writing

Aug

2013

Membership Drive

Years and years ago, I used to write plays and sketches, all comedic. I mostly wrote to give myself something to act in or direct, and abandoned writing almost entirely when I started acting professionally.

Now, with a return to writing (albeit a different form), I’m revisiting some of my old theater pieces to see if anything is worthwhile. Most of it isn’t, but this made me laugh. It’s an unfinished piece – barely started, in fact. It’s just a few lines long. I probably wrote it twenty years ago, give or take. I have no memory of it whatsoever.

Membership Drive
(A GAY MAN and a LESBIAN knock at a door. A MOTHER answers.)

MOTHER
Yes?

GAY MAN
Hi, we’re homosexuals. We’re here to recruit your children.

MOTHER
Oh, please, come in.

(They all enter.)

MOTHER
Sit down, sit down. Can I get you anything to drink?

LESBIAN
No, thank you. We’re fine.

MOTHER
I’m glad you came by. I’ve been hearing a lot about this homosexual lifestyle.

GAY MAN
We’ve been getting a lot of press lately.

LESBIAN
Still, our numbers are down slightly this quarter, so we’re having a door-to-door membership drive. We’d like to tell you about some of the benefits homosexuality could bring to your children.

MOTHER
I’m all ears.

GAY MAN
How many children do you have, ma’am?

MOTHER
Little Billy is 10, and Janey is six and a half. They’re at school right now.

That’s it. That’s the whole thing. It’s pretty slight, but I really like how enthusiastic the mother is. I’m not sure where I would have gone with this, as I think that’s pretty much the only joke. Since this will never be finished, and it’s worth exactly one laugh, I thought I might as well share.

Aug

2013

Abandoned

“Wow.”
Jane stared at the dilapidated old barn standing lonesome in the abandoned field. It looked nothing like the structure she remembered from her childhood.
“Let’s go in,” Tom said.
“Is it safe?” she asked.
“Come on,” was the only reply.
She followed him in through the gaping doorway. The cool afternoon air turned humid and musty.
Jane looked around, at the rotting wood and empty stalls. A skeleton of a memory.
“I can’t believe it,” she said. “It’s so different.”
“You haven’t been here in years,” Tom said.
“I guess not.”
She joined him in the center of the barn, in the square of light pouring in from the upper window.
“Look at that beam,” she said. “That’s where we jumped from, into the hay. Remember?”
“I remember,” he said.
“Remember the rats scuttling away when we landed? I don’t know why that didn’t bother me. I could never do that now, could you?”
“We were braver then,” he said quietly.
She let that sit for a moment.
Then, “Well, it’s rotted now. No jumping anymore.”
He kicked at a clod of dirt. “Nope. No anything anymore.”
He looked up at her and grinned.
“We did more than jump in that hay,” he said. “Remember that?”
“I remember your dad catching us,” she said, returning his smile. “I was sure he’d tell my folks.”
“Instead he sat us both down and gave us ‘the talk,’” Tom said.
“That was worse! I wanted to die.”
They laughed. Some of the tension she had felt since he called her dissipated.
“Tom, why did you bring me here?” she asked him.
The smile vanished. He shrugged. “Thought you’d want to see it before it was gone. This hasn’t been a working farm in years, we’re selling off most of the land. Need to tear this old thing down first.”
“I heard about the farm. Sorry. I know it meant a lot to your dad.”
“Meant a lot to me, too,” he said.
“I know that,” she said. “Obviously, I know that.”
They were quiet again for a moment.
“We’re fine without the farm,” Tom said. “Elaine telecommutes three days, and I do consulting for some of the corporate farms, so one of us is always home for the kids.”
“Good. That’s good, then.”
“How’s New York?”
“It’s good. I just showed in a gallery, that was exciting. Alex made partner. We’re thinking first kid in the next year or two, maybe.”
He didn’t meet her eyes. “That’s great. Life’s good all around, then.”
“Don’t,” she said. “It was your choice.”
“Me in New York,” he scoffed, still not looking at her.
“I’d better go,” she said. “My folks are making dinner.” She walked away from him.
“Wait, Jane…” he said.
“Thanks for calling, Tom,” she said as she crossed the doorway. “I’m glad I got to see the old place one last time.”

