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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 4, 2005)
40 J**St OUt » noyember 4.2005 eating DIVERSIONS ................ ▼................ eating Darcelle LXXV 5. jo to 9pm Tues limes 5 30 to 10pm Fri-Sat Idle iiitfif lounge on weekend* Violet’s Café 5204 NE Sacramento at 52nd & Sandy Blvd Open 7am-2pm Thursday-Monday “Before there was the Pearl District, there was Darcelle. Darcelle is Portland’s original pearl,” a fan once commented. And the pearl is turning 75 on Nov. 16. That evening there will he a party to end all parties at Melody Ballroom with entertainment provided by Tony Award nominee Sharon McKnight, pianist Michael Allen Harrison and the Sonny Hess Band. There will also be dancing, food and cake. “I hope the cake is 5 feet tall,” Darcelle jokes. “I don’t want a flat cake. You can’t see it from across the room!” The drag legend has been entertaining, involved with gay causes and raising money for charities for more than 35 years, having served as Rose Empress XV in 1972. Last month, he and Rose Empress XLIV Poison Waters made an appearance at Lewis & Clark College for National Coming Out Day. “I was just standing there thinking, ‘Oh, my God, he’s 75, do these people even get it? ” Poison says. “The fact that he is 75 and still up there every night kicking his heels and doing his thing is amazing. I’m probably going to be feeble in the comer somewhere hoping that somebody feeds me.” Darcelle’s longevity is a testament to him and his attitude, notes Rose Emperor XXIII Kimberlee Van Patten. “He absolutely will not talk about going down. He just has a totally positive outlook.” Darcelle used to keep his age a secret, but that ended when he turned 60 and several of his closest friends placed two ads in The Oregonian: his birth certificate and a picture of him as a kid. After that, there was no turning back. He couldn’t claim to be 35 anymore. “It’s really exciting to celebrate his 75th birthday. He’s like the most celebrated queer in the state,” says Van Patten. “It’s going to be a great party and a great opportunity for us to show how much we love him and how much we appreciate all he has done for everybody.” The celebration will take place from 6 to 10 p.m. at 615 S.E. Alder St. Tickets are $20 from Darcelle XV Showplace. —Pat Young The songwriting for Taurero was “pain staking,” but Stitt got the results he wanted. It was “like squeezing blood from a rock,” he says, but “somehow these songs mean more to me. They were such a pain to write, (but) they’re at least worth my sweat and tears.” “Sweat and tears” would be the apt fluids: Songs like the title tune and “Runaway Mercury” ooze sex, while “Under the Water" and the Chopin-esque “The Walk/Gold, Silver” are contempla tive, delicate and tinged with melancholy. Stitt says his “whole world is tied up in my satisfaction with the music,” but in his downtime . he can be found indulging in karaoke at the Galaxy or, when not on the road, doing a day-job gig at Spartacus. (“They’ve been great to me, with my frequent traveling.”) This flirtatious, sexually charged performer is surprisingly mum about his love life, however, saying, “It’s been troubled and spotted in the past” and directing inquiring minds to his music for clues about his experiences in the relationship department. Stitt’s multifarious plans include reprising his stint as Hedwig in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, performing in Hair and scoring an original musical—all for the Perseverance Theatre in his hometown of Juneau, Alaska. But for now he is gearing up for his national Taurero tour, and he is eager to bring the songs to a live crowd. “What I love about the audience that comes to see me is that I never know what they’ll look like,” he says. “Young, old, gay, straight, boys, girls—I get a little bit of everything, and I prefer it that way.” Audiences can expect to be moved both above and below the belt. “Performance...is a lot like sex with a new partner,” Stitt says. “You’ve got to find, in real time, what turns the audience on...touch them, coax them, comfort them, whisper and get aggressive when it’s time. If you do it right, they’ll know you better than you know yourself by the time it’s over. And you’ll all feel that warm afterglow of a great moment shared.” Stitt performs 8 p.m. Nov. 19 at Mississippi Studios, 3939 N. Mississippi Ave. Tickets are $5 from 503-285-3895. —Christopher McQuain Wilde to his dying day “Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative,” observed Oscar Wilde. So it seems deliriously inspired that Jesus Christ finds salvation of the righteous an utter bore and chooses to appear as a Young Darcelle XV (left) will celebrate his 75th birthday Nov. 16 with longtime partner Roxy LeRoy. Gentleman, ready to escort the dying-but- unapologetic gay dramatist to Paradise. Blood, sweat and tears Or so it seems to Oscar on his deathbed in With the release of his new album, Taurero, Readers Theatre Repertory’s encore presenta Rory Stitt is set to be the Rose City’s premier tion of Goodbye Oscar 12:30 p.m. Nov. 9 at gay piano man. The record is stripped down (as Pacific Northwest College of Art, 1241 N.W. Johnson St. The free, script-in-hand reading of is Stitt—check out the fetching shirtless CD this short play is part of the Forgiveness Project, sleeve photo), all of the songs performed live an international program fostering positive on the piano with lyrics—as he puts it—con social change by celebrating difference and cerning the intimate matters of “love, sex, overcoming division. death and all the tiny moments in between.” Rory Stitt will seduce concertgoers Nov. 19 at Mississippi Studios. * Neal Starbird, who turned us on last sum mer as a flaming Mephistopheles in Faust. Us. (Version 2.0), reprises the title role, a character he considers highly charged with emotional pain about relationships and love between two people. But Oscar, he says, is buoyed by enor mous self-respect, rising above indignities with decorum and grace. As an actor, Starbird says, “It’s the conflict between Oscar’s patience and desperation that I find really appealing.? Starbird, arguably the Portland gay commu nity’s favorite straight man onstage, has por trayed numerous queer characters. He’s observed cliché, “borderline offensive” stereo types ranging from butch to camp. But each extreme seemed off base to him. “They’re not honoring the circumstances of the character,” says Starbird, who acknowledges that his own approach has become more rooted in context than effect. “You got this,” he says, picking up his script, “and all you can do is what this suggests.” But whether Romulus Linney’s script sug gests forgiveness or acceptance is a complex conversation that may depend on viewers’ per ceptions. Linney has stated that “a good play should not validate the assumptions of the audience,” and Goodbye Oscar puts that philos ophy to test. Is homosexuality a sin that Christians should learn to forgive? Or is the point simply one of love and acceptance, leav ing the past in the past and putting assumptions of character aside? And what if this strange fel low who knows all about Oscar isn’t really Christ at all? Offstage, the Young Gentleman is easily rec ognized as Portland’s own mystic queer, Wade McCollum (One: The Musical). —Timothy Krause Saints go marching in Musician Michael Sanchez was 10 years old when he first played the trumpet and was a
