September 1
books
A generation later, the dancer has matured
In September,
the Light Changes
by Andrew Holleran
Hyperion, $23.95 hardcover
Reviewed by Bob Findle
When one thinks of gay literature, the name Andrew Holleran pops to mind in capital letters. It's a name attached to five selfworks and numerous multi-author collections that span more than 20 years of his (and our) gay life, starting in 1978 with the nowclassic Dancer from the Dance to his latest, In September, the Light Changes.
Holleran was among the first group of urban gay writers to chronicle postStonewall/pre-AIDS images and reach an eager market made up of gay men reveling in ever-growing freedoms and visibility in metro areas, and those living in the heartland looking for positive images not so handily available in small towns and hamlets.
Along with contemporaries Chris Cox, Robert Ferro, Michael Grumley, Felice Picano, Edmund White and George Whitmore, Holleran was part of the Violet Quill Club, a prolific band of writers joined in the late 1970s to promote gay literature.
Writing about his own experiences, either in first person or through characters, Holleran's choice of material has matured as he himself has; each work presenting, and encapsulating his findings as he changed from young New York party boy, to plague survivor, to suburbanite, to parental caretaker, to life after 50. A valuable body of work, indeed.
His first novel, the now 21-year-old Dancer from the Dance, told the story of preAIDS crazed urban gay life, with rampant drug use, promiscuity and absolute slavery
Andrew Holleran
to physical perfection.
Nights in Aruba, the second novel, finds characters settling down a bit, still wild about sex and boys, but also reflective about the bigger schemes of things-jobs, family, life away from the ghetto.
Next up, Ground Zero is a collection of 23 essays, many of which appeared in Christopher Street, a now-defunct gay literary magazine that flourished in the 1970s and '80s. AIDS, the medical condition, had arrived; AIDS, the acronym, forever becomes linked with the word gay; AIDS settled in to affect everything from the mundane to the sacred, and Holleran writes it from all angles.
With 1996's The Beauty of Men, Holleran dares to illuminate, with the harshness of a bare 150-watt light bulb, the price one has to pay for having the misfortune of growing old
in a culture that reviles age. The novel is dark, soaked in sadness and melancholy images of what it can be like to be gay, single and over 50, with desires for love and sex transformed into insurmountable tasks.
Now comes In September, the Light Changes, a collection of 16 lushly written, image-heavy stories that connects the young Holleran with the elder. There is the darkness of Beauty, but also the thrill of Dancer. Several stories contain moments that expose the joy of a successful sexual hunt.
From "Delancey Place": "Five minutes later we were undressed in his stifling basement apartment room, his lean, smooth body silvered by the light of his little refrigerator as he stood before it getting us a beer, and when he came to the bed on which I lay waiting for him, dappled with the light on Delancey Place that came through the shrubs outside his window, I thought I had never seen anything so beautiful in my life." Included are the longings for love that we all face in the dark of night at one time or another.
From "Blorts": "Four stubby candles, molded to their saucers with wax, lined the windowsill of the bedroom, like candles in a church; waiting for the person with whom I could celebrate the rites I had moved here to observe. I'd thought having my own apartment, freedom and youth would be all that was necessary to realize my dreams... the vast majority of evenings I went to bed alone, thinking there was something wrong, something about the city I was missing. That little moment of turning the light off, before going to sleep alone always seemed an admission of failure. The next day, I told myself, I would find Him. Meanwhile, the candles on the windowsills gathered dust.” Love's confusions and losses are cov-
Season begins with more theatres, more plays
Continued from facing page
of their Broadway show. The production will be directed by Jeff Blanchard, founder and artistic director of Cleveland's Cabaret Dada.
The Fine Arts Association is located at 38660 Mentor Ave. in Willoughby. Call 440951-6637 for ticket information.
Camp it up—over dinner
Who can resist the campy fun of Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical gem The King and I, now playing at Akron's Carousel Dinner Theatre through November 7.
Keith Brava, who plays the fictional King Mongkut of Siam for the fourth time in his theatrical career, has appeared in the films Amistad, True Lies, The Good Son and Malcolm X. Several children from the Cleveland and Akron community will appear in the cast as the King's children.
You'll surely walk away whistling some well-known tunes from the famous score, including "Whistle a Happy Tune," and "Getting to Know You."
For reservations and information, call the Carousel box office at 330-724-9855 or 800362-4100.
Also runs
While some upcoming shows don't have lesbian or gay themes, they reflect the tastes and interests of gay and lesbian artists that are out and active in the northeast Ohio theatre scene.
