Drama queens

March 1997

Drama queens

The Triangle Theater has closed, and former members have started up a new company
by Robert David Sullivan

In 1979, the Triangle Theater took its name from a symbol of repression, the triangle used to mark gays and lesbians during the Holocaust. The company went on involuntary hiatus last year, shortly after the word "triangulation" was coined to describe President Clinton's strategy of placing himself at equal distances from liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans. And, like Clinton, Boston's first gay-and-lesbian theater has developed a reputation for staying close to the middle. Triangle has stood apart from Boston's mainstream stages, where gay and lesbian characters are still often treated as novelties, and also from the more radical gender-fuck artists associated with the Theater Offensive. It has presented plays by Harvey Fierstein and Charles Ludlam, but it may be best known for the peppy Ten Percent Revue.
The artistic director of the newly formed Open City theater company, which also plans to produce primarily plays with gay content, promises something different. "Triangle's mission was to produce positive theater for gay men and lesbians," says Steven O'Donnell. "Open City is going to push beyond that. We are looking to produce theater that's of interest to the entire spectrum of the community -- gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, even people who may not consider themselves gay men or lesbians." O'Donnell adds that Open City will also place more emphasis on producing new works by local playwrights.
Sally Fabens, chairwoman of Triangle's board of directors, sounds skeptical about this mission statement. "That's interesting to me," she says carefully over the phone. "I think they're claiming that this is an expansion, but it was already our mission. It just wasn't reflected in the works that were chosen."
Why not? "Those were the choices of Steve O'Donnell," Fabens responds dryly. O'Donnell, now leading Open City, was artistic director of the Triangle for its past three seasons, and for five years in the late '80s.
O'Donnell and Fabens seem to agree on two things: first, the Triangle hasn't been as challenging and as inclusive as it should be; and, second, the Triangle has been quite successful. O'Donnell claims that the company's last two seasons were "dynamite" in terms of ticket sales. But explosives of a more literal kind were needed when the theater's landlord, the Hotel and Restaurant Workers' Union, abruptly locked the doors to the upper-floor stage on Berkeley Street. The details are murky, but the action was apparently precipitated by the need to make repairs to the space in order to keep an entertainment license -- and by the Triangle's unpaid back rent. The union and theater company are reportedly involved in a suit and countersuit that have frozen Triangle's funds. "We are trying to get through with the union's legal action," Fabens says. "We don't want to go forward in soliciting donations until then." As for a new site and artistic director, Fabens says, "We have quieted our search, but we're still putting out feelers."
Open City hasn't got a home yet either. "We have a couple of possibilities that are within the city area but not in the South End," O'Donnell notes. "So we're still scouting for something a little closer."
Nevertheless, Open City is planning its debut production for June, followed by a 1997-'98 season consisting of three plays and other events such as staged readings. In order to gain access to a more professional talent pool, Open City is seeking approval from the Actors Equity Association to employ both union and non-union actors in its productions. (Because of the added expenses, only a handful of Boston theater companies regularly use Equity actors; the Triangle has not been among them.) Besides O'Donnell, several other Triangle associates are on the founding committee, including director Joseph Cambone, actress Catherine Clark, and playwright Myles Crowley (The Last Shaker). "Some people have decided that they can't wait it out," says Fabens of the Triangle's uncertain status.
As for Open City's progress in raising funds, O'Donnell says, "So far, so good. We were very fortunate to get several generous donors at the very beginning."
Those donations may have been given out of sheer curiosity, to see what O'Donnell will come up with. This is the same guy who, in a 1994 interview with the Phoenix, defended the lack of "in-your-face" shows at the Triangle, adding that otherwise, "We wouldn't be seeing as many people from all walks of life." Even now, sitting at a South End café, O'Donnell seems to keep reminding himself to use the Q-word. ("The primary focus is going to be gay sensibility -- er, queer sensibility.")
"The focus at Triangle," he says, "and I think this was unintentional, tended to be about gay men and women of a certain age, a certain income. We were not an ethnically or racially diverse theater company. [Open City] is going to be a theater that develops a diverse talent pool. Racially, ethnically, generationally."
Fabens responds that the Triangle had already been trying to move in that direction. "We've had this discussion several times," she says. "That has been our intention all along." About five years ago, for instance, the company adopted a policy of staging an equal number of plays written by gay men and by lesbians. Fabens also points to OUT!!!, a Triangle-commissioned work about gay teens that she hopes will tour local high schools.
Sandra Heffley offers another example of the Triangle's artistic growth. She directed Holly Hughes's The Well of Horniness, which she remembers as one of the Triangle's two or three biggest hits. "We took a chance," Heffley says, adding that she doesn't know whether anyone on the Triangle board objected to the choice. "It was very raunchy for a lesbian show, and you know how PC lesbians can be. But it was a good night of entertainment."
Heffley is now on Open City's founding committee and is a supporter of "on-the-fringe kind of plays." Of O'Donnell, she says, "He's the one pushing for new things."

