Out Lines – Episode 3

Episode Transcript

[music]

0:00:01.0 Virginia Baeta as The Actress: I intend to file a grievance with Actor’s Equity.

0:00:03.7 Chris Weikel as Lane: Which violation in particular?

0:00:05.7 VB as The Actress: Production values.

0:00:06.9 Mark Finley: That’s the unusual part? That’s what raises your eyebrows?

0:00:10.3 Karen Stanion as Gladys: Something tingling with excitement is about to take place.

0:00:13.0 VB as The Actress: You bet your sweet ass it is.

[music]

0:00:17.3 MF: Welcome to Out Lines, the show where some cat fanatics dig into fascinating texts from the LGBTQ theater canon for the revelations waiting for us between the lines. I’m Mark Finley. When I’m not actively Artistic Director for TOSOS in NYC, I’m Simon’s social media manager.

0:00:35.2 Jordan Schildcrout: I’m Jordan Schildcrout, author, theatre scholar and regular feeder and victim of Jupiter.

0:00:40.0 VB: And I’m Virginia Baeta, actor, playwright and full-time Meatball stan. This season, we’re excavating Doric Wilson’s meta fantasia Now She Dances! You can find the full text of the play, along with pictures of our cats and other scintillating supporting stuff at outlinespod.com.

0:00:57.1 JS: In the last episode of Out Lines, we met all but two of the play’s characters, started digging into the action, and discussed the importance of off-off-Broadway to the existence of exciting experimental plays like this.

0:01:07.7 MF: In today’s episode, a new character arrives, derailing the action.

0:01:11.5 VB: Or does she? Let’s find out.

[music]

0:01:20.1 MF: When we last left Now She Dances!, Bill and Lane were on stage, working on a solution to a significant prop problem.

0:01:27.8 Gail Dennison: Lady Herodias, a dowager dreadnought, enters full steam down the aisle. Bracknell deranged, Lady H is dressed for the boulevards of 1895. She carries a beaded reticule. Her hat is a fantastic bird of prey.

0:01:44.3 MF: I love that.

0:01:45.0 VB: We have Lady H, who is making her entrance in her costume, from the streets.

0:01:52.6 MF: Yes.

0:01:53.4 VB: So, Gladys brought her costume in on a hanger. She is an actor who plays a maid, that is what she does, and is going to become the maid for this play, but now, we have a character who enters who is herself outside as well as inside. Lady H/Lady Bracknell, with her bag. [chuckle]

0:02:12.7 MF: Her beaded reticule. And it just makes you wonder, is she an actor or not? Is she just this character in space?

0:02:22.8 GD: Lady Herodias is returning from a mission and is in high dudgeon.

0:02:29.2 MF: I had a lot of trouble fantasy casting this one too. The first thing I thought was Judi Dench, ’cause she can do anything.

0:02:36.2 VB: I went to Judi Dench too, but I almost feel like that’s too easy. [chuckle]

0:02:39.6 MF: Yeah, it’s like Ian McKellen. It’s just too easy. I would love to see Bea Arthur do this. [chuckle] Just because you’d have an actual base on stage. Jordan, what do you think?

0:02:50.7 JS: I think the comic grande dame is such, again, a great stock character type. And in my mind, again, going back to classic Hollywood, I’m always picturing Margaret Dumont, the straight woman for all the Marx Brothers comedies. And honestly, though, when thinking about this more recently, I was actually thinking about Tonya Pinkins. And the reason for this is that I recently saw her do a reading of a Bernard Shaw play, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, in which she played Mrs. Warren.

0:03:20.8 MF: Wow.

0:03:21.5 JS: I feel she did a great job, because the character, she rose in class. And so, there’s a little bit of the high class about her, but also not so high-class still rumbling underneath. And I could totally see her in this kind of role, doing this. But the other thing that I think is always worth talking about this is that, if this is the Lady Bracknell type, this is a role that traditionally, including up the most recent Broadway revival, is done in drag. So, Brian Bedford played Lady Bracknell in the most recent revival of Earnest. Did a fantastic job in it. And I could definitely see this role going in that direction as part of the comedy of it. Although, honestly, if I really wanted to do my fantasy casting, I would vote for Miss Piggy.

0:04:05.5 MF: Yay! [chuckle]

0:04:07.1 JS: She’s a powerful woman. That’s what’s necessary for this role, and I think that Miss Piggy would be great in it.

