LGBT – [art]seen

REVIEW: Stop Kiss

May 7, 2024May 7, 2024 musicalsoup Leave a comment

Rude Mechanicals completes their 2023-24 season with the 1999 play by Diana Son, Stop Kiss. Seeing this play was a new experience for me, and quite a beautiful one.

Set from *Stop Kiss* in the Arthur Miller Theater.

The play follows two young women, Callie (Emilia Vizachero) and Sara (Victoria Vourkoutiotis), who meet in New York City and begin to have feelings for one another. One evening, they share a kiss in the West Village, and it results in a terrible hate crime leaving Sara with a life-altering injury. The play follows a non-linear storyline, jumping from Sara and Callie’s first interaction to weeks after the attack.

I am not cultured on much queer theater, so I haven’t been exposed to many pieces where characters are actively discovering their sexual identity during the show—rather many pieces I’ve encountered have characters come in with their sexuality seemingly decided. I enjoyed this piece’s honest and sincere exploration of queerness.

I was immediately struck by Audrey Tieman’s beautiful onstage set when I walked into the Arthur Miller. It brought me directly into the moment of the show with an ornate pink apartment—the 1990s, young, and within a metropolitan city. The major part of the set was far upstage, juxtaposing the thrust space. This left the apartment scenes feeling more presentational than personal, counteracting the intimacy of a thrust. All of the scenes outside the apartment were on the thrust, such as the detective’s office or moments when characters were strolling through the streets of New York City. An interesting choice, that sometimes led me out of the detail of the world that was created in the embellished apartment set.

Emilia Vizachero and Adam Rogers delivered individually exquisite performances. Rogers is effortlessly charming as Callie’s undefined partner, George, and Vizachero brilliantly leads us through a journey of Callie’s many complex emotions over two timelines—one I would be happy to experience again. Vourkoutiotis also played a sweet and gentle Sara, with wholesome chemistry alongside a witty Vizachero.

Direction (by Reese Leif) was cohesive and thorough. Scenes and dramatic moments felt naturally paced, at times skimming on hyper-realism, making the play’s brutal contrast of content duly apparent to the audience.

The illuminating kiss that closes the play leaves a fully realized portrait of Callie and Sara’s relationship. This perfectly placed scene becomes charged over the duration of the play due to the revelations about what lies behind and ahead of these beloved characters. It was an unforgettable (and titular) moment of the piece, yet left my heart aching for the two women.

Leo Kupferberg (a fabulous and frequent SMTD Dramaturg) made a beautiful point in his dramaturgy note about the “in-between” of the piece, which I left the theater pondering. This show revels in the lack of certainty, unwavering bravery, and messiness many women navigate through. Stop Kiss can feel limited to its darkness and crucial messaging of the tumultuous experiences of many LGBTQ+ relationships, but Leif brings out the beauty in such darkness, reminding us that love always prevails.

April 20th, 8pm. Arthur Miller Theater. Images thanks to @umrudes on Instagram.

REVIEW: The Favourite

January 22, 2019January 22, 2019 Laura Dzubay 1 Comment

I don’t know quite what I was expecting when I walked into a screening of The Favourite at The Michigan Theatre. I had heard it described as a dark comedy, while other people had told me definitively that it wasn’t a comedy. I knew it involved queer relationships, but people had also told me not to think of it as a gay love story. Emma Stone was the only actress with whom I was very familiar, and her own past filmography has been so varied that it was hard to predict what type of role she was going to play.

As a result, it’s saying something that even throughout the length of The Favourite, I still struggled to pinpoint exactly what type of a movie it was. This isn’t meant as a slight. The movie is of course a historical drama, set during the reign of Queen Anne in Britain during the early 18th century. The comedic elements, although dry and often subtle, were often at the forefront of the screen, from the petty arguments and witty bickering between Sarah Churchill (Rachel Weisz, The Lobster) and Robert Harley (Nicholas Hoult, Mad Max: Fury Road) to visual jokes, like Robert Harley pushing Abigail Masham (Stone) into a muddy ditch. The romance took a backseat to the drama, to be sure, and The Favourite could not quite be classified as a romance film. However, a major element of the emotional weight of the end of the film was the factor of Queen Anne’s (Olivia Colman) discarding of Sarah, which only landed in the way that it did due to these characters’ romantic history.

