by Karen Tortora-Lee on March 14, 2012
You may think my life is all about going to shows, sitting in the dark, absorbing — going back home … writing reviews. It is NOT. My life is about highlighting, showcasing and celebrating the talented people of the independent entertainment world that I am lucky enough to experience. I only know how to do that one way: by knowing their work first, and then – if it works out – by meeting them for interviews, then seeing them socially … then interviewing them again. It helps when I can know the artist from the inside out – Know Them: Know Their Work. In turn: Know Their Work … Understand How To Distill It To An Audience. Voila - suddenly it’s all second nature.
Larry Kunofsky and I started out like any playwright/reviewer. But we soon learned that we had a lot to say to each other. A LOT. Larry is many things: a playwright, a thinker, a brilliant man. He’s as much an interviewer as an interviewee, and that’s what makes for a good give and take. In a few weeks The Management Theater Company will be doing his play Your Boyfriend May Be Imaginary. I had a lot to ask him. He had a lot to tell me. As a result I ended up with a two parter – and so did you, lucky reader. So, grab a drink and get ready to find out why New York City on a Saturday Night can be like falling down the rabbit hole, read why every relationship has an imaginary component to it, and, if Feist gets mentioned, play some of her music as you read. That’s what the link is for.
Love the title: Your Boyfriend May Be Imaginary.
Larry Kunofsky: Thanks, Karen. I won’t deny it, some of my titles are pretty nifty. I’ll let people like you speak to the merits of the plays themselves, but I hope that you and your readers will indulge me my little self-back-patting when it comes to Title-Pride.
If a play is sex, then a good title is foreplay. And if giving good foreplay is my legacy, I’ll accept my lot in life.
And we’re off!
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on April 14, 2011
Meet Simon and Kim – passionate. About their cause (we’ll get to that in a moment), about each other (when we meet them they’re taking a cozy bath together) and about their work which (currently) is a documentary film they’re shooting called The Un-Marrying Project. As it stands, this play IS the film. Or is it the other way around?
So passionate are they about their work, their relationship and their cause that it all blends together for them in one big ball of “Here we are! Simon and Kim!” (Exclaimed in unison, no less. Well … after some practice). They’re so deeply connected that they even have joint panic attacks. (Awwww – cute). But is all this passion enough to get them through their act of civil disobedience – The Un-Marrying Project: documenting the process of several married couples who willingly get un-married (yes, also known as divorced) in the name of protest … living apart until ALL people can be married EVERYWHERE? In other words … they’ve decided that until Gay Marriage is legal, no marriage should be valid and several brave couples are taking up the cause, allowing their journey to be filmed. So here’s the question … can they all stay committed to the cause? To the film? To each other? Is their committment as strong as their passion?
In The Un-Marrying Project writer Larry Kunofsky has taken a controversial matter and then turned it inside out. This is no easy topic and Kunofsky doesn’t gloss over any of it. With the overarching premise being that we’re watching two documentary film makers (Documentarians!) create a record for posterity, we gain access into nooks of participants lives in ways that perhaps they wouldn’t be so quick to divulge.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on April 4, 2011
Gay Plays for Straight People (and also gay people) is comprised of two plays which will play in rep brought to you by the new theatre company Purple Rep founded by playwrights Larry Kunofsky and Mariah MacCarthy. The plays - Kunofsky’s The Un-Marrying Project and MacCarthy’s The All-American Genderf*ck Cabaret – will run from April 8-30 at The Paradise Factory (64 East 4th Street between 2nd Ave and Bowery).
Larry and Mariah took some time to answer my questions and give me some straight answers (and also some not-just-straight answers) about what they’re passionate about, how they explore the fuckupedness of both genders, what it means, exactly, to be “un-married”, and how they intend to keep blending it all up in an effort to keep it Purple. Read on …
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