

issue. ‘Parents said, “He dresses as a girl, he lives as a girl, he plays with girls,”’ recalled Mr. Heinert, a Democrat who voted against the bill. ‘We made some accommodations at our school. Nobody cared.

Everybody knew. We didn’t make a mountain out of a molehill.’”

The Washington Post went further than the Times: It featured an op-ed by Thomas Lewis himself.

“People who support the bill are claiming that they are treating us fairly by giving us separate restrooms,” Lewis writes. “In reality, this law does just the opposite.

It suggests that transgender people like me are unequal and must be separated from our friends and peers. It prohibits us from using the restroom that matches who we are.

Every transgender child who starts school in my state will be subjected to unequal treatment and made to

South Dakota’s schools are not and should not be houses of trans advocate worship.”

The overt paranoia and sheer meanness of these remarks are mind-blowing.

Fortunately, on March 1 some reason prevailed when Republ i ca n G over nor D enni s D a ugaard vetoed the bill. No override attempt is planned.

But let’s get to Marcus’ lunacy: “Part of the reason trans advocates have been so successful in their attempts to redefine gender is that most people are uncomfortable with the entire discussion. It is far easier to simply live and let live, knowing that a person’s gender identity has little effect on you, than to actually tackle this complex issue [emphasis mine]. After all, most people wish to be polite. So they smile and nod, and use appropriate pronouns,

“ Because no one is going around forcing gender non-conforming children into cross-gender-identifying or socially transitioning.”

feel like an outcast. They may even be subjected to terrible things such as someone demanding documentation about their chromosomes or to see their genitals. A member of my legislature, Rep. Roger Hunt (R), actually brought this suggestion into a committee meeting on the bill.”

The idea that anyone would have the legal right to examine a student’s genitals against his or her will is repulsive. There appears to be no limit to the filth that fills these scuzzbags’ minds.

In the interest of balance, we now turn to the scuzzbag point of view. Here’s the Federalist’s David Marcus: “While the coastal class clobbers bigoted South Dakota on social media, the parents of that state have spoken. Their representatives have accepted the time-honored definition of gender and defied the transgender mafia. That choice must be celebrated and defended…

never truly believing what they are saying. But this luxury of politeness is one we can no longer afford.”

Why not, one might ask? If “knowing that a person’s gender identity has little effect on you,” then why bully your way into a deeply personal area of someone else’s life?

In justifying his paranoia about the devious plan by the “trans mafia” to rule the earth, Marcus points to New York magazine article

by Jesse Singal about well-known gender specialist, Kenneth Zucker, being fired from a clinic because he advocated “reparative therapy.”

The issues raised by Singal’s article are complex and deserve more space and time to dissect than this column can accommodate. But the response offered by Julia Serano, a trans woman, poet, author, and performer, on her blog, Whipping Girl, is simply the interview Singal

conducted with her, none of which made it into Singal’s article. It’s the most useful way of summarizing why the trans community shed no tears at Zucker’s unceremonious firing, not to mention why Singal stands accused of anti-trans bias: “Zucker’s stance has always been the same: While not explicitly condemning trans or gender-non-conforming people, he has maintained that these children’s lives will be easier if they can grow up to be more gender-normative. But in the last decade or so, as LGBTQ acceptance has grown (with public recognition that many gay people are also gender non-conforming), and as the practice of allowing trans children the possibility of socially transitioning (with physical transitioning only coming if/ when the child is old enough and desires it), Zucker and his supporters’ arguments have shifted. Nowadays, gender reparative therapy is being sold as allowing these children the possibility of being gay rather than trans, or as not needlessly shuttling children into potentially unnecessary hormone regimes and surgeries.

“The problem is, this argument is not only revisionist, but it creates a false dichotomy. Because no one is going around forcing gender non-conforming children into cross-gender-identifying or socially transitioning. The organizations advocating on behalf of gender-variant children and the non-gender-reparative clinics that work with these kids will tell you (if you ask them, and you most certainly should) that social transitioning (and puberty-delaying drugs, if they are older) is only being recommended for children who strongly and persistently cross-gender-identify. If a child is simply gender non-conforming or gender questioning, these people/ organizations/ clinics will encourage them to explore their genders (i.e., without socially transitioning), and try to provide support for them to do so without shame or stigma.”

Had Singal included any of these thoughtful, articulate comments in his article, it would not have been as sensationalistically one-sided as it turned out to be. And creeps like David Marcus wouldn’t be able to claim victory where none exists.

Follow @EdSikov on Twitter and Facebook.

25

PERSPECTIVE: Snide Lines

First Woman President Nukes Iran

BY SUSIE DAY

W

ASHINGTON — President Hillary Clinton, making good on her 2008 threat to “totally obliterate” Iran, celebrated her first week in office by ordering a nuclear strike on Iran’s capital city of Tehran. As a squadron of F-35s streaked through the sky toward the Mideast metropolis of over seven million, President Clinton outlined her foreign policy to a bevy of reporters at a White House press conference.

“I’m not here to bake cookies, people,” the president announced. “Women CEOs have to be twice as good as the boys. Which is why I went nuclear. You get the entire job done in an hour and a half. Funny you macho sexist creeps didn’t think of this.”

Amid a hushed assemblage of media representatives, CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour was the first to speak, asking the president just why she had done this.

“There’s nothing in your ‘Distrust and Verify’ plan that should apply here, Madam President,” Ms. Amanpour said. “The Iranian government has not bombed Israel; neither has Iran been caught with nuclear material. And — just to play devil’s advocate — why can Israel have nuclear weapons, while Iran can’t?”

“You know, Christiane,” smiled the president evenly, as she pressed a little button on the podium to summon the Secret Service, “my friend, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, once said, ‘There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other…’”

As Ms. Amanpour disappeared behind a posse of black-suited agents, the president called on CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer.

“Not that I have any real problem with this,” began Mr. Blitzer cautiously, “but shouldn’t

Congress have approved this strike?”

Eyes flashing defiance, fists methodically clenching then unclenching, President Clinton announced that she was “fed up” with “male media bias.”

“Ever since aerial bombardment was invented, white male American presidents have launched missile strikes without congressional approval,” the president shot back. “My stars, look at Nixon; look at Reagan. Look at Obama paving the way for presidents of color to bomb Syria and Iraq without permission — even pioneering unauthorized drone strikes. Call this equal-opportunity Armageddon, but if Harry S. Truman can drop the big one without congressional approval, so can I.” Although some “it’s-time-for-a-woman” presidential campaigners say they feel betrayed by the president’s nuclear strike, it does, in fact, square with decades of Hillary Clinton’s military policy. This includes Mrs. Clinton’s support for massive government aid and commercial arms sales to right-wing countries, including Israel and Saudi Arabia; her 2002 vote in the Senate for the war in Iraq; and, as secretary of state, her military intervention in Libya. Interviewed on CBS News about the 2011 ouster of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, Mrs. Clinton quipped, “We came, we saw, he died.” Recently, former Republican Florida Representative Joe Scarborough remarked, “Hillary is the neocon’s neocon… There’s hardly been a military engagement that Hillary hasn’t been for in the past 20 years.”

Indeed, there is some indication that, among neocons of note, Hillary Clinton’s presence in the White House may actually have advanced the cause of feminism. Reached by phone, former presidential candidate and Hillary-hater Donald Trump expressed “total support” for President Clinton’s bombing, admitting that, because of it,

he has realized he is a “sexist pig.”

“I used to think feminists wanted to tear down our military/ industrialist complex and make it all sissy-socialist. But if feminists can help us get rid of the towel-head menace, they’re OK by me.

You also got to admire how the little lady never really responded to those Black Lives Matter activists who kept interrupting her campaign — proving conclusively that they don’t matter. And if feminism had anything to do with how Hillary has not lifted a finger to change the drug laws or sentencing guidelines that she and her hubby devised in the 1990s to overflow the prisons with super-predators, I got to say, All Hail Hillary.”

Adding that he regrets all the sexist things he has ever done or said in his life, Mr. Trump announced that he now believes menstruation is “neat.” To atone for his sexism, Mr. Trump stated, he would sign an open letter being circulated by a group of renowned misogynists, including Lawrence Summers and Mel Gibson, apologizing for male chauvinism and promoting the global equality of all the sexes, “providing they are of the Caucasian gender.”

Meanwhile, in Iran, reports are that the mushroom cloud over Tehran is dissipating, while fireballs, shockwaves, and radiation are beginning to encircle the Earth, causing nuclear winter and the probable extinction of life as we know it.

Back at the White House press confer ence, Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly spoke up: “Madam President, I say with all humility that I am in awe of how you overcame your weepy, liberal female concern for millions of supposedly defenseless Iranians. Bravo. How did you do it?”

“Assertiveness workshops,” answered President Clinton. “I also channeled the powerful women in history, like Catherine the Great and Golda Meir. They helped me to see my strike was a sort of ‘bomb for a people in a country without a bomb.’ Besides, what did any of those Iranian women ever do to get me elected?”

Laughing joyfully, the two women rushed across the pressroom, threw their arms around one another, and hugged, like sisters.

