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HIGH GEAR

MAY 1976

Tim Tavcar:

On the Inside Looking Out

By Michael Madigan

When he gave his one-man show at Kennedy's Playhouse Square, on April 13th, Tim Tavcar kicked up his heels at a peculiar milestone. It is one with which theater folk are vitally familiar, one many of them stumble upon or trip over at best, or meet with some other inelegant gesture. It stands beside the road they walk. They know what it means, more than we in the gallery, because they walk that road and seek that mark without us. It stands on the height from which, only they know, the best of them finally survey their promised land.

Timothy J. Tavcar, arguably the most prominent self acknowledged gay person in Cleveland theater, knows and surveys. His remarkable triumph at the new cabaret named for playwright Kathleen Kennedy, before an elbow-to-elbow cross section of our town's performance-loving public, took him up the hill and showed him the view. was pretty impressive, pretty exhilarating. Tavcar, who doesn't require a stage for "presence," grabbed the concerted cheers of Playhouse Square's board chairperson, his parents, veteran stars and ordinary enthusiasts alike, super-straight and super-gay.

His program was carefully chosen and characteristic, most of the time sidestepping concert warhorses in favor of less wellknown gems, coming across as a special, personal education in the enjoyment of Tim Tavcar. Extra-shiny facets of his presentation, ones likely to remind many of the audience of him when they hear them again, were "Who Are You Know?" from Funny Girl, "Life Story" by Tennessee Williams, "Some Folks' Lives" by Paul Simon, "It Must Be So' from Candide, Lonely House" from Street Scene and "Being Alive" from Company. "They were the most

intensely personal," he says. And the most lovingly received.

He was accompanied by a trio of his friends -Marge Adler on biano, Ken Schworm on guitar and harmonica, and Michael Misiak on percussion..

-Tavcar's efforts and accomplishments before April 13th certainly have not been without victory, satisfaction and credit; and his hefty ambitions for even the next couple of months should cast larger and larger shadows as they materialize. But if the rarely exhaustible actor-singer-musi-

cian-author-composer-director enjoyed the magic confluence of experience and opportunity at any definable time, it was on that night. Fortune has been noticeably more appealing and predictable since then.

His personal promised land seems to have an especially mountainous terrain, by his own design. Before joining us for this interview, he was already zealously at work on organizing the Cleveland premiere of Claudio Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea (The Coronation of Poppea), a series of three performances at the Palace Theatre which will also mark the debut of his Cleveland Performance Group. He is producing and directing the fully realized, fully costumed opera, to be staged in the opulent Grand Hall of the Palace on successive Sundays, May 9th, 16th and 23rd at 3:30 p.m. It is a significant first for Cleveland, certainly deserving of the interest and patronage of High Gear readers who enjoy being dazzled while they support the arts in our town.

L'incoronazione di Poppea, composed in 1642 and given only rarely because of the elaborate production required, is based on the history of the emperor Nero by Tacitus. Its plot is concededly one of the most amoral and immoral in the history of opera. Vice triumphs

are

over virtue, evil over good, cruelty over compassion. Nero and his courtesan-wife Poppea the incarnation of corruption, and in their lust and selfish ambition they destroy all who cross their paths. Yet these hapless mortals work out their destinies in music of extraordinary eloquence and majestic power. Monteverdi, who is known today principally for his madrigals, motets and choral pieces, has lately achieved immense popularity with a broad range of music lovers because of the fascinating complexity and beauty of his work.

Tickets for L'Incoronazione di Poppea are priced at $5.50 and $3.50 with a $1.00 discount for students and senior citizens. They may be ordered by calling the Playhouse Square Association at 523-1755, purchased in advance at the Playhouse Square offices in the Keith Building, or purchased at the

door on the day of performance.

Although Tim Tavcar's further production plans are of interest to his old and new admirers, his principal reason for consenting to this interview was, gratifyingly, the chance to give us some copy that is "worth more thought than those vapid personality interviews you read in In Touch and After Dark," as he put it. Of course, we'll be sneaking a mention or two of his upcoming involvements and appearances in the text, as they turned up in conversation.