0:04:12.2 MF: So, Lady H has come in, she is inspecting the set. She’s all over the map, talking about the good old days. And her reference into that is different kinds of natural poison.

0:04:25.5 GD as Lady H: The garden is pulling itself together quite nicely. Look, hemlock in full bloom, and it’s only May. And foxglove… And there, deadly nightshade… And here, look, dainty belladonna… How I do prefer the domestic poisons. They take me back to when I was but a spring of a thing. A silly miss, gathering me banewort where I might.

0:05:00.0 MF: So, Lady H is on, she’s throwing a tizzy, because somebody has accosted her on the street. And the person who has accosted her on the street, she never even got a good look at him. But the person thrust a piece of paper in her face, and the piece of paper is a flyer from a protest group called the Gay Defensive Front.

0:05:22.6 CW as Lane: Did you accomplish your mission?

0:05:24.1 GD as Lady H: Out there in the streets is anarchy. Fuzzy fiscal policies stalking the better shops. Radicals running riot, left to right. Close personal acquaintances hanging from the lampposts. But for the sake of you and your silly mission I gathered me skirts about my and persevered. When suddenly, to my horror, there, before me, was… Was… Was.

0:05:55.9 CW as Lane: What?

0:05:57.1 GD as Lady H: A hand.

0:06:00.1 CW as Lane: A hand?

0:06:02.1 GD as Lady H: Your usual five fingers. Nothing out of the ordinary. No, now that I recall, there was an ink smudge near the knuckle of the third digit from the thumb. Or was it the first digit from the pinkie?

0:06:17.2 CW as Lane: Had this hand a face?

0:06:20.9 GD as Lady H: I daren’t look. There stood I, there stood the faceless hand. The both of us poised on the precipice of an impasse. And then I saw it. The anonymous appendage with the ominous ink stain was proffering to me a piece of paper.

0:06:41.1 CW as Lane: A piece of…?

0:06:43.4 GD as Lady H: 8½ by 11 inch rag bond with miscellaneous mimeography on it. Which I instantly disposed of in the proper receptacle. It may have inadvertently slipped into my reticule.

0:06:58.9 MF: Again, it’s interesting. The outside, coming inside. I was just thinking, how does this translate to what is going on with us today? The closest I think that we get to it, in my experience, is people coming up to us on the street asking us to sign petitions and stuff, or “Are you a registered Democrat?” or…

0:07:22.1 VB: Save the children, save the environment…

0:07:23.5 MF: Yeah. Pieces of paper, not so much? But when it happens to me, I do feel equally accosted. So I have a little bit of sympathy for Lady H there. And I’m wondering how this would get addressed in a modern production. Me as the director, how would I handle it, or would I not even bother to just go full-on anachronistic with it and have a mimeographed piece of blue and white paper that smells funny, to have her walk in with it.

0:07:50.5 JS: That’s such an interesting point ’cause you’re right. In the 21st century, so much of our civic discourse and political campaigning happens online. And that wasn’t always the case, that it used to be a much more public thing. That if you had a cause and you wanted to convince people of it, you took to the streets. And the ability to communicate that way, to express one’s perspective that way, to create social change that way, has altered so much since the time that Doric wrote this play.

0:08:18.3 MF: Yeah.

0:08:18.5 VB: Well, we do still go and we do still hit the streets, it’s just that those street-hittings tend to not be interwoven within the rest of what people are doing. So it’s not that you are walking down the streets with everybody else handing out flyers and trying to persuade, but when people are hitting the streets, they tend to be shuttled into safe and acceptable protest zones where you can hand flyers to each other, and you’re not actually as much able to interact face-to-face, one-on-one with other people that are just walking by.

0:08:50.5 MF: But again, if you’re creating this metaspace of all times are meeting together in this room, sure, I’d buy it, why not? And at this point, the balance, all the wackadoos that have walked in that door, your balance is so off as an audience member, you’re just accepting whatever walks in that door. Especially if you’ve got somebody in full 1895 drag, real or non-real. Of course, she’s gonna be carrying a piece of paper. Of course, why wouldn’t she be?

0:09:18.6 VB: Well, and also to be handed a paper from the ’80s, the late ’70s or early ’80s, when you’re wearing 19th-century clothing, entering a 20th century or 21st-century space.

0:09:32.4 MF: Yeah, that’s the unusual part. That’s what raises your eyebrow.

0:09:36.1 VB: Which part of this is weird?

0:09:37.6 MF: Yeah, so again, it’s kind of perfect in its imperfection, and there’s really no way around it because it’s an important plot point.

