Chris Tyler performing in an earlier workshop at Little Theatre in February (photo credit: Knud Adams)

THIS IS A PLAY ABOUT BEING GAY

Written and Directed by Teddy Nicholas
Presented by the 2013 Fresh Fruit Festival
www.freshfruitfestival.com
All performances at The Wild Project
195 East 3rd Street New York, NY 10009
www.thewildproject.com
Ticket available for purchase by: https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/924653

“A three-act experimental gay identity politics play”

Show Times:

Tues 7/16/13 @ 7:00pm
Wed 7/17/13 @ 7:00pm
Sun 7/21/13 @ 12:00pm

Answers by Teddy Nicholas (playwright/director/producer)

[1] How did you come up with the title for your show?
Teddy Nicholas: I was getting to a point in my play-writing career where I realized I hadn’t written a play that addressed what it meant, for me, to identify as a gay male in our current American society.

I had also been seeing plays which painted really depressing worlds featuring this really ugly side of gay men and it pained me. It pained me because I felt I had more evidence, from these plays and from these message in media and culture, of why gay men are evil and wrong, and not enough evidence, not enough stories, not enough heroes who are gay men, even if they are fictional, to look up to.

There was a span of two weeks where I’d seen plays that featured a gay man abusing crystal meth, and featured a destructive relationship that ended in death or emotional ruin. And I’m not saying that these things don’t exist in the world because they do, and that’s obviously a problem, and I think yes, art does hold a mirror up to the audience showing the society we live in.

But I also believe that art can influence and shape and guide the way, and more often than not, work that features characters who are gay males are either victims or perpetrators of destruction, whether to themselves to the people they love; and I guess I’m getting sick of seeing that narrative played over and over again.

There’s a quote by Bertolt Brecht I love: “Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.”

And so one night, I began typing furiously away at my computer and after about 10 pages, I titled it: THIS IS A PLAY ABOUT BEING GAY.

[2] Was there an unexpected discovery made during the development of this production that you’d like to share with us?
Teddy Nicholas: I began writing the play two years ago, and at first, it was sort of a one-act musical with all these songs in it and I imagined there being musicians on stage. But then I felt that the play was striving to get at something stranger, and so I took out the music and replaced them with dances, and added two more acts. Each of the three acts of the play are completely different in terms of tone, narrative and characters, but yet they are all thematically linked towards the same universe of this idea of what it is to be a gay male as I see it today.

[3] What do you hope the audience receives from the experience of seeing your show?
Teddy Nicholas: I hope the audience takes away a new and different perspective of gay males, or at least questions their own ideas of what gay males are or how they relate to them in society. I also hope the experience is entertaining as well!

[4] How much of your show was inspired by true events?
Teddy Nicholas: A lot of the writing in the play is deeply personal and mixes in a lot of truth with slight distortions; there are stories from my childhood (including the first movie I ever saw in a movie theatre: Pet Sematary), my awkward/angsty high school experience, and even a breakup that happened to me in college that was particularly painful and raw but I felt needed to be shown. But there’s also a gay marriage proposal which is basically how I imagined my dream boyfriend proposing to me someday.

As a playwright, I don’t feel particularly comfortable with the writing unless I believe it to be honest and truthful, and so the things I write about in the play are either from my own experiences, or from experiences of those who are close to me.

[5] An anonymous donor funds your show. The one caveat is that you must use the money for a lavish set piece that’s outrageous, dazzling, fun and/or showstopping. What do you build for your show?
Teddy Nicholas: I would build a giant glass cube that surrounds the stage so that the actors looks like specimens and the audience is observing them as if they were scientists or something and the stage floor would illuminate like the music video to Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean.

~~~

Thanks Teddy!

Don’t forget to check out:

THIS IS A PLAY ABOUT BEING GAY

Written and Directed by Teddy Nicholas

Presented by the 2013 Fresh Fruit Festival
www.freshfruitfestival.com

The Wild Project
195 East 3rd Street New York, NY 10009

www.thewildproject.com

Ticket available for purchase by: https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/924653