The playwright A.R. Gurney does not fear experimentation. Once regarded as a chronicler of the WASP experience in America, a deeper look at his work reveals a dramatist continually aiming to stretch himself. In "Sylvia," the main character is a dog. In "Sweet Sue," Gurney cleaved his central female character in two. In "Another Antigone," he offered a modern variation on Sophocles. And in "Big Bill," currently running at the Mitzi Newhouse Theater through May 16, Gurney, a married man of many years, created a homosexual central character, one based on historical fact.
One could argue that this is unimportant, that a playwright is a playwright -- that the true dramatist, secure in his or her craft, knows how to burr into any character whether he or she shares qualities with that character or not, and can fashion the right voice for that character and deliver, finally, a believable, rounded, accurate portrait of a person on a stage. This is not entirely incorrect: In a utopian theatrical world, a playwright need not be homosexual to create a homosexual character; a playwright need not be heterosexual to create a heterosexual character.
But for much of the 20th century, heterosexual writers rarely wrote gay characters; rarer still were plays containing strong, dramatically engaging gay themes. There certainly are enough apparent examples to show it's not a total anomaly -- think Lillian Hellman ("Toys in the Attic"), Frank Marcus ("The Killing of Sister George"), Ruth and Augustus Goetz ("The Immoralist"), and Lee Blessing ("Thief River"); think Neil Simon ("The Gingerbread Lady"), Norman Mailer ("The Deer Park"), Diana Son ("Stop Kiss"), Mae West ("Pleasure Man"), David Rabe ("A Question of Mercy"), and Charles L. Mee ("Big Love"), too. But it has not been commonplace. And that is changing.
In "Big Bill," in fact, Gurney does more than simply develop a gay character. The quintessential American tennis player of the 20th century's opening half, William "Big Bill" Tilden, while worshipped by the public for his athletic prowess, was privately a closeted homosexual and perpetually tormented by it. Tilden's lifelong resistance to his self-identity clearly holds a great deal of dramaturgical allure for Gurney, and the way the playwright keys into Tilden's self-loathing -- culminating in two '40s-era incarcerations for sexual indiscretions with teenage boys -- is heightened by quick, cinematic scenes that cut across time and perspective.
And "Big Bill" is only one of several plays on New York stages presently in which straight playwrights -- or directors -- interface with gay main characters, or operate in plays in which homosexuality furnishes a driving theme.
At Wings Theatre, the Millennium Talent Group, the venue's resident troupe, for example, is reviving John Guare's "Six Degrees of Separation," running through May 1. The play, which won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and was later turned into a film starring Will Smith, is based on the exploits of the late David Hampton (named Paul in the play), a real-life con artist and gay African-American who insinuates himself into the lives of two wealthy New York art dealers by posing as the son of Sidney Poitier. While the play's themes of racial friction and class struggle are self-evident and undeniable plot elements, Paul's homosexuality, too, offers a powerful and underlying dramatic motor. And as if mirroring the gay-straight dynamic explored in the play, the revival is co-directed by Louis Reyes Cardenas, who is openly gay, and Sarah Rosenberg, who is straight. They are, in fact, co-artistic directors of the Millennium Talent Group.
"While homophobia is clearly a prevalent theme of 'Six Degrees,' " says Cardenas, "and although one might not just term it a 'gay play,' the play is certainly an indictment against a society that judges people because of their sexual orientation, which is why we felt it was perfect for a 'gay play' festival."
Adds Rosenberg, "John Guare explores all the masks all of society wears -- not just the masks homosexuals sometimes wear."
Because the co-directors collaborate on most projects, they assert there isn't much of a learning curve to their teamwork on "Six Degrees." But they do concede that working on this particular play, with its wide range of emotions and its discomfiting social questions, asks them each to bring at least a piece of their sexual identity to the directing table. "For me," says Rosenberg, "the most important line of the play is when Paul says, 'You have everything, I have nothing,' to these people that he's been fooling all along. It's beyond straight and gay -- or rich or poor, or black or white. It's the idea that this character can only celebrate his uniqueness, especially around these people, through sex. So the idea of our production is to heighten the homosexual themes a bit. Couple that with the heterosexual themes Guare has inherently in the play, and I think Lou and I are creating an overall kind of honesty everyone can relate to."
