Over the weekend I sat down with Jon Marans, author of The Temperamentals, which is currently playing Off-Broadway. We had a great conversation about Harry Hay and the founding of the early gay rights movement in America.
We both recommend reading Stuart Timmons' Trouble With Harry Hay for more information.
Listen below, or subscribe on iTunes. If you missed our first episode on the 1920s Harvard Secret Court, listen here.
Two Beers In! Taxing Soda, Ravitch's Budget Plan, and Yank, A Love StoryOn this week's episode of New York's political talk show, hosts Ryan J. Davis and Greg Palmer discuss Ravitch's new budget plan, taxing soda, Mayor Bloomberg's public health efforts, and Yank The Musical.
Listen online right here!We start with Lt. Governor Ravitch's plan to fix New York's longstanding budget problems and why legislators need to learn to do their jobs or face our wrath in this fall's elections. We wonder if the state is insolvent and when we're getting our tax returns, and we talk about how the state can generate more revenue.
Ryan thinks we should raise taxes, while Greg says we're already one of the highest taxed states in the country, but we agree that the proposed soda tax is a good idea. Unfortunately, Governor Paterson has gotten behind it, which probably means it's dead on arrival.
Which brings us to Mayor Bloomberg's public health efforts and why a soda tax needs to be partnered with hardcore nutritional education for parents throughout the city. Some kids' best meals are coming from their schools, where the food actually looks like food... unlike a lot of other school cafeterias across the country.
Ryan stops by Yank, a musical love story set in World War II, and thinks we should all go to Monday's equality rally in Brooklyn in response to the vicious gay-bashing that occurred in Carroll Gardens earlier this month. It'd also be a nice gesture to show some support for the 9 year old kid whose teacher taunted him as being "gay."
Coming up next week, loads more fun and a review of the Whitney Biennial. In the meantime, you can subscribe on iTunes and use Facebook Connect to discuss topics from this week's episode below!
I'm giving away a pair of tickets to Fuerza Bruta: Look Up's special Twitter night on Thursday. It's sure to be a fun night and you're encouraged to live-tweet with pictures and video. More from the show's website.
To enter to win a pair of tickets to Thursday's performance, all you need to do is Tweet; "Just entered to win a pair of tickets to see @FuerzaBrutaNYC, via @RyanNewYork at http://ryanjdavis.blogspot.com." I'll draw and announce the winners late tonight. The tickets have to be used Thursday, so be in the New York City area.
FUERZA BRUTA: LOOK UP is a non-stop collision of dynamic music, visceral emotion, and kinetic aerial imagery.
Featuring mind – blowing visual effects that must be seen to be believed – a man running full throttle through a series of moving walls, women frolicking in a watery world suspended just inches above the audience – FUERZA BRUTA: LOOK UP is a theatrical experience that floods the senses. Come experience a 360° heart-pounding theatrical experience!
Update: Contest Over - Congrats to Josh Scheer/@Joshscheer and Desi /@Immeblue on winning a pair of tickets over Twitter to MCC's The Pride. Oliver, Philip, and Sylvia are caught in a kind of erotic time warp. Their complex love triangle, replete with conflicting loyalties and passions, jumps from 1958 to the present and back in a maelstrom of fantasy, repression and rebellion in this innovative new drama. After taking London by storm last season in an Olivier Award-winning production at the Royal Court, The Pride now makes its American premiere at MCC Theater. Tony Award-winning director Joe Mantello (Take Me Out, Blackbird) joins playwright Alexi Kaye Campbell (Apologia), to stage this alternately tough and touching look at love and betrayal. Four of Britain's most acclaimed young actors, Hugh Dancy (Adam, Journey's End), Adam James (Last Chance Harvey), Andrea Riseborough (Happy-Go-Lucky) and Ben Whishaw (Bright Star, Brideshead Revisited) will star.To enter to win a pair of tickets to a preview performance this week, all you need to do is Tweet; "Just entered to win a pair of tickets to see The Pride, via @RyanNewYork at http://ryanjdavis.blogspot.com." I'll draw and announce the winners late tonight. The tickets have to be used this week, so be in the New York City area.
Originally posted on The Huffington Post:
In 2000, my first year living in New York City, I attended over two hundred different theater productions. This year, I clocked in barely a hundred. Below are my top five in no particular order.
The New York City stage is packed this summer and the three Off-Broadway productions I'm recommending, Ruined, The Temperamentals, and Jeffery & Cole: Make It Bigger, all represent the wonderful diversity of offerings currently available to theatergoers.
Ruined, which won the Pulitzer Prize this year, is the story of Mama Nadi, a women who owns a brothel in the middle of a civil war in the Congo. Loosely inspired by Brecht's Mother Courage, Ruined offers us a glimpse into the lives of these women as they struggle to survive. It's one powerful story.
The script feels authentic and was carefully researched and developed by interviewing women who live in the region under these deplorable conditions. The production has been running for months at Manhattan Theatre Club, but is still fresh, vital, and beautifully performed.
I'd be shocked if Ruined doesn't get a shot at Broadway soon.
Playing until August 23rd, The Temperamentals is the true story of the creation of American's first gay rights group. Staged both simply & beautifully in the intimate Barrow Group Theater, you feel as if you're a part of their early organizing - both victories & defeats. The entire cast is fabulous; lead with strength by Thomas Jay Ryan and Ugly Betty's Michael Urie.
Harry Hay, the founder of The Temperamentals, wasn't as known to me as Stonewall or Harvey Milk, but he's courageous and intelligent. Anyone currently involved in the fight for gay equality (and who believe it has to do with way more than marriage) will find lots to like in Hay's philosophies. He's no fan of total gay assimilation, and would question the value in the current pursuit of a strictly heteronormative agenda.
In fact, shortly before his death (at the age of 90) in 2002 Hay said, "The assimilationist movement is running us into the ground." Amen brother.
For big laughs, with zero assimilation, head downtown to Earl Dax's Hot! Festival. Queer performers have taken over the uber-trendy Dixon Place. Two of those performers are my good friends Jeffery Self and Cole Escola, extremely funny guys who have scored quite a hit with their current Logo TV show Jeffery & Cole Casserole.
Jeffery & Cole's Hot! Festival offering, 'Make It Bigger,' is loosely based on their story, from YouTube to the boob tube. Wonderfully raunchy and politically incorrect their rise to fame story has lots of familiar elements and big laughs. You can see their final performance on Thursday night.
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Ryan is a freelance theater director, who is currently directing Vote! at FringeNYC and Street Lights at NYMF. His musical White Noise recently premiered regionally in New Orleans. Read his blog here.
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