Category Archives: Arts

Beebo Is Back!

Beebo_brinker BEEBO BRINKER!…in the form of the Beebo Brinker Chronicles, a wonderfully realized play by Kate Moira Ryan and Linda Chapman based on the estimable Ann Bannon‘s series of books (who. by the by, will be honored along with Malcolm Boyd and Mark Thompson at the Lammies this May in Los Angeles) …IS BACK!

That’s the good news. The bad news is it’s only around for ten weeks and this time it is live on stage at the 37 Arts Theater, 450 West 37th Street. Tickets are available here. Or you can call 212-307-4100 from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm.

This is a delicious evening of theater and LGBT history all rolled into fantastic performances and beautiful bodies. 01big_2 It’s sexy smart and fun. You may recall we wrote about this when we first saw it last October. Since then it’s been nominated for a GLAAD award.

All I can say is…nothing’s changed…it’s just gotten better!

ALL: A James Broughton Reading…

Broughton_all_cover For readers in the Bay Area, KPFA radio host, Jack Foley, and his wife, Adelle, will be giving a reading of  ALL: A James Broughton Reader, a White Crane Book, along with poet Katherine Hastings, at A Different Light in San Francisco, this Wednesday, March 5 at 7:30pm.

Hastings recently wrote of the book: ALL: A James Broughton Reader is an important book and offers us a unique experience, for it is, as Foley claims, “the very first book to allow the various aspects of Broughton’s complex personality to ‘sing’ to one another.” James Broughton was so vastly talented and led such an extraordinarily interesting life that one comes away from this gorgeous and excellently structured book wondering how we did without it. If you are familiar with James Broughton’s work, you already know you must have this book. If you have not experienced Broughton’s poetry, film or journals, treat yourself—you’re in for  “Big Joy.”

My dog Butters…

Captain_chaos OK…nothing particularly Gay, wise or cultured about this (ok…maybe a little), but I did a quick watercolor sketch of my beautiful dog Butters this weekend, and I wanted to share it. He’s an Anatolian shepherd…mostly. Butters_watercolor_2_3

(Perry…when he’s not restfully yearning towards his dog self, his secret identity is Captain Chaos and he wears this very cool aluminum foil mask…but mostly he rests.)

The Restless Yearning Towards My Self

SUNDAY MARCH 16, 2008 @ 3PM
Announcing the World Premiere of

The restless yearning

towards my Self

A Musical Collaboration
and a Transformative Work in Healing the Heart


“I see it as I am rowing on the dark waters

towards a rock, large and bright—like a moon,

rigged, distant, rising at the end.
It is that marker, moorage, beckoning;
I dreamed of it in the cold, my body rolled,

amphibian-soft, primitive as defense….”

from The Restless Yearning Towards My Self, Perry Brass.

Most people take many detours in the course of their lives, as they follow their goals and ambitions, often finding themselves detracted by a confusion of byways and misleading directions.

But at the center of their actions (and themselves), lies a psychic/emotional core, that they often lose sight of but the loss of which leaves them with an almost indelible sense of its absence. So, instead of re-discovering this core, they erect “impostors,” stand-ins for their real selves: bright, glowing public figures, of significance, certainly, to them and much of the outside world—while the real “Self,” that almost physical realization of the inner soul, still waits, until some moment of starkest Self recognition, which brings with it an almost uncontainable feeling of contentment and a much longed for, blessed unity.
   
“The restless yearning towards my Self” is about realizing this search, and finally achieving its goal, when the Self after years of denial recognizes and claims you; when the deepest part of you speaks to you, and offers you that genuine feeling of achievement and unity most of us seek. It is this great recognition that in many ways powers the most lasting of the Arts, and we have brought to life once more this recognition of the Self by merging the text of a starkly moving poem by poet/novelist Perry Brass (“The restless yearning towards my Self”) to music by opera composer Paula M. Kimper, scored for counter-tenor and string quartet.


This premiere will be part of

THE DISTAFF SIDE: WOMEN AT WORK:

DOWNTOWN MUSIC PRODUCTIONS
mimi stern-wolfe, artistic director
EAST VILLAGE CONCERT SERIES
St Marks in the Bowery  10th street and 2nd avenue
SUNDAY MARCH 16 @ 3PM
Restless Yearning will feature counter tenor Marshall Coid, and a string quartet. This piece lasts approximately 26 minutes.
Also on this program will be MADELEINE DRING (Trio for oboe, flute & piano); MARY CAROL WARWICK (premiere) (Viola Sonata); (Song: (Imagination) (Ilsa Gilbert ) Dan Strba (vla);  & Mimi Stern-Wolfe, piano.
MEIRA WARSHAUER (Aecha)  with Downtown Chamber Trio  A. Bolotowsky, fl;; Jeffrey  Hale, oboe; LAURA WOLFE, vocals and guitar with DAVE EGGAR:, cello; (Original songs); MIRA SPEKTOR, (Turn Around) ;Songs:  Maeve Hoglund, soprano.
Suggested donation: $10, 15;  information: dmpmimi@msn.com;; www.downtownmusicproductions.org; 212 477 1594

Ennis del Mar is dead – RIP Heath Ledger

Ennisledger Heath Ledger is dead.

