Project #3 Too Hot to Handle

Naked Broadway

Love! Valour! Compassion! by Terrance McNally

The setting is at a lakeside summer vacation house in Dutchess County, two hours north of New York City where eight gay friends spend the three major holiday weekends of one summer together for Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, and Labor Day. Its off-Broadway premiere was at the Manhattan Theatre Club on October 11, 1994 where it staged 72 performances. The production then transferred to the Walter Kerr Theatre on Broadway where, after 28 previews, it opened on 14 February 1995, closing on 17 September 1995 after an additional 248 performances.

Berkshire Theater Festival production of Love! Valour! Compassion!

The play is about eight gay male friends, and features hot topics such as AIDS, infidelity, and had a controversial nude skinny dipping scene.

Gay Broadway

The Boy From Oz by Martin Sherman, and Nick Enright

The Boy From Oz is a jukebox musical based on the life of singer/songwriter Peter Allen and featuring songs written by him. It was the first Australian musical to reach Broadway. It started previews at the Imperial Theatre on 16 September 2003, opened on 16 October 2003 and closed on 12 September 2004. The show played 32 previews and 365 performances. Directed by Philip William McKinley, with choreography by Joey McKneely, it starred Jackman as Peter Allen, Isabel Keating as Judy Garland, Stephanie J. Block as Liza Minnelli, Beth Fowler as Marion Woolnough, and John Hill (actor) as Mark Herron (Judy's Husband).

Racist Broadway

Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet

The play shows parts of two days in the lives of four desperate Chicago real estate agents who are prepared to engage in any number of unethical, illegal acts -- from lies and flattery to bribery, threats, intimidation, and burglary -- to sell undesirable real estate to unwilling prospective buyers. The play opened on Broadway on March 25, 1984 and closed on February 17, 1985. The production was directed by Gregory Mosher and starred Joe Mantegna, Mike Nussbaum, Robert Prosky, Lane Smith, James Tolkan, Jack Wallace, and J.T. Walsh.

Alan Alda, left, and Liev Schreiber as dueling salesmen in a revival of David Mamet's Pulitzer Prize-winning play "Glengarry Glen Ross."

The play sparked contreversy after including dialogue which many found very prejudice to people from India. The lines were cut out for the latest revival.

Raided or Closed

Sex by Jane Mast (Mae West)

Mae West starred in "Sex" in 1926, which she also wrote, produced, and directed. In "Sex", Margie LaMont (Mae West) shares her apartment with a blackmailing gigolo. When he drugs a rich socialite, Margie rescues her. But the woman, fearing for her reputation, accuses Margie of theft. So Margie gets even by seducing the woman's son. Though critics hated the show, ticket sales were good. The notorious production did not go over well with city officials and the theater was raided with West arrested along with the cast.

Arrested

NEA 4

Four NEA grants were vetoed by John Frohnmayer in June,1990 singling out four controversial performance artists because of the artists' sexual preferences and political discourses. The grants were vetoed after having been recommended for awards by the NEA peer review panel.
Three of the rejected artists are gay and deal with homosexual issues in their work; the fourth, Karen Finley, is an outspoken feminist. The endowment had been under attack since 1989 for funding supposedly "lewd" work. All members of the NEA Four received compensation surpassing their grant amounts in 1993 when courts ruled in support of the four artists, but the NEA controversies continue. The question of content restrictions on use of NEA funds and definitions for "obscenity" are still in court.

Karen Finley John Fleck

Holly Hughes

Tim Miller

High School

Rent by Jonathan Larson at Corona del Mar High School

Drama students at Corona del Mar High School were excited to push the envelope with a spring production of the Bohemian love story "Rent." The drama teacher at the Newport Beach school says the principal told him to cancel the show because she disapproved of the gay characters in the musical.

College/University

Gratuitous Pieces

The graphic nature of SSU senior Beau Jorgensen's senior project, the play "Gratuitous Pieces," was met with some disapproval. The show was considered to be so graphic that the SSU theatre department required him to put a disclaimer that the production was not affiliated with the theatre department or the drama club on his posters, said Ray Oster, associate professor of theatre arts.

"The play contains a violent rape scene, a murder, a suicide and a character who is into pornographic materials," said Joyce Arends, the SSU campus program director for the New Horizons Crisis Center. "Murder and suicide are not the messages that we want victims of sexual assault or any crime to have as solutions to the problem."

Project 2

Casting:
I very much like the idea of a small cast playing a wide variety of roles. This greatly challenges and benefits the actors. The amount of learning from a project like this would forever shape their acting skills.
It also gives the audience a chance to be thrown into a great interesting experience as play goers. Kushner had a very specific vision in mind when he suggested doubling, and that’s what I would want to share with my audience.

Angel:
In my head there is no way you wouldn’t fly the angel. With a show with the language and themes that this one has, the bigger the better for me. I want the angel to be as real to the audience as possible, and for me to achieve that I’d have to fly her.

Nudity:
If I were directing this show, it would not be necessary for Prior to be completely naked. I feel that we can still portray the extremity of his disease without going all the way. I don’t think an audience member would be taken out of the play or get any less of the experience. In fact, I think many people would refuse to come if there was nudity, and many would be distracted and uncomfortable throughout the show.
Disagree: When I suggested dropping the nudity, we discussed the context of the medical examination in which it occurred and concluded that the rest of the play romanticized AIDS too much. Without a visual encounter with the humility of real physical exposure and ravaging disease, the audience would not "get" the truth.

Language:
I wouldn’t alter any of the language. Because if I started cutting, then I don’t know how I could stop. While I feel that stage directions are more of suggestions from a playwright and can be flexible, the dialogue is set in stone. I don’t think you get the affect of Angels in America without the rawness of the language.

Disagree:

“He would...delete a few instances of the word fuck. He changed his usual policy requiring all theater majors to audition for school productions, giving them the option to bow out… Only two out of 20 opted out.”

Agree: Ms. Gardiner, saying that ''Angels'' is ''a big risk and a smart move'' for the theater, is interested in how the audience is going to deal with the play's graphic but not gratuitous scenes. ''I opted not to pretend, or to keep secrets,''

Intermissions: I would probably find a way to only do one intermission. I think having two will be tiring to the audience and make it seem extremely long.