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 From the album MDNA – Coming March 26

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OutFront Minnesota

Leading Minnesota Toward LGBT Equality. Website is a wealth of support information for jobs, LGBT organizations, friendly places of worship, or help in coming out and covers resources across the entire state. Minneapolis, MN • www.outfront.org

Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Services at the University of Minnesota Duluth

Created to aid the recovery community in staying clean and sober. Coordinates awareness and education about recovery in the GLBT community and provide clean and sober social events. Minneapolis, MN (and other locations) • www.glbtinrecovery.com

The Family Partnership

Reuters reports that three British Muslim men were found guilty in January of anti-gay rhetoric by distributing leaflets calling for the death of homosexuals.  The men handed the leaflets out in advance of a gay pride parade in Derby, England.

South African Rights Investigators Probe Zulu King’s Alleged Gay Slur

The Washington Post reports that South Africa’s human rights agency said that it is investigating allegations that the Zulu King called gay people “rotten” during a speech.  In a statement, the Zulu royal household said the king’s comments were mistranslated.  King Zwelithini has no governing powers in South Africa, but is an influential figure.

Cynthia Nixon Says Being Gay ‘Is A Choice’

Actress Cynthia Nixon created controversy in a recent speech and interview claiming she chose to be gay.  During a recent speech in connection with an upcoming Broadway play, Nixon said, “I’ve been straight and I’ve been gay, and gay is better.”  When asked to clarify, Nixon defended her statement saying, “…for me, it is a choice. I understand that for many people it’s not, but for me it’s a choice, and you don’t get to define my gayness for me.”

Gay Marriage Bill Advances in NJ, Despite Veto Threat

The Wall Street Journal reports that New Jersey’s state legislature advanced gay marriage legislation in January, despite a threatened veto by Republican governor Chris Christie.  According to the Wall Street Journal, New Jersey Democrats might be close to having a veto-proof majority.  In January, a poll from Quinnipiac University found 52% support for gay marriage among New Jersey voters, the first time approval has been above 50%.

Forced Sterilization for Transgender People in Sweden

Mother Jones reports that Sweden is considering legislation that would allow transgender individuals to marry, but would force them to undergo reproductive sterilization.  The current law, passed in 1972 requires both divorce and sterilization.

Gay Groups Angry Kansas Anti-Sodomy Law Remains on Books

Reuters reports that gay rights groups in Kansas are upset over a state sodomy law still on the books, even after the Supreme Court ruled in 2003 that such laws are unconstitutional. Thomas Witt, chairman of the Kansas Equality Coalition, a state gay rights group says, “We are angry that the governor of a state wants to keep a statute on the books that says gay people deserve to go to jail.”

Ugandan Gay Activists Honor Slain Rights Leader

AFP reports that gay activists in Uganda met to commemorate the first anniversary of the murder of fellow activist David Kato.  Kato was was found beaten to death outside his home in Kampala last January.  Kato’s mother told reporters, “It is not easy when a loved one dies but thanks to all the friends inside and outside Uganda who worked with David… when I get down they lift me up and help me.”

Starbucks Endorses Gay Marriage in Washington State

Reuters reports that Starbucks made a statement in January, publicly supporting gay marriage legislation in Washington state.  ”Starbucks strives to create a company culture that puts our partners first, and our company has a lengthy history of leading and supporting policies that promote equality and inclusion.”  Starbucks joins Microsoft and other major corporations to support the legislation.

Maine Poised for 2nd Public Vote on Gay Marriage

The Associated Press reports that gay marriage supporters in Maine are planning to put the issue before voters once more in 2012.  A statewide vote in 2009 resulted in the repeal of marriage legislation passed by the legislature.  Betsy Smith, executive director of Equality Maine, said polling by gay marriage supporters indicates 54 percent of state residents now support gay marriage.

NAACP Supports Extending Rights to Maryland Transgender Residents

The Washington Post reports that NAACP President Benjamin Jealous said in January that the organization supports legislation in Maryland that would extend civil rights protections to transgender residents.  Jealous made the announcement at the 24th national conference on GLBT equality.

New Hampshire Bill Would Allow Service Refusal To Gay Couples

WCVB-TV reports that the New Hampshire legislature is considering a bill that would allow providers of wedding-related goods or services to refuse doing business with gay couples, if doing so would violate their conscience or religious beliefs.  The bill would also bar lawsuits against business owners who deny business to gay couples.  The state’s House Judiciary committee held a hearing in January on the bill.  If the committee recommends the legislation, it will head to the full house for a vote.

Barney Frank Plans to Marry Longtime Partner in Massachusetts

The Washington Post reports that Congressman Barney Frank announced in January that he will marry his longtime partner Jim Ready.  A spokesman for Frank said the the couple will wed in Frank’s home state of Massachusetts.  A date has not been set.  Ready is 42 and lives in Maine.  He runs a small handyman business.  The men have been together since 2007.