0:09:46.4 Jay Thomas as Bill: What’s he protesting?

0:09:48.8 GD as Lady H: Me. They’re always protesting me.

0:09:54.1 CW as Lane: Save the whales? Ban the bomb? Free the Standard and Poor’s 100?

0:10:00.0 KS as Gladys: It’s something about the GDF. Ha! Lady Herodias, avert your eyes.

0:10:07.9 GD as Lady H: It’s off-color?

0:10:09.1 KS as Gayle: Depravity, pure and simple.

0:10:12.1 JT as Bill: Porno?

0:10:13.3 KS as Gladys: This, I think is addressed to you.

0:10:17.5 CW as Lane: Me?

0:10:19.5 GD as Lady H: What would Lane want with obscenity?

0:10:23.2 CW as Lane: Mine, milady.

0:10:25.7 GD as Lady H: I see no depravity. Gladys, you were titillating us. Oh, here it tells what GDF stands for: Gay Defensive Front.

0:10:40.0 CW: Peachy.

[music]

0:10:45.1 JS: One of the reasons that Doric Wilson’s play, Now She Dances! is so fascinating is because it’s had such a long life. It premieres in 1961 and is actually performed at various times over the following 50 years. But in each case, with differences that Doric continued to revise, to rewrite, to change it, as it moved forward through time, but of course also, we changed. The places where the play was produced changed, the audience has changed, and the times in which those plays were produced changed drastically. Primarily around how LGBTQ citizens of the United States were seen and treated under the law. And in a play that is focused on someone’s prosecution for homosexuality, this is a major point of its context. How we understand what this play is, what it means, what it could mean to its different audiences over time. So what do you say we begin in 1961?

0:11:45.7 VB: Well, actually, let’s start a tiny, tiny bit before 1961. Give a little bit of context just so folks know, homosexuality was actually illegal in much of the country with different levels of penalties from states to states, there were no federal protections. In 1950, New York State had reduced sodomy to a misdemeanor, and if you were caught and prosecuted for that, you could get six months in prison.

0:12:12.1 JS: And it’s so fascinating to think about the relationship between when Oscar Wilde was prosecuted in 1895, there, the sentence is two years hard labor. So from the two years hard labor to six months for a misdemeanor in the US, how far had we actually come?

0:12:28.4 VB as The Actress: You truly are, aren’t you?

0:12:30.0 Christopher Borg as The Actor: Dashing? Dauntless? Debonair?

0:12:32.5 VB as The Actress: Wholly and altogether without redeeming social content.

0:12:37.2 JS: What that line describes is usually the legal definition of obscenity, and this goes through major changes in the late 50s through the 1960s. Particularly, it’s the Roth v. United States decision in 1957. And the thing I’d emphasize here, particularly around having LGBT characters onstage, is that for so many years in New York, especially, it was illegal. That it was actually considered obscene to even just have any mention, any sort of depiction of homosexuality within the theater. And this really begins to change by the late ’60s. So when Doric is first doing this play in ’61, it’s actually still kind of in place what in New York was known as the Wales Padlock Law, in which the authorities, if you were judged to be producing an obscene play, could lock your theater up for a year, and of course, no theater owner wanted to risk that.

0:13:26.3 JS: So it’s really over the course of the 1960s that these laws began to crumble. I’ll also mention that in terms of, for example, nudity in the theater, this also begins to change by the late 1960s. So by the time that this play is done again in 1969, we’re in the full swing of the sexual revolution, and that the censorship laws in the theater around sexuality in general, and around homosexuality in particular. This has pretty much been deteriorated and there’s so much more freedom in terms of queer theater artists really being able to represent queer characters, relationships, communities, all of it.

0:14:00.9 VB: Between when Doric had written this play and 1969, which is the next production we’re gonna talk about, Illinois in 1962 is the first state to decriminalize homosexuality. New York actually doesn’t until 1980, which is a good chunk of time.

0:14:19.3 MF: A little bit, yeah.

0:14:20.2 VB: A good chunk of time after 1969, which is this production we’re talking about, so this next production, you’re still in a social context where you’re producing this play in a place where the conduct that is being referred to in some ways, is still punishable. Criminal.

