Just entertainment
Very funny!
‘ ‘ What are affirmations? Affirmations are when
you lie to yourself until it's true."
— Linda Moakes
B Y ___ H O W I E
B A G G A D O N U T Z
ieve Marlin once said, “ Comedy isn’t
‘ That’s when you lie to yourself until it’s true,”
pretty.” But he’s a straight white guy, so
explains Moakes. Her work can be visionary
what does he know? Comedy is ruled by straight (“ The future isn’t what it used to be” ),
white guys. What about a gay or lesbian comic
scholarly (“ The Bible had no editors — if it
I have been known to be one — gay, not lesbian
had, that book would be a pamphlet” ), even
— on occasion, and believe me, it isn’t always
fearful (“ I’m going across the Bay bridge and
pretty; in fact, it can be downright ugly! That’s
somewhere I’m thinking, ‘Gosh dam, this is all
why I have the utmost respect for other funny
built by the lowest bidder’ ” ), but always
human.
homos who take to the stage. It’s tough making
a roomful of people laugh — unless, of course,
Like many of today’s top lesbian and gay
you ’re Tammy Faye Bakker. It seems to me that
comics, Moakes got her start at the Valencia
gay and lesbian comics are ail too few in
Rose nightclub in San Francisco in 1982. Critics
number, but among the ranks are two of
have praised her work as zany, spirited and
California’s best — Linda Moakes and Danny
inspiring, anti have described her as one of San
Williams, who will appear in Portland this
Francisco’s finest comedians. She’s honest,
month.
vulnerable, chic — her words, not mine — and
Linda Moakes, like most queer comics, it
very funny. And she believes in the power of
seems, started out as a teacher, seeing her
laughter. “ Just to laugh at anything is
students as “ hormones with legs.” She lasted
important,” she says. “ You sort of work your
five years with the “ puberts” before making a
body out in a kind of aerobic way when you
career change to landscape architecture, which,
laugh.”
in turn, got hertoSan Francisco, which, in turn,
Danny Williams is no slouch either when it
got her into West Coast spirituality, which, in
comes to making people laugh. An award
turn, got her into comedy — particularly com
winning comic, Williams has come a long way
edy about spirituality and the New Age. She’s
since taking to the stage at — where else? — the
one of a kind. How many other comics joke
Valencia Rose in 1982. At the time he was going
about affirmations? What are affirmations?
through a fag crisis of sorts — turning 30,
S
"Steel Kiss" opens Seattle's
Alice B. Theatre season
This play is halls-to-the-wall theater. Steel Kiss is
hard-hitting, heavy metal, all those great adjectives!'
‘
Steel Kiss is the work of Robin Fulford, a
Canadian playwright whose avowed betes
noires are the vicious little prejudices society
e was a faggot. He was there. That was
declines to take seriously. Director Nikki
enough.” Robin Fu I ford’s Steel Kiss,
chose it from several scripts offered her
based on a murder that ttx>k place in a park Appino
in
by
the
directors
of Alice B.
Toronto in 1985, opens Alice B. Theatre’s sixth
“ This play is balls-to-the-wall theater.” said
season on October 13.
Appino, a Seattle newcomer of national
Alice B Theatre, “ a gay and lesbian theatre
experience who will direct Eric Bogosian’s out
for all people,” is not just Seattle’s principal
rageous Drinking in America at Empty Space
storehouse of gay-themed theater, it is one of
later this fall. “Steel Kiss is hard-hitting, heavy
the Queen City’s proudest gay outreaches to
metal, all those great adjectives. The writing’s
benighted straights.
real good — crude and nasty, which will bring
And if all this is political, the chief aim is still
up reactions by itself. I have some problems
to entertain. The message is insidious. Straight
with the structure of the play, but it gives a
people are lulled into swallowing the pill of gay
director lots to do.
rights. And we all know how good for them that
will turn out to be.
