Newspaper Page Text
Page 11
COUNTERCULTURE
Different 'll
Punch Ya, PQW!
As part of its ongoing effort to nurture gay
talent and sponsor dynamic, responsible
entertainment, S.A.M.E. is delighted to
announce the world premiere of its eighth
production, "Different". The musical by
Patrick Hutchison and Dan Pruitt—part
concert, cabaret, and commentary-opens
March 10 and runs every Thursday through
Sunday until April 3 at the Collective
Theater.
A 21-song odyssey of a gay Everyman
(David Willis), "Different" chronicles
Sonny Robinson's childhood memories,
coming out, plunge into romance and adult
gay networks, and finally his ultimate
confrontation with terminal illness. Each
song is unique, catching all of Sonny's
emotions from angry schoolyard brawls to
knock-kneed fear as he first enters a gay
bar to the rapturous discovery that his lover
is much more than that, he is his friend.
Willis leads an ensemble of eight
actor/singer/dancers whose combined
credits exceed 150 shows from Manhattan
to Florida to the Midwest. All of them
sing, dance, and enact a plethora of roles.
GSU student G. Burrow Holmes is featured
as Sonny's lover, Neal. Choreographer
Jeffrey Laymon, who also was responsible
for the dances in S.A.MT.'s previous "For
Love and For Life" as well as the Decatur
Playhouse's "A Chorus Line", promises
dancing that will be as varied as the songs,
encompassing 40's/50's images of "West
Side Story", soft shoe, and up-to-date Fosse
jazz.
"Different" marks a number of
breakthroughs. For S A.M.E., it is their
first musical production, and probably the
most commercial project yet undertaken.
Director Rebecca Ranson stresses that what
lifts the show beyond its undeniable appeal
to gay audiences is its universality. "The
score has a fantastic punch," she said, and
she was punched enough to tackle directing
her first musical. Previously, Ms. Ranson's
efforts have been issue oriented drama,
twenty years' worth of work ranging from
the 1987 production of the drama,
"Elmatha's Apology", at the Academy, to
her recent "Blood on Blood" at Seven
Stages, and of course, "Warren", also
produced by S A.M.E., which has gone
onto 30 cities since, including its next
production in Las Vegas.
For Willis, it is his first lead in a career that
has included the SoutheasterrLSavoyards,
"Heartstrings", the Neighborhood
Playhouse's "A Chorus Line", and Onstage
Atlanta's "Working". He won a "Chance to
Dance" award that allowed him to dance on
Broadway in the 5000th performance of "A
Chorus Line". The actor conceives of
Sonny Robinson as a man whose resilience
is tested again and again by rejections,
guilt, and confusion and is still able to rise
above his trials to forge an adult identity of
trust and idealism. Sonny grows before the
audience's eyes, and he keeps on growing
to the very end.
For the composer-
actor/singer/pianist/writer Patrick
Hutchison, "Different" marks his first
musical. Widely experienced in
accompanying other shows, and in
interpreting other composers, here, at last,
he comes into artistic maturity and gets to
sing in his own voice.
According to Hutchison and author Dan
Pruitt, the production modestly began as a
Mickey and Judy "Let's do a show!" lark.
Initially involving themselves, their lovers
and two other friends, they would present a
home review using other people's songs.
Then they added a few of their own songs,
and initiated a process whereby the few
were succeeded by another 20 numbers a
year later, and the game had become a
serious artistic effort.
For Pruitt, the timing couldn't have been
better. Hitting his 40s, he was engaged in a
glorious burnout of his previous artistic
incamations-graphics, painting, and
teaching. He was an artist seeking a
medium, and jumped in feet first.
Once the score was completed, it had
evolved into both a biography of Sonny
Robinson as well as a telling commentary
on the manifold denizens of his world, two
artistic intentions that sometimes blended
and sometimes criss-crossed. Pruitt
contacted Ranson about six months ago,
and once she had heard the score,
"Different" leapt into a new kind of reality
for its creators.
"I want the audience to get an intelligent,
witty entertainment," Pruitt says. "The
show can give them a sense of where we've
been, and where we're going-one
continuous coming out after the other
where with shared joy and shared grief, we
can be reminded of our weaknesses, our
strengths, and our courage."
Tickets are available for $10 at the
Collective Theater (523-7647 for
reservations) and at Charis Books and
More.
