The Plays I've Read This Week
Jan. 29th, 2025 11:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amado11) Bent by Martin Sherman.
I went to stay with my parents in the country last weekend at Rich's request; he wanted to do some stargazing. Unfortunately, I got outvoted on the "let's all go to the bookstore first" front, and due to various bad coincidences, I ended up out there in Amishville with nothing to read except my textbooks. So I searched for gay plays and/or plays that take place in Pennsylvania, and bought whatever I could find that had an ebook available. This was one of them. It follows Max, a gay conman from a wealthy family who is arrested and taken to Dachau during WWII.
It's a moving play, but I felt disconnected from it somehow. I think it might be better seen than read. Parts of it were extremely moving; the use of humor was unsettling, a perfect touch. But what took me out of it, I think, was the assertion that gay prisoners suffered more than Jews. You hear that a lot these days, and it's something I used to believe as well, especially after reading The Men in the Pink Triangle as a teen -- but, to be honest, my only argument for this was that Jews were released after the war and gay men were still considered criminals. After reading more about the war, and after talking to Prof. Roberts about the treatment of gay people, this assertion seems almost like a type of Holocaust denial to me.
The author is both gay and Jewish; he has every right to say gay men suffered more if he wants to. I discussed it with Shoshana to see what she thinks, and to sum it up, "You could ask 6 different Jews what they thought about this and you'd get 12 different opinions." Her opinion is that she understands why some Jews get frustrated with queer goyim amplifying the suffering of gay men over the suffering of Jews 100%; but as a queer Jew, she also gets frustrated with straight Jews erasing the fact that queer goyim suffered too.
2) In the Boom Boom Room by David Rabe
I adored this one. It's, iirc, a 70s play, set in the 60s, and it follows a teenage go-go dancer on her own in Philadelphia, working through the incest she suffered as a kid and self-destructing, getting into terrible relationships, searching for meaning and failing to find it. What charmed me was the incoherence of the dialogue, the pointed lack of educated introspection. One of the pitfalls of literature is that, on the rare occasion when a book focuses on a rural kid from an uneducated family, they're still an introspective, intelligent diamond in the rough. You don't get a whole lot of literature that features realistic non-intellectual types. I don't know what precisely the issue is. For some authors it might be a lack of respect; they don't find it worthwhile to dwell on people that they consider unintelligent. And for some, maybe most, it's because they were the diamond in the rough, and they want to write about what it was like to be a bookish, sensitive kid in an insensitive place. But Chrissy reminded me painfully of my best friend growing up, and I loved her.
Rich pointed out that Martin McDonagh does this well, too. It's been ages since I read a McDonagh play, but that was my impression as well. Stewart O'Nan nails it too, and that's why I connect with his books so deeply. But even he doesn't do it as well as Rabe!
3) Sagittarius Ponderosa by MJ Kaufman
A beautiful, more recent play that really hit me hard. It follows Archer, a closeted trans man who goes by Angela around his family. He's just moved back home after an unspecified setback, maybe related to his dad's failing health. The staging is brilliant imo: four sets, always on stage simultaneously, usually with something going on in all four: Mom and Pops' bedroom, the dining room right next to them, the forest with its big Ponderosa pine next to that, and Grandma's nursing home on the far edge. Dialogue and character interactions overlap and flow freely between these sets without being confusing. Metaphors, too, overlap and rebound upon each other.
Names, and how we choose them, are a prime focus here, but because this play is by a trans author, it's done ... so artfully, and without undue emphasis on Archer's journey. Instead we focus on his father, who's changing his own name in a desperate attempt to confuse Death and keep it at bay. Identities are fascinatingly fluid here; when Pops dies halfway through the play, his actor stays on stage, sometimes repeating Pops' dialogue from earlier in the play, sometimes handling a puppet named Peterson, who is romancing Grandma (Pops' mom!) and slowly starts to appear in Pops' own clothes! I was RAPT.
4) The Betterment Society by Mashuq Mushtaq Dee
If you were watching an episode of Glee where an obnoxious theater major read out his terrible, impractical, pretentious magnum opus, it would be this. But that actually doesn't mean it's bad. Just, admittedly, a LOT of elements here made me wince: actors steadily losing body parts throughout the play with seemingly no thought or direction for how the crew will achieve this effect; Gender Itself as a mute character comprised of three dancers in masks; vague staging directions that must have made the crew bite into their beanies and suppress a scream; and an ending that hinges on audience participation to work.
But...
The story follows Gertie, Lynette, and Doreen, three elderly women who live alone on a harsh unforgiving mountain and whose personalities, admittedly, seem ripped from Dorothy, Blanche, and Rose. The women can be played by either cis or trans women. Gertie is an old-school butch with an aggressive, somewhat stupid personality; she reads like an abusive husband from a sitcom sometimes. Doreen is the youngest, sweet and adventurous but also docile. Lynette is strong-willed and full of ideas -- early in the play, she suggests they form a Betterment Society, meeting regularly to learn new feminine skills like quilting, which Gertie disparages and Doreen enthusiastically embraces. Soon it's discovered that Lynette is pregnant, maybe Gertie's child, maybe a man's, and Gertie sells the child against Lynette's will to the Town down the mountain, buying them new blankets and propane for the winter.
