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| For Immediate Release: August 3, 2006 |
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"FOUR PLAYS" Tackle Gender Behind the Cape 
Is gender a fact we are born with or a more complicated identity that we are all searching to discover? And when we -- or society or our governments -- define identities, are we actually creating rigid boundaries that limit our ability to discover ourselves and all the richness and diversity of human sexuality? These questions are so heavy that few Hamptons or Fire Island dinner tables will broach them this summer for fear that the otherwise friendly chat erupts into impassioned, fiery disputes with plenty of un-relaxing-vacation-like profanity. So we tend to leave the debate up to others. This August, four original one-act plays produced by the up-and-coming, independent Diverse City Theater (DCT) will tackle these gender and sexuality issues for us with a balance of witty humor and heart-felt drama. In each of the four pieces, someone is hiding behind something--a "veil," a "cape," a uniform--to protect or disguise his- or herself. But underneath, each protagonist has a desperate and universally human need for emotional connection despite unconventional notions of gender and sexuality. Why go to the theater for this? True, Freud gave us some explanations and plenty of pop-psychology self-help books do as well. But sometimes seeing and experiencing gender and sexuality up close and personal is the only way to get close to understanding the issues. Theater is the only artistic medium that can put the issues in our face. No other art form envelopes its audience or viewers in such a complete way -- actors and spectators are in the same room, hear the same things, see the same objects ... And questions about gender and human sexuality are important, aren't they? Schools try to inform kids about them -- if their parents let them -- but we still spend most of our lives trying to figure it all out. One month after Gay Pride and we are still trying to figure out what all those letters in the LGBTQI identity stand for. What used to be simply G&L has added B and T (not Bridge and Tunnel! The B is for Bisexual and the T is for Transgendered or Transsexual, but no one is sure which) and sometimes Q (Questioning) and I (Intersexed). And there are probably a few other letters. Why has the identity become so long? Because there is great diversity in human gender and sexuality. It's much more complicated than we can sometimes describe or even understand. The one-act plays are part of DCT's annual Theater Festival called "The Equality Playwrights Festival" which will run from August 11 - 26, 2006, at Theatre Row's Clurman Theatre on West 42nd Street in New York City. The Festival's plays -- by both emerging and established playwrights -- will revolve around one single diversity issue each festival year. This year, the inaugural year's theme explores "Gender Identity Issues of the 21st Century." The Festival's mission fits with DCT's goals. The theater company's socially-conscious mission is to promote multiculturalism and diversity in the theater through non-traditional casting and by commissioning, developing and producing original plays that explore and examine diversity issues. The roster of plays also fits that mission. COLD FLESH by Jorshinelle Taleon-Sonza addresses three categories of discrimination: race, class and gender, as a Filipino economic refugee and closet homosexual seeks his "freedom" while temporarily separated from his wife. CLEAN LIVING by Robert Askins tackles the military ban on gays with song, dance and a disco ball. While hilarious shenanigans help tell the weighty story, it poignantly follows dedicated soldiers trying to define sexuality within narrowing confined boundaries. Like COLD FLESH, Joe Byers's VEILS also finds the intersection of race and gender as it follows an American GI, Rusty, and his veiled sexual conquest, Aliya, in a confusing evening of passion and love in a Middle Eastern city. Finally, ONNA FIELD by Stuart Harris introduces us to an awkward gay teen as his straight, insightful athletics coach helps him to come to grips with the cape he wears to protect himself. The theater is the only medium that puts its artists so close in the face of its spectators. And actor Victor Lirio, DCT's Chief Artistic & Producing Officer, leverages this fact. He says that his theater company uses the theater as a venue for examining tough social issues with its audiences. In the end, says Lirio, it's all about the human experience and the "universal truths, about our need for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, stories about what it means to be human--serious, whimsical, funny, absurd."
EPF will run from August 11 to August 26 with the following performance schedule:
Tickets can be purchased through Ticket Central by calling 212-279-4200 or online at www.ticketcentral.com. Tickets $18.00. The Equality Playwrights Festival is made possible due, in part, to the generous support from Disney Foundation's Cast Community Fund, The Guild Family Foundation and strong support from CD101.9FM, Financial Services Industry Exchange (FSIX), Interep National Radio Sales and Scharff Weisberg. |
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Diverse City Theater Company
Formed in April 2003, Diverse City Theater Company -- run by artist playwrights, directors and actors -- is an independent, not-for-profit 501(c)(3) theater developing and producing organization based in the world's most diverse city, New York. Its mission is to promote multiculturalism and diversity in the theater arts by developing and producing works that explore and examine our society’s diversity issues -- social, cultural, gender and demographic -- from a global perspective; create multiculturally fluent theater audiences; and advocate the non-traditional casting of actors to reflect the rich spectrum and diversity of our national culture. Formed in 2003, Diverse City Theater Co., Inc. is based in New York City. For more information, visit the organization's website at www.diversecitytheater.org. |
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Contact
Janet Appel |
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Copyright ©2006 Diverse City Theater Co., Inc. All rights reserved. |