September 1,2 0 0 0 » •**3 1 Out on stage Don Horn’s triangle productions! keeps queer theater alive in Portland heatergt>ers in Portland ürf are familiar with the perpetually smiling, dark-haired man who greets them barefoot at every performance of a triangle by A n d y M an c ; hls productions! show. For more than 11 years, Don Horn has been the artistic managing director of triangle, hut few are aware the 45- year-old is also its founder. And in those 11 years, he’s managed to raise money for chari­ ties, inspire controversies at Fred Meyer, coax rock stars into disrobing and make a go of queer-friendly theater in a city with at least one decidedly unfriendly newspaper critic. Horn was horn in Ely, Nev., hut his family moved around the West, landing him in Port­ land during the mid-1970s. He originally had­ n’t been interested in stage work. “We lived on a farm,” he says with a laugh. “That was enough theater.” During his junior and senior year in high school, he did some acting but didn’t pursue it in college. He later married, but as the age of 30 neared, he became dissatisfied at home. “1 think a lot was happening in my life around 29, 30. It was an explorative time. I started doing theater again,” he notes, then adds with mock irony, “about the time I came as the opening act out.” He started as an actor— mainly in musi­ for the Rolling Stones. cals with such groups as the Firehouse, Port­ “I had this guy walk in, and land Civic Theater and Columbia Theatre he was fabulous. I thought he was Company— until 1989, when he wrote a play very raw and fun, and I didn’t know who he titled After the Rain. was. He said he was a rock star, and I said, ‘Yeah, The subject matter was about survivorship right, we all say that.’ Come to find out he was!" after AIDS, but Horn couldn’t find anyone to The notoriety from Bent and Beirut helped produce it. “So, I produced it myself and start­ galvanize Horn and triangle. “We had some­ ed triangle productions!" thing worth saying to the audience. People Looking back, Horn is mystified how he loved the show, but they also walked away with ever thought he could succeed. “I ran the box a knowledge of heterosexual AIDS.” office, did the sound, dressed one of the actors, In the following years, Horn produced many ran concessions and produced and wrote the gay-themed shows including Jeffrey, The Sum of show! Who would have thought? I just Us, Falsettos and The Kathy & Mo Show. “We thought, ‘I’m going to do it.’” pulled things out of a hat sometimes with no money,” he says. After the Rain sold out every performance, By taking his meager profits—and selling and—because of a fortuitous meeting at the his house— Horn and Myra Donnelley bought opening night’s Cascade AIDS Project bene­ fit— Horn soon was writing his second play, Tell a performance space on Belmont and trans­ formed it into Theater! Theatre! The space Momma Goodbye, which was performed at sev­ opened in 1996 with fixtures and seats from eral Portland venues. Shortly after, in 1990, he the classic Portland movie houses the Music licensed the rights to Charles Busch’s campy Box and Fox Theatre. Vampire Lesbians of Sodom. The first show was one of the earliest non- “I took it to the Clinton Street Theater, Broadway runs of Angels in America. “People and it sold out!" he says. “I didn’t know I was a laughed at me because they didn’t think I could producer, so it really surprised me that this pull it off,” says Horn, who recalls painting the thing sold and that I had a knack for this.” Vampire Lesbians also sparked triangle’s first homophobic incident. “Fred Meyer would not sell our tickets. They said ‘Vampire,’ ‘Lesbians’ and ‘Sodom’ all at once.” A Fred Meyer repre­ sentative told Horn the company only could sell the tickets under the name V.L.O .S. “I know people would walk into Fred Meyer and ask at the ticket counter, ‘Can 1 have that Lesbian show?’ just to provoke them. That was our first controversy,” Horn says. his summer, triangle productions! once In 1992, one of his shows was the victim of again clashed with its most persistent a hate crime. During the grim days of the Ore­ enemy. But this wasn’t an Oregon Citizens gon Citizens Alliance’s first Measure 9 foray, Alliance-identified hatemonger, it was Wil- Horn produced Bent, a hard-hitting show about lamette Week critic Steffen Silvis, a thorn in homosexuals in Nazi concentration camps. the side of many Portland theater companies. The OCA-fueled climate of hatred in Oregon Don Horn had reason to celebrate after affected Kith the play’s patrons and those who learning triangle would be receiving several didn’t dare see it. new grants: a multiyear $45,000 grant from "When I got to the theater one night, there the Collins Foundation, a $52,500 