-James Rosenfield
Suede back by
popular demand
Suede continues her love affair with
Atlanta on Saturday March 5 when she
will appear at Seven Stages Collective
Theatre in Little Five Points. Her special
guests will be Sam Baker and Dan
Lawrence.
At her first appearance in Atlanta last
spring in a benefit with Romanovsky and
Phillips for the local March on Washington
committee,Suede felt a strong rapport with
her audience and said she was "knocked
over" and "moved" by the audiences
generous reception.
"I really loved being in Atlanta," she
says. "I can't believe I was only there for
24 hours; I felt so much at home."
Audience response was equally
effusive. One local reviewer described her
performance: "With a well-balanced
Redefining Masculinity
New Men, New Minds: Breaking Male
Tradition
Edited by Franklin Abbott
The Crossing Press, Freedom, CA, 1987
$10.95,220 pp.
Franklin Abbott has served as editor of a
cogent new book called New Men, New
Minds, a collection of nearly fifty essays
that examines the question of how men
today are "changing the traditional roles of
masculinity." The subject range is
prodigious: male rape, circumcision, public
acknowledgment of one's gayness, the
origins and consequences of traditional
male thinking. Yet the effect of the book is
far more complex, and far more affecting,
than any brief description of it can
adequately convey.
The opening essay is slashing and simple.
In "Healing the Wounded Father", Joseph
H. Pleck recounts the unfortunate course of
his dead father’s life, from early
unhappiness to middle-aged satisfaction to
final embitterment. Pleck begins by
exploring his own feelings of alienation
from his father, and then discloses with
charity and distress the private troubles his
father so desperately sought to hide from
his family, including two heart attacks
suffered and recovered from while away on
extended "business trips."
As a child, Pleck's father had been made to
,work in his own father’s ice cream business,
though he seems often to have wished to be
far away. The elder Peck recalled his father
as "a good man, but he was a Prussian, he
was strict. It wasn't that he refused to give
me a vacation from making ice cream
every day of my life, it just never occurred
to him that a boy might not want to make
ice cream every day, it just never occurred
to him."
Pleck's own poise communicates itself. He
is not content, as men sometimes are in
their lives, to fight battles with the invisible.
He finds his particular solace in
comprehension: in learning all he can
about a buried father whose private troubles
still affect the son today, and in using that
knowledge as the key toward forgiveness
and effecting change in the future.
In "Mad as Hell", Craig G. Harris asserts
that third world gays and lesbians must
work to make their particular legal needs
heard. A black, gay male assistant in a
management consulting firm, Harris was
Continued on page 14
Franklin Abbott -photo by Linda Douglas
stylistic range and a genuinely warm
rapport with her audience, she brought the
crowd to its feet in a spontaneous ovation at
the conclusion of her set."
Baltimore is home for Suede, but she
performs often in New York and all along
the east coast, from Provincetown to
Atlanta. She has played at the Michigan
Womyn's Festival, Campfest, and Winter
Womyn Music I in North Carolina, and has
shared the stage with Kate Clinton, Alix
Dobkin, and Lucie Blue Tremblay.
"I view myself as a singer-vocalist first,"
Suede says. "The voice is my favorite
instrument." She describes what she does
as an art-the way she takes care of and
approaches her voice, as well as her
material. Suede designs her performances
as if orchestrating or arranging a single
piece of music, and pays attention to a set's
tempo and texture in an attempt to make it
flow easily. Her voice isn't the only
instrument she uses: she plays guitar,
piano, and trumpet as well. On March 5th,
Suede will debut new songs from her
upcoming album and she promised to
provide a few more surprises as well.
Says Cathy Woolard, who's producing
the show: "Those of you who were
fortunate enough to enjoy her show
stopping performance as the opening act for
Romanovsky and Phillips know that this
will be a show to remember. Those of you
who missed that night certainly don't want
to make the same mistake twice."
Woolard praises Sam Baker as well.
She calls him "the unforgettable man with
the big voice who brought down the Fox
Theatre during Heartstrings and who
anchored the music in SAME'S production
of For Love and For Life. Sam and his
pianist, Dan Lawrence create a powerful
sound that can rock you through the night.
Tickets are available at Charis Books &
More, LazerAge Desktop Publishing, The
Boy Next Door, and Seven Stages/
Collective Theatre (call 523-7647 for
charge orders). For more information, call
377-8312.
-Peter Dakutis