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GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE FEBRUARY 26, 1999

EVENINGS OUT

Reaching out to connect with anyone in the world

by Kaizaad Kotwal

Columbus-One of the clichés of the post-Industrial Revolution era has been that the world is constantly getting smaller. The more the world shrinks, the further alienated we seem to become from each other. The wider those chasms become, the stronger the longing to find those rare and lasting connections.

John Guare has written the ideal play about such existential angst in his meditation Six Degrees of Separation. Before it was a movie with Stockard Channing, Donald Sutherland and Will Smith, it was a hit Broadway play. Reality Theatre in Columbus is presenting the first semiprofessional production of Guare's masterpiece in March.

Guare's explorations of the loneliness of the human condition are poignantly summed up by Ouisa, a socialite married to art dealer Flan.

"I read somewhere that everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people, Ouisa says. "Six degrees of separation. Between us and everybody else on this planet. I am bound to everyone on this planet by a trail of six people. It's a profound thought."

While Guare's play is indeed profound

on many levels, it is also a smartly funny play and bound to deeply move its audiences. Frank Barnhart, who is directing Six Degrees for Reality, says that it is exactly this that attracted him to the play in the first place.

"I've always liked the play on several levels as it deals with coming to terms with who we are as individuals," Barnhart said. "Guare grapples with who we are inside as opposed to who we are in public, and what you see is not often what you get."

The play, with cinematic swiftness and theatrical élan, tells the story of Paul, a young con artist who comes to Ouisa and Flan's Manhattan apartment pretending that he is the once-abandoned son of AfricanAmerican screen legend Sidney Poitier.

Ouisa and Flan's world revolves around the wheeling and dealing of art masterpieces. In the process of letting Paul into their lives, Ouisa and Flan's existences are turned upside down and what once seemed ideal begins to unfurl as a big sham.

Elaine Miracle, a veteran actress on the Columbus stage, talked eagerly about playing Ouisa, "a plum part for a woman over 40." Miracle shares much of Barnhart's enthusiasm about Six Degrees.

"All of these people start out life with something they wanted, a sort of idealism

and it has become something different, more complicated," Miracle explained.

Miracle said she strongly identifies with the character of Ouisa "because like her, I too am a mother, and the play deals with the idealization of how we want our kids to turn out and how they actually end up. Ouisa wants to reach out and connect because she feels deeply for people and genuinely cares about people."

The play in some ways is about these characters being forced to seek a return to simplicity, to an original innocence that has been lost in their hustle and hurry worlds. Their catalyst on this journey is Paul, a gay man who longs for a real connection to any human being.

Paul is from the other side of the tracks, so to speak, and he comes into these people's lives just for the sake of being with them. Ouisa and Flan's worlds are about connections and relations that stem from everyone wanting something out of them; their children, their business associates, their colleagues. Paul simply wants to connect at a human level and he manages to completely transform their lives, especially Ouisa's, where towards the end of the play she concludes that Paul has "given me more in one night than they have in my entire life.” "It is rare for a play that deals with so

many issues, sexuality, race, gender, class, generation gaps, that it doesn't become preachy and doesn't linger too long on any one issue," Barnhart said.

But what makes this deeply human and complex exploration so unique, according to both Barnhart and Miracle, is that Guare catapults us into their lives with comic genius. One of the play's most pleasing and hilarious ongoing gags is a brutal skewering of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Cats.

"People in the audience will find different things that will appeal to them individually," Miracle said. Barnhart chimed in that "the play allows you take away what you want to."

Guare's play is terrifyingly poignant as he reminds us that we have one life to live and if we exist purely behind masks, then real connections become impossible and improbable. And while Guare's characters are stuck in worlds that seem out of touch and out of step, as he unmasks them they become human, connected and lovable.

"You end up liking all these characters," Miracle said, "or you come away saying 'I know people like that"."

Six Degrees of Separation will appear at the Reality Theatre in Columbus from March 4 27. For ticket information and showtimes, call 614-294-7541.

