Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyJuly 1st, 2012
TODAY’S AGENDA (Ours):
Final Performance of “A Missionary Position”: Los Angeles, CA. Charles McNulty at The Los Angeles Times reviewed Ugandan-American playwright and actor Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine’s A Missionary Position,which premiered Thursday at the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater in the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex. A Missionary Position tells the story of Uganda’s LGBT community as seen through the eyes of a Ugandan government official, a transgender sex worker, a gay priest and a lesbian activist, and portrays their resistance to state-sponsored homophobia and repression. McNulty wrote:
The words of the characters, which include a transgendered sex worker, a gay priest and an accidental lesbian freedom fighter, are largely based on interviews. These monologues are carefully wrought, though they aren’t half as riveting as the onstage costume changes Mwine goes through to transform from one character to the next. The most startling metamorphosis occurs between the brigadier and Serena, the “trans-woman” whose world opens when she discovers a welcoming if dangerous subculture eager to put a price on her flesh. Mwine peels off hyper-masculine black fatigues to reveal a sexy red dress — a contrast that is as psychologically charged as it is theatrically resonant.
As a performer, Mwine possesses an entrancing graciousness. He offers himself as a conduit to other voices. This devotion to the real lives he is in composite form portraying may impede to an extent the dramatic interest of “A Missionary Position.” Reality is the ultimate arbiter of his narrative, not imagination — an inherent challenge for all works of creative nonfiction.
Tonight is the final performance, beginning at 7:00 p.m. Tickets are $20-$25 for general admission, with discounts available for students and groups. You can find more information here.
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Barcelona, Spain; Cincinnati, OH; Delémont, Switzerland; Dublin, Ireland; Helsinki, Finland; Istanbul, Turkey; London, UK (World Pride); Madrid, Spain; Toronto, ON; and Winnipeg, MB.
Other Events This Weekend: Canadian Rockies International Rodeo, Strathmore, AB; Creativity and Crisis: Unfolding The AIDS Memorial Quilt, Washington, D.C. Eurogames 2012, Budapest, Hungary.
TODAY’S AGENDA (Theirs):
Family “Research” Council’s Values Bus Tour: Liberty Twp, OH. The Family “Research” Council, an SPLC-certified hate group, continues its Values Bus Tour with the Heritage Foundation today. The tour is part voter registration drive and part propaganda tour where they will disseminate “materials on defending life, marriage and religious liberty.” Today, the tour leaves Columbus for two stops in Liberty Township, in the norther Cincinnati suburbs. First, the box will stop at Princeton Pike Church of God (6101 Princeton Glendale Rd) from 9:00 a.m. to noon. The bus will remain at the church for a Light Up Liberty festival from 6:00 to 10:00 p.m.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Farley Granger: 1925: One of the best-looking men in Hollywood, he didn’t have the kind of prolific a film career one might expect despite his work being well-regarded. He is best known for his role in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope and Strangers on a Train and for Luchino Visconti’s Senso. In Rope, Granger played a murderer and (implied) lover of an accomplice in a story inspired by the Loeb and Leopold murder. In real life, Granger also enjoyed the attentions of men — as well as women. According to his 2007 autobiography Include Me Out,
Men or women?
“That really depends on the person,” he said impishly. But his follow-up comment left little doubt: “I’ve lived the greater part of my life with a man” — he has been with (Robert) Calhoun in New York since the 1960s — “so obviously that’s the most satisfying to me.”
Granger died of natural causes in New York City at the age of 85 in 2011.
Fred Schneider: 1951. The B-52s front man is probably America’s best known practitioner of sprechgesang. (The Free Dictionary: “a type of vocalization between singing and recitation … originated by Arnold Schoenberg, who used it in Pierrot Lunaire (1912)”) The group’s guy-and-gals call-and-response between Schneider and Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson have become a trademark ever since “Rock Lobster” hit the charts in 1978. That sound defined the B-52s as the quintessential party band, inviting everyone to pile into the Chrysler as big as a whale. Schneider was coy about his sexuality throughout the 1980s and most of the 1990s, but his reluctance appeared to be more a matter of annoyance than fear. “I’m on the same side the fence as k.d., Elton and Frederick the Great. I just don’t like to share my personal life with the public.” Of course, there wasn’t much sharing needed. His own mother’s reaction when he came out to her probably sums it up for everyone else. “Oh I know, Freddie,” she said, and continued vacuuming without missing a beat.
Roddy Bottum: 1963. The keyboardist for Faith No More since 1982, Bottum came out as gay in 1993 the year after his father died. It’s easy to imagine that his revelation would have come as quite a shock to the hyper-hetero world of heavy metal, but Bottum described it as “a positive and uplifting experience. I guess I expected some of the fans to burn crosses or throw panties at me, but nothing like that ever happened.” One of his hits with Faith No More was “Be Aggressive,” from their 1992 album Angel Dust. The homoerotic song was about oral sex. “It was a pretty fun thing to write, knowing that (lead singer Mike Patton) was going to have to put himself on the line and go up onstage and sing these vocals.” Bottum’s openness about his sexuality didn’t exactly open the floodgates for other heavy metal rockers to come out. “You’d think there’d be a lot more homosexuality in metal with all the dressing up,” he told The Advocate in 1999. By then he had left Faith No More — and metal — to form the indie boy/girl group Imperial Teen. Since 2005, Bottum has written scores for more than a dozen movies and television shows.
If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).
And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?
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