PERSPECTIVE: A Dyke Abroad

The Terror of Terroir

BY KELLY COGSWELL

W

hile Americans duke it out over the White House, the French are lining up to get into the annual Agricultural Fair in Paris, where you can see in the flesh how tough it is to maintain symbols of tradition in a society grappling with how to integrate immigrants and prod the recalcitrant economy to produce more jobs.

26

When President François Hollande turned up for the usual opening day cow-kissing, crowds of farmers heckled and screamed, “You’re killing us.” Instead of calling them pathetic assholes like Nicolas Sarkozy once did, Hollande just said that he’d come to listen, “Yes, even to screams. People are in pain.”

It’s true small farmers can barely make ends meet, though they aren’t exactly getting gunned down in the street. Still, I marvel at what

a loud voice they have considering that they are a tiny minority in a country where agribusiness is enormous. In the US, they would have gone under long ago. But in secular France, where so much of the national identity is now tied to the land, their role in national pageantry is essential.

At the fair, they hawk everything under the French sun, seeming to prove that we are all different, the literal product of separate geographies — yet also the same. We see a gazillion different prize-winning cheeses, jams, juices, wines, honeys all shaped by what the French call terroir (soil or land).

When it comes to determining the best, each category is rigorously judged, though on different criteria.

Ground red pepper from Espelette competes against itself. Champagne produced only in that particular region is expected to aspire to different qualities than a bubbly wine from Alsace. And certainly than a rum from Guadeloupe.

Check out the food halls — there are also cod fritters from the French Caribbean, curries from West Africa — and you remark that diversity in France is most readily accepted at the level of cuisine. But it still doesn’t

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DYKE ABROAD, continued on p.27

March 03 - 16, 2016 | GayCityNews.nyc

PERSPECTIVE: The Long View

Dick Gottfried Aims for Fixes in Med Marijuana Program

BY NATHAN RILEY

T

he New York medical marijuana system is rigged and getting walloped by a backlash for imposing hardships on sick people.

After Governor Andrew Cuomo demanded last-minute changes in the 2014 law, activists predicted it would make the medications expensive and the small number of outlets would create hardships. Only 20 pot drugstores are allowed across the state’s 62 counties. The Governor’s hemmed the program in with restrictions, calling pot a “gateway” drug that could undermine the campaign against tobacco smoking.

Smoking and eating — the most popular ways of consuming pot — are banned. Only a small number of illness may be treated: multiple sclerosis, Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS), Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, cancer, HIV/ AIDS, and neuropathies. Efforts to add diseases like Alzheimer’s and post-traumatic stress syndrome are stalled in the State Department of Health.

Since the law took effect in January, other problems have emerged. The law requires a physician to write a prescription specifying a dose, but clinical trials of cannabis-related substances are in their infancy. Federal hostility has prevented the US from developing cannabis-based drugs.

But State law asks doctors to write prescription for an illegal substance that hasn’t finished clinical trials. Doctors worry that the Drug Enforcement Agency may proffer charges and they will no longer be able to prescribe other narcotics. In other states, doctors only recommend the medications without writing formal prescriptions.

c

DYKE ABROAD, from p.26

mean that the annual exercise of the fair is useless. In fact, thinking about the tools we use to preserve our national myths is essential. We reshape society by changing our stories, opening them up one by one.

We Americans have our own myths that need busting. I remember going with my grandmother to the Kentucky State Fair and getting dragged to see the quilts and prize-winning jam when I only wanted to go to the midway with its Ferris wheel and cotton candy. But she’d been off the farm a long time and had her roots to acknowledge and explore.

GayCityNews.nyc | March 03 - 16, 2016

Doctors and patients complain that the health department makes it difficult to find doctors who are eligible to prescribe the medicines. The list of eligible doctors is not public record. General practitioners can’t prescribe it, only doctors treating the eligible illnesses have this authority.

Dr. Jim Gaden, who specializes in osteopathic medicine and practices primary care in Western New York, told Gannett News Service, “Personally, I don’t think [the state wants] the thing to work. I think they did it to appease the people who were lobbying long and hard for medical marijuana. They figured, we’ll do whatever we’re doing and let everybody try to figure out how to make it work.”

But the program is here to stay. Currently, participation is small but significant: 421 physicians are registered and 1,174 patients certified.

The process is expensive. Patients must register with the State Department of Health for a $50 fee, and according to marijuanadoctors.com, doctors are charging between $150 and $250 for an initial consultation. There is no health insurance to pay for the doctor visit or the medication.

After obtaining a prescription, the patient must find a dispensary, and nothing is easy in New York State. Each medical marijuana store can only sell five products. Thus, a doctor might prescribe an oil, pill, or compound that is not sold by the nearest dispensary, requiring a long journey to find the right pot drugstore. The patient can designate up to two caregivers who can do the traveling, but they, too, must pay a registration fee.

The indefatigable Richard Gottfried, the Chelsea Democrat who chairs the State Assembly Health Committee, has devoted decades to pass-

Not that she was nostalgic about the back-breaking work, or the incessant pressure to breed that created families of 10 or 12 kids and left a lot of women dead. Once, when we were looking at a pair of wooden knitting needles her father had whittled for her, she said how happy she was when she got her tubes tied and didn’t have to do what other women did.

We also had a conversation once about organic food, when she interrupted a lecture on my newly acquired knowledge about vegetarianism and the environment to declare that was how they all ate back in the day, because they were too poor for

ing medical marijuana legislation and is a sharp critic of the current system. He recently filed legislation that would double the number of dispensaries by telling the health department to examine the list of original applicants who filed last year and register five more organizations. Each registered organization may open four dispensaries, so Gottfried’s proposal would double the number of dispensaries to 40.

“There ought to be more than 40,” Gottfried said over the telephone “after all there are thousands of drugstores that stock opiates for pain.”

He will also submit a bill allowing each dispensary to stock every compound made legally under the state law by a registered organization. Currently, the dispensary can only sell five products derived from plants grown by the parent organization. His proposal would allow cross selling from one registered organization to another. The goal is to have every dispensary sell every drug available under New York State law.

This change allows patients to go to the nearest dispensary for their medicine and be sure their needs are met.

In 1988, when Ronald Reagan was president, the Drug Enforcement Agency held a hearing on whether to permit clinical trials of medical marijuana. Francis Young, the administrative judge for the DEA at the time, found marijuana was safe.

“Nearly all medicines have toxic, potentially lethal effects,” he concluded. “But marijuana is not such a substance.” There is no record of a “cannabis-induced fatality,” he found, but Young’s conclusions were never accepted.

Still, marijuana’s underlying safety is the reason it can be used before clinical trials are completed.

Given the difficulties of New York law, many will buy from a dealer, but in doing so patients are deprived of a singular advantage of the New York State law. All of the products authorized under law are tested for contaminants including pesticides. It’s a reminder that legal sale of marijuana meds will improve the public health.

fertilizer. And couldn’t af ford meat. And man, she was grateful to be able to run to the store for a package of hot dogs and some Cheese Whiz.

I think about her now when I hear about all those white Trump supporters who long for the days of Jim Crow and even actual slavery, in which white people would apparently all be happy and rich. They’re not only evil to think enslaving other people is a viable option, but totally delusional.

The rainbow of the left is not immune to nostalgia either. So many are looking to the past for a future, not just via the old white guy running for president, but by

embracing a kind of stale Marxist rhetoric reconfigured as that buzzword intersectionality, which sounds good on the face — of course oppressions are related and we must be allies! Of course class effects everyone! But, it’s a rhetoric that imagines a Revolution that still enforces the same old pecking order that leaves queers and women in the bottom tiers.

So faggots in Nigeria — even when working on their own behalf — are slammed as agents of colonialism. Feminists fighting misogyny in Algeria are regularly called bigoted Islamophobes by Euro-

c

DYKE ABROAD, continued on p.29

27

PERSPECTIVE: State of the Community

Blindness and Insight

BY DAVID EHRENSTEIN

A

long time ago in a galaxy far, far away — America in the 1950’s — “homosexuality” was “the unspeakable.” Oh sure, everyone “gossiped” about “who was” and “who wasn’t,” but such talk wasn’t considered part of “polite conversation.”

Only a decade or two before, Djuna Barnes’ Sapphic cri de coeur “Nightwood” (which my husband insists was passed out to prospective “girltoys” as they arrived at the Port Authority Bus Terminal) was on every soigne hipster’s bookshelf, and “the pansy craze” made male effeminacy fashionable among the trend-conscious,” as featured the incredible last scene of George Cukor’s “Our Betters” (1933), where one of “them” shows a group of society women how to walk.

Then came World War II, where countless soldiers and sailors discovered that the “strange twilight urges” they found themselves subject to were shared by ever-so-many others. When it was all over, so were the good times, as these same GIs, instead of enjoying “The Best Years of Our Lives,” found themselves branded as civilian “neurotics” by the newly-empowered psychiatric establishment, and “sex criminals” by the police, who were given to arrest all and sundry at any place where “they” gathered — be it a public bar or a private home.

Hence the “vice” arrest of a young Tab Hunter.