While many gains are being made in understanding the disease of Addiction, much still needs to be done to mainstream the understanding of how substance abuse impacts various cultures in different ways.  Through my work, I often hear stories of teens who are questioning their sexuality who, unable to reach out to GLBTQ adults or mentors, reach for substances instead as they are not sure how to navigate their first sexual encounters and are unsure of how the revealing their orientation will be received.  Not only can substances hinder these experiences, the heightened risk for physical and sexual abuse that accompanies chemical use cannot be ignored.

A study by Dr. Michael P. Marshal of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center revealed that GLBT teens are 190 percent more likely to use drugs and alcohol than are heterosexual teens, and that the usage rate is even higher among certain subgroups. For example, Marshal’s study, which was published in the April 2008 edition of the journal Addiction, documented that the prevalence of drug or alcohol use among bisexual youth is 340 percent greater than the rate among straight teens. Among lesbian youth, the number rises to 400 percent (McBride, 2011).

While becoming more accepted in mainstream society, there is still a stigma attached to being chemically dependent.  Being a member of the GLBT community, we are also aware of the attitudes that are bestowed upon us.  There are a number of resources for those who are addicted, and there are a number of supports to the gay community, but there are not enough resources to adequately meet the needs when these two issues are combined.

In the community currently, there is a significant number of us who abuse substances or who are chemically addicted. Moreover, for both youth and adults who do not live in the Twin Cities, there is another hurdle to overcome, which is a furthered lack of resources.  Regardless of location, it is vital that we are able to lean upon one another to get the support that we need.

This is not just a call to support queer and questioning youth to help guide them in healthy ways, this is a call to put pride into ourselves and our community and to become healthier overall so that we might have a chance to demonstrate to those who are coming out and joining us–regardless of age–can be mentored and supported without resorting to the use of chemicals to navigate all of the important “firsts” that are part of our lives.

Resources for GLBT Substance Abuse:

1.)Element Mental Health Services: Element’s chemical dependency currently is running a GLBT-specific primary outpatient group and an outpatient group for the general public. Both groups currently have openings and are taking referrals and are Rule 31 licensed and a Minnesota provider. Element also takes most insurances and is able to work with the ones not currently contracted with to get funding.

Element Mental Health Services
http://elementmentalhealth.vpweb.com/
1204 7th Street South, Ste. 105, Saint Cloud, MN 56301
(320) 257-6020

2.)   AA Intergroup – Minneapolis: Access to all Alcoholics Anonymous groups including GLBT specific groups.

Alcoholics Anonymous Intergroup – Minneapolis
http://www.aaminneapolis.org/
(952) 922-0880

3.) AA Intergroup – Saint Paul: Access to all Alcoholics Anonymous groups including GLBT specific groups.

Alcoholics Anonymous Intergroup – St. Paul and Surrounding Suburbs
http://www.aastpaul.org/
(651) 227-5502

4.) Avenues for Homeless Youth – Minneapolis: Provides safe and nurturing emergency shelter, short term housing and support services for homeless youth. Coordinates the GLBT Host Home Program – has a Chemical Dependency element for youth.

Avenues for Homeless Youth
http://www.avenuesforyouth.org/
(612) 522-1690

5.) PRIDE Institute: PRIDE Institute is committed to providing lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people a road to recovery through evidence-based substance abuse, sexual health, and mental health treatment.

PRIDE Institute
http://pride-institute.com/
14400 Martin Dr, Eden Prairie, MN 55344
(800)-547-7433

Howler Give Up America 

Jordan Gatesmith was a teenager when he founded Howler in 2010, but the band’s sound on their debut album showcases a confidence that goes far beyond their years. The Minneapolis-based five-piece has a great international buzz right now, and they bring the goods through their noisy debut. Howler isn’t recreating the wheel here. This is straight-up modern rock ‘n’ roll in the Strokes mode, but played with plenty more verve (and distortion) than that group. The band brings out other influences along the way, such as the terrific “Too Much Blood,” which sounds like a lost Jesus and Mary Chain track. While “I Told You Once” and “Back of the Neck” are perfect tracks for a radio station actually willing to rock.

High Dive High Dive 

Punk rock and queer culture have long been intertwined. Punk was a very visible way to showcase that you were different and – in some corners of the scene at least – being gay was not just accepted, but celebrated. There’s still a need for positive queercore, and this new trio – featuring members of acoustic punkers Defiance, Ohio – fits the bill. This sharp and short (about 23 minutes) debut focuses on breezy-sounding high-energy rock ‘n’ roll, but also sports personal, honest tales of relationships, life, and being gay. That comes out in plenty of the tracks, but especially on standouts “Tennessee” and “Thank You,” both of which provide strong lyrical comfort and support for all the people who struggle with themselves, and society’s perception of their sexuality.