Aug

2013

Harry Potter and the Assumption of Heterosexuality

I was in the audience at Carnegie Hall the night J. K. Rowling revealed for the first time that Dumbledore was gay. My friend Kate had won two tickets to an evening with the author after the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Kate took me as her guest, something for which I will be eternally grateful to her (added to the long list of things I have to be eternally grateful to Kate for).

A young girl – I want to say she was around twelve, though I may be misremembering – shared a personal story about how the Harry Potter books had helped her through a difficult time in her life. She then asked if Dumbledore had ever found love. Rowling hesitated, then said that because the girl had been so honest, she deserved an honest answer. She said she had always considered Dumbledore to be gay.

The audience cheered and applauded. I did as well. It was a lovely moment. By the time I got home, the internet had exploded.

As I thought more about it, I found myself wishing Rowling had made Dumbledore’s sexuality explicit in the actual text. How much more powerful would that have been? I’m not suggesting she change her story the slightest bit, just that she could have stated clearly what she says she already intended. One little throwaway line about Dumbledore being in love with his friend would have had such a colossal impact. It would have done so much good. A major character in children’s fiction, named as gay in the book itself. Undeniable. Parents would be reading a story to their kids that includes a same-sex love presented as valid (if doomed). How many gay kids would have been helped by that? How many straight kids, for that matter? How many would still be helped now, as new generations discover these books for the first time?

I don’t blame J.K. Rowling. She is certainly an ally to the LGBTQ community. I don’t think it was a purposeful omission on her part. I don’t know why she didn’t clarify Dumbledore’s feelings, but it seems unlikely she was shying away from controversy. I think she wrote the story she wanted to write, and it’s a damn good one. I’m just a little disappointed that she didn’t go that one tiny step further, as the end result would have been so much greater.

Still, I’m glad she said what she said. Even though Dumbledore’s sexuality is far from clear in the text, and plenty of people will read the book and never notice anything romantic in his feelings towards Grindelwald (I certainly didn’t), a lot of people now know Dumbledore is gay, and that helps. And when she said it, it was beautiful. And I’m so happy I was there.

(This post was inspired by some conversations happening on Gail Simone’s Tumblr blog. If you’re a comics fan you should definitely follow her.) (And if you want to get the really insane – but hilarious – stuff, follow her on Twitter.)

Aug

2013

What do you do?

For years, I called myself an actor. If you asked me what I did, I would say acting. “Actor” was my identity. It had been for my entire adult life.

Then I started directing. Acting wasn’t bringing me the same happiness it once had, and directing was getting better at scratching that itch to create. At first, calling myself a director felt like a lie. I wasn’t acting anymore, but I had wanted to succeed as an actor for so long that is seemed like a betrayal of my younger self to call myself anything else. But directing satisfied me, and acting didn’t, and gradually I started calling myself a director and believing it. “Director” became my new identity.

For the past few years I’ve been working as a production manager. It’s more than a full time job, so I’ve had less and less time for directing as my work responsibilities have increased. My identity hasn’t changed – production managing is just my job. But if you ask me what I do nowadays, I’m more likely to say I’m a producer. (Nobody knows what a production manager does, but everyone thinks they know what a producer does, so I simplify.) Since I only direct about once or twice a year these days, I once again feel like a fraud if I introduce myself to someone as a director. I’ll leave that revelation for the deeper end of the conversation – if we reach the point where we’re telling each other what we are instead of what we do, I may tell you I’m a director.

Years ago, I was, to most of my friends, a writer first and foremost. I wrote plays and sketches for myself and my friends to perform, in high school and college and summer stock and eventually in New York. But while that was how other people viewed me, it was never how I viewed myself. I only wrote to give myself something to act in.

But now…something is changing again. I spent the past year pouring all of my frustrated creative energy into a book, and I surprised myself with how happy it made me. Happy enough that I turned down the opportunity to direct two plays this summer in order to focus on writing. I’m not quite ready to say I’m a writer, yet – it hasn’t become my identity. If you introduce yourself to me at a party and ask what I do, I will, after stammering incomprehensibly for a moment (I’m bad with new people), still tell you I’m a producer. But if we get past that, “And I wrote a book” will probably leave my lips before “And I’m a director” does.

But ask me again after my second book comes out. I’m dying to know what I’ll say then.

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