Events Feedback
New This WeekAround TownMusicFilmArtTheaterNews & FeaturesFood & DrinkAstrology
  HOME
NEW THIS WEEK
EDITORS' PICKS
LISTINGS
NEWS & FEATURES
MUSIC
FILM
ART
BOOKS
THEATER
DANCE
TELEVISION
FOOD & DRINK
ARCHIVES
LETTERS
PERSONALS
CLASSIFIEDS
ADULT
ASTROLOGY
PHOENIX FORUM DOWNLOAD MP3s



QUEENS MUM ON DRUMS, WILSON SOUNDS OFF: No word yet on who’ll fill the drum seat being vacated by Dave Grohl, who’s gone back to his day gig as Foo Fighters frontman, but Queens of the Stone Age have announced plans for their proper fall tour in support of Songs for the Deaf (Interscope), which arrives in stores on August 27. QOTSA arrive at Avalon, 15 Lansdowne Street, on September 1 with Austin’s cataclysmic . . . And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead. Tickets are $20 and go on sale this Saturday at 10 a.m. Meanwhile, on August 16, reclusive Beach Boy Brian Wilson reprises his concert performance of Pet Sounds at Avalon. The last time Wilson came around, he played the Orpheum; these days, he’s in somewhat less fine fettle. Avalon will be configured with cabaret seating, for which tickets are $65, with standing-room tickets going for $35. They go on sale today (Thursday, July 25) at 10 a.m. Call (617) 423-NEXT.

POP SMEAR: Boston folk-rocker Christine Baze, of the group the Skills of Ortega, was diagnosed two years ago with invasive cervical cancer; after an intensive program of radiation treatment and chemotherapy, she’s in remission — not to mention on a mission. On August 29 at the Paradise, Baze gathers a bunch of friends — including Catie Curtis, Jim’s Big Ego, and the Mudhens — for "Pop Smear," a concert to benefit the American Cancer Society and the National Cervical Cancer Coalition. The event will also serve to educate women about early detection, with the NCCC and Planned Parenthood on hand to spread the word. The Paradise is at 969 Commonwealth Avenue, and tickets are $12; call (617) 423-NEXT.

NEXT WEEKEND:

Jump Rope

John Kuntz has won acclaim in almost equal measure for his playwriting and his acting, and indeed early in his career the two were inseparable, as he starred in several severely offbeat one-man shows. But as he’s evolved into an author of multiple-character dramas, Kuntz has hit an interesting problem. He makes a habit of writing a part for himself in each of his plays; it’s just that lately he hasn’t been getting cast. You might say his playwriting has priced his acting out of its own market, except that he isn’t hurting for acting work, either: as we speak, he’s on his way to Boston Common to rehearse his role as Fluellen in the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company’s open-air production of Henry V (Carolyn Clay’s review is in the theater section), even as he makes last-minute adjustments to his new Jump Rope, which is being readied for its premiere next Friday in a production by Next Stages at the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre. (He’ll also be making his feature film debut, as a murderer, in the forthcoming horror movie The Red Right Hand.)

Jump Rope is the third of Kuntz’s plays in which he has failed to appear as an actor (the first was Emerald City at CentaStage last year; he also wrote a one-woman piece called Miss Price explicitly for the actress Paula Plum.) It’s billed as "a killer love story," and it’s premise is quite simple: people ain’t no good. A gay couple, Alex and Martin, hit a dull spot in their 13-year relationship; one of them begins an affair with a charming stranger named Kurt who may or may not be the person responsible for a series of murders of gay white males in the neighborhood. "The original idea I had," he explains, "was about this little blip in someone’s relationship. One of them has this little affair, and then they decide to go on as if it never happened. It seemed like a kind of traditional love-triangle story. And then as I started writing it, it just got more and more perverse. The characters are all just despicable. It becomes kind of like a contest to see which one’s the worst."

Another inspiration was a letter that was posted on the Theatermirror message board during Kuntz’s run in a Lyric Stage production of John Logan’s Never the Sinner, which chronicles the sensational 1924 trial of Nathan Leopold and Dick Loeb. "I was playing Leopold, and Bill Mootos [for whom Kuntz wrote the part of Alex in Jump Rope] was playing Loeb. Leopold and Loeb were these despicable people and they were gay, and they killed this young boy with an icepick and felt they were superior, and they were just awful people. I thought the play was really terrific: it really explored their relationship, like how Loeb would give Leopold sex in exchange for crime. Then this guy wrote a scathing letter saying, in essence, ‘How can the Lyric do this play [when] it depicts gay people in such a negative light? They should be ashamed of themselves.’ And I remember thinking, ‘Well, what do they want us to do, rewrite history?’ They really were despicable. And I thought there was some sort of censorship going on, as if you could only depict gay people being nice. That’s an awful lot of pressure to put on gay people. It’s not even really that accurate. I’m gay, and that doesn’t mean I’m gonna get along with everyone else who’s gay. It made me really think: was Never the Sinner homophobic? Am I homophobic? So Jump Rope started to become a response to this man’s letter: could I create these three despicable people who are gay?

"The director [Matt August] was nervous about it. When he first read it, he said, ‘Yknow, we’re wondering about how the gay community would respond to this play; the characters are all gay, and they’re not very likable.’ And my response was, well, I don’t think people are very likable. And people are people. I guess I felt I wanted to be part of the human race again. I wanted to have the freedom to write a character that was really despicable and was gay. It was very freeing for me, to have people do awful things. It was nice. Recently I was on my bike and this guy honked at me the second the light turned green, like he couldn’t wait one second, and I turned around and just started screaming at him. And then I was like, ‘Hey, it’s okay that I can do that, I don’t have to be nice all the time.’ People just aren’t nice."

Jump Rope, written by John Kuntz, directed by Matt August, and starring Brooks Ashmanskas, Benjamin Evett, and Bill Mootos, is presented by Next Stages and Carolyn Spector August 2 through 18 at the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, 949 Comm Ave. Performances are Wednesday through Sunday at 8 p.m.; tickets are $20. Call (617) 499-7785.

BY CARLY CARIOLI

 

Issue Date: July 25 - August 1, 2002
Back to the Editors' Picks
table of contents.