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.