I Raising 'Milk' Money and Voices
Los Angeles theatre companies are quickly responding to last week's California Supreme Court ruling upholding the controversial voter-approved Propositon 8, which bans future gay marriages in the state. As previously announced here, veteran director-playwright Del Shores is offering an encore performance of his sublime solo reminiscence Del Shores: The Storyteller on June 3 at the Zephyr Theatre, as a benefit for Equality California. Announcing the added show the same day the Supreme Court ruling came down, Shores proudly informed me that he was just preparing to go out to join the local protest marches.
And on May 31, I had the supreme pleasure of attending a staged reading of Patricia Loughrey's deeply moving theatre piece, Dear Harvey: Stories of Harvey Milk at Hollywood's gay-focused Celebration Theatre.
Marvelously directed by Anthony Frisina, the Celebration's Associate Artistic Director and featuring an excellent ensemble cast of Celebration members, this piece was originally comissioned by and performed at San Diego's gay-focused Diversionary Theatre. The reading was timed to honor the birth month of revered gay-activist pioneer Milk, who served as San Francisco City Supervisor from January-November 1978 and worked tirelessly and unselfishly on behalf of equal-rights issues for all citizens, before being murdered, along with Mayor George Moscone, by disgruntled former Supervisor Dan White. Half of the proceeds from the reading went to the Hetrick-Martin Institute and the Harvey Milk High School.
The text of Loughrey's script consists entirely of Milk's writings and first-person interviews with people who knew and/or admired him (and even a homophobic hate letter or two from bigots who despised him and his messages of tolerance). The excerpts--beautifully brought to life by Vash Bodie, Jim Faulkner, Hutchins Foster, Jenny Gattone, Charls S. Hall, Matthew Hannon, Louise Hung, Samantha Kern, Sean Lambert, Michael Mullen, Jordana Oberman, Michael O'Hara, Chris Pearson, and Vance Reyes--painted a funny, tragic, stirring, and uplifting portrait of courage, faith, and dignity. Among the dozens of interviewees whose comments are dramatized in the piece: Tom Ammiano, Cleve Jones, Anne Kronenberg, John Laird, Dan Nicoletta, Chris Kehoe, and Robin Tyler. A reiterated message that came through loud and clear, both in the reading and in the wonderful talk-back session that followed, was to fight the equal-rights battle from a place of postivity, rather than fury or in attack mode--educate and discuss, come to common grounds of understanding.
There was a lot of mention of the Celebration's ongoing aggressive efforts to be a voice and forum for the community at large with programs of interest to family audiences, seniors, and others, besides its emphasis on gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender issues. Educational outreach programs and other worthy efforts are also underway. A vocal and highly involved audience expressed interest in these efforts and a great apprecation for the reading, and many offered their support on the spot. It's heartening to see a theatre company striving to expand its charter of producing provocative theatre by working to communicate huminatarian messages of love, respect, support, and positive action within and beyond the theatre's four walls
--Les Spindle