Needless to say in an atmosphere like this, the notion of being “openly gay” was far beyond the pale. You could lose your job, you could lose your home, and if you were under 21 your parents could throw you out of the house. Such calamities, of course. persist in one form or another, but today’s LGBTs can gather publically and privately quite legally. For that we have Stonewall to thank. But the past shouldn’t be swept aside as mere history, as we have still much to learn from it, especially now as we suffer from what Michelangelo Signorile, “It’s Not Over,” calls “victory blindness” — the illusion

28

that the ground we’ve gained is stable, when we need to fight to maintain it 24/ 7. We’re not going back, but we may well go “sideways,” in a culture that still wants to ignore our existence as it did in the “before time” — which is why we need to look back, less in anger than with care and consideration.

It’s not that “LGBT” wasn’t present pre-Stonewall. It resided “under the radar,” both by choice and design. Christine Jorgensen’ sexual reassignment surgery made headlines, but there was little interest in other transgender people — even though many were hiding in plain sight. Billy Tipton, a popular jazz musician, lived as a man and had several common-law wives, his biological gender not discovered until after his death in 1989.

Claire Morgan. It could never have reached the screen in the 1950s, and rests there uneasily today in the eyes of those who find the past difficult to comprehend. In other words. it’s not the lesbian “Brokeback Mountain.” It’s a lot subtler and more complex than that.

Highsmith largely played by the rules of her time, even while trying fitfully to bend them in her writing. She touched on lesbian sexuality in only two of her other novels. Others faced off against the status quo, as best they could more forcefully. The early gay and lesbian organizations, the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis, being subject to arrest, met in secrecy. They documented their activities and published position papers in small press journals like One Magazine, whose authors wrote under pseudonyms, and such works were frequently confiscated by the authorities.

Out lesbian tele-journalist Rachel Maddow covers LGBT issues with more depth than any public personality save for Ellen DeGeneres.

Serious literature dealing with those other than heterosexual was likewise carefully buried. Charles Jackson’s 1944 novel “The Lost Weekend” mentioned gayness in passing as a spur to its anti-hero’s alcoholism, but thanks to the Motion Picture Production Code it was impossible for Billy Wilder to include it in his film adaptation made the following year.

And speaking of film, Todd Haynes’ “Carol,” an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s “The Price of Salt,” dramatizes a clandestine lesbian love affair that slips beneath the socio-political radar of the early ‘50s — as did the novel itself.

Written by Highsmith immediately after her breakthrough debut “Strangers on a Train,” “The Price of Salt” was published by a small press, its author identified as

What most interested these political pioneers most was gay history and the gay world that surrounded them, however hidden it might be.

Consequently, several Mattachine members were tasked with combing through newspapers and magazines to divine anything of potential LGBT interest, even though such subjects were essentially never labeled so in the press. This was no simple matter as Jim Kepner’s encyclopedic 1998 account “Rough News, Daring Views” shows.

But that’s all changed now. As Mike Nichols once quipped that homosexuality was once “‘the love that dare not speak its name. Now it won’t shut up.” And in his television adaptation of Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America,” Nichols helped “it” speak more loudly and more resolutely than ever.

Gayness is everywhere now, but in pre-Stonewall America “coming out” wasn’t merely avant-garde socially, it was dangerous legally and sometimes ruinous psychologically. Many gay and lesbians had a hard time coming out to themselves. It took at least two decades post-Stonewall for things to loosen up, with the out and proud being not just political radicals but everyday citizens and — of even more import for this culture, “celebrities.” But is this new outness more apparent than real.

Out lesbian tele-jour nalist Rachel Maddow covers LGBT issues with more depth than any public personality save for Ellen DeGeneres, whose lightweight entertainment show is never chary of mentioning the LGBT whenever its out host finds it pertinent.

But then there are such “outies” as Anderson Cooper, Thomas Roberts, Don Lemon, Steve Kornacki. Skillful tele-journalists all, they rarely touch on gay issues even when they’re close to the action, as when Florida Senator Marco Rubio had a confrontation with a gay man, Timothy Kierstead, who was eating with his husband in a restaurant in New Hampshire, which enacted marriage equality legislatively seven years ago. Rubio didn’t perform well — though he may have been oblivious to the shortcomings in his response to Kierstead.

Kierstead: “I’m a gay man, already married. I’m already married, have been for a long time. And you want to say that we don’t matter.”

Rubio: “No, I just believe that marriage is between one man and one woman.”

Kierstead: “But that’s your belief. Not half of the country’s.”

Rubio: “Well I think that’s what the law should be. I think you should have the law changed by the legislature. I believe that —” Kierstead: “But the law already happened.”

Rubio: “I respect your opinion.”

Kierstead: “Yeah, yeah. Typical politician. Marco Rubio… walk away” So it’s nice that David Geffen, Neil Patrick Harris, Jim Parsons, Nathan Lane, Victor Garber, Jesse

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COMMUNITY, continued on p.29

March 03 - 16, 2016 | GayCityNews.nyc

COMMUNITY, from p.28

Tyler Ferguson, Tim Cook, and — after a life largely spent in the closet —Jodie Foster are out. As we used to say “the personal is political.” But now for the personal to be political something more is needed — especially as backlash has set in with a vengeance.

Under the specious ideological umbrella of “religious freedom,” a number of states have made noise about adopting laws that would foreclose the option of meaningful nondiscrimination protections ever being instituted (there are not yet any nationwide civil rights protections) and could also be used to erode established freedoms in areas like marriage equality. It’s obvious that no religion opposed to it is under any obligation to marry samesex couples — and as distasteful and even frightening as it may be, no religious body can be prevented from proselytizing against LGBT people in any way they wish — but that’s not enough for them. Organized religion is fading fast, and as we all know a wounded animal is more dangerous than a healthy one.

In Georgia, a law is advancing through the legislature that could be used to justify discrimination not only against LGBT people, but unwed mothers and other unpopular minorities by those claiming to exercise their “freedom” but really want to terrorize everyone who doesn’t fall into line. “Religious freedom” could be used to enable foster families to submit an LGBT child to “conversion therapy” or shame and deny service to an unwed pregnant women without fear of government intervention or license suspension. It would even allow individuals to refuse to carry out the terms of a state contract for providing counseling services to all eligible individuals, based on the counselor’s religious beliefs.

In Kentucky, where county clerk Kim Davis famously caused a ruckus by refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, a bill is in play

that would create a second, separate — and of course unequal — license form for “Applicant One” and “Applicant Two” so that “ traditional families” are not “disrespected” by losing their right to still be acknowledged as “Bride” and “Groom.”

How this plays out has yet to be seen. But Georgia has already been warned of a mass exodus of businesses from the state should it go down the road that blew up in Indiana’s face a year ago.

And that brings us to boxer Manny Pacquiao, whose declaration that gays and lesbians deserve death has led to his being dropped as spokesmodel for Nike.

“I am not condemning the LGBT,” Pacquiao claimed in remarks identical to those of every ‘phobe who has used “hate the sin, love the sinner” to justify their bigotry. “What I am condemning is the act. I’m happier because I’m telling the truth...

It’s worse if we will hide the truth.

I’m happier that a lot of people were alarmed by the truth.”

The truth is that “the act” is anal intercourse — which is all “homosexuality” amounts to for those who hate LGBT people. We are not people. We have no lives. We have no loves. We have only “the act.” And for that, according to Kevin Swanson, a pastor who hosted Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, and Bobby Jindal at the National Religious Liberties Conference in Des Moines on November 6 and 7, 2015, we must die.

We have of course faced death already. The AIDS pandemic — a health disaster Swanson and his ilk have doubtless enjoyed ( he speaks of activists “putting happy faces on running sores!”) — has not killed us off. Neither have his threats. It will take time and money better spent elsewhere to defeat “religious freedom.” But to quote a famous heterosexual, Friedrich Nietzsche, “That which does not kill me makes me stronger.”

And we’re stronger than ever.

What we must do now is act on that strength.

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DYKE ABROAD, from p.27

peans and Americans of all races because they are just not convincingly authentic unless they are in headscarves. You see, we do not really believe in equality — the idea that human beings are more GayCityNews.nyc | March 03 - 16, 2016

or less the same, or that the rights appreciated by people in the US or France or England might be welcome elsewhere. No, we exoticize and judge by different standards, reducing humans to horses and cows. Handing out everything except respect.

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STRAIGHT Acorn Theatre at Theatre Row 410 W. 42nd St. Through May 8 Sun.-Tue. at 7 p.m.; Thu.-Sat. at 8 p.m.

Sat.-Sun. at 3 p.m. $79.50; telecharge.com Eighty-five mins., no intermission

MATTHEW MURPHY

Jake Epstein and Thomas E. Sullivan in Scott Elmegreen and Drew Fornarola’s “Straight.”

Football, Brewskies, and Brojobs

What happens when straight dudes hook up with other dudes

BY DAVID KENNERLEY

W

30

MATTHEW MURPHY

hen I first got wind of “Straight,” the new drama about a guy who has a serious girlfriend yet who also hooks up with a guy, I was hopeful. Finally, I thought, a play about the escalating visibility of sexual fluidity and blurring of identity labels. A play showing that being attracted to both sexes, while complicated, is no big deal. After a couple of years of provocative theater exploring the T in LGBT, I was excited to see a play focused on the B. This is not quite that play.