0:14:36.8 JS: So I should say that leading up to this, that there’s really a major shift in the theater. Beginning in 1964, you have many more plays that feature queer characters. So a lot of this is again, coming out of the Caffe Cino, you have The Madness of Lady Bright by Langford Wilson, The Haunted Host by Robert Patrick. And even a play by Amiri Baraka, who’s more famous for Dutchman, but he also had a play in that same year in 1964 called The Toilet, which was about two teenagers in a public high school who have a secret relationship. So this alters the tone of what’s possible in the theater, what’s being represented in the theater, and then, of course, the big change is in 1968 with The Boys in the Band, which is usually seen as such a landmark play, because it’s not just successful with a small downtown, shall we say, “in the know” countercultural, or queer audience, it hits the mainstream. It runs for a thousand performances off-Broadway. And so this is one of the major representations of queer life right before Doric’s play Now She Dances! is produced once again, now in a full length two-act version in February of 1969. It’s at a place called The Play Box, which is in the East Village of Manhattan, and it starred Jane Lowry, and also Sloane Shelton. And one of the major things about this is, that it’s just four months before Stonewall.

0:15:55.7 MF: I was gonna say, it pre-dates Stonewall by just a hair’s breadth.

0:16:00.8 JS: Absolutely.

0:16:00.9 MF: That’s interesting.

0:16:01.4 VB: Let’s take another little time jump to the next recorded production, which is in the mid ’70s. A couple of exciting changes went hand-in-hand here. Mark, how about talking about TOSOS?

0:16:14.9 MF: The original TOSOS company, which stands for The Other Side Of Silence, was founded in 1974 by Doric Wilson, Billy Blackwell and Peter dell Valle. It was founded as New York City’s first professional gay theater. Doric and his partners wanted gay theater to have a home in New York City, and they decided to put TOSOS essentially on the map. Their focus, I believe, was to target plays that had gay content, period. They didn’t have to be American plays at all.

0:16:51.8 JS: And it’s interesting to see that the kinds of things that TOSOS was producing in many ways was the continuation of the Caffe Cino, so they were actually reviving some of those great gay Cino plays, like The Madness of Lady Bright, and The Haunted Host, but also trying to do more contemporary gay plays as well. What’s interesting to me at this point, ’cause we’re talking about ’75 and then it’s played again in ’76, is that there is a lot more queer theater going on. So there’s mainstream stuff, if you think about this, 1975 is when A Chorus Line comes out. Also Chicago and both of them feature in supporting roles, explicitly gay and lesbian characters. The Ritz by Terrence McNally, is also on Broadway at this time. So there was a breakthrough in the mainstream of queer theater, but also there’s more exciting stuff happening in the alternative theater.

0:17:43.4 JS: Charles Ludlam and the Theater of the Ridiculous is now in full swing. They produce Bluebeard in 1970, Camille in 1973, some of their landmark queer theater performances. The multi-gendered drag troupe Hot Peaches begins in 1972, and so there’s that kind of energy going on as well. But in the midst of all of this, Doric is championing what is now regarded as the first professional gay theater company. And really, when we say it’s a professional company, they’re working within Equity, they have a board of directors, they’re set up as a not-for-profit theater company, just like any other institutional theater, but within their mission statement is the fact that their whole agenda is to produce plays by, for, and about LGBT people.

0:18:25.9 MF: Learn more about how this play engages with our queer history at outlinespod.com. And more to come in future episodes of Out Lines. But for now, back to the show.

0:18:36.5 CW: Lane learns that Lady Herodias has failed in her mission to acquire suitable music for Salome’s dance.

0:18:43.5 GD: Lady Herodias, outraged about being sabotaged by a sodomite, exits to inform her brother Herod.

0:18:52.4 JT: Bill gets back to work.

0:18:54.8 KS: Leaving Gladys alone with Lane.

0:18:57.5 KS as Gladys: His lordship’ll have apoplexy.

0:18:58.4 CW as Lane: His Lordship need never know.

0:19:03.3 KS as Gladys: As for the kid, she’ll have a conniption.

0:19:05.3 CW as Lane: Miss Salome is no kid.

0:19:08.5 VB: The actress enters in her dressing gown and addresses Gladys.

0:19:13.1 VB as The Actress: You.

0:19:14.1 KS as Gladys: Yeah.

0:19:17.4 VB as The Actress: Yeah?

0:19:18.6 KS as Gladys: Yes, Miss, I’m sure.

0:19:21.4 VB as The Actress: I’m not at all sure.

0:19:23.6 KS as Gladys: No, Miss.

0:19:25.2 VB as The Actress: I’ve seen you somewhere before.

0:19:27.6 KS as Gladys: I’ve worked for a lot of other plays.