Cardenas says that while Guare, a white man who is long married, has created in Paul a memorable gay black character, "the actor who plays the role has a lot to do with how real, which is to say how well, the role ultimately gets played. I mean, Guare did write a brilliant play, but I think it's one play in which the actor really has to be the final ingredient; the brilliance comes just as much from the actor's interpretation as well as [Guare's] ability to write such a wonderfully precise play about a homosexual."
P.S.: Your Sexuality Is Dead
Uptown at the Director's Company's Theater 3, producer Bruce Robert Harris' SunnySpot Productions will present Gay Fest 2004, The Emerging Playwrights Series, a parade of original works by emerging playwrights connected to the gay community, throughout the month of May. During the festival's second week, one work, "P.S. 69," by Susan Jeremy and Mary Fulham (starring Jeremy, directed by Fulham), offers another take on how a creative team, gay and straight, bridges the orientation divide.
In this case, Jeremy says, the collaboration is intense -- she is openly gay, Fulham is decidedly straight. The piece, a 24-character one-woman show about a substitute teacher in the New York City public school system, is based on Jeremy's own experiences, but it was Fulham, she says, who drove a good deal of the writing process, being a playwright herself as well as a director.
"Before developing 'P.S. 69,' I had written a one-person show about my father, a '50s mambo dancer, about my relationship with fame. It wasn't really character-driven, it was more a monologue, and I hired Mary to focus it -- it became this wonderful show that toured the country. But for our second show we decided not to make it more about just me and my life. We felt we should tackle something offering social and political issues and, because I'm a comedian strong in character work, we felt housing a bunch of characters in a school would give them ample place to breathe and develop.
"At the time, 1998 and 1999, I was substitute teaching," she continued, "and I was in an environment I'd never been in before because I don't have children. I was seeing the inside of a school, all the politics that went on, and it was scary. Mary has two children in the system, so it was a coincidence that I started substitute teaching in her son's school. Three days a week I go to Mary's house after school and her son would verify it all."
They began with a central character who, while informed by Jeremy's experiences, isn't meant to directly represent her. And the central character, she adds, did not get developed with the specific intent of her being gay -- the fact winds up being revealed to the audience relatively late in the piece.
"The character is afraid of all aspects of the school system and she's easily bullied by people, so being gay -- but not out at school, where she can't be out, of course -- adds another layer of vulnerability. You know, kids asking, 'Are you married?' -- the piece involves many characters so different from just some woman who parades around wearing rainbow flags. Mary and I had a chance to make her straight, but that didn't work for the piece either. The point is, you have no sexuality in school; you're stripped of it because of children and neon lights. So you're more apt to be closeted in that environment. It's a play about a woman and these characters."
Jeremy portrays 24 characters in all, and it is through these various individuals that the woman, she says, "finds out how to express herself, finds her sense of self. And at that point she finds a love interest that happens to be a parent of one of the kids who gives her the most problems. It's a slice of life with the reality that you don't know who is gay and who is not."
And within those parameters, Jeremy says, both she and Fulham brought their experiences, gay and straight, to the writing process. "While I am gay and out in the community, when me and Mary teamed up to write this, sure, it was perhaps easier for her to make the character straight -- but then we realized this character would have been somebody in any school in any town. And again, her sexuality is not the point -- it's a layer revealed to the audience."
It was a true collaboration, she adds, in the sense that it was Jeremy's experiences and skill at characterization that inspired the piece but Fulham who lent them dramatic heft and appropriate structure.
Which doesn't mean there weren't moments when Fulham suggested a line, word, or moment that Jeremy resisted because it simply didn't seem, to her, true to life. "There's a man in the school who flirts with this woman. It's not like she doesn't notice or she's not flattered or she avoids it. It's that it's in the school -- no flirting at all is supposed to be going on. So a moment like that isn't about her being gay -- or the character being gay or Mary being straight. So much of the piece, I think, transcends all that."