High Gear: As you can imagine, any feature that appears in High Gear has to play into the hands of the issues, so to speak. You are going to influence the thinking of the people who watch you perform, and if they know you're gay, they want a kind of clarifying viewpoint on all the mythology that surrounds the connection between gay people and the theater.

TIM TAVCAR: The first thing that comes to mind is what I hate to hear actors saying.. that it's an escape, a chance to do things on stage that you can't do in real life, using the character as a cover. But I guess escapism is basically healthy, as long as you don't overdo it. Beyond that, one of the strong attractions theater has for gay people is freedom of total self-expression. I've never felt constrained, except when I first came out, to be anything except what I am. That's an incredible feeling.

I keep a much lower profile at my non-theater job. There are people there who are aware that I'm gay and it's unusual for me to find that I'm working with people who aren't comfortable about that. But the degree of comfort depends on the individual.

HG: And the type of people you meet in the theater are more comfortable, generally?

TT: Not exactly. This might sound uncharitable, but I think that a lot of actors really don't care that much about what other people do or feel, so whether you're gay or straight couldn't concern them less. We need to spend a lot of energy on how we feel about ourselves. Sometimes there isn't that much left over.

HG: Does this tie in with the popular notion about a huge percentage of gays in the theater? Are you directing your judgment at them?

TT: No. Most people in the theater aren't there because of anything sexual at all. It's because they're emotionally outward, because they deal with emotions.

You submerge your life -you constantly are racking up fast experiences and emotional traumas to do a serious role. This does something to your normal ego. I once knew a girl who was a brilliant actress, who had absolutely no personality except for that of

the particular character she was playing at the time. She would change totally her entire, even her physical appearance, her behavior pattern would change constantly with whatever characters she was taking on. No one knew who she really

was.

The theater requires this of everyone, to a greater or lesser

extent. But being gay is no more of a guarantee that you'll behave that way than being straight is. As for popular

notions, there are no more gay theater people than there are gay school teachers.

GF: This seems to be prime discussion material among gay people, and it always results in contradiction. Recently I asked you: Why does everybody think there are so many gay people in the theater? Your first reaction is that was: Well, there are! And then you went on to say that the theater is not perceptably different from any other occupational or professional group.

TT: It's just more obvious. Everything in the theater is more obvious than anywhere else. It's larger than life. It has to be, to be seen.

The reason that people don't always say: Gosh, there seems to be so many straight people in the theater, is because straight people are commonplace and routine with the audience. When straightness is made larger than life, it doesn't seem to be, because straightness is always larger than life. That's the way we live. When the gay percentage of the population is made larger than life that's what's noticeable.

derstand, who starts these -so-and-so is gay" rumors about actors who are straight or whose proclivities can't be substantiated -gay people or straight people?

TT: A little of both. The straight person, the really straight, stereotypical straight person is likely to make that generalization about almost anyone. They just do, because they don't understand what the theater requires. Some actors encourage it without thinking by acting all the time, offstage or off the set, and they fit the well-known mold.

Some gay people, too, need heros, or fall in love with the actors' characters, and express this by laying claim to them. It's a cooperative effort.

HG: Are we protesting too much as far as this thing about a connection between gay people and the theater is concerned?

TT: I think so. It's obvious that gays have had a great deal of influence on theater. The very nature of the theater makes it benefit from both the gays who need to submerge themselves in other characters and the gays who need to speak out about their hurt and their rage. Although I object to implications that the theater itself has sexuality of any sort, I can certainly see the attraction -and I might go so far as to say that it's more the other way around, the theater is attracted to gay people. I had no trouble deciding to get into it.

in 1971 Tavcar was featured in

festival presentation of Aristophanes' The Birds at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., receiving critical acclaim and the Kennedy Center's award for distinguished achievement. His capacity for tirelessness and versatility became more apparent during the next two years as he combined his work in New Philadelphia and his continuing. academic schedule with a tour

HQ: People outside the theater seem eager enough to believe statements like that regardless of their accuracy -sometimes to the chagrin of actors who are really straight or at least don't care to have their sexuality tossed around in public. From what you can un* @vegye art arvonet one-philebom