JANUARY 1976
Shaker Show A Hit!
by Charles Stella
Anyone who was lucky enough to see Le Femme Jesters recently at the Shaker Club on Shaker Square must have been impressed by the verve and polish of this extremely talented quartet of female impersonators.
Someone who is seeing female impersonators for the first time spends the first few minutes trying to get the malefemale mixup out of his mind. That obstacle is soon overcome though, and one is just swept along by the sheer drive and professionalism of the group.
Jerri Daye, who is the show's emcee, holds this show together. His rapid-fire one liners ? keep things moving between numbers. Day has a quick mind that improvises well and he
(the similarity in looks and style is startling!) to the funniest turn of the evening as a drunken princess struggling through a taping of a TV commercial.
What the fourth member of the troupe, Ron Salem, lacks in drag he makes up for in intensity and comic inventiveness. He switches from one role to another easily and does several very funny solos.
The two high points of the act were a salute to "Hello Dolly" and a medley of songs built around "That's Entertainment." In the Dolly segment the audience is treated to the bonus of having facsimiles of this great show's three magnificent interpreters -Carol Channing, Barbara Streisand and Pearl Bailey on stage at the same time. Now that's entertainment!
Judging from the lengthy
HIGH GEAR
more information
Among the many organizations and councils which have voiced unqualified support for gay people's individual and civil rights are. the following:
1. The American Anthropological Association
2. The Lutheran Church in America
3. The American Library Association
4. Society of Friends
5. National Organization of Women
6. The American Personnel and Guidance Assoc.
7. Young Women's Christian Assoc. of the U.S.A.
8. Unitarian Universalist Association
9. American Psychiatric Association
10. American Bar Association
June, 1970
June, 1970
June, 1971
June, 1972
February, 1973 February, 1973 March, 1973 May, 1973
Dec. 1973
Dec. 1973
11. National Federation of Priests Council
March, 1974
12. American Federation of Teacher
March, 1974
13. National Education Association
July, 1974
14. American Psychological Association
Jan., 1975
15. The American Assoc., for the Advancement of Science 16. American Civil Liberties Union
Jan., 1975 April, 1975
The above list was compiled last summer by local activist, John Kelsey in the offices of the National Gay Task Force, Room 506, 80 Fifth Avenue, N.Y., N.Y. 10011. High Gear extends thanks to both.
Page 23
La Femme Jesters at Shaker
found it easy rapping with the Shaker Club patrons.
If the show has a star, it is probably Emore, a slinky and lithe figure who does showstopping impressions of Eartha Kitt, Shirley Bassey and Pearl Bailey. Emore is sex personified. Jessie DeVille shows good range in moving from a perfect take-off on Barbara Streisand
applause given the performers at every show, there's little doubt how the Shaker Club felt about Le Femme Jesters. In fact, the stars of the Bayou, Tiffany Jones and Tiffany Middlesex -and their boss Jerry Batal applauded the loudest the night they caught the show! Le Femme Jesters ringing success certainly calls for an encore in the near future.
Till Death Parts
a guest review by Mitchell Manigu
A Single Man, by Christopher Isherwood, Lancer Books, 1968)
(A Single Man, by Christopher Isherwood, Lancer Books, 1968) In The Advocate of December 17, 1975, Christopher Isherwood is reported to consider A Single Man the best of his ten novels. It is a novel deserving the attention of all gays, but it has merits that make it relevant to all readers.
While its theme of the problems of coping with loss and loneliness is universal, the novel's point of view is distinctly colored by the fact that George, the central character, is gay. In the one day that the story details, from wakening the awareness until sleep cuts conscious;ness and suggests strongly the inevitability of death, we are shown George reacting out on his gay nature.
The loss he is trying to face is the recent death of his lover, Jim. Jim has been the focus of George's life, and the par-
ticularly deep sense of bereavement George feels is projected by contrasting his feelings about Jim's death with those he experiences when he visits Doris, a friend, who lies dying in a hospital.
Part of his means of dealing with the loss of Jim is the attention he gives to his job as a professor of English at San Tomas State College. Work becomes a bulwark against loneliness, the source of George's sense of purpose in life; it does not, however, close off consciousness of his feelings. As he walks across the campus, George's reactions to the tennis players he passes are believably those of a gay man tuned in to This senses. As he teaches a class, his role as teacher predominates except when the material he is dealing with or a student's reaction reminds him that he perceives the world with a difference, both because of age and experience and because of his sexual preferences. In picturing the situation of a gay man in his late fifties, the novel forces us to consider some painful questions that younger gays, still heady with
gays' glorification of youth in recent years, prefer not to. face: What does it feel like to grow older gay? If the relationship with the lover survives the passage of time and the attraction of other potential lovers, how can the survivor deal with the inevitable death of the other? What responsibility does a gay person have to his gayness and, at the same time, to society as a whole?
A Single Man deals with situations that seem depressing, but its final flavor is positive in its bittersweetness because George's action reveal him to be a man committed to life as something valuable in itself. He contemplates death; he suffers the pains brought by losing someone beloved to death; but he remains aware of the compensations that life offers in memories of love shared, in friendship given and received, and in the pleasure of observing the bond of love between others. A Single Man seems, unfortunately, to be out of print now, but it is worth a trip to the library or to browse through a friend's bookshelves.