This sets off the conflict for Act II (although, and this won't surprise you, this playwright doesn't do anything so conventional as Acts and Scenes). Lynette becomes cold and hard toward Gertie, understandably. But it's quite depressing to read, especially when Gertie gets sick and Lynette pays for treatment by selling off Gertie's legs and remaining fingers, robbing her of the ability to hunt or do chores and rendering her completely helpless, dependent on Lynette and Doreen's good will. Meanwhile, Doreen dreams of leaving the mountain and starts seeing Lil'ope, a himher (the three dancers in the mask) who might be the ghost of the baby, or might be a doll come to life, or might be Gender Itself.
At the end, Doreen addresses the audience, and Lil'ope enters the audience passing around a collection plate. Doreen sings an original song with a repeating line, "Come to the Edge," which is apparently meant to instruct the audience to get up and approach the stage. If they do, the play ends on a happy note, with Doreen realizing there IS something more than the mountain, and she DOES have the opportunity to leave. If the audience stays still, the ending is much darker. Doreen says, "I knew I was crazy," and retreats to the cabin, where she loads a gun and shoots Lil'ope dead.
I like the dark ending quite a bit. It brought me around to a favorable overall impression of the play ... especially since I imagine most audiences won't understand the song as a call to action. Still, writing it all out like this makes it sound even sillier and more pretentious than I thought!
5) Not read yet, but I just wanted to tell you -- I bought a collection of Mae West's plays from the 20s. I always get Mae West mixed up with Mae Questel... Anyway, West wrote plays, mostly under a pseudonym, and this compendium includes a queer play from 1927 called The Drag, about a young gay man hosting a drag ball while also dealing with a conversion therapist and a father who studies "inverts" as a doctor (possibly his dad IS a conversion therapist, I didn't read the description in full before I bought it).
I'm ... no stranger to queer lit from the 20s, or nonfiction about queer life in the 20s. I've loved the music and poetry of the 20s since I was a kid, too, so the frankness of that era, especially re: sexuality, is also not a surprise. But somehow it feels almost scary that this exists. Any thoughts on that?? I'm almost afraid to start it. Maybe, with the political situation right now, I'm sensing that this is gonna make me cry. To read something so modern, from a century ago, knowing how much we've regressed and progressed and regressed again -- that's going to hurt.
I went to stay with my parents in the country last weekend at Rich's request; he wanted to do some stargazing. Unfortunately, I got outvoted on the "let's all go to the bookstore first" front, and due to various bad coincidences, I ended up out there in Amishville with nothing to read except my textbooks. So I searched for gay plays and/or plays that take place in Pennsylvania, and bought whatever I could find that had an ebook available. This was one of them. It follows Max, a gay conman from a wealthy family who is arrested and taken to Dachau during WWII.
It's a moving play, but I felt disconnected from it somehow. I think it might be better seen than read. Parts of it were extremely moving; the use of humor was unsettling, a perfect touch. But what took me out of it, I think, was the assertion that gay prisoners suffered more than Jews. You hear that a lot these days, and it's something I used to believe as well, especially after reading The Men in the Pink Triangle as a teen -- but, to be honest, my only argument for this was that Jews were released after the war and gay men were still considered criminals. After reading more about the war, and after talking to Prof. Roberts about the treatment of gay people, this assertion seems almost like a type of Holocaust denial to me.
The author is both gay and Jewish; he has every right to say gay men suffered more if he wants to. I discussed it with Shoshana to see what she thinks, and to sum it up, "You could ask 6 different Jews what they thought about this and you'd get 12 different opinions." Her opinion is that she understands why some Jews get frustrated with queer goyim amplifying the suffering of gay men over the suffering of Jews 100%; but as a queer Jew, she also gets frustrated with straight Jews erasing the fact that queer goyim suffered too.
2) In the Boom Boom Room by David Rabe
I adored this one. It's, iirc, a 70s play, set in the 60s, and it follows a teenage go-go dancer on her own in Philadelphia, working through the incest she suffered as a kid and self-destructing, getting into terrible relationships, searching for meaning and failing to find it. What charmed me was the incoherence of the dialogue, the pointed lack of educated introspection. One of the pitfalls of literature is that, on the rare occasion when a book focuses on a rural kid from an uneducated family, they're still an introspective, intelligent diamond in the rough. You don't get a whole lot of literature that features realistic non-intellectual types. I don't know what precisely the issue is. For some authors it might be a lack of respect; they don't find it worthwhile to dwell on people that they consider unintelligent. And for some, maybe most, it's because they were the diamond in the rough, and they want to write about what it was like to be a bookish, sensitive kid in an insensitive place. But Chrissy reminded me painfully of my best friend growing up, and I loved her.
