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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 19, 2007)
JANVWY19.ZOT7 JUStpUt, theater -I-------- ------------- — - H--------------- T IT - ! Ill" - - I - - The Boys in Their Outfits Gay playwright puts big ideas behind small-town men who play dress-up by Timothy Krause hortly after moving to Minneapolis in 2003, Jordan Harrison was commissioned by Commonweal Theatre Company in Lanesboro, Minn. They asked him to write a play that spoke directly to their tiny town and its history. When a friend tipped him off that Lanesboro’s little storefront museum held some fascinating photographs of a 1927 cross-dressing pageant, the playwright marched in and asked the docent where he might find the drag photos. Harrison says the woman looked at him as if he were speaking a foreign language and then said, “Oh, you mean the boys in their outfits.” His subsequent scenario of men who cast themselves in a period melodrama dressed in “fancy-type, women-type” costumes first caught the attention of Portland audiences at the 2005 Just Add Water/West Playwrights Festival. The new farce then was selected to open the highly regarded 2006 Humana Festival at Actors Theatre of Louisville, Ky. And now, some 80 years after the museum’s photos were taken, the men of Lanesboro once more step into skirts when Harrison’s Act a Lady opens in Portland. Contending that people are much more than the hough Jordan Harrison plans to be in Portland sum of their backgrounds, Act a Lady promises to for initial rehearsals and opening night of Act a speak to the woman in every man, the man in every Lady at Portland Center Stage, the Bainbridge woman and the magic of the theater to uncover Island, Wash., native who now lives in San Diego both. Reluctant to disclose too much of the story, is busy working on a musical adaptation of H.G. however, Harrison simply points to one example late Wells’ The Invisible Man. “It’s the first musical I’ve in the first act when the strapping leading man is ever written, and it’s romancing a sparkly makeup girl. “He’s about to been a pleasure to dis make his move to kiss her when he realizes he’s still cover that all those wearing his gown from rehearsal. And you can see hours of watching The that the makeup girl is fascinated by—and attracted Music Man and South to—the femininity that she’s bringing out of him. Pacific weren’t wast And he’s both excited and freaked out that it was ed! 1 think it helped waiting inside him all along." give me a sixth sense The inspirational event captured in those about what is best museum pictures was called a Womanless Wedding, sung rather than and Harrison learned that they weren’t uncommon spoken.” occasions in the Midwest and South during rhe first He’s also research half of the 20th century. Producers would go from ing a play commis town to town, recruiting prominent men—from sioned for South Coast mayors to firefighters to teachers—to put on a Rep in Costa Mesa, Calif., about the history of typog grand show. And what immediately struck him raphy and the role of typefaces in different revolu about the photos was that those essentially tions. “How something as seemingly tiny as a font Prohibition-era Midwest farmers had put so much affects the way we think, the way we live our lives.” care into their drag. But that’s not all: In addition to serving as “They didn’t look ridiculous—someone had one of two editors of the annual publication Play: taught them how to do their makeup, how to pose A Journal of Plays, Harrison is finishing work on elegantly, how to find their light,” notes Harrison, Doris to Darlene, a play about the relationship 29. “I wondered: Who was that person? And of between 1960s girl-group pop and Wagnerian course I wondered what it would be like to be queer opera. “There’s more of a connection than you in a small town in the ’20s and to suddenly find might think. So, of course, I’ll be first in line to yourself in a dress—and be celebrated for it. And see the Dreamgirls movie." eventually 1 wondered: WTiat was the conversation A Playwright's Work at Various Stages T World Beat Sod Rock MUSIC MILLENNIUM Women’s Oldies Jazz Folk Gospel Cajun Country New Age Bluegrass Soundtracks Musicals Lounge Big Band Comedy Reggae Spoken Word and more... EAST PORTLAND • 32nd & E Burnside St. • 231-8926 Gender lines blur, identities explode and alter egos assert themselves in Act a Lady. these men would have had with the female charac ters they were playing?” Which elevates Act a Lady to more than just another half-pint historical pageant. “It feels more like a fable—the characters definitely have a rural 1927 innocence about sexual ity and gender roles. I think that’s probably one of the reasons these cross-dressing performances could have happened: The actors who performed them didn’t think they were doing anything gate-crashing or subversive. It was just for fun,” says Harrison. “It was just, ostensibly, ‘the boys in their outfits.’ ” Modem audiences, however, will be quick to rec ognize what these characters might not even know about themselves, including that at least one is gay. “When one of the characters says, ‘You’re the realest man I know’ to one of his fellow actors, the audience laughs because they know this is as close as he can get to saying, ‘I love you,’ ” Harrison explains. “The men in Act a Lady are playing women that always have the perfect word available, but in their own lives, they haven’t found the right words yet. So their clothes aren’t the only part of their drag get-up—it’s their language, too.” Researching the play, Harrison learned that directors of Womanless Weddings were often female, and it was important to him that the female characters in this play got to cross-dress, too, even though rhe 1927 pageant kept them on the sidelines. "As one of the characters in the play mentions, a woman dressed as a man is a different experience altogether. Dietrich in a tux is a sexual threat, Jack Lemmon in a dress is not.” And then there’s the God-fearing, accordion playing Dorothy, the sort of music teacher who would rap a student on the knuckles with a ruler. Even though she’s fearsome to other characters in the play, Harrison says she is probably the one clos est to the audience. She is recruited, against her bet ter judgment, to play accompaniment for the play- within-the-play. As an aside, Harrison divulges, “The actress playing Dorothy at PCS has no prior accordion experience, but I hear she is bravely fling ing herself into the unknown.” Which itself illuminates the sense of hidden adventure that lurks in lonesome places like Lanesboro, ultimately surfacing among characters like Dorothy, whose newfound definition of art is the sensation that I went somewhere, and I’m not totally sure I ever came hack. “This play is about people who are venturing into unknown territory, losing track of themselves— or who they thought they were,” affirms Harrison. “This play is, on some level, about a group of people who are making art but would never call themselves artists. 1 think they would consider it too fancy, immodest even. I think uncertainty—and mystery—are undervalued experiences in theater right now.” • P ortland C enter S tage presents Act a Lady Jan. 30 to March 11 in Gerding Theater Studio at the Armory, 128 N.W. 11th Ave. Tickets are $15- $30 from 503-445-3700 or www.pcs.org. TIMOTHY K rause is marketing director for Miracle Theatre Group. He can be reached at timkra@millenicom .com. IMMORTAL PIANO COMPANY <011 SE BELMONT • PORTLAND. OR • 9721 * 503-233-2234 VINTAGE PIANOS AND USED YAMAHAS www.immortalpiano.com MUSIC NW PORTLAND • 23rd & NW Johnson • 248-0163