What “Straight” is, however, is a first-rate comic drama, written

by Scott Elmegreen and Drew Fornarola, about wrestling with sexuality and being torn between two worlds. Here labels, however inadequate, are a very big deal.

Could it have been written 20 years ago? Sure. But in the capable hands of director Andy Sandberg and a terrific cast, the wellworn subject feels as potent and relevant as ever.

Jake Epstein and Jenna Gavigan in “Straight.”

Besides, there’s a fresh angle.

Ben is a 26-year -old investment banker who identifies as straight and has the stereotypical trappings to prove it. His otherwise bland Boston apartment, impeccably designed by Charlie Corcoran, is filled with stuff like a pennant from U Penn (his alma mater), an Aerosmith poster, a soccer ball, superhero comic books, and what looks like a framed New England Patriots jersey. His fridge is stocked with little else but beer

(Blue Moon Ale, but still…).

And yeah, the slightly nerdy, good-looking Ben is, as they say, straight acting.

Judging from the décor, it’s no surprise Ben lives alone. Emily, his pretty, doting girlfriend of five years, lives in nearby Cambridge (she’s getting a Ph.D. in bioinformatics at Harvard).

She pushes for them to take their relationship to the next level and move in together, but Ben resists.

She has a key to his place and is not afraid to use it without warning.

But Ben has a secret. He’s started inviting Chris, a boyishly charming Boston College undergrad, over to watch the Patriots and drink beers. And swap blowjobs. Perhaps they met via BRO, the new app designed for “straight” guys seeking other “straight” guys for sex.

What follows is a complex love story of sorts, fraught with lust and duplicity, building tension over whether Emily will find out and, if so, how she’ll react. Ben eloquently refers to their frantic little love triangle as “an emotional Ponzi scheme.”

This tight-as-a-drum production is well cast, with actors teasing out emotional depths from what could be cookie-cutter characters. Jake Epstein, fresh from his Broadway turn in “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical,” is devilishly endearing as the deceitful, confused Ben, bent on clinging to heteronormativity and feeling trapped by labels.

“In our culture,” Ben laments, “the only way to be gay is to be all the way gay.”

Jenna Gavigan (“Gypsy”) does a fine job of balancing Emily’s ever-mounting desperation with grace notes of vulnerability. At first I thought Thomas E. Sullivan’s portrayal of the cocky, closeted Chris was a tad too self-conscious, but he loosened up as the play unfolded, just as Chris lets down his guard with Ben. Any starchiness is completely in character.

The steamy chemistry between the two young men — emotional as well as physical — is undeniable. Despite deep flaws, each of the three characters is so likable it’s difficult to choose sides.

The savvy, enthralling “Straight” makes a persuasive argument that there’s still plenty of urgent life left in the coming-out genre of queer theater. It’s refreshing to see a candid, sex-filled bromance thrown into the mix.

March 03 - 16, 2016 | GayCityNews.nyc

LIMITED ENGAGEMENT THROUGH MAY 8

A New Play Written By

Scott Elmegreen and Drew Fornarola Directed by PHOTO: ZACK DeZON

Andy Sandberg

SAVVY AND ENTHRALLING!

“

A candid, sex-filled first-rate comic drama in the genre of queer theater.”

Gay City News

Thomas E. Sullivan PETER WELCH

StraightThePlay.com

Matias Polar and Tim Connell in Danny Ashkenasi’s “Speakeasy: John and Jane’s Adventures in the Wonderland.”

Manic mashup of Prohibition-era queer history, “Alice in Wonderland,” and a zillion other things

S

peakeasy: John and Jane’s Adventures in the Wonderland” is one of the most wildly ambitious, inspired theatrical endeavors I’ve seen on an Off Off Broadway stage. Bursting with an excess of ideas and passion, there’s nothing remotely easy about it.

Hatched from the fertile, fervid mind of Danny Ashkenasi, “Speakeasy” shines a light on New York City’s queer culture that briefly emerged from the shadows during the Prohibition era, circa 1930, known as the Pansy Craze.

The central thread is a love story — three love stories, actually — between bright-eyed newlyweds John (Matias Polar) and Jane (Kayleigh Shuler), who succumb to forbidden longings. John is smitten by a female impersonator (Tim Connell) inspired by Julian Eltinge, a hugely popular drag performer on Vaudeville, Broadway, and in Hollywood. Jane is sweet on a stocky, white-tuxedoed performer (Camille Atkinson) based on Gladys Bentley, an openly lesbian blues singer during the Harlem Renaissance.

But Ashkenasi is not content to stop there. He has slathered on a thick, gooey layer of magical realGayCityNews.nyc | March 03 - 16, 2016

SPEAKEASY Theater for the New City 155 First Ave., btwn. Ninth & Tenth Sts. Through Mar. 13 Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m.

Sat. at 2 p.m., Sun. at 3 p.m. $18; theaterforthenewcity.net Three hrs., 45 min., with intermission

Jenna Gavigan

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Jake Epstein

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ism, borrowing heavily from Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland” stories. After a chance sloppy kiss from a close female friend (and a swig of hooch), Jane falls down the proverbial rabbit hole, and John, after a random blowjob in a men’s room stall, passes through the looking glass.

A dizzying, confounding epic fever dream ensues, where they meet oddballs like crooner Chet Cheshire (Bri Molloy) and the chirpy, dancing Tweedle sisters (Allie Radice and Anne Bragg).

Oh, and did I mention “Speakeasy” is a musical? The program lists no less than 40 musical numbers, many with full-blown choreography (by J. Alan Hanna). Wonderland, as it happens, is the name of a racy, queer speakeasy in Harlem

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WONDERLAND, continued on p.43

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THEATER

Family Values Dysfunction, with bright absurdity, but also tedium

JOAN MARCUS

Zachary Quinto in Noah Haidle’s “Smokefall.”

right tone for the piece, and he does so brilliantly. Brian Hutchison as Daniel, a father chafing at his home life, and the other fetus has a wonderful gentleness and depth in his performances. Taylor Richardson as Beauty, a teen who turns into a searcher, has amazing confidence and focus in her role, particularly for so young an actor. Robin Tunney as Violet, the mother of Beauty and the twins we see in utero gives a fine and sensitive performance, and Tom Bloom as the Colonel, Violet’s father, and the adult Johnny, his own grandson, is precise, warmly comic, and conflicted.

Archibald MacLeish wrote, “A poem should not mean. But be.” The same could be said of Haidle’s masterful play. It is not the plot or the staging but the cumulative impact of the piece as it unfolds that is so compelling, rare, and welcome.

BY CHRISTOPHER BYRNE

John Patrick Shanley’s new play “Prodigal Son” might more appropriately be named “Tea

f you want to see deconstructive absurdity done right — and believe me, you do — get down to the Lortel to catch Noah Haidle’s existentialist comedy, “Smokefall.” Echoing Thornton Wilder and the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, the play is a meditation on love, life, risk, and the inevitable sadness, disappointment, and death that come with being alive. It is buoyant, celebratory, melancholy, and quirky — and, as directed by Anne Kauffman with a consistently stellar cast, it is delicately provocative and heartfelt.

The plot skips about in time and tells the story of four generations of a family. Nothing much happens except falling in love, attempting to know oneself, searching for the ineffable sources of our joy and pain, and coming to understand one’s mortality. We see a family uplifted by hope and challenged by dementia, the struggles passed from generation to generation, a couple that even while knowing all love ends chooses to love anyway, and — in a delicious flight of fantasy — a conversation between twins in a womb about the risks of living and whether it’s worth it.

This is the kind of play that propelled the early Off Off Broadway movement, both thematically and structurally, and while many playwrights have tried to ape this style in recent seasons, Haidle gets it right, knowing how to create an organic reality in an absurd situation that allows an audience to feel safe and to comprehend the conceit.

Zachary Quinto serves as a narrator, plays one of the fetuses, and is the grandson of the original couple. He is clearly at home on the stage, and the stakes are high. The success of the play depends on his character setting the

and Solipsism.” In it, the author tells the story of his 15-year-old self on scholarship at a private boarding school, who — though a bad actor who stole from classmates, beat up underclassmen, and was indifferent with class work — was in fact a misunderstood genius superior in every way to all around him.

The play is structured as a memory, and Shanley seems to want to cast himself as a Holden Caulfield, but his stand-in character, named Jim Quinn, is just a garden-variety narcissist, rendered even more insufferable by the memoirist’s over-romanticizing of his young self. There is none of the chafing at society or the struggle to discover himself as a man that made Salinger’s anti-hero so classic and relatable. Instead the play moves somewhat aimlessly through selected events in Jim’s two years at the school. None of the characters, including Jim, are drawn with any kind of depth or dimension, so one is left wondering what the purpose of this piece is.

It’s surprising that Shanley, who wrote “Doubt,” could tur n out such a lumber ing script. He is intent on showing off that he knows the classics; shoehorned into the speeches are references apparently meant to highlight everything that’s fallen out of school curricula in the past half-century.

