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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