Poliça Give You the Ghost 

In the wake of Roma di Luna’s breakup, Channy Moon Casselle’s new project has earned plenty of ink, but the band is far from just the new chapter for the singer. Poliça features an all-star cast, fronted by Gayngs’ Ryan Olson and players from the Vampire Hands and Stnnng. The vibe is close to Gayngs as well, with plenty of moody-if-somewhat-funky beats, washes of keyboards and a brooding vibe that sounds drawn from a late-night crawl down the seedy streets of Minneapolis. Sometimes, the vibe gets a bit too overwhelming, and the songs start to blend together, but more often than not it makes for thrilling listening, such as on “Lay Your Cards Out” or “Violent Games.” Poliça is definitely a band to watch.

Guided by Voices Let’s Go Eat the Factory 

When preparing for this piece, I checked my iTunes library and saw that I had more than 800 Guided by Voices tracks. So what do Robert Pollard and company give us this time? Pretty much exactly what we’ve always gotten: A messy collection of oft-brilliant classic, fuzzy, low-fi pop (in the 1960s sense) interspersed with dashed-off concepts, short experiments and whatever else the mad genius had in mind that day. The presence of the classic mid-‘90s band lineup makes for a tougher, more lively sound than Pollard brought to his recent solo albums, and when the album hits – “The Unsinkable Fats Domino” or “Spiderfighter” or closer “We Won’t Apologize for the Human Race” – It hits as well as anything from their long, boozy history.

Maintenance usually involves an overhaul.  An overhaul of my ideas and what I hold to be true.  What I consider when I make decisions.  What I cling to as validation for my choices.  Ideas that may not actually be accurate. It is a very real and very common tenet of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy that we humans believe distortions.  We cling to versions of reality that can be found anywhere on the spectrum between truth and fallacy.

I joke with my friends that we shouldn’t let my copays go to waste whenever I share a kernel of knowledge from my work with psychology professionals.  Many of the lessons are easily applicable across a broad base.  The basis of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy is that our emotions affect our thoughts which affect our behaviors. It’s triangular between the three.  What we think changes how we feel and then how we act.  Likewise, how we act changes how we think and feel.  And, how we feel changes how we act and think.  Stay with me.

If I look in the mirror and think “I look fat” and feel shame and then I reach for a candy bar, I will probably feel sad because I’ll think “I’m a failure” because I just ate a candy bar and will still look fat.

Not so unfamiliar a thought pattern, is it? Thinking, emotions, and behavior.  Right there. But, it’s not always as easy to see the triangle happening between the three—sometimes the thoughts are really ingrained and subliminal and the actions are veiled even to ourselves.  It gets hairy.  It’s why the professionals get paid to do their jobs.

I remember the day that my particular professional handed me a paper with the 15 Cognitive Distortions listed on it.  Google it.  You’ll find them, too.  They’ve been accepted and they’re used widely in helping people to figure out how we might see things a little less accurately than they really are.  I was pretty pissed that day.  Being shown—not told—that something isn’t how I thought it is tends to be a pill I don’t swallow very happily.

What?  You mean that I shouldn’t save my friend from herself?  I should just let her throw her life away and go down the road to ruin because she’s making a choice that I don’t agree with?  How could I live with myself for letting her do that?  How could I stay friends with her after failing her so?

You see, I was a caretaker, among other things.  I knew what people should do, how they should do it, and when they should do it.  I could give you ten reasons why it should be done and assure you that Andy knows best. But you know what?  Andy didn’t know best.  That is simply untrue.  It was a distortion. Consider the 15 Cognitive Distortions that I paraphrase from those presented by Aaron Beck and David Burns.  With each, I’m including a small example from my distortion arsenal:

1. Filtering: Taking the positive aspects out of a situation and focusing only on the negative. “That typo ruined the whole magazine.”

2. Polarized Thinking: Things are either/or—there’s no gray, but just black or white.  “Either I answer all the emails in my inbox immediately or I’m not doing my job right.”

3. Overgeneralization: If something happens once, we might think it’ll always happen that way.  “I didn’t get any feedback from that Facebook post, nobody cares. I’m going to stop posting.”

4. Jumping to Conclusions: Without having firsthand knowledge, we think we know what someone else will do or what they’re thinking, particularly about us. “Oh, he’s super busy and important.  He doesn’t want to talk to me.”

5. Catastrophizing: Using the “what if” scenario to try to minimize or maximize a situation out of proportion.  “What if I print that review and someone doesn’t like it and the world ends?”

6. Personalization: This happens when we interpret unrelated events to be about us.  “She just walked across the room when I got here—she hates me.  She’s probably talking about me right now to that person. Look.  He scowled.  He hates me, too.”

7. Control Fallacies: External control fallacies include those that are based upon things happening to us, “My piece isn’t that good because my internet connection was bad and I couldn’t research”; internal control fallacies are those that are based upon what we think we caused, “Why are you upset?  Because of something I did?”