Whether or not Open City gets off the ground -- or the Triangle gets off the mat -- there will still be queer theater in Boston. The Theater Offensive, ensconced in the Boston Center for the Arts, is planning its third spring season of "Plays at Work," featuring works in progress by local playwrights. Running from May 1 through 11, the festival includes a piece about AIDS created and performed by the Sign Language Theater; Letta Neely's Hamartia Blues: Stuck in the Game, based on the "rich cadences and graphic images of the African-American, urban Midwest"; and Leo Cabranes's In Mortality, about two white gay men who pick up a "Puerto Rican sex object" for a three-way and discover that he has "a life, a culture, and an HIV status." Then, from May 30 through June 15, the Theater Offensive premieres a full production of artistic director Abe Rybeck's political comedy Dirt. And in the fall, the long-running "Out on the Edge" series features a variety of queer performers. It all sounds quite a bit like what O'Donnell and Fabens say they want their companies to be.
That brings us back to the triangle metaphor, and the difficulty of characterizing gay theater in Boston. On the left, the Theater Offensive specializes in "in-your-face" material and has impeccable credentials in terms of gender and ethnic inclusion. It has often concentrated on nationally touring performers, but Dirt reflects a new commitment to developing works by local playwrights. On the right are the mainstream companies now finding success with gay-themed plays imported from New York. In particular, the SpeakEasy Theater Company has scored with Jeffrey and Love! Valor! Compassion! (plus two one-man shows by local performer John Kuntz). But since SpeakEasy has never come out of the closet as a queer company, there's no guarantee that it will continue to feature gay themes if they start to fade at the box office.
And as they say on late-night TV: wait, there's more! The Raven Theatrical Company, housed in the Little Flags Theatre, in Cambridge, has offered such campy fare as the Duelling Bankheads and works by Charles Busch. (Might there be a gay equivalent to the "chitlin circuit" -- the broadly acted melodramas and farces that attract huge audiences in African-American communities across the country?) And local playwright and actor Bruce Ward has bypassed all of these venues with his current double bill of the two-character play Paint by Numbers and his one-man show Decade. Ward improvised a company called Syzygy for the three-week run at the BCA but hasn't decided whether other productions will follow. He says it is particularly important for gay theater to address the issues that arise around AIDS and HIV-positive status.
If Open City does become the city's only full-time queer theater, how many of these performance styles should it try to take on? In trying to come up with a model, some mention the Theatre Rhinoceros in San Francisco, now in its 20th season and the country's oldest gay-and-lesbian company. Associate artistic director Douglas Holsclaw says that programming there is pretty eclectic, but they aim for shows that can't be found elsewhere in town. For example, penises are old news in San Francisco.
"The trend is naked boys and more naked boys. If a theater wants to make money, they can do it with Making Porn," says Holsclaw, referring to the Ronnie Larsen play that has featured real (and unclothed) adult-video stars in San Francisco and New York. Holsclaw says it would be redundant for the Rhinoceros to present such a play. "And we don't need to do Jeffrey," he adds. "A mainstream theater will do that."
The Rhinoceros puts on five full plays per season, plus various readings, workshops, and smaller productions. This season's main offerings include a collaboration with a local Latino theater company, the Five Lesbian Brothers in Brides of the Moon (which the Theater Offensive produced here last fall), and several works by local playwrights. Holsclaw says there is about a "50-50" mix between gay and lesbian authors.
Holsclaw adds that his guiding principle is "If you build it, they will come. If a show is good, [the subject] doesn't matter."
Steven O'Donnell seems to feel the same way. He says that Open City assembled an "artistic ensemble" to focus on content before a formal board of directors was named, the reverse of the usual process in establishing an arts organization.
The emphasis on content may please theatergoers who didn't feel Triangle was daring enough, but giving content priority over organization carries its own perils. Local playwright (and One in Ten contributor) David Valdes Greenwood recalls that, two years ago, the Triangle chose one of his works for a staged-reading series. For logistical reasons, the group canceled the performance a couple of days before it was to go on -- and Greenwood learned about that cancellation from a theater critic he happened to see on the street. "My experience wasn't with them being bad people. They were bad organizers," Greenwood says.
Such experiences underscore the fact that Open City probably won't enjoy the grace period that the press, theater professionals, and the public gave to the Triangle as a pioneering institution. It is a sign of progress that, in 1997, good intentions aren't enough.

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