GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE October 27, 2000

ELIZABETH

KELLEY

for STATE SENATE 22nd District

COMMITTED TO CHILDREN, WORKING FAMILIES, & SENIORS

As your State Senator I will fight to:

• Provide stable, long-term funding for our schools without raising taxes

• Promote basics for the 21st Century in our schools through a curriculum of fundamentals, smaller class sizes, reform of proficiency tests, and a strong introduction of high-tech skills • Provide prescription drugs and long-term care for our seniors

• Establish a Patient's Bill of Rights, which makes HMOs accountable to consumers

• End discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodation based on sexual orientation

www.elizabethkelley.org

Paid for by Friends of Elizabeth Kelley, David L. Rowthorn, Treasurer

1370 Ontario Ste. 800, Cleveland, OH 44113 (216) 502-1029 Fax (216) 621-0575

COUNTY RECORDER

PATRICK J. O'MALLEY

eveningsout

Two talented women in two very different solo works

by Anthony Glassman

Cleveland Public Theater explodes with the Solo Performer Festival, a series of oneperson performances already in progress. The two performers of most interest to Northeast Ohio's queer community, however, are still coming.

The first is Menopausal Gentleman by Peggy Shaw from New York City. She wrote the piece in collaboration with Rebecca Bayla Taichman, who also directs it.

Shaw presents a stunning gender-bending performance using stream-ofconsciousness monologue, stand-up comedy, and a bluesy lounge act to deliver a stunning view of life. The act incorporates lip-synching, dance, rap, and regular speech to discuss the trials and tribulations of menopause. It also covers every turning point in people's lives, from adolescence to death.

Reflecting on the erotic, absurd, and existential, but speaking as a 35-year-old man, Shaw, who is in her 50s, has won raves from the Boston Globe, the Irish Times, Village Voice, London Guardian, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

Shaw, a founding mem-

LEO ROSTEN

a five-week run in San Francisco, which was extended to seven weeks. Perhaps the easiest way to further describe it comes from Felder's own press materials:

"A clown with a secret recipe, a juggler with attitude playing on the classics, a nearly century-old Yiddish play with a twist that could make a hipster plotz, dykes on bikes with tykes on trikes, granddaughters of Bundists swaying with the Holy Torah at the

HOORAY YIDDISH!

ber of Split Britches theSara Felder ater troupe, has received

an Obie award. Her wit

and wisdom should appeal to queers of all ages with such tidbits as, "They say a lot of women get like men in menopause 'cause they grow a beard and get dried out. I guess that's their definition of 'man.' A hairy, dried-up woman.”

Shaw will be unleashing her madness Friday and Saturday, October 27 and 28, at 8 pm.

The following weekend, November 3 and 4, unleashes an altogether different type of lesbian on the Cleveland Public Theater stage: Sara Felder, a good Jewish girl, performs Schtick!, written by Felder and directed by Jayne Wenger.

The piece revolves around two people, a young Jewish immigrant and vaudevillian, and his queer performance artist descendant who reaches back to the dawn of the 20th century searching for her roots.

Schtick was originally commissioned for

LESBIAN

SEX

Western Wall. This is schtick: a piece, a bit, a comic routine. This is schtick: a prank, a bit of mischief, a devious trick."

Felder has worked to create a new queer Jewish aesthetic, combining an attitude that embraces change with love of millennia-old traditions that epitomizes the Jewish community in America and the queer community that is constantly searching for its roots, either because it is so diaphanous or because the people in it were forcibly separated from their families, their histories.

This work should be truly interesting, combining both the long-standing tradition of Yiddish theater with the emergent queer drama scene.

The Solo Performance Festival, intended to be an annual event, runs through November 5 at Cleveland Public Theater. The theater can be reached at 216-631-2727 or www.clevelandartists.net/cpt.

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