The story is still breaking and the reasons or causes still unknown. I’m sure we’ll know more as the news media does it’s work of uncovering what can be uncovered.

My partner called me up to tell me the news. Feeling shocked I looked online while we talked to confirm what was true. Then I called Bo up and we talked about the loss. He told me the television stations in New York had broken in with the news.

Is this story right for a blog about Gay Wisdom?

Yes. I believe it is. Ledger wasn’t Gay but he was so successful in providing the film-watching world with one of the most nuanced, aching portrayals of a very real Gay man dealing with living openly and claiming his life — a portrayal we had never seen on the screen before on such a level. With that alone he may have singlehandedly (and with Jake Gyllenhall) provided a powerful service to the larger public about the realities of the homophobic, hetero-orthodoxy LGBT people live in day in and day out.

Beyond all the Brokeback jokes that flooded over us during the movie’s historic run and trophied success, there remained that simple story of these two men who found themselves in love, two men who struggled in a difficult period and place to carve out a loving space for themselves. This was the story that writer Annie Proulx had created to speak of the quiet lives of Gay ranchers she met while living in Wyoming. The critics raved:

"Both Mr. Ledger and Mr. Gyllenhaal make this anguished love story physically palpable. Mr. Ledger magically and mysteriously disappears beneath the skin of his lean, sinewy character. It is a screen performance, as good as the best of Marlon Brando and Sean Penn."  the film, critic Stephen Holden

"Ledger’s magnificent performance is an acting miracle. He seems to tear it from his insides. Ledger doesn’t just know how Ennis moves, speaks and listens; he knows how he breathes. To see him inhale the scent of a shirt hanging in Jack’s closet is to take measure of the pain of love lost."  the Rolling Stone’s, Peter Travers

In our 2006 White Crane interview with the writer Jeff Mann,:

I will remember Brokeback Mountain as one of the great films of my life. I don’t think any other mainstream movie has ever captured so many of my issues, my passions, and my fears. Most Gay [themed] films are about the urban experience, to which I can only partially relate. The fact that this film dealt with small town and rural experience really resonated with me, since I’ve spent most of my life in such settings. I thought the movie was beautifully filmed and finely acted, and I sympathized very strongly with both of the male protagonists.

Sure, one could look at Brokeback as yet another Hollywood Gay tragedy story, but I always felt it was an honest telling of a past (and for the majority of Gay people still trapped in less free places) and present reality we never see in the movies. And I can’t imagine a more heartwrenching portrayal of such an honest story.

I could go on and on about the portrayal but I think Andrew Hudson, who wrote a really amazing reflection on the movie for our 2006 Cowboy issue, nailed so much of the importance of the film and of Ledger’s amazing portrayal of Ennis.

A few excerpts then from Hudson’s writing:

One night in an upstate Wyoming bar, Annie Proulx noticed how a poor ranch hand in his late sixties looked with longing at the young cowboys playing pool. She wondered if he might be “country Gay,” and conceived “a story of destructive rural homophobia,” the tale of a love between two men shaped, forced by the mountain landscape’s “isolation and altitude,” by homophobic antipathy and denial. She rewrote her story over sixty times in the next months, as she got into a dialogue with her characters, determinedly hunted down the right words.

= = =

We end with the two shirts, but now Jack’s is enclosed inside Ennis’s, to say he lives on in Ennis’s heart. (This reversal was the brainchild of Heath Ledger, who to Annie Proulx “knew better than I did how Ennis felt and thought.”) As [the screenwriter] Larry McMurtry has said: when Ennis visits Jack’s parents, hears what Jack’s father says, finds the shirts in Jack’s room, it becomes a great movie, a tragedy — for he then realizes what he’s missed. We have seen his deep emotional turmoil, but he’s failed to grasp (what we have also seen): Jack’s enormous love for him (even during Jack’s unfaithfulness). We’ve heard Jack’s tender “it’s all right, it’s all right,” repeated in their second lovemaking; said in response to Ennis’s agony when he falls to his knees at the crux of their argument. We’ve felt Jack’s heart.

from Andrew Hudson’s "The Art of Brokeback Mountain", White Crane #68, Spring 2006.

Edward II

I had the immense pleasure of seeing an amazing play recently. What makes the pleasure all the more thrilling is that the play was written more than 400 years ago, by an ancestor who was nothing less than Shakespeare’s chief competition! As we plan the spring issue of White Crane on Ancestors, it was deeply satisfying to see this production made possible by no less than three major Gay allies or ancestors, Christopher Marlowe, Garland Wright and Edward II himself (kudos to the still with us — and with it! — Red Bull Artistic Director, Jesse Berger, too, of course!)

