Showing posts with label Revival. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Revival. Show all posts

Monday, February 26, 2018

Is It A Rock Band???

Last Wednesday I did something pretty atypical for me. I stopped by the local gay bar on the way home around 6PM and ordered a drink. It was Happy Hour after all, and I figured that there would be a solid group of people taking advantage of two for one drinks, and yet... it was me, the owner, the bartender, and a regular who seemed more staff than patron. And yet, I've always been one to dive into social situations head first. So after about fifteen minutes of solitary sitting, watching them gab amongst themselves, I got a notification for discounted tickets to the upcoming revival of Angels in America, a production that had begun in London and is headed to New York, and which I'm frankly, very excited to see. So I thought to myself, "here's an easy icebreaker, I'll bring up the new revival and we'll have a lively theatrical discussion." But the response? Quizzical looks, and a tilted head from the bartender as he asked "Is that a band?" The bartender asked.

The owner, who is old enough, didn't know it either. And to be fair, while I feel like the play is ever present, it has been 25 years since it premiered on Broadway.  The patron though? The one who had been playing on his laptop? He had heard of it, and I felt a little vindicated. And yet, I'm still a little surprised, as this is considered the greatest American play in the past quarter of a century. But then, maybe it didn't matter.  maybe people today, even gay people, aren't as culturally aware as I would think.  I mean, I didn't think to toss out A Streetcar Named Desire and see what reaction that would have gotten. I would like to think that more people would have heard of that, but in truth, I don't know that they would have. And shouldn't they? 

I first saw the play around 1998, ironically, with a girl I had been seeing for a while. And it was a strange experience to see. It was a glimpse at a distasteful world. A world I didn't quite grasp, in spite of the fact that in my reality, I was reaching toward it with one hand and pushing it away with another. Holding hands with a man in the park as we chat about Come Back Little Sheba? Lounging around in full drag? Having random sex with a leather daddy? Embracing the full force of my feminine side in the daylight, owning every ounce of me?  I couldn't see it. Didn't want to. Would not be going there. Ever. And of all the characters, if I related to any, I related to Harper, the Mormon mother in denial who slowly but surely inched her way into a new and open way of being. Strange that I didn't see myself in Joe Pitt. And yet, I think I saw him as too far above me. Better looking than me, more manly than me, more chiseled, ramrod straight and respectable. All things I had never really succeeded at being. But, like Joe, I saw myself as above gay culture. They were the victims, thy were the weak ones. Weren't they? They luxuriated in femininity and vulnerability. Didn't they?
And I had already upon seeing this play experienced the giddy, floor shaking experience of a really great kiss from a man, but I did not consider myself gay, because I had not completely given into camp, into ceaseless emoting, into gooey public intimacy with a man as if we were romantic. 

And yet, now? I have done a version of every single one of those things that I cringed at before. And those that I haven't? Those are the experiences I long for. A long term relationship with one that I know intimately from day to day? I want that. That thing that when I first saw this play, that I saw as men "playing house"? I yearn for it. Ad I'm grateful. I know that what I am and who I am and what I've done isn't "gay" for everyone. But it is for me, and I am grateful. Grateful to be a part of a community who has been through the experiences painted in this piece. Grateful to have had some of those experiences myself, grateful to be watching the play from what feels like the inside out rather than looking from the outside in, like a petrie dish. Because there's so little redemption to be found in judgement, and so much to be had when one can look at himself and ask "Why am I judging? What is the fear here about?" And then step through that fear. 

Joe's resolution at the end of the play is ambiguous to say the least. But, as someone who's journey has been a version of his, even though he "pretended" so much better than I ever could have, fI see hope for him. We only see him at the beginning of his journey, and the years have a way of changing a person if you are able to strip away the false and look at the reality of yourself and who and how you are in the world. And so, yes. People, gay and straight need to know this play. They need to look back on our history, our post stonewall history, which was every bit as much a struggle for those who experienced it, as the closeted years of those before. We need to be able to see a time, which is close to the one we currently live in than it was just two years ago, if only to know that we can, and with strength and with our eyes open, we will.

Cursive

  Last week I returned to doing my  morning pages , a practice I was committed to for years, and then abandoned, at least partially in the d...