Worse yet, plot points are obvious and telegraphed. Two teachers argue over whether Jim is an angel or a demon, but the argument doesn’t even come up to the philosophical level of “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?”

The teacher who wants to help Jim, Mr. Hoffman, turns out to be gay, but we know this in the first 10 minutes when he admits he isn’t married because he “hasn’t found the right girl.” The line, perhaps plausible in the mid1960s when the play is set, sounds hackneyed

I

32

to 2016 ears. Here, the moment seems intended to allow Quinn to make clear he is not gay. Duly noted, Mr. Shanley.

Shanley has opted to direct his own piece, which in this case is probably not the wisest choice. The production plods, and despite the best efforts of the cast they cannot overcome the play’s unfocused and episodic structure. Robert Sean Leonard as Mr. Hoffman has an easy charm that has more to do with his personality than the piece. Likewise, Chris McGarry as the headmaster Carl Schmitt has a strong presence, but the character and his motivations remain unexplored. Timothée Chalamet as Jim also serves as the narrator, but the performance lacks believable conflict. Rather, he seems like a child more in need of a time-out than a play about his life.

Jim’s triumph at the end seems to be that he outlived the people who made him miserable and that they were unhappy when they died. This is hardly the stuff that plays are made of, though it did accurately capture one common high school experience — staring at the clock and waiting for the bell and the release it promised from droning tedium.

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VALUES, continued on p.43

SMOKEFALL MCC at the Lucille Lortel 121 Christopher St. btwn. Bleecker & Bedford Sts. Tue.-Wed. at 7 p.m.; Thu.-Sat. at 8 p.m.

Sat. at 2 p.m.; Sun. at 3 p.m. $49-$99; ovationtix.com Or 866-811-4111 Two hrs., with intermission

PRODIGAL SON MTC at New York City Center 131 W. 55th St. Tue.-Wed. at 7 p.m.; Thu.-Sat. at 8 p.m.

Wed., Sat.-Sun. at 2 p.m. $90; nycitycenter.org Or 212-581-1212 Ninety-five mins., no intermission

BURIED CHILD The New Group at Signature Theatre Center 480 W. 42nd St. Tue.-Fri. at 7:30 p.m.; Sat. at 8 p.m.

Sat.-Sun. at 2 p.m. $27-$107; ticketcentral.com Or 212-279-4200 One hr., 45 mins., no intermission

March 03 - 16, 2016 | GayCityNews.nyc

FILM

Clueless

Max Landis squanders chance to probe sexual confusion, spoof La-La Land

BY GARY M. KRAMER

M

an love interest, Gabbi? If Landis had better played off the straight guy/ gay girl friendship — a twist on the gay guy/ straight girl cliché — Cory might have made more sense, or at least generated more laughs, as a character.

“Me Him Her” is only a little bit better in depicting its queer characters. Both Brendan and Gabbi have dreams where they are haunted by a giant penis, a sight gag that represents their sexual anxiety. The over -the-top moments, though, only obscure their genuine feelings.

In one of the film’s nicer, quieter moments, two patiently supportive lesbian friends of Gabbi’s, Laura (Alia Shawkat) and Kris (Rebecca Drysdale), try to understand what she’s up to with Cory.

In contrast, a running joke that as Brendan asking, “Why didn’t you tell me I was gay?” no less than three times — once while perched on a rock in the desert wearing only his boxer briefs — falls flat.

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FILM BUFF

e Him Her,” written and directed by Max Landis, aims to do something different, if not radical, with sexual politics. In this broad comedy, Brendan (Luke Bracey) is a successful Hollywood TV actor anxious to come out. His handlers, however, are less than pleased with his decision and ask him to stay in the closet. When Brendan flies his best friend Cory (Dustin Milligan) to LA to help him with “emotional damage control,” all hell breaks loose.

Brendan pines for Griffin (Jake McDorman), a crewmember who kissed him on set and unleashed the actor’s pent-up homoerotic desires. On his first night in LA, Cory encourages Brendan to go to a gay bar to meet Griffin.

Although Brendan wants to be discreet, he ends up being ambushed by paparazzi and rumors circulate that he is gay. Meanwhile, at the bar, Cory meets Gabbi (Emily

Meade), a lesbian who has just broken up with her cheating girlfriend, Heather (Angela Sarafyan).

Cory and Gabbi spend the night together, which includes having sex in her car. As Brendan tries to find the best way to come out on his own terms, Gabbi grapples with her confusion about her desire for Cory.

Unfortunately, “Me Him Her” is mostly convoluted — and often ridiculous. The humor stems mainly from its characters acting outrageously, and scenes that should be comic end up being manic. When Brendan and Cory find themselves at a pride parade, Cory pretends he is gay, taking his shirt off and screaming “I love dick!” to divert attention from his celebrity friend, whose publicists continue to insist that he deny all rumors. The moment is neither funny nor convincing.

It might be that the straight and obnoxious Cory is the film’s problem. Is the joke meant to be that he has no chemistry with either his best friend, Brendan, or his lesbi-

Luke Bracey in Max Landis’ “Me Him Her.”

ME HIM HER Directed by Max Landis Film Buff Opens Mar. 11 Cinema Village 22 E. 12th St. cinemavillage.com

CLUELESS, continued on p.43

New Offerings from France Film Society of Lincoln Center’s 21st “Rendezvous” unspools March 3-13

BY GARY M. KRAMER

“Summertime” is a beautiful and moving lesbian romantic drama set in 1971, written and directed by Catherine Corsini. Delphine (Izïa Higelin), who works on her family farm near Limoges, declares she does not want to get married and one night sneaks off to see her girlfriend, who promptly breaks up with her. A short while later, GayCityNews.nyc | March 03 - 16, 2016

UNIFRANCE

T

his year’s Rendezvous with French Cinema program — the festival’s 21st — opens March 3 with the premiere of Guillaume Nicloux’s “Valley of Love,” starring French icons Isabelle Huppert and Gérard Depardieu as a couple reconnecting after their son’s suicide. The festival closes March 13, with a screening of Jacques Audiard’s “Dheepan,” about Sri Lankan refugees in France. In between, 21 feature films will unspool. Here are five highlights:

Delphine moves to Paris and becomes involved in a women’s group that fights for gender equality, as well as abortion and gay rights. Delphine not only becomes empowered by the group, but also smitten with Carole (Cécile de France), who initially rejects Delphine’s kiss. Before long, however, they embark on a passionate affair.

When a family matter forces Delphine to return to the farm, Carole soon follows. Although Delphine has become politicized, she feels obligated to remain closeted in her village. This causes tension between the lovers. On the surface, “Summertime” may be a standard coming out tale, but this lovely period film reflects the difficulties of living one’s truth in a rural environment. Higelin movingly conveys both Delphine’s pride and her shame. Her smile during her erotic trysts with Carole conveys the happiness she feels even as she compromises her authenticity to maintain the façade of a dutiful daughter. As Carole, de

Nicolas Duvauchelle in Emmanuel Finkiel’s “A Decent Man.”

France exudes radiance, and she makes her identity struggle credible, too.

Another film featuring LGBT characters is Nabil Ayouch’s “Much Loved,” a provocative drama about Marrakech prostitutes. The film, banned in Morocco, immerses viewers in the world of Noha (an excellent Loubna Abidar), Randa (Asmaa Lazrak), and Soukaina (Halima Karaouane), who cater to the sexual needs of

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FRENCH, continued on p.34

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FILM

An Outsider on Outsiders

BY STEVE ERICKSON

L

ow-cost video technology has always carried the promise of democratizing and demystifying filmmaking. The people who have benefited from it, however, are generally the kind of people who would become directors anyway. This is true in the US, at least. In Nigeria and other parts of Africa, digital video has led to a burgeoning movie industry where filmmaking never existed before. Mumblecore, whatever its aesthetic merit, largely consisted of white guys making films about people like themselves. One refreshing thing about

KINO LORBER

Chloé Zhao tells us something new about Native Americans

John Reddy and Jashaun St. John in Chloé Zhao’s “Songs My Brother Taught Me.”

“Tangerine” was that director Sean Baker finally used innovative technology — the film was shot entirely on an iPhone but looks gorgeous — to tell the stories of marginalized people.

Digital video has empowered “Songs My Brother Taught Me” from director Chloé Zhao, a Chinese-American woman depicting Native American life in South Dakota. Her film harkens back to an earlier time in American independent filmmaking when John Sayles was hipper than Quentin Tarantino. It respectfully fills in the gaps of an area of American culture most of us know nothing about. The broad strokes — alcoholism, poverty, clinging to both Native tradi-

tion and Christianity — may be familiar, but the details are new.

The film takes place among the Lakota tribe on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where Johnny (John Reddy) and his 11-year-old sister Jashaun (Jashaun St. John) live with their mother. Johnny tends to behave self-destructively; he has a profitable business selling alcohol, which is illegal on the reservation, but faces danger from competitors. He dreams of escaping to LA. Jashaun doesn’t share his restless urges and feels more at home on the reservation.

