I remember the very first play I went to. I was ten years old, and it was Annie, staged by Manila’s pre-eminent English language theater group, Repertory Philippines, and it starred an eight year old Lea Salonga, pride of the Philippines and future Tony winner (for Miss Saigon). I remember being awestruck through it, as well as inspired and uplifted. I remember keeping the show program for years, a habit that I continue to have to this day, just to keep on reminding me of the magical experience of that evening. My mom brought me and my brother Judd to see it, because she loved musicals and live performance. I fell in love with the theater that night, and it has been a full-time love affair ever since. My mom also loved looking at paintings and sculptures, and one of my most vivid memories is the two of us silently walking, inspired and immersed, among the Philippines’ national artist Juan Luna’s works in the National Museum in Manila, and staring open-mouthed at the splendor of his most famous work, the Spolarium. Every year that my mom came to visit me in Chicago from Manila, we would have the MCA or the Art Institute AND a musical on the agenda (one year, we gushed all over Chita Rivera, when she was doing The Visit at the Goodman, and we told her we also both saw her in Kiss of the Spider Woman in New York oh so many moons ago). Passion for the arts isn’t acquired overnight, it’s nurtured, cultivated, deepened over the years of continuous exposure to theater, or film, or art, or music, opera, literature. It’s built upon a sense of intellectual curiosity, an open-mindedness to new experiences and to soak them in like a sponge, an ability to reflect and construct and deconstruct honed continuously and regularly. I owe a lot of who I am today to my mom who was tireless in shaping her son’s life with new, interesting, different experiences; who encouraged interest, curiosity, and endless questions. My mom passed away more than two years ago at 66 years old. She never saw this blog come into being, but I think she’ll be pleased and tickled pink with it - she was always convinced that I could write exceptionally well, and was so proud all those years ago when I contributed feature articles to the Philippine Daily Inquirer as a lark, and when I wrote plays in high school and college that actually got staged and won awards. Today, the day I turn forty, is a day for reflection and gratitude. Thanks Mama!
I am taking a break today from the arts and culture focus of From the Ledge to irrevocably, unequivocally express how proud and hopeful I am, as an immigrant, as a gay person, as a person of color, as someone in the 40 and below demographic, as a citizen of the world, as a Chicagoan, that Barack Obama will be the 44th President of the United States of America. It’s a difficult, anxious, chaotic world we’re living in today, but with President-elect Obama, I sincerely, truly, feel that we have the inspiration and the confirmation that there is a very real opportunity for America, and the world, to change for the better. That’s not hyperbole, that’s heartfelt emotion.
I think it is so apt that my 135th blog post, written twelve months to the day of From the Ledge’s unveiling to the world, was about Kafka on the Shore, since Murakami wrote a beautiful, sensitive, impactful sentence that Frank Galati wisely preserves in the play: “In dreams begin responsibilities.” Having a blog was a dream that lay unrealized for many, many years, as I wandered through the busyness of life, as I second-guessed myself, lost confidence, found excuses not to write about what I’m passionate about. It really was not “do I have something to say?” since I thought I did, and I had a responsibility to articulate and share it, but “is anyone willing to listen?“. I really do feel that a blog can only be as good as its readers - it’s a channel for personal expression, yes, but it should also be an avenue for conversation and provocation. It has been quite a year for me and for From the Ledge, with more than 12,500 hits, coming from people not only in Chicago, or the United States, or the Philippines, where the critical mass of my friends and family are, but from places far and wide such as Germany, Brazil, India, Japan, Belarus, and Norway. It was a year of strongly advocating for Chicago’s talent and artistic life: for August: Osage County and Steppenwolf Theater, for Sean Graney and the Hypocrites, for Keith Huff, for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNow series, for the Chicago Opera Theater, for the Court Theater, TUTA, Strange Tree Group, the Gene Siskel Film Center, the Chicago International Film Festival, Art Chicago, and the Grant Park summer music Festival- all of them essential and irreplaceable. But it was also a year to reflect and challenge: on the lack of artistic appreciation among my demographic group, on disconcerting hints of Chicago arts parochialism, on the responsibilities of bloggers and blog commenters, on the tension between playwrights’ and directors’ artistic visions. Most importantly, it was a year of making connections and starting conversations, both on the blog, and via email, of discovering readers, of listening to other people’s points of view, of taking feedback seriously. A big thank you to everyone, and here’s to another year of delightful dialogue.
