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Pterodactyls is a startling, funny, and horrifying farce

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SEPTEMBER 16, 1994 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 9

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An old friend drops in on Dale R. Van Niel and Joan Fuglewicz in Pterodactyls.

by Barry Daniels

Nicky Silvers' very gay black comedy, Pterodactyls, is the opening production of the Working Theatre's season. Craig Rich, who is sharing responsibilities of artistic director with Walter Grodzik, and who is directing the production, allowed me to attend an early run-through of the play and spoke with me about it after the rehearsal. Rich calls the play “startling, funny, and horrifying."

"It grabs hold of you and makes you laugh, and then, a beat later, it can totally surprise you and frighten you with its realistic qualities," Rich said.

When I call Pterodactyls "a farce with AIDS” or an "HIV-positive comedy," Rich notes that people have been asking him if the play is about AIDS. “I think AIDS is certainly one of the major threads that goes through the play," he says. "But I think it is more a play about denial and acceptance. The people in this play are denying who they are, are denying what they feel; they're denying the whole world around them."

"This is a comedy with a character who has AIDS," Rich continues. "It is a play that takes place in the age of AIDS. It is a farce that breaks down. All those layers and conventions and theatrical devices that make up

a farce are all there at the beginning. As the play progresses those layers are stripped away."

At 33, Nicky Silver is an up-and-coming playwright who has received attention for such works as Fat Men in Skirts, Free Will and Wanton Lust (Charles MacArthur Award for outstanding new play of 1993), and The Food Chain. When asked-in an interview for American Theatre-what he was trying to say by mixing the outrageously funny with the brutally honest in his work, Silver replied, "I think the world is a mix of the grotesque and the absurd. I'm really creating an accurate representation of the world as I see it; I'm just trying to be honest."

Speaking about Pterodactyls, he said, "The

characters-like all of us have learned to survive in this grotesque world of disfigurement and dysfunction through denial. Well that's fine, except now we have a situation, because of AIDS, where our denial could end up eliminating the species. As a culture, America condemned itself to be in this precarious state because we didn't care about the people who were dying to begin withthese were homosexuals, minorities, people of color, drug abusers, and we said, 'Well, good, let them die. Who cares, we'll weed out the race. It's Darwinism.' And then the next question is: 'Well, why didn't we care?'

"It seems to me that we didn't care because there is a basic flaw in ourselves, a lack of acceptance of ourselves as a culture, that makes us unable to care about others. And the thing is, pretending that someone is not what they are is the same as hating them for what they are. We have to see what someone is and accept them and love them as human beings, even if they don't live up to our moral code."

Pterodactyls was premiered to critical acclaim last fall at the Vineyard Theatre in New York. It exemplifies a very contemporary gay sensibility imagine a Philadelphia rewritten by a Generation X fag. The actors at Working Theatre are skilled in performing the extravagantly queer theatre of the late Charles Ludlam as well as the biting and polished wit of the late Harry Kondoleon. There is something of both these artists in Pterodactyls. In producing the play the Working Theatre is continuing its commitment to bringing us the best work of contemporary gay playwrights.

Pterodactyls is being co-produced by the Cleveland Public Theatre. It will be performed at the CPT main stage, September 16 through October 9; Thursday-Saturday at 8pm, Sunday at 2pm. Tickets are $12, $8 (students and seniors), and $5 (Thursdays). For reservations call 631-2727. A joint fundraiser benefitting both theatres will be held on Saturday, October 8. The 8 pm performance will be followed by a Transvestite Ball.

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