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A teen also behaves badly in “Standing Tall,”

FRENCH, from p.33

Saudi and European men. Noha is the queen bee, who eagerly applies herself to the job to earn cash that she passes on to her poor mother. Randa is not keen on the work, preferring the company of women. Even though she experiences her first time with a female client, Randa’s story is the thinnest in the film. In contrast, Soukaina’s Arab client has trouble getting aroused, a moment suggesting he is gay. Though these women are at times treated badly, both physically and emotionally, their sisterhood, which includes transgender characters as well, proves resilient.

“The Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story)” UNIFRANCE

Rod Paradot in Emmanuelle Bercot’s “Standing Tall.”

RENDEZVOUS WITH FRENCH CINEMA UniFrance Mar. 3-13 Film Society of Lincoln Center Walter Reade Theater 165 W. 65th St. filmlinc.org

34

depicts a group of sexually adventurous suburban French teenagers — including some same-sex coupling — who gather at ringleader Alex’s (Finnegan Oldfield) house for orgies. With his parents absent, Alex seduces George (Marilyn Lima), but then ignores her. He next deflowers George’s best friend Laetitia (Daisy Broom) — and films the encounter — which creates a rift between the two girls. As dozens of teens play sexy games of spin the bottle or go skinny-dipping, the freedom they experience makes them “feel alive.” There are, of course, consequences, as well, that play out in the dramatic last act.

Based on a true story, “The Bang Gang” is meant to be a shocking cautionary tale, but it is too often simply depressing to watch, as these bored and horny teens make a series of increasingly bad decisions. Writer/ director Eva Husson creates a palpable atmosphere of drug-fueled depravity, and she peppers the action with news reports of train derailments meant to parallel the paths of these lost, corrupted youth.

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OUTSIDERS, continued on p.36

Emmanuelle Bercot’s absorbing drama about Malony (Rod Paradot), a juvenile delinquent full of rage who steals cars and commits violent crimes. He repeatedly appears in sympathetic Judge Florence Blaque’s (Catherine Deneuve) courtroom, where he is sentenced to a series of rehabilitation facilities and detention centers.

Malony is resistant to most of the social workers who try to help him. He has tense confrontations with his young mother (Sara Forestier) and finds comfort with his girlfriend Tess (Diane Rouxel). “Standing Tall” depicts Malony’s process of maturation, and in his impressive feature film debut, Paradot is magnetic, capturing the amorality of a young man trapped by circumstances socially determined, to be sure, but also of his own making.

Another film set in courtrooms is “A Decent Man,” writer/ director Emmanuel Finkiel’s hypnotic and fascinating character study. Eddy (Nicolas Duvauchelle) is an unemployed man who is separated from his wife Karine (Mélanie Thierry) and son (Johan Soulé). After he is assaulted on the street, Karine takes Eddy back in, and helps him rebuild his life. She helps Eddy get a job, and they reestablish their family unit. But Eddy has wrongly accused Ahmed (Driss Ramdi) of the crime, and as the case proceeds through the courts, Eddy is troubled by his actions. He and his family are harassed, and his life starts to deteriorate. Duvauchelle is magnificent in this unsettling drama, expressing Eddy’s quiet rage in moments like when smoking a cigarette or firing off rounds at a shooting range. “A Decent Man” is both affecting and disturbing.

March 03 - 16, 2016 | GayCityNews.nyc

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OPERA

Cavalli Soars as Puccini Sours Juilliard stands out with “Calisto”; Met misfires on “Manon Lescaut”

BY DAVID SHENGOLD

J

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OUTSIDERS, from p.34

She hangs out with a tattoo artist and clothing designer, sometimes helping him sell merchandise. Eventually, she’s forced to confront the damage lingering in her family.

There are moments in “Songs My Brother Taught Me” that could have come from almost any film about American teenagers. There’s a scene in which a high school teacher talks to his class of graduating seniors about their plans in life — all of them, including the teacher, happen to be cradling animals. It’s one of the wittiest moments in “Songs My Brother Taught Me,” but it’s also full of pathos, as one knows that the students’ vague dreams will be terribly difficult to fulfill.

The scene where a party gets busted is also familiar, only made new by the illegality of alcohol on the reservation. Despite this, almost everyone seems to either drink heavily or be in recovery. On the way out of the reservation, a carload of people urges, “Say no to alcohol!

36

also etched memorable characterizations. Julia Wolcott’s Giunone unfurled an imposing, not quite yet controlled dramatic soprano; she may follow Christine Goerke — Glimmerglass’ splendid 1996 Giunone — in becoming a mettlesome Elektra. Even before the first half of this triumphant staging had ended, I was wishing I could see it again.

ROSALIE O’CONNOR

uilliard made a fantastic contribution to the opera season with Zack Winokur’s imagistically haunting, pitch-perfect staging of Francesco Cavalli’s 1651 “Calisto.” The work exemplifies opera’s second generation, in which what had been a restrained, literally aristocratic pastime went public — especially in the fun-house mirror of Venetian culture — and aimed for wider audiences with broader and bawdier plots and effects.

Nymphs, shepherds, and divine beings or not, the libretto is entirely fueled by lust, deceit, and revenge.

Not a noble thought or act gets aired — though the titular nymph and Endimione, the moony mortal lover of the “chaste” goddess Diana, whom Calisto follows, are principally victims.

The small Willson Theater housed Pilar Almon’s lovely bucolic-papered walls and screens designed by Charlap Hyman & Herrero. Two key elements prevailed in creating magic: Marcus Doshi’s lighting and Austin Scarlett’s sexy costumes — including a show-stopping, almost architectural but serpent-like gold dress for the vengeful Giunone that figured as a set element.

Some American conservatories seem to preparing musicians for the operatic repertory as it existed 50 years ago, but Juilliard, with its Historic Performance initiative, has been sterling about exposing both singers and instrumentalists to 17th and 18th century period style. On February 21, the small instrumental ensemble Juilliard415 played with great delicacy and point under the authoritative Stephen Stubbs.

Not all the youthful vocalists had fully mastered the needed speech/ song fluidity and melismatic grace, but all showed rewarding stylistic awareness. And all benefitted from Winokur’s psychologically detailed direction and supple choreography, which left virtually no aspect of the text and subtext unexplored.

As Diana and the randy Giove-impersonating-Diana, Samantha Hankey had the largest part and handled it with dramatic smarts and vocal aplomb. Gifted baritone Xiaomeng Zhang acted and sang with great effect as Giove himself, really relishing the text.

Angela Vallone (Calisto) sang with compelling freshness and looked great consorting with both Hankey and Zhang. Jakub Józef Orlinski, dressed in as little as Scarlett could contrive, also looked wonderful as the punch-drunk Endimione.

Samantha Hankey and Jakub Józef Orlinski in Zack Winokur’s staging of Francesco Cavalli’s “Calisto” at Juilliard.

His musicianship proved impressive and his countertenor luminous — though sometimes imprecise of pitch in the lower reaches of his music. Matthew Swensen’s jealous Pan displayed a wonderfully promising, clear tenor; so did Alexander McKissick as the horny nymph Linfea, usually cast with a broken-down mezzo or ancient character tenor but here a handsome jeune premier with a gift for comedy. Caitlin Redding, sporting a pleasingly shiny mezzo, performed bravely and well as Linfea’s suitor, Satirino. Cody Quattlebaum (Silvano) and Michael St. Peter (Mercurio)

Embrace sobriety!” Turning alcohol into forbidden fruit seems to actually have made it more tempting for the reservation’s residents. At least they stay away from hard drugs.

Zhao seems to have filmed the badlands of South Dakota in the fall. No snow is visible, but most of the vegetation has turned brown and dry. A chill is obviously in the air.

Her film’s long-shot vistas have a nonchalant beauty. The characters don’t seem to care that they live in a gorgeous landscape; to them, it’s just a place they walk through every day, although they enjoy riding horses and participating in rodeos.

The stereotypes Zhao dodges aren’t safely relegated to the past. The Western may be a dead form now, and the idea of the Native American as a threat gone with it. However, Canadian director Dominic Gagnon’s found footage documentary “Of the North,” which played the Museum of the Moving Image’s “First Look” festival in January, shows the

The main thing making the Met’s new “Manon Lescaut” worthwhile February 15 was the lavish, expert conducting of Fabio Luisi.

Puccini’s first major success gets better in each act, and the playing and pacing here were superb. Still, this was yet another poor co-production from yet another flashy but essentially traditional British director (Richard Eyre)! Seemingly the Brits like to remind us that Nazis occupied France — and not Britain; the 1941 Vichy setting here added nothing positive, just dramatically ludicrous moments when Nazi soldier extras failed to shoot straying characters dead. Rob Howell’s set brought forth yet another gratuitous huge staircase, the Met’s recent trademark. How can a management touting its own commitment to “Broadway theatricality”

c

OPERA, continued on p.43

dangers in thinking you’re too hip to be a racist. Taking YouTube clips of Inuit Americans and Canadians, most of them unflattering, he made something that looks like a “Jackass” episode at best and is actively insulting at worst, as when he plays a rap song called “Don’t Call Me an Eskimo” over footage of a kid in a fat suit awkwardly dancing.

