June 11, 2011

Dawn before the summer gallery stroll. I think I’m as set up for I as I need to be.

Good production of The Glass Menagerie at NC Stage. Amanda was flawless. Some directorial or interpretive eccentricities, though new things must be tried so modern classics don’t become a kind of Chinese opera of received interpretations. JC and I did a panel discussion afterwards about the gay playwright. That was not the forum to get into it, but, if asked, I would have said that the time of the “gay playwright” is passed and I am not one. . . except for being gay and a playwright. . . a difficult concept to explain. What I aim for is an art where a gay character’s sexual identity is no more an issue than it is for Macbeth or Henry Higgins. The time of the how-heroic-it-is-to-come-out play or the we-are-all–girls-beneath-the-skin musical where the paramount of self-realization is to put on a bustier is gone, and I squirm when I have to sit through them. It’s like a black troupe thinking it must put on a minstrel show. Anyhow, we got through it, and had a drink across the street among all the rowdy 20 somethings. ID’s were being checked. The enormous tattooed bouncer scorned mine and said, “you’re great.” Those little daily heartbreaks. . . . .