In October of 1998, I just marked my first year of living in Chicago, having moved from Minneapolis and grad school during the summer of 1997. On October 7, 1998, Matthew Shephard, an openly-gay University of Wyoming student, was robbed, heinously beaten, and left for dead tied to a fencepost in the outskirts of Laramie, Wyoming by two men who despised Matthew’s homosexuality. It was, and still is, a watershed event for my generation of gay people - we, too, in consonance with Matthew, were brutalized by the frighteningly deep, inexplicable, unconscionable hatred that caused his death. It’s been ten years, but I have to wonder, how much really has changed? Sure, there’s been a lot of “mainstreaming” of gay culture, there’s a lot of “it’s hip to be gay” (or it’s hip to know a gay person) in urban communities such as Chicago, but…. No hate crimes legislation has been signed into law. In February of this year, in Ventura County, California, a 15 year old gay teenager was shot inside his high school’s computer lab by the straight classmate he had a crush on. It’s been ten years, and the circumstances and impact of Matthew’s death seemed to be fading into the soft gauze of memory. So it felt so right, so necessary, that About Face Theater, Chicago’s pre-eminent gay and lesbian theater, staged a one-night only reading of Moises Kauffman and the Tectonic Theater Project’s The Laramie Project, which dramatized the Matthew Shepard case using interviews conducted with the stunned community of Laramie, Wyoming, last Monday night, to remember the 10th year anniversary of Matthew’s death. It was a privilege for me to attend. I really have to commend new Artistic Director Bonnie Metzgar, who, with the Taylor Mac season-opener and this reading, has infused so much vigor, energy, and yes, much-needed relevance back into About Face in the short time she’s been in Chicago. The Laramie Project reading was a tremendous accomplishment. She got Leigh Fondakowski of the Tectonic Theater Project, one of the co-creators, to direct the reading. She assembled a jaw-dropping Chicago-based cast: Kelly Simpkins, another co-creator of The Laramie Project, who is now actively performing in Chicago; Tony Award-winner Deanna Dunagan; About Face co-founder Kyle Hall; Chicago acting titans such as John Judd, Steppenwolf ensemble member Ora Jones, and Lookingglass Theater Producing Artistic Director Philip R. Smith; rising stars such as Patrick Andrews; and members of the About Face Youth Theater. And with these talents working beautifully together, she made the reading one of the highlights of this Chicago theater-going year. Despite how many times you see the play or the HBO movie, The Laramie Project continues to be powerful, emotionally walloping stuff, taking you through a rollercoaster of grief, vehement anger, helplessness, and consolation in community. There were a lot of sniffling and teary eyes in the theater last night, and I hope many of them were remembering Matthew and rediscovering themselves. The Laramie Project is ultimately about community and seeing Chicago’s theater community, artists and audiences alike, coalescing to honor Matthew’s memory, and what it stands for in gay experience, was touching.
Tags: About Face Theater
In almost a year of From the Ledge, I’ve tried hard to post blog entries 2-3 times a week. It’s been a way of disciplining myself to make sure that there’s always new, fresh blog content available; it’s also allowed me to keep up with the numerous arts events that I go to. I’ve found out over the past several months, too, that some very avid From the Ledge readers salivate like Pavlov’s dog whenever there’s a new blog entry, so I want to make sure I don’t disappoint anyone. For the first time in eleven months or so, I’ve let seven days (a full week!) pass between blog entries, for two straight weeks! Yikes! I’ve been travelling continuously for business over the past two weeks, crisscrossing the country, jumping through multiple time zones, pulling atrocious hours, and frankly, it bites! I’m exhausted (whenever someone tells me they think travelling for business is uber-glamorous, I give them the cold shock of reality: delayed flights. middle seats. bad coffee. really hard hotel mattresses. airless conference rooms. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s Manhattan or Boise). And not being physically in Chicago, I’m not able to go to ANYTHING! Well, I snuck in Porchlight’s marvelous Candide last weekend, but that’s it (more on that forthcoming). I’ll be in town for the next two weeks and have already lined up my viewing schedule: Edward II, Taylor Mac, Caroline or Change at the Court, Streamers, and some nudiefest at Bailiwick’s Pride series. So I’ll be writing more regularly in the next couple of weeks. Don’t forget me! Come back again! The picture by the way is of the late great Ann Miller (love the slit!) who played Carlotta in a production of Stephen Sondheim’s Follies sometime in the 1990s and was the lucky gal who got to belt the brutally-honest anthem of all of us world-weary (and bone-weary) survivors, “I’m Still Here”.
As an audience member, I have always thought that giving a standing ovation at the theater is a rare gift reserved for those sock-in-the gut productions that are truly transformative and utterly unforgettable, which come once in a blue moon. It’s not to say I don’t show enthusiastic appreciation for the work and the artists - as my blog readers who’ve gone with me to the theater know, I heartily applaud a good part of the time and have been known to emit that occasional cheer and guttural whoa. Theater artists work hard and they deserve all the recognition and positive feedback they can get. But a standing ovation at the end of a show shouldn’t, in my view, be taken lightly, it should be dispensed only when the production is a true masterpiece. You wouldn’t serve a 1978 Montrachet at a girl’s wine and mani-pedi night out; you’d reserve it for the truly special occasions, like your husband or life partner getting promoted to CEO (amidst visions of that future villa in Lake Como so within your reach). So I am a little perturbed by this noticeably increasing trend (not as bad here in Chicago as it is on Broadway, discussed ad nauseam in theater geek chat rooms such as Talkin’Broadway.com’s All that Chat) of people getting up on their feet wildly, as if they’re in a mosh pit, for even the slightest, though enjoyable, stage trifle.
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