Gagnon sat in front of his computer in Montreal, never interacting with the people whose images he appropriated; Zhao worked without a formal script and based her dialogue on her engagement with her cast.

Even at 95 minutes, “Songs My Brother Taught Me” is overly leisurely. It could have packed more of a punch at 80 minutes, and the opening and closing voice-overs are heavy-handed. Still, Zhao’s film, made by an outsider to mainstream American culture about a different group of outsiders, shows the potential indie cinema still holds to offer an alternative vision of our country.

March 03 - 16, 2016 | GayCityNews.nyc

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37

IN THE The True King of Tap

NOH

Maurice Hines, happily carrying on both family and classic showbiz tradition

BY DAVID NOH

T

38

CAROL ROSEGG

here was no show more entertaining than “Tappin’ Thru Life,” starring the phenomenal triple threat talent Maurice Hines, who, at 72, just blew me away with his inexhaustible energy, showmanship, and elegance (in some fabulous Armani). Backed by the wonderful all-girl Diva Jazz Orchestra and featuring three dazzling, gorgeous, and excruciatingly young tap dancers, the Manzari Brothers and Luke Spring, it was a musical journey through his incredible life, from the beginnings at the Apollo Theater, where he and his brother, the late Gregory Hines, tap danced their way into the hearts of Har lem and big-time TV and Las Vegas audiences.

I’ve always loved this war m and winning man, running into him often back in the day at the Christopher Street subway stop, and was so looking forward to our interview. The day before it happened, his show’s closing that Sunday was announced, but always the trouper, he decided to carry on, regardless, and we had a delish dish sesh in his dressing room before his Friday night show.

I commiserated with him over the bad news, and he said, “Unfortunately, we just couldn’t get over that hump after the big snowstorm. Our show didn’t have a big advance — people started coming, but it was too late. The Shuberts booked the theater and they never wait [chuckles].

“But I’m loving every last minute of it, and yesterday, I had one of the greatest audiences of my life. There were little kids in there, and at the end I came out of the theater and half the audience was out there and they all applauded.

This woman stops me near the elevator and she’s crying, ‘This is what we want our children to see, this kind of show business. I’m not putting down the rappers of today or Beyoncé. But this is what made it possible for them, and you

Maurice Hines, with Leo and John Manzari, in “Tapping Thru Life.”

are channeling the old performers from the past.’

“It’s so unreal to me: we got fantastic reviews, everything was perfect. But in order for a show to continue, you have sell a certain amount of tickets and it didn’t happen. The church ladies were coming, but they don’t go nowhere until it’s warm. They want to wear their hats and shoes! But when some do come, they just over whelm me. My producer, Leonard Soloway, a legend in the business with his own caricature at Sar di’s, said to me, ‘Maurice, I can’t stop watching the show myself, and when you go down to shake the hands of the first row, the women kiss your hand, which I have never seen before!’ It’s thrilling and, after all these years in the business, just in time.”

In the show, Hines pays heartfelt, lengthy tribute to his mother.

“Yes, the show’s success is really a testament to her and I sing the last song for her. She really kept us straight when we had rough times, and I don’t know if my brother Gregory and I would have survived, because my father was a

street guy. He liked to knock people out and she had to tame him and help us through all of it.”

This description of his father was definitely at odds with the genial paterfamilias known to me, from childhood shows like “Ed Sullivan,” when the boys Maurice and Gregory appeared with him in the act Hines, Hines & Dad. “Oh yes! We once saw him knock a guy out at the Audubon Ballroom, where he was a bouncer.

We looked at him differently after that and when we got home, we said, ‘Daddy, what did that guy say to you that you hit him like that?’

‘Oh, I didn’t like the way he said hello to me.’ Now that’s a rough man, and my mother would just laugh and say, ‘That’s your father!’

“He never physically punished us; my mother was more the disciplinarian. He worked nights.

But all he’d have to do was walk into the room and look at us. But they let us be kids. Sure we could do wrong, but they guided us and were great parents.

“It was thrilling to be at the unveiling of my caricature at Sardi’s yesterday. They put my pic-

ture right next to Gregory’s, which would have made my mother very happy, as she always wanted Gregory and I to be close together. When she was very ill, I used to visit her here, grabbing time off from the show I was doing in Vegas, as she couldn’t travel.

“Yes, I had a 10-year riff with Gregory, but we promised our mother we wouldn’t tell anybody about it. It wasn’t about our careers, it was a family thing.

Everybody wants to say it was because Gregory became a big star. But that wasn’t true — we always wanted the best for each other, even when we wer en’t speaking. My mother always said, ‘Never discuss family business.’ It was just a personal thing, but we promised her.”

For all of his ineffable gregar iousness, Hines is not one to make the celebrity party scene, and we talked about how Paul McCartney was not allowed into Flo’rida’s Grammy party, wondering why he even wanted to be there, in the first place.

c

IN THE NOH, continued on p.40

March 03 - 16, 2016 | GayCityNews.nyc

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IN THE NOH, from p.38

“It amazes me and my longtime friends how much show business has changed. Today if I was at an airport and Ella Fitzgerald and Kim Kardashian were also there, I know I would see the paparazzi push Ella out of the way to get to Kim. And that’s the sad part of our business, what it’s evolved into.

“I used to get invited to all that, but I didn’t go then. Gregory used to say, ‘Maurice don’t go to none of that stuff.’ Spike Lee wanted to invite me some place and I respect it, but I’m not part of that, and am very happy in the world I have created in show biz.”

I have adored Hines’ work since seeing him in the lavish, aborted disaster “The Cotton Club,” opposite Gregory, with the two of them playing onscreen brothers. I told him how much more I admired his light-as-a-feather tapping, with gracefully elegant hand gestures, than his late brother’s more decidedly macho approach, close to the floor, with loosely hanging arms.

Hines cited the legendary Nicholas Brothers as inspirations for both of them. “Yes, my style came from my idol, Fayard Nicholas, while Gregory was into Harold because Harold was into the floor.

Besides tap dancing, I took classes in ballet, jazz, and other forms of dance, and when I choreograph I put all that in.

“This man just wrote a book about tap dancers and although he never interviewed me, he lied about me, saying that I was afraid of the audience. I was shocked because if anything, Gregory would say, ‘Listen, when we are out there, I don’t have to worry about nothing. Maurice goes after the audience, so I can just lay back and be funny.’ This writer also said something very unnecessary, that I was very effeminate when I danced! He wrote a nice profile of me for the New York Times, but when I read his lies, I threw his book away.”

Hines has never been very vocal about being gay but “I did talk about it in Metro Weekly in Washington. I always enjoyed being gay from the minute I realized I was, which was very early on. And it was no problem in my family. One of my cousins was gay and he came out after he got married and had a baby. He said, ‘I did what

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they said I should do.’ Well, Maurice ain’t doing that!

“I love being gay, always have, with fantastic friends and wonderful lovers. I really did have them and now I’m involved with a highend businessman who is wonderful, but he’s very private because he lives in another world. I never really had any problems being gay.

I went into showbiz where there are gay people all around. I’m just a happy guy.” (A photo glimpsed of said lover, on Hines’ dressing room table, obviously Latin and eminently woof-able, would be reason enough for anyone to smile.)

Although Hines, at 72, seems to be finally coming into his own, it can’t have been easy for someone as multi-talented as he to be bypassed all these years by real stardom.

but definitely not dying.

“We’re going to London and my producer told me, ‘Once we bring you there, they will never let you go!’ And we’re also going to tour America. Of course, I’m keeping my all-girl band! They’re wonderful and we are giving them all a chance, because that’s what we were taught

by Nat King Cole and Harry Belafonte, at the Apollo, to be generous to your fellow performers.

“The stars today don’t seem to be giving it up to their fellow performers. They’re too busy putting each other down, so competitive and so much money involved. But I will never change. They asked me if wanted to keep the band and I said that’s a given, a no brainer. They asked, ‘Will they hold an audience?’

‘Don’t worry about it, especially when they hear that drum solo.”

Gregory played the game, did what he needed to do and he realized at the end that the game didn’t matter when he couldn’t get a job.

“When my mother was really ill, she told me, ‘You know, son, your career’s going to take a little longer, because you’re a little too political.

You don’t play the game.’ Gregory played the game, did what he needed to do and he realized at the end that the game didn’t matter when he couldn’t get a job. He could not get a job. My brother! I was astounded when my cousin told me this, because he was one of the most talented people I ever saw in my life.

“I’m so very proud of this show, though. Debbie Allen, who was my Miss Adelaide when I did ‘Guys and Dolls,’ came to see the show the other day. We screamed and kissed and she said, ‘Maurice, it’s a perfect show, with tears and laughter, you tap and then you’re mentoring. And then you’re funny like Richard Pryor! What the hell is that?’ When I told her the show was closing, she got very upset, but said, ‘I know [Off] Broadway. I understand.’”

There’s good news, however, in that the show is only closing here,

In his show, Hines tantalized with anecdotes of the glory days of the Las Vegas strip, which was fabulous, but definitely painfully segregated.