8. Fallacy of Fairness: We think we know what is fair and we expect people to agree with us. “It was my turn to get the good assignment even though she knows more about the subject.  I should’ve gotten to pick.”

9. Blaming: We either blame others for our feelings, “He makes me feel worthless”; or blame ourselves too much, “I’m just being too sensitive again.”

10. Shoulds: We have ironclad rules about how people should behave.  “She should have gotten me a card, I remembered her birthday and got her one.”

11. Emotional Reasoning: We believe that what we feel must be true, automatically. “I’m sad because you said that, therefore you must be wrong.”

12. Fallacy of Change: We expect people to change to our liking if we pressure or cajole them enough.  “He knows I hate it when he drinks too much, he’ll stop doing it for me.”

13. Global Labeling: Taking one error and making it true for all situations.  “She didn’t tell me the truth.  She is a liar.”  Or, “She moved to another city. She always abandons her friends.”

14. Being Right: We always have to be right no matter what the circumstances are or how it makes another person feel.  “Didn’t I tell you that was a mistake? Yeah.  I was right.”

15. Heaven’s Reward Fallacy: We expect our self-sacrifices to pay off, as if there’s a big scoreboard in the sky.  “I just need to grin and bear it.  Then, I’m sure I’ll get the raise I deserve.”

Here’s the deal.  There might be some truths to these claims but there might not be.  Where we get into trouble is when we base our thoughts, actions, and feelings on these ideas without pausing to reflect.  Depending on the typo, it could ruin a magazine.  A person can be busy and not want to talk, but I won’t know until I ask…and suggest a different time to talk. Things beyond our control can impede our progress but we can also mitigate problems by way of what we can control.  Nobody will change because you want them to.  And yes, some victories are hard won, but we shouldn’t have to suffer as a matter of course to get what we want in life.

I know which distortions I tend to cling to—I come by some of them honestly as a Scandinavian Lutheran Martyr…and some of them I’ve developed on my own, lobbing shoulds and shouldn’ts around like grenades.

It’s when I can look at that list and laugh that I know I’m on the right track.  I can see them.  I can laugh at them.  And, I can try not to think them.  That’s when I can avoid the triangle of negative thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that might lead me to make unhealthy choices.  If I see a situation for what it is and try to change it, I may not need to find a way to cope with it.  I may just change my true reality to be better.

At the end of the day, what I hope for all of us is that our realities can be truthful and, in them, we can find comfort.  And, if we need to, get a little work done.  Spread our copays around.  Pay it forward.

With thanks,
Andy

My Mother’s Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding. Photo by Sarah Whiting

My Mother’s Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding
Feb. 18 – Mar. 11
Hillcrest Center, 1978 Ford Pkwy, St. Paul
(651) 647- 4315
www.mnjewishtheatre.org

You know we’ve come a long way baby when acclaimed, sympathetic, gay-themed stage work is generated by straight folks and creates a buzz. It was a Toronto straight married couple actually, that conceived one of that city’s big Fringe Festival musical hits of 2009, which has also played New York. David Hein and Irene Carl Sankoff tell the true story of David’s mother’s coming out and being in love.

True to form, Minnesota Jewish Theatre continues to manifest artistic courage and exploration of challenging themes under Barbara Brooks’s Artistic Directorship, while entertaining at a standard comparable to other topnotch Twin Cities professional houses.

Brooks, central to the play selection, observes “the story looks at Claire (Laura B. Adams) who is on a journey to a stronger identity. For her it included identity as a Jew as well as a lesbian. A concern in the Jewish community today, as well as in other cultural/ethnic/religious communities, is lack of identity and engagement with the community, so developing a stronger identity is not only most relevant to Jewish culture today, but it’s universal to a large extent. It also looks a the timely issues of the changing American family – two parents of the same sex and same sex marriage.” In Canada same-sex marriage is legal.

Also speaking to identity, director Michael Kissin points out “that a conventional upbringing and marriage with children in Lincoln, Nebraska, and approval from a strong-willed mother simply are not satisfying. So the struggle is to leave that behind, that security. Claire foresakes everything known: hometown, husband, son, mother – abandons her security in favor of the elusive quest for a new identity, which, of course, in the play, she achieves. And we bear witness to the struggle and the transformation.”

Adams, who had us rolling in the aisles in 2010 as the lead in the often lesbi-erotic Michele! The Bachumanntary Musical, says “we first meet her in the play as she is leaving and saying goodbye to her teenage son, David (Matt Rein), who will stay in Nebraska with her ex-husband. Clarie has always been attracted to women but never acted on it. She finds herself away from her mother, who is an orthodox Jew. And in an openly gay community in Ottawa she allows herself to finally feel the feelings she has always had. She meets Jane (Tinia Moulder) and falls in love with her.”

