GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

DECEMBER 6, 1996

Evenings Out

These boys are definitely not in the band

A group of gay men are having a party. But it's 1996, they're happy, and they're nude.

by Doreen Cudnik

Party, a rollicking look at gay life by Chicago playwright David Dillon, makes its Ohio debut on Thursday, December 5 at the Reality Theatre in Columbus.

The play revolves around seven gay men, ranging in age from their early twenties to mid-thirties, who are the best of friends. Each month, they get together to have a party, which in addition to the usual gossip, laughter, drinking, and eating, includes playing a game.

The game that gets suggested on this particular occasion is called Fact or Fantasy, a game that director Frank Barnhart calls “Truth or Dare with a twist." The action takes place in the apartment of Kevin (Ross Shirley), a university theatre professor, and a character that Shirley describes as "the everyman of the gay world."

"He tries to be the perfect host, he's doing relatively well in his profession," Shirley said. "He's the most stable and ordinary of the bunch."

As the evening and the game unfolds, the players peel back the layers to expose previously unseen elements of their personalities. As the figurative layers are removed, so too are the characters' clothes, and much of the play is performed in the nude.

This presented Barnhart with an interesting casting challenge, trying to find seven actors who possesed a flair for comedy while at the same time being bold enough to strip down to the bare essentials.

"I thought [the play] was going to be difficult to cast, but actually it wasn't," Barnhart said. "I was lucky that I did not have a lot of people audition, but the people that did audition were very good performers and willing to do the show."

There were two things that Barnhart took into account when casting the show.

"Because the performers are nude, it was important to me, and from the point of view of the audience, that esthetically, [the actors] be people you would want to look at with no clothes on," he said. "But at the same time, they needed to be good performers, because the play itself is very well written and there's a lot of humor in it, so comic timing and delivery is very important. You can't just have nice looking bodies, you also have people who are good actors."

Barnhart also said that it was important to be realistic when casting, taking his casting cucs from the off-Broadway production in

New York.

"They cast very average-looking, attractive men. They were not seven gods on stage, they're not musclebound and all that, beCause that's not someone that the audience Can relate to. We can't relate to seven friends who also happen to be the most gorgeous hunks could ever lay your eyes on, the odds of that happening are very slim."

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The nudity was no problem for Columbus actor Joey Landwehr, perhaps best remembered for his recent role as "Buzz" in CATCO's production of Terrence McNally's Love! Valor! Compassion!

"I decided that since I was cast in Two Boys in a Bed (on a Cold Winter's Night), which had nudity in it, and Love! Valour!, which had nudity in it, that this role would be a nice rounding off of my nude roles," he laughed.

"I was nervous about the nudity, but my desire to work superceded my fear of exposure," Shirley added. "It's not nearly as traumatic as I thought it would be. In the gay community, where there is so much emphasis on the body beautiful, there are those of us who are just regular people who experience the same things that [these characters] do. Being naked frees them up to really show us who they are."

Shirley and Landwehr were also excited about their roles in Party because

it gave them an opportunity to work with director Barnhart, an individual they both admire. Barnhart was the other "Boy in a Bed" along with Landwehr in the Reality Theatre production, and he was Jeffrey to Landwehr's Darius when Reality did that play.

"Frank is wonderful," Landwehr said. "I've never worked with him as a director, so this will be a first."

Both actors credit Barnhart with bringing recognition to the thriving gay theatre community in Columbus.

"He's taken gay theater and said, 'You're just going to have to listen to it'," Landwehr said. "There are so few really credible gay theatre's around and Reality is definitely up there with the best of them."

"I was really attracted to the company, and I'm very much attracted to the kind of confrontational, experimental theater that I definitely think Reality is a part of," Shirley added. "I don't think Reality is interested in playing it safe, and that's what I like about them. I think Columbus has a great potential to be a hot little theater town, an arts town. There is a thriving, growing theater community here."

Don't come to the theater expecting too much of an intellectual challenge if you're coming to see Party, but be prepared to laugh and have a good time.

"Party is just a time to celebrate being gay," Landwehr said. “It's time to celebrate who we are and just allowing it to be. There's not a lot of deep overtones and beating people over the head with stuff, which I think is wonderful. It's been a long time since I've

FRANK BARNHART

Reality Theatre' Brty rty Boy

been in a show where I can do that."

"The play itself does have a beginning a middle and an end, but it is literally an hour and forty-five minutes out of these guys lives-nothing more, nothing less," Barnhart added. "There are no shocking revelations, there are no angry moments, none of those sorts of things, it's these seven guys getting together and having a good time. Tomorrow, they'll all wake up and go to their jobs and do what they were doing-nothing new has happened, nothing has changed. It's the type of show that I believe people will leave the theater laughing and remembering some of the funny lines, but they're not going to leave the theater, stop and get a cup of coffee and analyze the show."

Barnhart said that Dillon wrote the play to show audiences the lighter side of being gay.

"Although he enjoyed all the other gay plays that we were seeing (i.e. Love! Valour! and Angels in America, not to mention the morose Boys in the Band, which was also about a party), he felt that there were no plays that existed that just showed gay people getting together and having a good time. He said it always seemed that in the plays that existed they would get together, and then some serious things would happen. So he wrote Party."

The play was expected to have a very short run in Chicago, but ended up running for two years. It was so successful in Chicago that it moved off-Broadway and ran for almost a year there. Since that time it has been performed in major cities all over the country, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, and Detroit.

Barnhart said that the show has been very successful in other cities, and in fact, there hasn't been a city that it has run in where they have not extended it. "I'll be curious to see how well it does in Columbus. And we're hoping to pull people from all over the state."

Opening night, December 5, will be held as a benefit, with all proceeds going to Stonewall Union, the second such collaboration between Reality Theatre and the community center.

"Stonewall, over the years, has been a very supportive organization of Reality Theatre and has helped us out in many ways," Barnhart said. "We exist primarily from our box office, and a large percentage of our box office comes from the gay and lesbian population. We feel that it's very important to put something back into the community."

Even though the cast is comprised of men, Landwehr had some incentives to encourage women to come see the show.

"Well, for straight women, there's a bunch of gay men on stage. For lesbians, even though we're a bunch of gay men up there, it's still a celebration of who we are as a collective. And it's just a lot of fun. It's a play that you can just go and lay back, you don't have to do a lot of thinking, Just bring a date and enjoy yourself!"

Reality Theatre is located at 736 North Pearl Street in Columbus. Party will be performed every Thursday, Friday and Saturday from December 5 through December 28 at 8 pm. Tickets are $14 ($9 for students, differently abled, and seniors), and may be purchased by calling Reality at 614-2947541 or via e-mail RealityCol@aol.co

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