The Favourite is a difficult film to characterize, but this lack of definitiveness is done purposefully and well. At its core, The Favourite is about manipulation, which is why it feels fitting that even as the three central characters — primarily Sarah and Abigail — manipulate each other, the film is also manipulating its viewers. It is tempting to side with Abigail for much of the first half of the movie, as she is constantly undercut and underestimated by the other characters. Abigail seems kind and relatable, bringing Anne medicine for her pained legs and shrugging off the advances of Samuel Masham (Joe Alwyn, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk). She is also in competition with Sarah for Anne’s attention, and Sarah, while at times genuinely funny and surprisingly endearing, can also come across as intimidating (especially to a new servant like Abigail), vindictive, and callous.

In the end, though, the film makes a point about the tremendous bearing that wealth and stature can have upon the way that a person acts. When Abigail ultimately succeeds in becoming Anne’s “favourite” and edging Sarah out of the queen’s inner circle, it becomes clear that she was truly the vindictive one all along, motivated by material gain and greed rather than by any real attraction to or interest in Anne. When Sarah is distanced from the queen and then exiled, she comes across as emotionally closer and more attached to Anne than ever before. Anne herself, as the queen, is in a position to take her wealth and status more for granted than the other characters, and therefore exerts the bulk of her emotional energy on her own profound loneliness and despair.

The Favourite ends with an incredibly sad, grave, loneliness-oriented scene, far from the comedic and more lighthearted elements that punctuated the film earlier on. And yet, despite some of the seeming tonal shifts, it feels apparent that this gravity was what characterized the film from the very beginning. On the one end, this movie is about three women possessing varying degrees of power, each able and willing to do various things — some of them outrageous things — in order to gain and maintain this power. On the other hand, it simultaneously perfectly captures the notion of desperation, of seeking all of the material promises of a good life — wealth, power, beautiful objects, political sway — only to be crestfallen upon the realization that these gains have come at the cost of forsaking true and meaningful companionship. Each of the three characters embodies some angle of this concept by the end of the film, completing a trifecta of powerful acting and storytelling. The Favourite is currently playing at local theaters such as the Quality 16 and the Ann Arbor 20 IMAX.

REVIEW: They, Themself, and Schmerm

February 7, 2018February 7, 2018 tintinj Leave a comment

Like performer Becca Blackwell, it’s hard to define They, Themself, and Schmerm as a specific “type” of performance. Like a stand up comedy special, it’s funny, observational and at times, oddly insightful; but, unlike a regular gig, Blackwell’s narrative highlights scenes from their entire life, like a cohesive, revealing, well-told memoir.

Blackwell’s performance is an attempt to connect the dots in their sexual identity, both for themselves and their audience. They questioned the origins of their queerness (“I wasn’t aware I was a girl between ages 0 to 3” “What makes a man? I acted like a boy, I looked like one, the only thing I didn’t have was a penis.” ). They prodded at their impressions of binary gendered people (“before I took testosterone, men were just shades of grey, obstacles that got in the way of women”). They broke down their insecurities in public life (“I hated the men’s room- there were all these unfamiliar sounds and sights–I had to turn my feet this way and that to pretend I was peeing standing up”). And they shared their various roles in other people’s lives, like when Blackwell was cornered into a mother figure for a niece because the rest of the men “blanked out.”

Blackwell’s delivery is raw and honest. One of my favorite parts of the show was Blackwell’s use of “Blerrgghh” (while jutting out their head and wiggling their fingers) to refer to her femininity. It’s an honest portrayal of the interwoven confusion, annoyance, lust, unpredictability, and fear of the vagina and female hormones. It’s also a metaphor for the confusion that comes with figuring out who we are, who we love/lust, and why we love.