0:19:30.6 VB as The Actress: It’s unlikely we frequent the same plays.

0:19:33.8 KS as Gladys: Yes, miss.

0:19:35.2 VB as The Actress: It’s even less likely, we frequent the same playwrights.

0:19:39.6 KS as Gladys: No miss.

0:19:40.7 VB as The Actress: My costumes.

0:19:42.3 KS as Gladys: Immediately.

0:19:44.4 JS: Note how The Actress uses her authority to put Gladys in her place as a servant. But also on a meta level, to position herself as the diva, insisting that Gladys play her theatrical role properly. By sending the maid away on an errand, The Actress is now alone on stage with Lane.

0:20:00.5 VB as The Actress: Have we degenerated into improvisation?

0:20:04.4 CW as Lane: Not, if I can prevent it.

0:20:06.2 VB as The Actress: I could hear mamma’s histrionics all the way to my dressing room.

0:20:09.1 CW as Lane: A slight deviation in the narrative.

0:20:12.2 VB as The Actress: I abhor melodramatics.

0:20:13.5 CW as Lane: As well, you might.

0:20:14.8 VB as The Actress: Almost as much as I detest spontaneity.

0:20:18.0 CW as Lane: Nothing for you to worry your pretty head about.

0:20:20.3 VB as The Actress: I intend to file a grievance with Actor’s Equity.

0:20:23.4 CW as Lane: Which violation in particular?

0:20:25.1 VB as The Actress: Production values.

0:20:27.0 CW as Lane: If you refer to…

0:20:28.5 VB as The Actress: Music?

0:20:29.9 CW as Lane: There’s a perfectly good explanation.

0:20:31.4 VB as The Actress: I am referring to the shabby set.

0:20:35.1 CW as Lane: Hopefully the moonlight will minimize…

0:20:37.1 VB as The Actress: No moon.

0:20:39.2 CW as Lane: But considering what has to transpire here, tonight.

0:20:46.2 VB as The Actress: No moon.

0:20:46.9 CW as Lane: The moon is symbolic.

0:20:47.6 VB as The Actress: No moon!

0:20:47.9 CW as Lane: It’s your show.

0:20:49.2 VB as The Actress: You bet your sweet ass it is.

0:20:52.1 VB: I think he gets that line into every single play, right?

0:20:54.4 MF: I think he does too, yeah. And interesting here too, because you’ve got Salome nixing the moon. Where in Wilde’s play, it seems like every other word is the moon. So yeah. Again, he’s subverting everything, turning everything onto its head.

0:21:09.1 VB: The moon is absolutely a character in Wilde’s Salome.

0:21:12.7 MF: Absolutely.

0:21:14.8 VB: The actress exits.

0:21:17.1 JT: And Bill returns with some unexpected set pieces.

0:21:23.3 MF: He continues to pop in and out of the scene, setting up different parts of the set that are rather sinister. Most notably, the altar. Moloch’s altar, which is… Odd. [chuckle] And the… Things that we’ve been seeing before, which are tables and chairs and flats with flowers on them. All of a sudden we see this sacrificial altar. So it’s… A little bit of physical foreshadowing.

0:21:51.2 JS: Is this the first thing we’ve seen in the play that most directly references biblical times?

0:21:55.9 MF: Yes. Yes and no. We don’t really know yet.

0:22:00.8 JT as Bill: Where do you want this?

0:22:02.2 CW as Lane: The Holy Perch. Hand it to me. Reverently. What else is back there?

0:22:11.3 JT as Bill: Not much. Lamps, a box of empty bottles, the furniture for Act Two. Some kind of… Ouch! Hatchet.

0:22:24.0 CW as Lane: The headman’s axe.

0:22:26.0 JT as Bill: Sharp SOB. Croquet mallets, a cannon, the sphinx…

0:22:33.9 CW as Lane: The summerhouse?

0:22:35.5 JT as Bill: What’s it look like?

0:22:37.1 CW as Lane: Large.

0:22:39.6 JT as Bill: No.

0:22:41.1 CW as Lane: Octagon.

0:22:42.1 JT as Bill: Nope.

0:22:42.9 CW as Lane: Overwrought with wicker.

0:22:46.1 JT as Bill: Not back here.

0:22:47.9 CW as Lane: We can not possibly proceed without it.

0:22:49.9 KS as Gladys: You butlers slay me. You take everything so seriously.

0:22:55.6 CW as Lane: Have you forgotten the importance of the summerhouse. It must stand there at the bottom of the garden.