“ There’s sex in it, too. There’s a cruising
B Y
IJV A N
H
M A R T I N S O N
% , • •
! A • »'
•
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B * • O
t
working in a hospital and being “ real
. . v ■ • . -
unhappy.” All that changed a minute after he
stepped on stage. A month later he had his first
paying job as a comic. Six years later, he’s
playing Portland. Success, it seems, has arrived.
One of Williams’s favorite targets is
fundamentalist Christians and their bigotry.
> >
This bothers some people who feel that
IP* •
Christians are sincere and that he shouldn’t
make fun of them. “ But Mussolini and Hitler
were sincere, and a lot of people are sincere,”
explains Williams. “ What am I supposed to do?
Invite them over for toast?” As for parents,
lX t'
Williams poses this interesting thought: “ What
do you do with parents who, if they weren’t
your parents, you wouldn’t ever even remotely
know them?” Lest he be considered one-sided,
Williams also targets gays. Consider this:
■
>
“ What’s a gay couple’s anniversary: the first
time they met, the first time they made love or
the day they moved in together?” Williams’s
answer: “ Yes.”
Like Moakes, Williams gets more out of
i doing comedy than just laughs. “ Comedy,” he
says, “ is a way of healing. It’s easing pain. I
want to make people feel better. I feel
incredibly lucky because I’m doing that.” Is
I . 'I f
Portland ready to be healed by Williams and
^ n ^ ^ ^ ^ a r s ^ r u n n in g . .
Moakes? I think so. See them.
Danny
‘ year for *hree y , t0 Portland}
Linda Moakes and Danny Williams will help
to celebrate Just Out's fifth anniversary. The
dynamic duo will appear in Portland on October
onOctober
J ■
unniversor^ 21,22 and 23, at 8 pm, at the Columbia Theater,
2021 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Tickets are $8 in
...............
|
I
advance at A Woman’s Place Bookstore, Music
Millennium and Just Out, and $9 at the door. •
.....
I
scene in the middle, nonverbal, much like a
dance.” Come to think of it, that’s just what
cruising in parks at night is like: a pavane, very
stately, with definite rules and nervous under
currents, like some complex rhythm.
“ What [Fulford] does really effectively,”
said Appino, “ is set up three sort of separate
worlds: the world of teenage boys in the park :
the world of gay men who cruise the park; and
then society.
“ We’re having discussions with the audience
after every performance, which is real
important. I have a feeling it’s going to bring up
lots of stuff .” This was certainly the case
recently when such discussions followed every
performance at A Contemporary Theater
of Steven Dietz’s play about outlaw white-
supremacist groups, God's Country.
Fulford, a straight man whose first play was
produced in 1982 by Buddies in Bad Times, a
gay Toronto company that also first presented
Steel Kiss, said, “ I try tochallenge people to be
more aware of what’s going on around them. I
think my plays are geared towards disturbing
people and making them think more.”
The four actors of Steel Kiss play characters
at all different levels of society, from the bigoted
kids to their victims to the uncaring parents and
role models. This calls for a great deal of intri
cate work from fairly young actors, and can
backfire in front of the wrong audience.
Officials at the school that the thugs of the
real-life incident had attended proposed bring
ing in classes of other teenagers to view the
play. With a gulp, Fulford and Buddies in Bad
Times agreed— and the kids saw the murderers
as figures to admire and emulate! (The murder
ers are now all on parole and in halfway houses.)
“ It opened my eyes,” said Fulford of the
experience. “ I come from a very nonviolent,
‘nice,’ WASP background, and I wonder what
my fascination with violence is.
‘ ‘I go through a process of sensitization
myself when I write a play, doing the research,
living the experiences. One of the things I love
about being a writer is that I get to put myself in
so many other people’s places. My life isn’t all
that interesting.”
So the plays, of course, are that much more
exciting. Steel Kiss, full of sex, violence and the
hypocrisy of society, plays through November 6
at the Little Theatre Off Broadway on Capitol
Hill. Call 206-32-ALICE (322-5423) for
details.
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281-7831
288-7831
1323 NE Broadway