After a dive into their engaging stories, I came out with a better sense of the complexity of gender identity as well as its salience, in the form of socially awkward and even dangerous moments, for people who don’t conform to the binary standard. And it’s resonant, not only with people who are involved in the LGBTQ+ community or remotely identify themselves as such, but also with those who claim to be part of the more mainstream identities. The innocent questions that were brought up in Schmerm were definitely in my head at some point of my life, but I didn’t have enough of the curiosity nor the courage to follow it up even further. And I’m certainly not alone in this. Schmerm is a call to acknowledge, appreciate, and question without fear, the uniqueness of our own identities.

“A schmerm is a schmear of gender. It is basically the sound that people make as they try to figure my gender out.”- Blackwell in a short opening video.

REVIEW: LGBTQ monologues

November 16, 2017November 16, 2017 Abby Z Leave a comment

By the time I arrived the lights were low and the event was about to begin, so I didn’t have time to sample the refreshments artfully arranged at the back of the beautiful Pendleton room in the Student Union. My friend and I took our seats, pocketing the stickers we had gotten outside when signing in and prepared for a night of moving stories and personal accounts from members of the LGBTQ community here on campus.

The event had been arranged and sponsored through a collaboration between the student org LGBT Michigan and the university’s spectrum center kicking off Umich’s events for national coming out week. By the time the first speaker came up to give their monologue, the room was completely packed. Scanning the rows of crowded chairs it became a difficult game to try to pick out any empty seats as latecomers trickled in and slowly filled the room to capacity. To maintain the privacy of the community members and students who so bravely chose to share their individual stories, I don’t want to recount the specific of any one story, but I appreciated the diversity and range of individuals represented in the monologues. While it seems obvious that no two individuals would have similar experiences, I still found myself amazed at the amount of diversity of individuals and monologues that we heard packed into one night. The crowd was delightfully receptive, laughing at the right moments, staying quiet when the mood was somber, and offering a perfectly respectful environment that everyone could feel safe in, both for the speakers and the other audience members.

I appreciated greatly that there was also time reserved at the end of the event for open mic time, inviting audience members with their own story to share to come up to the front and have a turn on the mic. I was surprised at how well spoken everyone was, reading everything from a personal poem relating to the topic to a moving life story. It was the perfect way to round out the night, and even the open mic speakers all delivered their monologues with a level of polish that was not expected or needed, but highly appreciated. I think this event was the perfect place for those who might feel isolated or alone on campus to hear the stories of others that they might resonate with, or bring communities closer together. I hope that this event becomes a yearly series and sincerely thank those organizing it for their dedication and effort.

Review: 8-Prop and Problem

November 20, 2011May 15, 2013 Danny Fob

Another event celebrating the birth of the Spectrum Center was the first ever reading of the play “8” by Dustin Lance Black. It was an interesting experience. I had never been to a live play reading before. It was sort of like watching a regular play, except the actors carried the scripts around on stage with them and didn’t deliver the lines quite as well as they would have, though they still did an amazing job. It was also really great because many of the actors were the same Broadway UofM alumni that had performed the night before at the Pink Carpet Gala.

The play was based on the transcripts of the trial in California fighting against Proposition 8. This amendment to the Constitution of California banned gay marriage and recognition of same-sex marriages. The trial was not broadcasted nationally,

although the plaintiffs did fight for it to be. Because of this, the only record we have of the trial is the transcript, and from this document Dustin Lance Black wrote a creative interpretation. His play will be making a tour around the country at many universities. Hopefully it will help spread awareness of what is happening in California and in the rest of the country when it comes to the rights of TBLG people.

