Out Lines – Episode 1

Episode Transcript

0:00:01.4 Virginia Baeta: Something tingling with excitement is about to take place.

0:00:05.4 Mark Finley: My dad used to say “who put a nickel in you?”

[laughter]

0:00:08.7 Jay Thomas (as Bill): What’s he protesting?

0:00:10.0 Gail Dennison (as Lady Herodias): Me, they’re always protesting me.

0:00:13.0 Jordan Schildcrout: Hey, there.

0:00:15.0 VB: Welcome to Out Lines, the show where a trio of passionate nerds dig into fascinating texts from the LGBTQ theater canon for the revelations waiting between the lines. I’m Virginia Baeta, a New York-based actor, playwright, and Meatball wrangler.

0:00:28.5 MF: I’m Mark Finley director, playwright, artistic director of TOSOS, The Other Side of Silence, and Simon Sezzer.

0:00:34.3 JS: And I’m Jordan Schildcrout, dramaturg, Peter scholar, author, and Jupiter’s cupbearer. We’ll be your escorts through Doric Wilson’s meta-masterpiece, Now She Dances!

0:00:45.2 VB: Meatball, Simon and Jupiter are our cats, and they’re being introduced here for our own reasons, but I digress. Have you never heard of Doric Wilson’s Now She Dances!? If not, you’re not alone. Basically, it’s what you get when a brilliant playwright, a tertiary bible story, and the crush of gay history converged in a New York City cafe. But why explore this playwright now?

0:01:08.2 MF: Well, Now She Dances! is so many things in such a little space. [chuckle] It was an off-off-Broadway play, but if you had to ask me what Now She Dances! is about, I did write a 25-word synopsis and tagline of it.

0:01:27.7 VB: Oooh, nice.

0:01:28.1 MF: Yeah, and here it is. “A mysterious troop of actors follow the plot of Wilde’s Salome in sacrificial service to an ancient evil. Dash – Dash is not a word – a borderline absurdist surreal comedy of terrors.” Doric Wilson, one of the pioneers of off-off-Broadway theater and arguably the father of gay theater off-off-Broadway was primarily a satirist, and he wrote this satire of kind of everything, particularly of life as it was at that time, and kind of used his favorite things as a model for that being the theater and the play structure. So what you’ve got is a play within a play within a “what the heck is this thing?” So it’s a mystery, but mostly it’s a comedy if that makes sense at all. [chuckle]

0:02:23.5 JS: So I’m just happy to be here because Doric Wilson, I think, is one of the more exciting and innovative playwrights to come out of the off-off-Broadway scene, and this play is often credited as really one of the first to be performed at the legendary Caffe Cino. And part of what draws me to this play is that it’s such a fascinating text. As Mark has indicated, it’s sort of based on Oscar Wilde’s Salome, but also sort of based on The Importance of Being Earnest, and maybe it’s also a commentary on current political events, and all that and so much more. And so, as someone who’s interested in theater and culture and history, and really the impact that the theater can have. Right? What the theater can really mean to us, this play is just so rich. And because it is relatively obscure, it means that it also, I think, has great undiscovered riches. And that’s I think really what we’re aiming to explore throughout the whole season.

0:03:15.5 GD (as Lady Herodias): Young man, are you reliable?

0:03:19.6 JT (as Bill): What’s in it for me?

0:03:21.5 Chris Weikel (as Lane): He’s colonial.

0:03:22.5 GD (as Lady Herodias): Nonsense. They never put Americans on stage. Not even in America.

[music]

0:03:33.9 VB: Don’t be alarmed, your app isn’t glitching. We’ll be hearing scenes and snippets from Now She Dances! and other relevant texts along the way. You can find the full text of Now She Dances! and other scintillating source material at outlinespod.com. But back to the nerds.

[music]

0:03:52.2 VB: What are some of the angles that you think that we should be taking as we go through this discussion?

0:03:55.9 JS: Sure. Well, so one of the things that both you and Mark have already mentioned and that this play is considered one of the early landmarks of off-off-Broadway, and so one of the ways that we’re gonna take into this is to actually talk about what that means. What is off-off-Broadway? What was it in 1961 when this play premiered? And really how this play, really, any play isn’t just a text that exists on its own, right? It’s something that exists in performance in time in a shared space. And so, we’ll be talking about this play not just as a text, but something that is in performance with real theater artists making a live performance in front of an audience that changes over time. Because the audience for this play was certainly different in 1961 than it would have been when it was produced again in 1974 or ’75, than when it was revived again in the 21st century. And so, seeing this play in relationship to how it’s being produced, who’s producing it, who’s the audience, and really how the times around it changes. Because definitely the political landscape changed a lot over 50-plus years, and particularly Doric Wilson’s status as a queer playwright. And really, what that means in our culture also has changed so radically. And so, all these different angles around performance, culture, society, politics. All of that’s gonna be in the mix.

