To welcome new L Word cast member Daniela Sea – who’ll be playing an FTM love interest – Curve is throwing a party a huge party on January 13th. The proceeds will go to HRC, and Daniela Sea will be there signing authographs.
I wish we could go, but we can’t. But if you’re anywhere near SF, you should!
2006 Bloggies
You can nominate blogs in various categories for this year’s 2006 Bloggies awards.
And they’ve got a GLBT category, even.
(hint, hint.)
You can nominate *your favorite GLBT blog* here.
Say, just for instance, if there was a GLBT blog you liked.
(cough)
Interview in Curve
An interview with yours truly is in this month’s Curve magazine – the best-selling lesbian magazine – two pages of interview and photos. It’s issue 16#1.
From the interview:
“Sometimes transpeople seem to see any gender variance as latent transsexualism. Kind of like when you learn a new word and it shows up three times in a week. When you have transsexuals saying, ‘I should have known the first time I put on a dress (or a tie) that I’d end up having surgery,’ it prevents people from exploring. ”
Endymion, Parsing His List of Resolutions
So what are yours?!
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Mine?
Sign new book contract.
Lose 25 lbs.
Be cool & groovy.
Learn to talk about things other than gender.
Have more sex.
Worry about money less. Or make more. Whichever comes first.
Workout 3x/week.
Stuff like that. But mostly:
Write a really great book.
The Book of Daniel
Tomorrow night, one of my favorite actors, Aidan Quinn – of whom I’ve been a fan since way back, since Reckless, in fact, which my friend Julie and I used to watch with teenage lust – has finally gotten his own series, where he plays a minister who has a tendency to talk to Jesus and hits the prescription painkillers a little hard. It’s called The Book of Daniel.
He also has a gay son, a daughter, & an adopted Asian son. And a wife named Judith.
But two networks – one in Indiana and the other in Arkansas – are refusing to air it.
The saddest of it all is that the viewers in Indiana will be forced to watch re-runs of the show Simon Birch, instead, which is too bad, as Aidan Quinn has aged damned well. (I walked right by him in SoHo once, with my friend Brian, who swears I had a spontaneous orgasm as a result. I might have, I don’t know, but I do remember that I couldn’t breathe very well for a while after.)
Thanks to GAY (goodasyou.org) for the story, and thanks to ITL for doing a segment on www.goodasyou.org.
Did I forget to mention that the people who got those two networks to boycott the show haven’t even seen it? Right, they haven’t.
Aidan Quinn, I have to add, also played a gay man dying of AIDS, in the move An Early Frost, from way back in 1985, long before it was fashionable for straight actors to play gay characters.
Condolences
I can’t even begin to imagine how those families feel – getting the good news last night and today getting the correction.
I find a report of Bush’s condolences about the miners in a Chinese paper – not surprising, really, as coal miners die in China pretty much every month and their deaths go unreported or under-reported.
My condolences to the families, and a wish for freedom from guilt for that one guy who survived.
(If you haven’t worked it out, my grandparents & much of their generation were anthracite miners around the turn of the century.)
Five Questions With… Bradford Louryk
Bradford Louryk created and performs in Christine Jorgensen Reveals – as Christine Jorgensen herself. In the play, he lipsynchs a recorded interview with Jorgensen that was conducted by Nipsey Russell and recorded in 1958. The show, as directed by John Hecht, has garnered rave reviews, including at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Louryk did his BA at Vassar, and has acted at varied theatrical venues, from Studio 42 (of which he was a founding member) to Playwrights Horizons to hERE. Christine Jorgensen Reveals plays in New York until January 28th.
1. How has this piece affected your understanding of gender? Is this the first time you’ve played a woman?
This is not the first time that I’ve played a woman, but it’s the first time I’ve played an historical human being who happens to have been a woman. My previous experiences were with Greek tragic heroines – Klytaemnestra, Elektra, Medea, Phedre – and with biblical figures – Judith from the story of Judith and Holofernes, and I’m currently developing a piece about The Virgin Mary called “Version Mary.†I like to stretch myself as much as I can as an actor every time I’m onstage. Whether that’s through language or physicality or playing the opposite sex, I always want to grow as a performer through whatever role I’m creating.
That said, since I first became aware of cross-gendered casting as a politicized choice (when I was exposed to Charles Ludlam’s writing) when I was about 15 years old, I have understood gender as a fluid construct. Thus, my approach isn’t about being male or being female, but about realizing the character in an honest manner. Men are not exclusively masculine and women are not exclusively feminine, thus, when you paint your character with details from the spectrum of what we understand gender to be, you arrive at – I hope – a fully rounded person, with whom the audience can interact.
Continue reading “Five Questions With… Bradford Louryk”
Back to Normal
All of the parts of this website are functioning normally again, so you don’t need your special bookmarks to access the boards or my blog anymore. FYI.
Buy Gas at Citgo
Citgo is the only oil/gas company in the US that’s offering discounted home heating oil costs to lower income neighborhoods this winter. All the others are making their usual fast buck.
Back From DO
We’re back from our 4th DO, and once again – we had a blast. (More when I’m not exhausted.)