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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
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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.
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