Rich pointed out that Martin McDonagh does this well, too. It's been ages since I read a McDonagh play, but that was my impression as well. Stewart O'Nan nails it too, and that's why I connect with his books so deeply. But even he doesn't do it as well as Rabe!
3) Sagittarius Ponderosa by MJ Kaufman
A beautiful, more recent play that really hit me hard. It follows Archer, a closeted trans man who goes by Angela around his family. He's just moved back home after an unspecified setback, maybe related to his dad's failing health. The staging is brilliant imo: four sets, always on stage simultaneously, usually with something going on in all four: Mom and Pops' bedroom, the dining room right next to them, the forest with its big Ponderosa pine next to that, and Grandma's nursing home on the far edge. Dialogue and character interactions overlap and flow freely between these sets without being confusing. Metaphors, too, overlap and rebound upon each other.
Names, and how we choose them, are a prime focus here, but because this play is by a trans author, it's done ... so artfully, and without undue emphasis on Archer's journey. Instead we focus on his father, who's changing his own name in a desperate attempt to confuse Death and keep it at bay. Identities are fascinatingly fluid here; when Pops dies halfway through the play, his actor stays on stage, sometimes repeating Pops' dialogue from earlier in the play, sometimes handling a puppet named Peterson, who is romancing Grandma (Pops' mom!) and slowly starts to appear in Pops' own clothes! I was RAPT.
4) The Betterment Society by Mashuq Mushtaq Dee
If you were watching an episode of Glee where an obnoxious theater major read out his terrible, impractical, pretentious magnum opus, it would be this. But that actually doesn't mean it's bad. Just, admittedly, a LOT of elements here made me wince: actors steadily losing body parts throughout the play with seemingly no thought or direction for how the crew will achieve this effect; Gender Itself as a mute character comprised of three dancers in masks; vague staging directions that must have made the crew bite into their beanies and suppress a scream; and an ending that hinges on audience participation to work.
But...
The story follows Gertie, Lynette, and Doreen, three elderly women who live alone on a harsh unforgiving mountain and whose personalities, admittedly, seem ripped from Dorothy, Blanche, and Rose. The women can be played by either cis or trans women. Gertie is an old-school butch with an aggressive, somewhat stupid personality; she reads like an abusive husband from a sitcom sometimes. Doreen is the youngest, sweet and adventurous but also docile. Lynette is strong-willed and full of ideas -- early in the play, she suggests they form a Betterment Society, meeting regularly to learn new feminine skills like quilting, which Gertie disparages and Doreen enthusiastically embraces. Soon it's discovered that Lynette is pregnant, maybe Gertie's child, maybe a man's, and Gertie sells the child against Lynette's will to the Town down the mountain, buying them new blankets and propane for the winter.
This sets off the conflict for Act II (although, and this won't surprise you, this playwright doesn't do anything so conventional as Acts and Scenes). Lynette becomes cold and hard toward Gertie, understandably. But it's quite depressing to read, especially when Gertie gets sick and Lynette pays for treatment by selling off Gertie's legs and remaining fingers, robbing her of the ability to hunt or do chores and rendering her completely helpless, dependent on Lynette and Doreen's good will. Meanwhile, Doreen dreams of leaving the mountain and starts seeing Lil'ope, a himher (the three dancers in the mask) who might be the ghost of the baby, or might be a doll come to life, or might be Gender Itself.
At the end, Doreen addresses the audience, and Lil'ope enters the audience passing around a collection plate. Doreen sings an original song with a repeating line, "Come to the Edge," which is apparently meant to instruct the audience to get up and approach the stage. If they do, the play ends on a happy note, with Doreen realizing there IS something more than the mountain, and she DOES have the opportunity to leave. If the audience stays still, the ending is much darker. Doreen says, "I knew I was crazy," and retreats to the cabin, where she loads a gun and shoots Lil'ope dead.
I like the dark ending quite a bit. It brought me around to a favorable overall impression of the play ... especially since I imagine most audiences won't understand the song as a call to action. Still, writing it all out like this makes it sound even sillier and more pretentious than I thought!
5) Not read yet, but I just wanted to tell you -- I bought a collection of Mae West's plays from the 20s. I always get Mae West mixed up with Mae Questel... Anyway, West wrote plays, mostly under a pseudonym, and this compendium includes a queer play from 1927 called The Drag, about a young gay man hosting a drag ball while also dealing with a conversion therapist and a father who studies "inverts" as a doctor (possibly his dad IS a conversion therapist, I didn't read the description in full before I bought it).
I'm ... no stranger to queer lit from the 20s, or nonfiction about queer life in the 20s. I've loved the music and poetry of the 20s since I was a kid, too, so the frankness of that era, especially re: sexuality, is also not a surprise. But somehow it feels almost scary that this exists. Any thoughts on that?? I'm almost afraid to start it. Maybe, with the political situation right now, I'm sensing that this is gonna make me cry. To read something so modern, from a century ago, knowing how much we've regressed and progressed and regressed again -- that's going to hurt.