For those who wonder about the effect this has on the son, Kissin observes ” we know from the beginning that all will be well, because David, the son (played by David Hein in the New York production), now roughly 30 years old, walks in with his guitar, and begins narrating and singing the story, recollected in tranquility, ie. he is a happy, well-adjusted, witty, charming, amusing, handsome, hetero adult.”

Rein says “David is incredibly open to his mother’s coming out. He wakes up in bed one night and realizes ‘Oh! My mom’s a lesbian.’ Before she comes out to him, he has the realization on his own, so the actual moment of coming out focuses more on the mother’s desire to know how David feels about it rather than how David feels about it.”

As for Wiccan love interest Jane, Kissin says “she represents what Claire seeks: beauty, self-knowledge, love, physical attraction and true partnership.” Music Director Kevin Dutcher says of the music and lyrics “it’s evident that the words came first. This is a story and the guy who wrote it, lived it.” The ex-husband, Garth (David Coral) sings:

Was it me – did I turn her off men?
Was it her – was she always pretending
That we -we were better off friends?
Now I’m sure- we were better off ending
And she – I’m sure that she’s dealing
And I – I don’t know how I’m feeling now.

An Ideal Husband. Art by Alphonse Mucha's painting "Flirt"

An Ideal Husband
Through Feb. 25
Red Eye Theater, 15 W. 14th St., Mpls.
(612) 375-0300
www.walkingshadowcompany.org

The trial of Oscar Wilde looms in gay history on a par with Hitler’s Night of the Long Knives and Stonewall. For those of you who think your great grandparents or great great grandparents may not have known about gayness, consider that Wilde’s trial for ‘gross indecency’ reverberated around the world in the late 1890s and given that his plays have been consistently popular ever since his impoverished death in Paris in 1900 at age 46, odds are those folks from that time we so often sentimentalize about, may have actually been more aware of gay folk and oppression than we might think.

Director Amy Rummenie thinks the 1895 comedy ”contains shades of Wilde’s life divided between his characters: Lord Goring (David Beukema), the ‘flawless dandy’ fond of being misunderstood; Sir Robert (Adam Whisner), a man of honor facing the repercussions of a crime done in his youth; and even his wife Gertrude (Sarah Ochs), inflexibly holding her husband to standards he has already failed to achieve. The blackmail plot that surrounds Sir Robert has unfortunate similarities to the one that eventually consumed Wilde’s career and life. Just over a month after opening night, a few enterprising blackmailers surfaced with some incriminating letters of Wilde.”

That said, Rummenie calls Lord Goring “the moral center of the play. Unflappably calm, unerringly insightful, dapper, and witty, he is an echo of the public face of Wilde – the kind of man who seems to glide through trouble and emerge on the other side with a sassy epigram and not a hair out of place.” Beukema wonders that some might “think that Goring is a substitute for Wilde himself – the always witty, seemingly lighthearted life of the party who has much more lying beneath the surface.”

Ballad of the Pale Fisherman. Photo by Avye Alexandres

Ballad of the Pale Fisherman
Through Feb. 25
Illusion Theater, 528 Hennepin Av., Mpls.
(612) 339-4944
www.illusiontheater.org

If you missed this dreamy little gem of a show at the 2010 Minnesota Fringe Fest you’ve lucked out because it’s being reprised and expanded! Directed by Isabel Nelson, this folktale about a fisherman (Diogo Lopes) who falls in love with and marries a seal woman aka a ’selkie’ (Anna Reichert), exudes splendidly lyrical stage movement and transformational performances.

Allison Witham who is part of the show’s inventively magical ensemble, plays several different characters including a bartender, an elderly woman named Maud, a very friendly seal, the ocean, one half of a boat, a young mother, and a squeaky bed. She says “part of the challenge of devising and performing the piece is that we choose to perform without set or props, except an accordion which Derek Miller plays. This forces us to create and inhabit the world of the seaside fishing town with only our bodies.”

Black Label Movement’s Visceral at the Cowles
Feb. 10-12
Cowles Center for Dance and the Performing Arts, 528 Hennepin Av., Mpls.
(612) 206-3600
www.thecowlescenter.org

For the past five years choreographer Carl Flink has shaped his Black Label Movement troupe into a highly physical company that gets raves. Their first run at the prestigious Cowles Center will surely expand their base. Flink is a demanding creative genius who can actually have dancers give you the sense of what it was like to drown in the Edmund Fitzgerald and his work on movement for plays, like Mary’s Wedding at the Jungle, can lyrically render physical human emotions themselves. One of Visceral’s segments is based on Jonathan Swift’s radical satire, A Modest Proposal.

Flink says, “we are fascinated with exploring the risks the human body can take in dance and movement - to celebrate the body as much for its power and athleticism as its potential for grace. Some think dancers should glow, but I think BLM movers should sweat.”