Starting with the historical Edward: he was the first "Prince of Wales." He is the king who established colleges in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge; he founded Cambridge’s King’s Hall in 1317 and gave Oxford’s Oriel College its royal charter in 1326. And yes, he did have a tendency to sort of ignore his "nobility" (pre-shadowing Whitman’s "working class camerado’s" by a couple of centuries) and run around with sexy, young minions. Marlowe took a collection of "favorites" and created the archetypal character of Piers Gaveston to represent Edward’s "proclivities." Companions had been brought over from France to teach the young prince how to be a gentleman. If they only knew. Ahhh…if we only knew.

Edward_iiThe late Garland Wright was the visionary director and a leading figure in both the New York theater scene and the regional theater movement in America, most famously as the Artistic Director of The Guthrie Theater. He died at the tragically young age of 52 while in the middle of preparing this production of Christopher Marlowe’s legendary Edward II. His commitment to Gay causes, particularly his opposition to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell brought him to an interest in Marlowe’s Edward.

There is no way I can improve on the review of the play in the NY Times and other places. Does it ring any bells to say this is the story of a leader whose lover distracts him from his duties, tells the story of sexual obsession, religious power and the intersection of the political and personal lives of a flawed leader. Throw in some church/state tensions and you might well be talking yesterday, not 400+ years ago. Add Queer As Folk’s blond boy Randy ("Justin") Harrison in a featured (and, I might add, impressive…newly hirsute-for-this-play Mr. Harrison is virtually unrecognizeable, "boy " no more…this man can act!) role, and you have a damned sexy and theatrically fascinating evening.

It is tempting (and wrong) to believe  that the modern GLBT civil rights movement is the first time a movement has attempted to upset the social order (and despite what the assimilationists would have you believe, this is what it’s about, dear ones) and create an alternative to traditional gender roles, definitions of sexuality and hierarchal power structures. It is bracing to realize that Marlowe was doing this 400 years ago, before there was any other word for who we are than "sodomy." There was no "Gay," no "homosexual," no "same-sex love." It was sodomy, plain and simple, and a clear demonstration of the implicit role church has played in statecraft since its earliest days.

Further, this is the story that first turned this writer off Mr. Mel Gibson, waaaay before his drunken, entitled, anti-Semitic outbursts. His gratuitous and flat out historically wrong-headed re-telling of the murder of Edward’s beloved, Piers Gaveston, in Braveheart, where Gibson has Edward’s father (who was dead before any of the gist of the story we know happened) throw Gaveston out of a tower to his death made Gibson persona non grata in my eyes. Hollywood’s traditional "kill the queer" has never been more distasteful to me than it was in that horrible movie.

But, back to happier stories…the king and his beloved frolic on a wildly sexy set, in costumes (and the tasteful lack thereof) that reinvents the whole "suit and tie" Shakespeare fad. This play is gripping, intellectually and visually, from the dimming of the lights to the last ovation.

In a word: Run, don’t walk, to see this play at the Red Bull Theater on 42nd Street. Its run has been extended through the end of January. This is a must-see.

Queer Spirit in Utah

Fellow_travelers_poster_sm From our friend and partner, Jerry Buie:

Recently I announced the birth of Queer Spirit as a reflection of a prayer and vision of bringing queer men together in community to explore the essence and nature of who we are in relationship to Spirit, stepping into new stories and creations of vibrant and magical living. During the birthing of Queer Spirit and with each month I am impressed how amazing and in what manner this vision has unfolded. It touches me deeply and moves me in a profound way that I want to share with you what has taken place.

We have a beautiful website that is growing and expanding with new articles and information: and a slick short video (with music by Moby) that is getting a lot of attention.

Three retreats have been held with another one scheduled in January 2008, and a strong possibility of a documentary/reality story about the retreats. We have monthly activities averaging about 12 men, with many new interested people at each event.

We are delighted to be in partnership with White Crane Institute which has been supportive in many ways, including making it possible for us to bring the Fellow Travelers Exhibit to Salt Lake, with photos by Mark Thompson. This exhibit is a celebration of gay history and the magic makers of today and yesterday. As a bonus thirty men attended a "Gay Soul Making" workshop with Mark Thompson.

This essence and spirit of Queer Spirit here in Utah is becoming a community movement and shift in community processing. It is nothing short of amazing, considering the social and political climate here. It really has been a process of turning it over to Spirit and following that intuition.

It is my continued prayer that this process and movement will continue to grow. That my queer brothers will show up hungry to embrace balance, spirit and community in a loving and intimate manner.

Joel Singer’s Art Site

Practising_angelsPracticing Angels

Our friend, Joel Singer, has his new website up and it’s wonderful. Joel is a photographer (and was poet and filmmaker James Broughton’s lover and partner for many years). Some of the images are based on Broughton titles ("Packing Up for Paradise"). There are pieces he calls "photages" and there are some fascinating cityscapes (you’ll never see a puddle in quite the same way again) and beautiful portraits. Singer has a poetic eye. Take a look.