GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE OCTOBER 28, 1994

An Acoustic Evening

With

Mary Chapin Carpenter

SPECIAL GUEST JOHN GORKA

Mary Chapin Carpenter's New Album

Stones In The Road

Available October 4th

November 16 State Theatre

Wednesday. 8 PM $24.75

PLAYHOUSE

* SQUARE

CENTER

WGAR

NCA

FM 99.5

Tickets available at Playhouse Square Center box office, all Advantix locations or charge by phone at (216) 241-6000. or toll-free

1-800-766-6048. ADVANTIX

EVERY SUNDAY

BRUNCH

11am-2pm Vodka Fountain

1962 East Gay Street Columbus, Ohio 614/224-7779

DOG

ENTERTAINMENT

Angels playwright Tony Kushner speaks at Kent

by Barry Daniels

Tony Kushner, the award-winning author of Angels in America, was the first speaker in the Guest of Honor Lecture Series at Kent State University on October 17.

Angels, Pulitzer Prize winner for drama in 1993, and whose two parts each won the Tony award for Best Play in 1993 and 1994, is currently in its second year on Broadway.

Tony Kushner

A national touring company has recently opened in Chicago and productions

are in process at re-

gional the-

atres in Atlanta, Seattle, San Francisco, and Hous-

ton. The play has also received more than a dozen international productions over the past year. This has made Kushner one of the most visible of gay authors.

Kushner is working on a number of projects including the screenplay of Angels which will be directed by Robert Altman with Kushner serving as an executive producer. His newest play, Slavs! (Thinking About the Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness), will open at the New York Theatre Workshop on November 25.

Kushner arrived on campus at Kent State in the mid-afternoon. He was wearing black jeans and a washed out red sweatshirt over a black tee-shirt. He has olive skin and very curly jet black hair and wears thick glasses. He is modest and charming and possesses a sharp wit and a lively intellect. He met informally with Robert Johnson and a few students from Johnson's Sociology of Gays and Lesbians course.

I was most impressed by Kushner's gentleness and eloquence in dealing with a question from a student about coming out to one's parents. Kushner immediately sensed the student's personal dilemma and responded to it. He spoke of his own experience and how he had felt his parents go through a period of "mourning" that eventually healed. After his mother's death he recalled finding a drawerful of books about coming out and being gay he had sent her. They were still in their envelopes; she had opened them, looked at the titles, then slipped the books unread back in their envelopes.

In the evening Kushner spoke to a full house in the Kiva Auditorium at the Student Center. Now in bow tie and jacket, he delivered an intellectually dense paper that was

The

clearly a draft for an important statement about theatre and politics. Since my time on campus is spent mostly in my own department, I was pleasantly surprised by the size of the audience and by its gayness. I'd been told by a graduate student at the afternoon meeting that there was a lot of homophobia on campus, but there were no protests of any kind during the evening.

Kushner defined himself as a "writer of political theatre," later clarifying that he was "a political theatre artist of the left." He made it clear his politics are derived from Marx and his aesthetics from Brecht. He believes that social change can be made to happen by a coalition of minorities who can work in opposition to the dominant capitalist ideology.

He began with a personal recollection of his introduction to theatre by his mother who performed as an amateur actor when he was growing up in Lake Charles, Louisiana. This led to his elaboration of the idea expressed in the feminist slogan, "the personal is political." He argued forcefully that every action we take, or don't take ("omission is commission"), is political and that the individualist position common in the U.S. is an evasion of this fact. "You can't make good politics without access to your soul," he said, adding that, "it is, in fact, the political that allows the personal to enter the world of struggle, change, growth and revolution."

Kushner used these ideas to launch an attack on the traditional realistic family drama so popular in this country. Isolating the personal, it reinforces our general refusal as a culture to engage in political discourse and action.

Kushner concluded with a discussion of his position as a "gay theatre artist." He reminded the audience of "the power of naming, the strength that rests in open declaration of who you are." The closet only weakens us as individuals and as a group.

The theatre he is trying to create is “fabulous," a term used by Queer Nation which is characterized by “irony, tragic history, defiance, genderfuck, and rapture." After a tribute to the late Charles Ludlam and his Theatre of the Ridiculous, Kushner argued the negative implications of our continuing to regard ourselves as "ridiculous." But he also warned that, "if we take ourselves too seriously, we cease to be gay." He is not an assimilationist. The fabulous encompasses rather than erases the ridiculous.

Kushner's own speaking persona is decidedly fabulous. He can quote Hegel, Marx and Walter Benjamin, and then joke that he hopes this is not crimping his chances for a date later in the evening. Throughout the presentation he never let the audience forget they were in the presence of a proud gay man, and an intellectual and artist who is brilliant, witty, bitchy, sexy, kind and, most importantly, committed to making social change.

22965 Lorain Rd.

Travel Place Fairview Park, OH. 44126

Specializing in Lesbian and Gay Travel

Join Our Family Abroad for fabulous vacations to EUROPE L/G P-Town Women's Week Oct. 12-17 L

Key West "Fantasy Fest" Oct. 27-31 L/G Heart of the West Fest Nov. 4-6 at the Hacienda Hotel in Las Vegas L Motorcoach Tours through the Grand Canyon / Arizona California L/G RSVP The Club Maeva Nov. 5-12 in Puerto Vallarta G Atlantis Punta Cana Nov. 5-12 G

Mardi Gras New Orleans Feb. 25 March 1, 1995 Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras Feb. 1995 Packages Available Book NOW for Christmas and Spring Break Air Travel

(800) 484-7858 ext. 1886

(216) 734-1886

Contact: Carol A. Beck (M-F 9am-5pm)