Soul Tight Committee. Photo Courtesy of Soul Tight Committee

Soul Tight Committee
Fri., Feb. 17
Chanhassen Dinner Theatres Club Stage,  501 West 78th Street, Chanhassen
(952) 934-1540
www.ChanhassenDT.com

You can have the Beatles. I’m just a bit younger so my era was the Soul Era of the late ’60s and ’70s and I have never ever thought it got its due. It’s one of the most important movements in American cultural history and made the general population fall in love with African American music to an extent it never had before and perhaps since. The tunes of the time require superb vocals and clear connection with emotion, and you can bet this 10 piece ensemble will spirit us back to that dreamy space in time.

Soul Tight Committee, a nominee of many Minnesota Music Awards, will perform such classics as Ain’t No Woman (The Four Tops), Boogie Wonderland (Earth, Wind, and Fire), At Last (Etta James), I Wish (Stevie Wonder), and I’ll Be Around (The Spinners), as well as tunes made popular by Patti LaBelle, The Emotions, Michael Jackson, and K.C. & The Sunshine Band.

Story/Time
Feb. 16-19
Walker Art Center, 1750 Hennepin Av., Mpls.
(612) 375-7600
www.walkerart.org

Bill T. Jones looms as one of the planet’s great choreographers. His current Walker commission includes his globally renowned dancers with their physical magnificence and divine sense of experimentation. It also salutes two experimental gay artists who were life partners for about half a century: composer John Cage (1912-92) and choreographer Merce Cunningham (1919-2009).

Walker Performing Arts Curator Philip Bither reflects “since the earliest part of his career in the 1970s, Bill T. Jones has always been openly, proudly gay in a way few in the highest levels of American performing arts world had been before him. He was and continues to be a model of how to be a forceful, proud and very public gay man -one who has exercised the right to love whoever he wanted and celebrate those relationships openly for the world to see. He has spoken regularly and bravely about his HIV-positive status, his loving relationship with Arnie Zane -both his personal and artistic partner until Zane’s death from AIDS in 1988- and about the need to fight homophobia and racism that persists in our culture. He has for more than three decades fought these battles both on and off stage. That is why, in part, it was so thrilling to see him last year be given on national television a Kennedy Center Award by President Obama, the highest cultural recognition in the land. It felt like, for a moment, we were in fact, making progress as a people – progress due in no small part to the efforts of artists and activists like Bill T. Jones.”

Harold and the Purple Crayon. Photo by Dan Norman

Harold and The Purple Crayon
Through Feb. 26
Children’s Theatre Company, 2400 Third Av., S., Mpls.
(612) 874-0400
www.childrenstheatre.org

For decades there’s been a steady debate -as there should be- about the use, overuse, and misuse of technology and special effects in live theater. It’s a legitimate concern because tech can overpower performances of plays where the human form and the power of language itself and human movement can and in some cases, ought to, take us back to the most elemental aspects of performance.

However, the Seattle Children’s Theatre, now hosted by the Minneapolis Children’s Theatre, gives us a superb example of a work that balances technological brilliance with performance brilliance. Crockett Johnson’s 1955 children’s fiction classic has been adapted for stage with a dream-like stream of consciousness concept where pajama-clad Harold (an endearing Don Daryll Rivera) draws lines with his purple crayon wherever his impulses take him. And while he does, he automatically creates new worlds and being: spaceships, fish, and dragons reminiscent of a minimalist Chinese New Year.

The messages within this could be legion but clearly it spirits forth how our thoughts create our reality. A great message, don’t you think? (Rivera has also written the text adaptation.) Director Rita Giomi sees the stage as her canvas and on it she takes us beneath the sea and into outer space. She balances the craft of her actors, who also include the nimble and charming Khanh Doan and Caety Sagoian, with captivating visuals by animator Stefan Gruben and lighting designer L.B. Morse. Auston James’s music and Rob Burgess’s lyrics enhance the show’s gentle power.

But these weren’t pennies. These were air miles and I had mountains of them, because I’m somewhat of a financial idiot and had no idea that they could be used for something other than upgrades on overseas flights. They’re actually like money and can be used to purchase completely unnecessary stuff, which is my favorite kind of stuff.

So, I looked at the list of stuff I could exchange for miles and decided on the most ridiculous and expensive item on the list: a three-night stay at the Carlyle Hotel in New York City.

Here’s a quick tutorial on the Carlyle, in case you are unfamiliar with this country’s luxurious adultery grounds. The hotel is on the Upper East Side, aka Wasp Central, and is the place where JFK used to schtup starlets. He actually used a secret tunnel to the hotel to keep his assignations out of the media. The hotel is ghastly expensive and far removed from the garishness of Time’s Square. It’s also home to the famous Café Carlyle, one of the coziest and costliest cabarets in the world.