TV show has trans musicians, 'Bi 101' and Baldwin

by John Catania

America's gay and lesbian newsmagazine series In the Life returns to national public television with six all-new stories for its February-March episode.

Host Katherine Linton will be joined by correspondents Jonathan Capehart, Tanya Barfield, Paul Mueller, and transgendered author Kate Bornstein on the season premiere program.

The program begins with a segment titled "To be black and gay in the age of AIDS."

While AIDS cases in general have decreased nationwide, the disease is still continuing to affect the African American community in epidemic proportions. This story will look into the reasons for this alarming trend and what is being done to combat it.

"It's a national shame and human tragedy that AIDS in America has been allowed to become blacker, browner, younger and more female," says Philip Hilton, vice president of the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS.

The segment "Bisexuality 101" focuses on the burgeoning bisexual visibility and the misconceptions both gays and straights have about bisexuals.

Robin Margolis, author of Bisexuality: A Practical Guide says, "When you're bisexual and you come out, first you have all the problems in the straight culture that gays have: child custody battles, legal discrimina-

tion, job loss, and threats of violence. But when you enter the gay culture as a bisexual, you don't get immediate and unqualified support."

Also interviewed in this segment are Dr. Fritz Klein, author of The Bisexual Option, and Loraine Hutchins, author of Bi Any Other Name.

“Transgendered Musicians—Making Music, Making Changes" profiles three very different musicians with one important thing

in common: Billy Tipton, the jazz band leader who lived his life as a man and who was upon his death discovered to be a biological woman; transsexual heavy metal musician Christine Beatty; and classical pianist Sara Davis Buechner, formerly David. "The most important thing to be understood about trans people is that they are not being who they're not, they're being who they are," said transgender activist Jamison Green. "Billy [Tipton] described himself as a musician and a man the most important thing about honoring Billy is not to take

Billy Tipton

those identities away from him,"

In the segment "Ms. Baldwin Goes to Washington," newlyelected Rep. Tammy Baldwin says, "One of the sayings that we repeated over and over in the campaign was the famous quote from anthropologist Margaret Mead: 'Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful and committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.'" She is the only open lesbian in Congress, and her election marked the first time that an openly gay or lesbian non-incumbent has won federal office.

A segment on "Ethnic Parades— Crossing Lines" focuses on emerg-

The Chicago ensemble A Real Read addresses the African-American LGBT experience.

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ing gay and lesbian ethnic groups who have tried to march in ethnic parades with mixed reception: among them the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization in New York's St. Patrick's Day Parade; the South Asian Lesbian and Gay Association in New York's India Day Parade; and Kilawin Kolektibo, a lesbian Filipina collective, in New York's Philippine Independence Day Parade.

The last segment on the season premiere show is titled "Stop Kiss at the Public."

Stop Kiss has become one of the brightest off-Broadway offerings of the season. This sold-out, universally lauded play by Asian playwright Diane Son holds at its center the brutal beating of Sara (Sandra Oh), after she and Callie (Friends regular Jessica Hecht)

The South Asian Lesbian and Gay Association gets ready to march in New York's India Day parade.

are caught kissing-their first kiss on a park bench in Greenwich Village.

The play follows the budding relationship of Sara and Callie as they discover they are in love, even though neither had ever considered a lesbian relationship as a possibility in their lives. This realization and the juxtaposition of the gaybashing of Sara make this a compelling offering from New York's Public Theater.

The season premiere of In the Life will air in Cleveland on Tuesday, March 2 at 11:00 pm on WNEO-WEAO channels 45 and 49 in Akron, Youngstown and Alliance, which is also seen on most Cleveland area cable systems. WQLN channel 54 in Erie, Pa. will air the show at 11 pm on Sunday, March 28. A complete list of airdates and more information can be found on the Internet at www.inthelifetv.org.

John Catania is the director of communications for In the Life.