“When we performed with Judy Garland, we never met her until she walked onstage and said hello, and we were astounded. It was so interesting that everybody around her would say, ‘Now, be careful because she’s so tiny and she’s used to doing it with only one person, John Bubbles. You haven’t rehearsed with her, so be careful!’

“Everybody was sort of putting her down in a nice way. ‘Don’t let her down! Don’t do that step too big!’ Well, the number starts, and we do this big slide all across the stage and, baby we were on the stage, and Judy was all the way over there, already! She adjusted to us immediately! She was a fierce natural dancer, who could pick up a routine like that! And afterwards, I went to her people and said, ‘Do you do know who

you’re representing? This is Judy Garland!’ Because I was angry that they were saying things like that about her.

“With talent like Judy, God just gives it to somebody. Ella [Fitzgerald] couldn’t read music like Sarah Vaughan or Carmen McRae, who could also play the piano. Her pianist, Tommy Flanagan, said, ‘I worked with Sarah, Carmen, Gloria L ynn, and Ella is the genius among them, because she doesn’t know what she’s doing. She just goes and does it, like one night she was singing Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Goin’ On?” and she went somewhere, musically, which made us think, “No way is she going to find us, she’s so into the song, loving something contemporary which she rarely sings. She’ll have to take a breath, and find us.” Well, she never took a breath. She did something and came down, and we never knew how she did it. I’m a musician, and I don’t know how she did it. But you knew that she’ll never do it again, as she was totally in the moment.’ With Ella, you could say, ‘Can I get an A?’ And she hits a perfect A. Ohmigod, she was so sweet.”

In Vegas, Tallulah Bankhead wanted to meet the Hines Brothers and invited them to her hotel, which was in the definitely segregated part of town. When the hotel wouldn’t permit the boys to swim in her hotel pool, Bankhead threatened to not give her show that night unless they were allowed to. The brothers got to splash happily, but only learned later that the entire pool was drained after they got out. In the show, Hines recounted this tale, following it with an especially poignant rendition of “Smile.”

“I still remember the party she threw for us. We walked into her suite and she was there, so her, ‘Come in, dahlings! I have presents for you! Kiss me, dahlings!

Maurice, you like batons! Here’s a silver one with rhinestones.’ She sure knew my number! Gregory wanted drums, so she’d had Ann Sothern’s drummer pick them out for Gregory. It was a wonderful party and she was who she was, take it or leave it. She supposedly had a long affair with Billie Holliday, and blacks loved her because she was truly her own person.

Those were great times for us.”

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GayCityNews.nyc | March 03 - 16, 2016

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WONDERLAND, from p.31

where illicit liquor flows and inhibitions melt away.

The massive ensemble of 23 does its best to bring this dreamscape to life. Clocking in at nearly 4 hours including intermission (it ran about 45 minutes over), this gutsy production has bitten off way more than it can chew. The book is simply too bloated, and many scenes and songs are redundant. Granted, I saw the first and only preview performance, but clearly cuts should have been made weeks ago. Director Lissa Moira, who conjures some wonderful moments, should have sharpened her scissors and used them without mercy.

“Speakeasy” is at its best during the musical numbers (Ashkenasi wrote the music and lyrics as well as the book). Under the musical direction of Jonathan Fox Powers, the score is an appealing mix of period jazz, swing, cabaret, Tin Pan Alley, and operetta. The lyrics, melodies, and orchestrations are surprisingly rich and sophisticated for such a shoestring production.

No less compelling is the attention to historical detail. Dialogue is metic-

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VALUES, from p.32

In attempting to turn Sam Shepard’s “Buried Child” into a naturalistic, kitchen sink drama, director Scott Elliott undermines the play, missing its entire point. At its core, the play is unrealistic, a quasi-gothic tale that deconstructs the American dream. Ostensibly about a family coming apart at the seams, it explores the dissolution of the institution writ large. The crumbling of society is seen both in the collapse of the family’s farm and in the fall of ultimate taboos like incest. The play is heavy on symbolism and, in trying to force it into realism, this production undermines the artistry of the script and leaves the audience confused. In its structure, it has more in common with Albee and Pinter than

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CLUELESS, from p.33

Like Landis, the cast seems desperate to amuse. Bracey is endearing when Brendan talks about his crush on Griffin, but elsewhere the director makes him endure repeated indignities,

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OPERA, from p.36

countenance endless, tension-killing scene changes in every new production? Act III’s usually moving expulsion of “fallen women” evoked “Gotta Have a Gimmick,” trashily distracting from the principals.

Would that those principals had been better! Roberto Alagna bravely jumped in for Jonas Kaufmann at short notice. Though in no way aristocratic, the French-born tenor remains plausibly sexy onstage and at least renders authentic Italianate phonetics. Save for some dismal high Bs and initial vocal scruffiness, he did better than on opening GayCityNews.nyc | March 03 - 16, 2016

ulously sprinkled with colorful period queer slang, like “dropping pins” (hinting about one’s homosexuality), “Vaseline Alley” (the Southeast corner of Central Park where the fairies gathered), “basketeering” (ogling a guy’s crotch), and “browning” (I’ll let you figure that one out). The piece keenly illustrates that liquor was once blamed for the ills of society, but after Prohibition was repealed, the vice police decided the new enemy was the “moral degenerates” such as queers.

There’s even a steamy orgy scene set at the notorious Everard Baths, though it was unnecessary, since there’s another racy sex scene soon after it. What’s more, the historically based narrative is so weirdly captivating on its own, I’m not sure it needs the hackneyed “Alice in Wonderland” spin at all.

If the objective was to deliver an offbeat, mind-blowing fantasia on identity, taboo romance, and queer culture circa 1930, then “Speakeasy” has succeeded in the extreme. An equally vital goal, however, is coaxing audience members back into their seats after intermission. On that score, this well-intentioned, overwrought endeavor still has plenty of work to do.

Miller or O’Neill. For a production to work, it has to go beyond the literal and be larger than life — just as the so-called American Dream is an outsized fiction people cling to anyway.

This is not a plot-driven piece, though it tells a sketchy story about a drunken man Dodge, his unfaithful wife, their flawed children, a child of incest who was killed and buried in the yard, and the return of a lost son, Vince. This last plot point may or may not be real, and the one successful moment in this production is when Vince forces himself back into the family by slicing through a screen and being symbolically, forcibly born into this group.

The real disappointment is how timely this play could have been today. Hearing politicians scream exhortations to “Make America Great

Again” underlines the fracturing of our own social contract, yet so many people seem to embrace the moment as though a dream come true. A better production would have suggested the chilling parallels.

The cast is almost as lost as the director, and they seem to be in different plays. Only Ed Harris, as the patriarch Dodge, and Paul Sparks, as the son Tilden, seem to get what all this is about. Taissa Farmiga is wasted as Shelly, the outsider who arrives with Vince, and Nat Wolff as Vince is merely loud, with no evident motivation. The rest of the company simply go through the motions.

If the New Group was going to bother digging up this play, they really should have done more with it.

as when Brendan is flying on a bird-like creature with a rainbow painted on his face. Meade tries to make Gabbi sympathetic, but her character is a lesbian with such low self-esteem that after sleeping with a man she’s ready to return to her abusive girlfriend. Gabbi is

never really credible.

Landis manages, as well, to make Haley Joel Osment, playing himself, and Geena Davis and Scott Bakula, as Brendan’s parents, look back.

It’s surprising that Landis — who is the son of director John

Landis — was unable to do more in satirizing Hollywood life. The film achieves a few smiles in this regard, such as a mildly clever advert for Brendan’s TV show, but as with the film as a whole, there are far too many missed opportunities.

night transmissions. Alagna usually improves quickly during a run, and his blocking will surely grow less centered around the prompter’s visibility.

Kristine Opolais (Manon) looks like a TV star but again showed a voice lacking depth, color, warmth, or plushness; only softer middle register sounds emerged pleasant. Her Act IV aria’s more jagged music suited her approach best. Opolais acted a lot, rather manically and unsympathetically. Finally, there was insufficient chemistry between these two attractive professionals; this passion-imbued opera suffered without it.

Massimo Cavalletti followed up

mediocre Met runs as Schaunard (2010), Marcello and Escamillo (2014) with a mediocre Lescaut, with pushed, inelegant singing. Is being tall and personable enough to get the third lead in a new production and an HD? Tall and less personable was debuting tenor Zach Borichevsky as Edmondo, a good cameo part for a rising talent (as Sean Panikkar showed last time the Met staged “Manon Lescaut”).

Borichevsky’s passable voice isn’t notably attractive or distinctive and tends to narrow on top.

The evening’s only outstanding singing came from Brindley Sherratt (Geronte, portrayed as

an imperious film director) and Andrew Bidlack (the Lamplighter, here sweeping streets), who ended his little song with superb diminuendo. What one would like to think of as “Metropolitan quality” extended to the brief but potently sung contributions of Brandon Cedel (Sergeant) and Richard Bernstein (Captain). The exciting Juilliard mezzo Virginia Verrez sang decently but not memorably as the chief Musician, a part in which smoothness of line is paramount.

David Shengold (shengold@ yahoo.com) writes about opera for many venues.

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March 03 - 16, 2016 | GayCityNews.nyc