I’ve always wanted to stay there because, in spite of the fact that I’m a socialist in the Scandinavian sense of the word and, thus, prone to standing on bar stools and proclaiming “power to the people” when tipsy, I love luxury hotels. I love well-stocked mini-bars, plush robes, and fancy soaps. I don’t think there’s anything in the Socialist handbook that says you can’t pamper yourself occasionally.

When I told my girlfriend that we were staying at the Carlyle, she looked stricken. “They won’t like it,” she said with real fear in her eyes. By “they” she was referring to the super wealthy, that odd species of human that doesn’t need to use air miles to pay for its hotel stays.

My girlfriend owns a company that services the very rich, so she’s quite familiar with their bizarre rituals and habitats. She talks about the rich in the same awed, head-shaking fashion that we normal mammals speak of weird mammals, like the platypus. Platypuses are mammals, but they lay eggs and they don’t have nipples like the rest of us mammals. Because they have no nipples, their milk just sort of leaks out of their chests and their egg-babies have to lick it off them. They’re odd, fascinating, and kind of gross, just like the super rich.

I’m not rich, but I make a comfortable living and I own a hot tub, which makes most of my friends pea green with envy. If I ever did get wealthy, I’d live much the same as I do now, except I’d probably keep some exotic animals as pets. Yes, that’s the type of rich person I’d be: the one with perpetually messed up hair that walks a lobster on a leash through the public square. I’d also drink a lot more champagne. And, maybe, get a butler.

“Oh, don’t be silly,” I told my girlfriend, as I slipped into an old sweater and ratty jeans and zipped up my travel duffle bag. “We fit in everywhere. The rich will think we’re one of them.”

Stay tuned for the next episode, when I report back from the front lines of the super rich and fill you in on what the Wall Street protestors can learn about punishing the wealthy from the waiters, hotel staff and store clerks who service them.

Ste (David Darrow) and Jamie (Steven Lee Johnson). Photo by George Byron Griffiths

To an American ear, Thamesmead may sound like some hoity toity affair for posh Londoners. But in Jonathan Harvey’s play Beautiful Thing it’s a depressed housing project where two teenaged boys struggle with sexual identity and tune into the music of American Mama Cass to get them through the angst. Jonathan Harvey’s gritty 1993 gem has drawn comparisons to the late Sheilagh Delaney’s groundbreaking A Taste of Honey, which over three decades earlier dealt with youthful anguish and gay themes among Britain’s poor working class. In 1996 Beautiful Thing was turned into an acclaimed indie film and in 2006 was revived in London to great reviews once again.

In Minneapolis, Theatre Latte Da presents its first local staging of Harvey’s play at the Lab. It will include live vocals of Mama Cass songs sung by the beloved Erin Schwab. Peter Rothstein, Latte Da’s Artistic Director, has been advising regarding the production’s conceptualization but the actual director is Jeremy Cohen, the Producing Artistic Director for the Playwrights’ Center.

Cohen asked “what would happen if music were intentional and performed live, not necessarily by an actor playing Mama Cass, but that there was another energy, another voice, a storyteller of sorts that kind’ve moved us from one place to the next? What would happen if we created scenically this world where she is between the scenes, sort of not seen by the characters, but wanders around in the midst of them - bringing the audience from one emotional or funny moment to another?”

Rothstein is struck by what he calls “the juxtaposition of this realistic, urban drama and this iconic music. We (at Latte Da) are constantly searching for new and provocative ways for story and music to intersect.”

Schwab has loved her research, since that has required lots of listening to Cass Elliot: “Lucky me. I have loved her spirit and her voice ever since I heard Dream a Little Dream of Me in high school. I think she has such an amazing ability to tell a story so honestly. You start to feel like she is speaking your thoughts and knows your feelings. I have always been amazed by the way music can speak for us when the words are difficult to say for ourselves.”

Music Director Denise Prosek says that ”Mama Cass’s music both as a solo artist and as a part of the Mamas and the Papas, reflects an era of storytelling and invokes the power of an individual to instigate change. That is the message of Beautiful Thing. As a part of society, Ste and Jamie are immersed in discovering who they are, and how do they love each other as gay men? And how do their friends, neighbors, and parents accept their choices? By immersing themselves in Mama Cass and her messages of love and truth, the characters transform into their true selves as part of the world.”

Indeed the Mamas and the Papas signify the essence of social change in a world stuck in negativity. In Beautiful Thing that negativity springs largely from the poverty and its subsequent ignorance and lack of opportunities. Cohen observes the “gritty sense of British naturalism. Jonathan Harvey wrote it as a sort of in your face work from the British theater movement that was happening at the time. The play, unlike the film, takes place primarily in a very public space and that’s a real class thing. It’s not like they’re all in there drinking red wine and talking what if my kid was gay?”

