OR.COLL.
. J96
no. £1
September
3, 1999
■mTfe&i
V olume 16 ♦ N umber 21 ♦ S eptember 3, 1999
P o rtla n d , O r e g o n
Coffeehouses
are no longer just
for bleary eyed
commuters, they’re a
source of community
The importance
of playing Oscar
Former Portlander
Michael Lasswell returns
from New York to present
Gross Indecency: The Three
Trials of Oscar Wilde
by
I’w
I
F l o r a S ussely
hile most people have heard of
the man, there are undoubtedly
some who haven’t a clue—
beyond the infamous flaunting of
his homosexuality in Victorian England—
why Oscar Wilde is famous. Though he
made important contributions to literature,
he preferred talking to writing, and it’s not
surprising that he made a drama of his life.
As Wilde wrote, with more accuracy
than humility: “I was a man who stood in
symbolic relation to the art and culture of
my age. I awoke the imagination of my
century so that it created myth and legend
around me.” In
"Although he was order to stand out
in Victorian cub
on trial fo r his
ture, Wilde had
to stand against
sexual conduct,
it, and that he
Wilde really was
did with exces
persecuted fo r his sive flair.
A social gadfly
ideas about art
who wore outra
geous clothes
and m orality. "
made by theater
costumers, Wilde
— Michael Lasswell passed himself ofif
as an art critic
and aesthete, and built a reputation for
saying shocking things and doing amusing
ones.
Wilde’s century was the 19th. He died
in 1900, so it seems fitting at the end of
this century to revisit his legacy as a writer,
social commentator and early gay activist.
Speaking as the director, the set and
costume designer, and the actor who por
trays Wilde in Artists Reportory Theatre’s
September production, Michael Lasswell
believes the gay icon’s story is “so inexplic
able, it’s like the Holocaust.”
Wilde lived a bohemian lifestyle during
a very proper era. “He was very in your
face about not pretending to be ordinary,”
says Lasswell. “Although he was on trial
for his sexual conduct, Wilde really was
persecuted for his ideas about art and
morality.”
W
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