0:05:11.8 VB: Definitely, it’s so interesting to be talking right now about theater as a form, in particular, in relationship to an audience. At this time, when we’re recording this podcast, which is during the COVID-19 pandemic, the three of us are trapped in our closets and apartments talking with strange sound baffling and things like that.

0:05:30.4 MF: Not closets, no. Not closets.

0:05:32.3 VB: No closets. None of us are in the closet.

0:05:33.8 JS: Absolutely not.

0:05:34.2 VB: Actually, I am literally right now in a closet, but that’s okay.

0:05:39.2 MF: Oh, no.

[laughter]

0:05:39.9 VB: That’s okay. But to think that we have not been receiving encouraging news about when we will actually be able to gather audiences together again. And one of the things about Now She Dances! which you’re going to learn about this play as we move forward, is how critical the audience is to the experience of the play –

0:05:58.3 MF: Absolutely.

0:06:00.1 VB: – for the actors, for the audience, for the time. And stepping back again, how critical the intimacy of the audience was for off-off-Broadway and Caffe Cino.

0:06:11.0 MF: Oh, yeah.

0:06:11.7 VB: And what that was all about as well.

0:06:13.6 JS: I think that’s totally true. And you know, one of the things it makes me think about is how much the off-off-Broadway scene really emerged because people did create that sense of community, that’s sort of sense of belonging outside of the mainstream where they were not welcome. And yeah, the necessity for that sense of coming together, both for the artist and for the audience mutually, and that’s something we recognize the importance of now, especially as we’re missing it. Definitely, I feel that keenly.

0:06:37.5 VB (as Salome): Closets? What has this to do with closets?

0:06:42.3 David Leeper (as The Prisoner): Everything.

[music]

0:06:43.6 VB: But beyond looking at this play as it related to its live audience, we’ll also look at Now She Dances! in relationship with its social and political context from its first staging in the early 1960s through more recent engagements.

0:06:57.1 MF: Speaking of closets, everybody was in one. And when this play was first written, produced, 1961, that’s eight years before Stonewall. And it’s not like Stonewall happened and everything was wonderful, it was still illegal to be gay. So you’re not gonna see yourself up on stage. Any kind of reference that gay people had to one another would have had to have been strictly covert, and covered up, and in code, like all other parts of gay communication, society, culture, etcetera, it was all kind of its own encrypted thing.

0:07:39.6 JS: When thinking about the closet, that’s not just like some personal space, that’s something that is actually constructed by society. And so for example, with the theater specifically, New York State, actually, the legislature passes a law in 1927. It’s usually referred to as the Wales Padlock Law, and it actually explicitly stigmatizes LGBT people, saying that any play that depicted what they called sex degeneracy, or sex perversion, could be shut down by the authorities, and that the theater would be locked up for a year. And that’s why it was called the Padlock Law. And no theater owner would want to risk that. And so there really was, not just de facto, but actually legal censorship of LGBT representation in the New York Theater. And of course many other locations around the country had their own censorship laws. And this was on the books through to like the late ’60s.

0:08:26.7 VB (as Salome): You disgust decent people.

0:08:29.1 DL (as The Prisoner): No more than they disgust me.

0:08:32.4 JS: So when you think about when Lillian Hellman is writing, and Tennessee Williams, and then Doric Wilson, there were actually legal restrictions to how LGBTQ lives, characters, experiences, relationships can, and for the most part, can’t be shown in the theater. And that’s also why I think these early plays from off-off-Broadway are not just so informative, but actually so inspiring. Because you realize really what they’re up against to just even put a character like the ones that we’re going to be seeing in Now She Dances! on the stage.

0:09:03.9 VB: Were there off-off-Broadway theaters under that law?

0:09:07.5 JS: So technically they would have been. Yes. And the thing is censorship laws tended to be enforced a little bit of… Random is the wrong word, but they weren’t always reinforced to the same degree with any sense of consistency. But yeah, there were definitely plays that were censored in New York, especially like small theaters, off-off-Broadway. There was a play famously called Che! that was raided by the police. This was in the 1960s, because it was depicting sex acts and nudity. All these things that the cops thought were obscene, ’cause obscenity is actually not protected by the First Amendment, just our definition of what counts as obscene changes.

0:09:44.4 MF: It’s interesting that you mention that, Jordan, because last night I was watching the Bob Fosse movie, Lenny.

0:09:51.7 JS: Oh, yes.

0:09:52.0 MF: I’d never seen it. And Criterion Channel is getting me through the pandemic, so I was watching it, and it’s all about that. It was all about what’s obscene, what isn’t, and him getting arrested all the time, and etcetera.

0:10:05.8 JS: And that’s why I think the kind of countercultural movements of which, let’s face it, the LGBTQ movement was just one of them –

0:10:11.2 MF: Yeah.

0:10:11.3 JS:  – there were so many different liberation and empowerment movements happening, whether that’s Black, women, youth, anti-war, and so forth. That this is all happening, this more anti-authoritarian ethos, and we really see that in the play. It’s about a radical who comes up against authority.