Cohen also stresses how class differences stringently affect the very feasibility of coming out. It’s one thing to live in a sophisticated urban area that reflects affluence and progressive attitudes. But, what if, he muses “you live in Mora, Minnesota or north Minneapolis or Harlem? Class fits into how people come out. Issues of masculinity really come through because it’s not just these kids and their families. It’s also watching them in relationship with one another. It’s why we’re routing for them to fall in love and get together. Ste starts in Act One saying ‘look Jamie, if you only sort of butched up a bit nobody would pick on you.’ There’s very little for Jamie (Steven Johnson) and Ste (David Darrow) to grab onto, so they turn to each other.”

Johnson sees Beautiful Thing as being “about first love for the boy next door and his schoolmate, Ste. Sort of a modern day Romeo and Juliet. Also, Jamie’s relationship with his mother, Sandra (Jennifer Blagen) is loving but strained. She has to work all night at the pub to make ends meet and whenever she brings a new man into her life, it usually ends up being a pretty big disappointment for Jamie. He is starting to get to know Sandra’s new flame, Tony (Dan Hopman) and his Mama Cass-loving neighbor and friend, Leah (Anna Sundberg). They watch rainbows while he’s dodging gym class.”

Ste (David Darrow) and Jamie (Steven Lee Johnson). Photo by George Byron Griffiths

As for Ste, Darrow says “his struggle lies in getting through each day. He has an abusive family and is often beaten. The difficult home life makes him ambitious about one day having a job and moving away. But it also causes a lot of fear when he realizes he has feelings for another boy. In the second act, he says he is sure that his father would kill him if he ever found out about the relationship. He has to constantly struggle to find safety and understanding in unforgiving living conditions.”

However, Jamie’s living conditions present another sort of problem. Blagen shares “For Sandra, the core issue is not so much that her son is gay, but that she is losing her son Jamie, her best friend, to someone else. I think the relationship between Sandra and her son is especially close, and her concern for him before he comes out to her is that he’s not fitting in, that he might not be able to cope in the world. The world they live in is very tough and the system is not tilted in their favor, but Sandra has a fierce ambition and the ability to transcend her beginnings. She wants the same for her son.”

Moreover, in Sandra’s case, homophobia is actually not the issue: Blagen feels “when Jamie reveals his sexual leanings to her, she feels most betrayed that he has felt unable to share this with her, that she wasn’t a sounding board. She is also hurt that he prefers the company of 16 year old Ste to her, even though she actually thinks highly of Ste because he is a thriver. I think ultimately she is even a bit relieved to learn that Jamie is gay because it means that his difficulties at school have a tangible cause, and do not arise from being broken in some way.”

Playing a youth who has had such difficulties has heightened Johnson’s awareness. He notes that “bullying and violence toward gay youth is a major theme in the play. Minnesota has some of the worst anti-bullying legislation in the country and a major group of people that suffer from these poorly defined laws are GLBT teens.”

Johnson adds “falling in love is an awkward and sexy and scary and confusing and exciting and I think Beautiful Thing captures all of those elements and not just the romantic cliche ones. I love that even though the play is set in ’90s London, there is just something so universal about falling in love for the first time, that I think anyone -regardless of sexual identity- will be able to see themselves in the characters.”

Beautiful Thing
Feb. 24 – Mar. 18
Lab Theater, 700 N. 1st St., Mpls.
(612) 333-7977
www.TheLabTheater.org

We might delay our demise by accepting the fact of the empirically proven events, foregoing the squabbling long enough to tend to repairs–if we still have time.

Take bats. An intractable white fungus is killing millions of them in the Northeast, and a recent Time Magazine article notes estimates of some 6 million deaths may be low. Why care if bats become extinct? For one reason, the little critters can eat up to their body weight in insects nightly. Ask: What costs to human health and crop destruction the existence of millions of pounds of uneaten insects?

Honey bees, too, have been dying worldwide with speculations on the cause ranging from infestations of varroa mites to farm insecticide poisoning. Would climate changes affect the proliferation of mites? Certainly the insecticides are human borne. What happens when these busy pollinators can’t perform their tasks?

Down in Peru, notes the latest Smithsonian, chain saws decimate centuries-old rain forest trees to ravage the earth below for gold. In their wake only wasteland and rock piles remain. Local ecosystems are erased, mining contaminants pour into surrounding waters, workers die in cave-ins or are poisoned as they work mercury and mud with their bare feet to produce gold amalgam. Who can blame the workers who may make up to $600 a day instead of their average $30 a month? At the top of the food chain are the few who reap $1,700 and ounce for the gold.

These topics won’t appear in the grand guignol of the presidential debates, but they are losses that are occurring, whether or not they are denied.

Galileo Galilei may not actually have muttered before the Inquisition, after recanting the earth’s movement around the sun, “E pur si muove” – “And yet it moves,” but he did state, “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.” Like a chemical reaction where one final, added drop turns a clear liquid pink, the ongoing, worldwide events may also precipitate suddenly, into–what?