multiyear were swastikas painted outside,” Horn says, matching grant from Meyer Memorial Trust shuddering. Martin Sherman wrote a letter to and a $1,700 grant from the Oregon Arts The Oregonian, the cast and Horn, stating he Commission. Silvis—apparently not content couldn’t believe that 50 years after the Holo­ with writing negative reviews of triangle’s caust and 25 years after he wrote Bent, the output (until he was banned from all hatred portrayed in it still would be pertinent. shows), complaining to companies who Horn later produced Beirut, starring rocker Dan Reed, who just had closed a worldwide tour Overstepping bounds T The cast of Things You Shouldn’t Say Past Midnight gets very friendly lobby ceiling the same week the show opened. Since that time, he notes, triangle produc­ tions! has tried “to do at least a gay classic or a gay show every year that has some historical value, like Angels or Torch Song Trilogy .” But that doesn’t mean all of Horn’s shows are queer-oriented; in fact, he doesn’t consider tri­ angle a gay theater company. “I think we’re very gay-friendly— we are probably the safest place you get in theater in Portland,” he says, noting gay and lesbian cou­ ples often hold hands in his lobby and in his audiences. “You can be who you are here.. .almost every show has a gay character or a gay element to it.” The first show of the fall 2000 season, Things You Shouldn’t Say Past Midmght, is written by Portlander Peter Ackerman, an actor and screenwriter. The play follows three couples as their lives intertwine in what Horn calls “an American sex farce. It’s like a British sex farce but Americanized. It’s like Sex in the City —plus.” The show features a gay couple and inti- licensed Horn their plays or writing de­ scriptions of shows he never had seen— took it upon him­ self to call the three agencies, questioning the wisdom of giving the Don Horn — he’s astonished grants to an organization he deemed undeserving. “He asked them why they funded us," Horn says. “He asked why, on any merit, would they give money to triangle produc­ tions! I was astonished by that. He never came to me to talk about this. The successes we’ve had are because we’ve worked at it, mations of lesbianism and bisexuality among other char­ acters as well as some male and female nudity. “There’s a little bit for everybody in the show. We don’t exclude anybody.” Between Oct. 5 and 7, Horn will co­ produce the one-man show The Velocity of Gary (Not His Real Name) starring openly gay actor Danny Pintauro (Who's the Boss) followed by Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love and Broadway’s I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change. The holidays will bring A Gay Christmas Carol, which fea­ tures Marley and Scrooge as lovers, the three ghosts (Judy, Liza and Bette) and the Cra- chetts, a pair of lesbian lovers who want to be artificially inseminated for Christmas. The 2001 season will include Shirley Valen- tine, Songs for a New World, Veronica’s Position (dramatizing a bizarre New York group involv­ ing Elizabeth Taylor and Robert Mapplethorpe) and finally Howard Crabtree’s When Pigs Fly. Horn also promises a “gay pride series” from June to August. “There’s not a lot of gay theater in the North­ west,” he says. “I’m very proud that Portland has supported triangle all these years. We try to give patrons a very diverse type of theater, and we’re very blessed to have them come back to us.” ■ T hings Y ou S houldn ’ t S ay P ast M id ­ night runs through Sept. 30 at Theater! Theatre!, 3430 S.E . Belmont St. in Portland. For tickets call the box office, (503) 239-5919, or Fastixx. ANDY M angels is a Lmgtime Portland enter­ tainment uniter with three books arid hundreds of comic books and magazine articles to his credit. You can urite him at AMangelsSW@aol.com. not because we get it for free. “I don’t know what his vendetta is,” he continues. “I don’t know if it is ‘a vendetta.’ But it certainly is if you call the funders and inquire why they’re doing this and demand that they do something about it. There’s something more here than just ‘I don’t like what Don’s doing.”’ If he wants to review a triangle production, Silvis now must pay for his own ticket. But after his recent nonreview descriptions in Willamette Week misrepresented the contents of shows, Horn decided he’d had enough. “I finally said, ‘We’ve got to change this.’” Horn and his lawyer met with Willamette Week editor Mark Zusman about Silvis’ behavior. Although Zusman agreed some of the complaints have merit— including, according to a Business Journal article, the point that Silvis overstepped bounds in call­ ing the funding organizations— no examina­ tion, article or apology has been published in the paper to date.