0:10:28.4 VB (as Salome): Do you want me to come back there and break that door down? You like that, don’t you, breaking down doors? Come out. Come out, come out, COME OUT. We’ll have a party to welcome you.

0:10:43.4 JS: The great ghost hunting the play is Oscar Wilde. And so even if you were not hip to queer culture at all, if you knew one homosexual it would be Oscar Wilde, right? [chuckle] This was true of the general public. And so the fact that Oscar Wilde, who was persecuted, who was prosecuted for being gay, and found guilty. It really destroyed him. This is the ghost that’s haunting play as well, that other earlier radicalism around LGBT identity.

0:11:10.5 VB: And there are resonances of that trial within Now She Dances! along with other resonances throughout it, which is another thing that’s going to be exciting about exploring this play.

0:11:22.0 JS: Absolutely, I think you’re right. Doric is absolutely creating that direct connection, no question.

0:11:26.4 MF: Yeah. And what I love about is, it makes it a pleasure to sit down and read it, physically read it, because those bits are annotated. Like this is a quote from the actual trial. I doubt sincerely that people watching the play would go, “Oh my God, that’s from the Oscar… The first trial.” I mean, maybe, but it’s just a pleasure to see that in the notes. And again, you feel like you get a little piece of Doric’s brain there, and you get a little closer to you the millions of layers that are in this play.

[music]

0:12:03.3 VB: If you want to read the full script, you can find the text of Now She Dances! along with other cool background stuff at outlinespod.com.

[music]

0:12:12.9 VB: From its first staging as a one-act on the floor of the Caffe Cino in 1961, through rewrites over the decades, Now She Dances! brought a particular brand of ritual and catharsis to the LGBT community.

0:12:25.6 MF: In the ’60s, in ’61 it was its own catharsis, because I don’t know where else a gay man could go to see himself represented on stage other than off-off-Broadway. You certainly weren’t gonna see that in film and television. Boys in the Band hadn’t happened yet. So in a way, it must have been a real, for want of a better term, release to see someone that you recognize in some way on stage. And especially if you’re kind of made to be kept secret, to keep your identity a secret in so many different ways, to go to this downtown cafe and watch a play that’s happening literally a foot away from you, and to essentially feel like you’re in the play as you’re watching the play on so many different levels, must have been a real trip. Which I guess is an appropriate word to use for that time. And I think Doric knew that and kind of played on that. Doric said often that his two favorite playwrights were George Bernard Shaw and Thornton Wilder, and you can see both of those all over this play. If you look at Shaw as using the theater to both educate and entertain, yeah, that’s all over this one.

0:13:52.9 MF: And Thornton Wilder’s acknowledgement of the audience as the play is going on for… Well, real specifically in Our Town, that’s all over this too. In Now She Dances! it’s very much actors putting on a play and you as the audience are aware of them as actors until they, and you, get swept up in what play they’re actually performing, and then what ritual they’re actually performing. What sacrifice they’re actually making. And it’s a little bit like, particularly for several of the characters in the play, it’s a little bit like a horror movie, in that you don’t really know what’s going on until it’s too late.

0:14:40.2 CW (as Lane): William will know his duties all in good time.

[music]

0:14:46.8 VB: And we hope you come along as we get to know Doric Wilson’s Now She Dances! And a little bit more about our history and legacy.

0:14:53.4 MF: In the next Out Lines, we start our journey into Act One, Scene One of Now She Dances! by meeting some intriguing characters.

0:15:00.9 GD (as Lady Herodias): You want his head and you don’t even know his name?

0:15:04.0 VB (as Salome): He has hundreds of names. Hundreds of thousands.

0:15:07.1 JS: And with a dive into off-off-Broadway theater.

0:15:09.8 MF: You’re not trying to get the most asses in seats, therefore you can speak to specific audiences, you can cover specific themes.

0:15:18.7 VB (as The Actress): Is this?

0:15:19.9 Christopher Borg (as The Actor): A theater!

0:15:21.4 VB (as The Actress): Disgusting!

0:15:22.9 JS: This is really part of the ethos of the time. That there could be such a thing as a creative, artistic space, and theater is simply just one component of that.

0:15:30.8 CB (as The Actor): I think it’s what they term… experimental.

[music]

0:15:35.1 VB: Thank you for listening to Out Lines. Subscribe, get lost in our show notes and check out some awfully cute kitty pics at outlinespod.com.

[music]

0:15:44.1 VB: Season One of Out Lines features conversations and readings recorded between September 2020 and April 2021. This episode’s selections from Doric Wilson’s Now She Dances! were directed by Mark Finley and feature Gail Dennison, David Leeper, Karen Stanion, Jay Thomas, Chris Weikel, Christopher Borg and me, Virginia Baeta. And I did some writing and editing for this episode too. Thanks to Sarah Wardrop for the production magic, to the dastardly Morry Campbell for the theme music, and to Free To Use Sounds. You all are stars.

[music]

0:16:16.9 VB: Out Lines is a production of The Weakest Thing.