December 12, 2003 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 11

eveningsout

Playwright mixes humor and humanity in life and in art

by Kaizaad Kotwal

Columbus-Jeffrey Solomon was in town at the end of October for performances of his two one-man shows, both of which he had performed in Columbus in 2002 as part of the National GLBT Theatre Festival. Mother/Son and Santa Claus is Coming Out both display not only Solomon's virtuosity as a performer he plays multiple roles in both-but also his deftness as a comedic and dramatic writer.

Solomon sat down for an interview about his work, his life and himself at the Happy Greek restaurant in the Short North between a matinee of Mother/Son and an evening performance of Santa Claus is Coming Out. Chomping down on a Greek salad with fried calamari, Solomon set aside his tiredness and talked passionately about his plays, his performances and his politics.

Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Solomon moved to New York City to pursue dramatic writing at NYU where he also finally came out to himself.

"I knew something was different by the time I was twelve or thirteen," Solomon said of his homosexuality, "but at that age I didn't know what to call it." He came out to his mother at 24 and to his father two years later.

Solomon's Mother/Son, in which he plays both parts, Bradley Levi the son and Mindy Levi the mother, deals in detail with coming out to a parent. The play illustrates the turmoil and trauma of coming to terms with sexuality, not only as the gay person, but also as the parent of a gay child.

As Bradley seeks validation and acceptance, his mother too is searching for the same from her son, and in that, Solomon's one-man play is so much more than about just coming out. It is about navigating relationships through the often difficult, sometimes funny process of truly getting to know someone underneath the surface of it all.

Solomon's play and performance are filled with delightful highs and poignant lows, all encompassing the humanity of a mother and child who love each other deeply, but don't necessarily know how to always show it in discernable ways. The play ends beautifully with Bradley telling his dying mother over the phone how much she has meant to him.

"When I was a kid, and you sent me to Hebrew school," he tells her, "we had to, learn the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac, but no matter how many times they tried to explain the story to me I didn't get it. I said it was stupid. The idea that a parent would sacrifice their child was so totally incomprehensible to me, because I thought of you in the story, Mom. You were Abraham. And I was Isaac and God asked you to sacrifice your only child as a testament to your faith. And you refused. You shook your fist at God while you shielded me with your body, and you screamed at him: "How

Jeffrey Solomon

dare you!!!" And so great was your love for me, and so huge was your anger at anyone who would try to hurt me, that God got scared, Mom, and he backed down."

Solomon lost his mother, his Abraham, to a heart condition when she was only 53. "I didn't tell my mom what a good mother she had been," Solomon said, "but now I get to do it each time I perform and theatre is a great way to give my mom that validation after the fact."

Solomon's mother passed away in 1995 and two years later he debuted his play, a heartfelt homage to his mom and to all moms who have, in the end, loved their children unconditionally.

For Solomon, who is 37 today, there has been a fundamental change in the landscape for GLBT youth.

"When I was growing up all we had was Jack Tripper," he said, “and he was just pretending to be gay on Three's Company.”

"We were conditioned at a very early age," he continued, "not to talk about this part of our life."

In that, Solomon believes that even today, with a greater acceptance for GLBT people and their issues, there are still "so many stories yet to be told, so much yet to be explored."

Mother/Son has been performed all over the country and Solomon often takes it to colleges and high schools to help engender a dialogue about issues of family, sexuality and coming out. High school performances have been mostly in Massachusetts, Maine and New York, states "that are far along in terms of inclusion, ones that have gay-

straight alliances." College shows have been in most of the remaining states, except the Southeast.

"I intend to more actively pursue that area soon," Solomon said.

Santa Claus is Coming Out humorously explores the ways some groups manipulate that truth about homosexuality and use this misinformation in their propaganda.

The play is a laugh riot from start to finish. Solomon displays his virtuosity as a thespian, smoothly slipping in and out of over a dozen characters, male and female, gay and straight, very young and rather old. But the show also displays Solomon's great maturity as a satiric writer as he deftly mingles high camp and muted emotions with social awareness and political chutzpah.

Solomon does consider himself to be a political person.

"Growing up Jewish and with an understanding of the Holocaust," he said, "necessitated a somewhat political identity."

After his family moved from Hartford, Connecticut, to East Lyme where Solomon "became the minority," he was spat on after his bar mitzvah and called a "dirty Jew." It was such experiences that made it a "moral imperative" for him to become political.

Solomon's next work is a piece about immigrants seeking asylum in the U.S. because of persecution' against homosexuals in their home countries. He is traveling

around the U.S. to interview people who are currently seeking asylum.

I asked him if his mom would have liked his work if she could have seen it. "I think she would have loved it," he said. "My mother was always into poignant, weighty stuff and was always telling me to write something of substance."

At the end of the performance of Mother/Son that I saw, there was a talk back with Solomon. There, a middle-aged woman who had lost a young son to AIDS hugged him tightly and thanked him for the work he was doing. Solomon lost a lover to AIDS and some of that figures in Mother/Son.

Later an older gentleman, who had grown up in a very different era vis-a-vis gays, stood before Solomon, choking back the tears, as he told him of the near impossibility in his time of being able to be who he was with his family. There was a regret in his voice, but also a sense of hope for the generations that are coming after him. It was in these very personal moments that the power of Solomon's work became even more apparent to me.

Solomon currently resides in Philadephia with his partner of ten years, a surgeon, not unlike the partner Bradley finds in Mother/ Son. For more information about his work see www.jeffsolo.com.

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