Two yuppies and a dog
"There are gay artists, and artists who happen to be gay. I fall in the latter category," said director Lester Thomas Shane.
"I'm also openly Jewish,” he added with a chuckle.
Shane is directing Sweet Phoebe, which opened Sept. 9 at Cleveland Public Theatre. The play is about a heterosexual yuppie couple whose lives fall apart while they are petsitting a friend's dog. The unpredictable be-
havior of the dog destroys the carefully controlled order of their lives, and eventually brings them to a crisis point.
"They have to learn to embrace chaos ultimately in order to rebuild," Shane said.
Shane explained that the play is about the consequences of imposing an artificial structure to make reality fit what one wants the world to be.
"If you build rules that stand in the way of a greater truth, it will eventually bring destruction," Shane said. “Only when you embrace the 'is-ness' of the world and it's imperfections and chaos, is there a chance at happiness.
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Sacred dances of Tibetan nuns
Cleveland Public Theatre will also present Tibetan Nuns of Kathmandu. As a practicing Buddhist, the theatre's openly gay producing director Randy Rollison took a special interest in this traveling spiritual performance.
The spirit of Tibet comes alive as eleven Buddhist nuns from the Khachoe Ghakyil Nunnery of Kathmandu perform colorful masked dances and harmonic chants in an evening that is part sacred worship, part dance, and part lesson on the role of women in the spiritual life of Tibet.
The nuns' performance, titled Women's Freedom and Spiritual Liberation: An Evening of Sacred Performance, will take place on two nights only-Friday, September 11 and Saturday, September 12 at 7 pm. Much of the performance will include religious practices previously unavailable to women. Because of the current suppression of religious freedom inside Tibet following the takeover by the Communist Chinese, many nuns have sought refuge at the nunnery. Because of the rapid increase in the population of the nunnery, the tour will also raise funds so that facilities at the nunnery can be expanded.
For tickets and reservation information to both shows, call Cleveland Public Theatre at 216-631-2727.
Four views on love
The Next Production Company, Theatre for Humanity, is the new kid on the block in Cleveland-area theatre. Co-founder Kristina J. Ferencie is an out lesbian and avid Cleveland Indians and Rockers fan with roots in the North Coast. She is currently the production coordinator and company manager for the Cleveland San Jose Ballet.
Ferencie will be directing The Next Production Company's Love and Arms, a collection of four one-act plays that takes a realistic look at love and romance. One of the four vignettes, Not Now, But Forever, debates the existence of a perfect and effortless love. Hair Shirts and Wedding Gowns tells a story of how people don't always marry for the right reasons. Depression over a failed relationship
THE BREWMASTER'S HOUSE
ered in "Petunias" and "The Man Who Got Away." Holleran returns to themes of aging, but this time adds in the saving grace of friendship in “Sunday Morning: Key West," but in "Amsterdam," writes of a friendship kept alive beyond its value. Death and dying are recurring themes throughout, but also there are passages that skewer the entrenched plastic-ness of gay life.
In "The Housesitter," a New York waiter relates: "I had two queens from California last month, standing in line one night waiting for a table, and one of them comes up and says to me: 'Can we go back to our room to get a sweater, and not lose our place in line? We're very cold because we don't have any body fat.'" And later, "they're so concerned with the right résumé, the right dog, the right amount of body fat-it's like the whole generation is art-directed."
September is not without its flaws. Some stories switch tone near the end to provide what reads to be an easy wrap-up on Holleran's part. In others, there is a sense of reading something you have already read in a previous Holleran work. Perhaps it is because love, connection and relationships of all kinds—desiring them, finding them, losing them—are themes he returns to again and again. And, really, can there ever be enough written about the matters of the gay heart?
Hopefully, Holleran does not think so, and will continue to write on these themes, providing us with the pleasure of reading vivid aspects of ourselves the good and the bad, and yes, the ugly.
Bob Findle is a Chronicle contributing writer living in San Diego, California.
motivates Mark Weston to contemplate suicide in Disregarding Tennyson, and The Tragedy of Cupid shows that even the god of love is not immune to relationship troubles. The play was written by Michael George Benson, who has made his home in Cleveland for the past eight years.
As a co-founder of The Next Production Company, Ferencie hopes it will provide an "avenue for connection, and an inroad towards tolerance, acceptance, and understanding for all."
The production of Love and Arms opens on Friday, September 10, and will run through September 26 at the Cleveland Black Box Theatre at Cabaret Dada, located at 1210 W. 6th Street in Cleveland's Warehouse District. For ticket information, call 216-696-4242.▼
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