Attending this event was sort of like attending a court trial, as it was staged like one, except that it gave us the bullet points of what happened and also introduced the families that were fighting together against the proposition and the ad campaign used by the supporters of Prop 8. It was sort of funny watching this depiction of the trial, because I’ve always wondered how conservatives defend their “values” like banning same-sex marriage. I always wonder what kind of evidence and argument they can come up with. This is exactly what I thought it would be like. The defense could not provide evidence or even an argument. Its witnesses were absent from court because they were afraid to defend their own words on the witness stand. The one witness that did get cross-examined ended up supporting the plaintiff’s argument, completely crushing any chance the defense had.

The outcome of the case was that same-sex marriage would not affect the rate of different-sex marriage or the rate of procreation, which is the argument the defense was trying to use. The plaintiffs won, though it is being repealed and we are still fighting Prop 8 to this day. The best thing we can all do about it is to stay informed and educate others on what has happened. I believe that is what Dustin Lance Black is trying to do with his play and I hope it works.

For more info on Prop 8, please visit http://www.prop8trialtracker.com/ or search it online for other websites that you might prefer. Also, just a fun video that came out around the time of the trial;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_hyT7_Bx9o

Sending you love and light,

Danny Fob

(Coffee is on me if you can name the show that my sign off is from!)

Review: Gala Greatness-Let’s Do it for 40 More!

November 20, 2011May 15, 2013 Danny Fob

The Spectrum Center’s Pink Carpet Gala event happened this past Friday at Hill Auditorium, and both I and my colleague Kayla Silverstein enjoyed it thoroughly.

Since she already gave it such a raving review of the event, I would like to just provide my own personal experiences with the show, because it really was all that Kayla said it was, and more.

The speeches were incredible. Absolutely inspiring. Especially as a gay identified student here on campus that has spent a lot of time in the Spectrum Center and learned so much from the volunteers and employees that work so hard there. I am proud to have been able to celebrate so many milestones in my past three years here with the Spectrum Center. Their programming took me to the National Equality March in 2009, MBLGTACC 2010 in Madison, Wisconsin, gave me the opportunity to participate on an executive level with the planning of MBLGTACC 2011 here at the UofM, and has helped me become the proud Gay man I am today. This event meant so means so much to the community because it was the first ever office on a college campus to deal with LGBT issues, and as the co-founder and first publicly out gay person in Michigan, the speech of Jim Toy was the most hard hitting for me. This man is a legend in the LGBT activism world, and it is an honor to have met him on numerous occasions.

The speeches of Chris Armstrong and his father also brought me and most of the people around me to tears. It wasn’t so long ago that Chris was being targeted and slandered, and his family is so moved that our campus stood up and supported Chris in such a huge way. I’ve known Chris ever since my freshman year. He is a fantastic individual and it makes me proud to have been there with him, standing on the diag and at Gayz Craze with him. Andrew Shirvell approached me one time during his time here on campus, and him knowing my name and face before he met me was a little terrifying, so I can only imagine how Chris felt. UofM has proven once again exactly what the Michigan Difference is and that we will stand by our own.

Anyway, to the performers, since that what I’m really supposed to write about. Gavin Creel is amazing. I have to admit, I knew nothing about any of the performers before Friday (I’m more of what I like to call an “Old Gay” in that I listen to people like Patti Lupone, Bette Midler, Bernadette Peters, Dick Van Dyke). I absolutely loved Gavin Creel though. This man, I believe, was THE performer of the night. He sang Something’s Coming from West Side Story and I swear I couldn’t stop gripping the arm of the person next to me. He was amazing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAd1Dk6WFmw&feature=related

Everyone that performed was amazing. I think Kayla pretty much sums up how I feel about the other performers, and about how the crowd felt in her review, so I won’t make you read it all again. I really just wanted to report how amazing it felt to be in such a large crowd of LGBTQA people with highly supportive performers and University of Michigan faculty members. The love available in this community is really like nothing else you can ever experience. Plus, we throw the BEST parties!

Stay tuned for more about the Spectrum Birthday Weekend! (And of course by stay tuned I mean read my other review!)
Sending you love and light,

Danny Fob