0:23:03.8 MF: Reference to fairies at the bottom of your garden. But in our world, it’s… At the back of the seating area, so we don’t actually see it. We never actually see it.

0:23:17.6 CB: Herod enters in a rage, with a plan to find and bring to justice the deviant who undid the dignity of his sister.

0:23:24.8 GD: That’s me.

0:23:27.1 VB: So Herod’s entrance here, follows Lady H’s entrance. Her talking about being accosted, how she was a accosted, etcetera, as she leaves, she has a chance now to talk to Herod who comes back out, with a change of plans.

0:23:45.3 MF: Yes. He is going out to capture the sodomite who offended Lady H. And he pulls his sword out of his sword cane and charges out into the streets. Which… This being New York? Probably nobody noticed.

[chuckle]

0:24:02.3 JS: I think it’s worth mentioning that, he’s referred to in the script as Sir Herod KCB, which, this is just my own reference for it, I couldn’t help but think of H.M.S. Pinafore with Sir Joseph Porter KCB. But of course, what it indicates is that he is a Knight of The British order and that he is distinguished in terms of his class position. And again, this is totally out of sync with any contemporary American notion of who this character is, but it puts us squarely into the Victorian world.

0:24:30.1 MF: Absolutely.

0:24:30.5 JS: Oh, by the way, John Barrymore or maybe Fredric March.

0:24:33.6 MF: Oh as Herod? Oh yeah, we never talked about Herod. I’m thinking about Kevin Kline in this part. Because he can do that and he’s so charismatic. But I think he should be repulsive and [chuckle] I never think of Kevin Kline as repulsive.

0:24:47.5 JS: I think of him as sort of like, an aging matinee idol, who still is trying to seduce all the young ingenues.

0:24:53.7 MF: Yeah. Yeah.

0:24:54.2 JS: That’s the kind of type I was thinking of.

0:24:56.7 VB: I kind of want Alan Rickman.

0:24:58.3 JS: Ha.

0:25:00.0 VB: In that role.

0:25:00.7 MF: Yeah.

0:25:00.9 VB: He would just be so fabulous in it.

0:25:01.8 MF: Yeah.

0:25:02.6 VB: Cunning and sleazy and smart.

0:25:06.3 MF: He’s just so oily, and yet dangerous.

0:25:09.5 VB: Yeah, but also delightful.

0:25:11.0 MF: Yeah.

0:25:11.4 VB: You want him to win, even when you don’t want him to win.

0:25:14.4 MF: Yes, even though you know it means that he’s gonna actually stick a knife in you.

0:25:18.9 JS: I think that’s a great call, that he’s both dignified, but also a buffoon at the same time. It’s a tricky balance, and that’s definitely what the comic role requires.

0:25:26.6 CB as Herod: It only remains for me to catch the culprit.

0:25:31.3 GD as Lady H: I’ll identify him.

0:25:33.6 CW as Lane: You didn’t see him.

0:25:36.0 KS as Gladys: When you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.

0:25:39.3 GD as Lady H: He’ll be charged with perversity, with playing footsie with the wrong feet. With… With mimeography!

0:25:50.7 CB as Herod: I pity the poor chap his punishment.

0:25:55.6 CW as Lane: Will it be severe?

0:25:56.4 CB as Herod: Civilized.

[music]

0:26:00.1 VB: What do you say we leave this here for now?

0:26:01.9 CW as Lane: The possibilities are most intriguing.

0:26:05.0 JS: Tune in to the next episode where we wrap up Act One of Now She Dances!.

0:26:08.8 MF: And witness the first unveiling of Salome.

0:26:11.8 VB as Salome: I usually enter side saddle riding a giant purple peacock.

0:26:16.7 MF: Wow! [laughter] Ouch.

0:26:19.5 David Leeper: I want you to give me the head of John The Baptizer, on a platter.

0:26:24.5 JS: There’s something so bloody about the story. And at the same time, it’s witty.

[music]

0:26:30.0 GD: 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. 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 Virginia Baeta, Christopher Borg, Karen Stanion, Jay Thomas, Chris Weikel, and me, Gail Dennison, who’d like to shout out to her cat, Thomas, who returned to Planet Cat last August. Thanks to Sarah Wardrop for the production magic, to the dastardly Morry Campbell for the theme music, and to Free To Use Sounds. You are all stars!

0:27:16.0 VB: Out Lines is a production of The Weakest Thing.