LOS ANGELES — Latino Theater Company presents Mexico City’s interdisciplinary, experimental ensemble Organización Secreta Teatro in two new performance works. Each work, Pueblo Espíritu and Las Diosas Subterráneas, will receive five performances during a limited two-week engagement, May 3 through May 14, at the Los Angeles Theatre Center in downtown L.A.

Pueblo Espíritu (“Spirit Town”)explores a post-pandemic dystopian society in which humans renew their faith in the spiritual world as a means of survival. Attempting to escape restrictions imposed by the Covid pandemic, five characters find themselves in a dense forest. Exhausted and thirsty, they are fearful and distrustful of one another. Their terror escalates when the last of their party to arrive is sick. Their only hope for survival is to re-connect with their mystical surroundings.

In Las Diosas Subterráneas (“Subterranean Goddesses”) the Greek myth of Demeter and her daughter Persephone, kidnapped by Hades, god of the underworld, is intertwined with the story of Luz García, a character based on real-life women kidnapped by human traffickers, to tell the story of mothers looking for their missing daughters who find strength in community.

Both pieces were created collectively by ensemble members Beatriz Cabrera, Alejandro Joan Carmarena, Brisei Guerrero, Stefanie Izquierdo, Ernesto Lecuona, Mercedes Olea and Jonathan Ramos from original ideas by Rocío Carrillo, who directs.

Pueblo Espíritu is performed without dialogue. Las Diosas Subterráneas features minimal dialogue by Stefanie Izquierdo, Ernesto Lecuona, Mercedes Olea and Rocío Carrillo and will feature English supertitles.

Pueblo Espíritu will receive five performances, on Wednesday, May 3 at 8 p.m. (opening night); Thursday, May 4 at 8 p.m.; Friday, May 5 at 8 p.m.; Saturday, May 6 at 8 p.m.; and Sunday, May 7 at 4 p.m.

Las Diosas Subterráneas performs the following week, on Wednesday, May 10 at 8 p.m.; Thursday, May 11 at 8 p.m.; Friday, May 12 at 8 p.m.; Saturday, May 13 at 8 p.m.; and Sunday, May 14 at 4 p.m.

Tickets range from $22–$48, except opening night (May 3), which is $58 and includes both pre- and post-show receptions. The Los Angeles Theatre Center is located at 514 S. Spring St., Los Angeles, CA 90013.

Parking is available for $5 with box office validation at Joe’s Parking structure, 530 S. Spring St. (immediately south of the theater).

PUEBLO ESPÍRITU trailer de la puesta en escena presentada en el Foro Polivalente 2022:

LOS ANGELES – The Echo Theater Company presents That Perfect Place, a beautiful imagining by writer/performer Brent Jennings of what his mentally challenged brother might have said, had he been able to speak.

”I grew up a long, long time ago. In the ‘60s to be exact,” says Jennings. “A time that now seems like some sort of aberration, or invasion of inspiring aliens because there’s never been another time like it. A time of real and substantive change, a time of hope, a time of endless possibilities, all of our voices mattered. Encased in that reality were families struggling with the domestic or familial challenges of their households. Families like the one I grew up in. The stories presented in That Perfect Place are a representation, a musing, a meditation on the lives of the family I grew up a part of, presented by its most challenged member. A member that may have been the most soulful, wisest and compassionate one of us all. Thank you for allowing me to explore this, my passion project, with you.”

Brent Jennings is a veteran stage, television and film actor based in Los Angeles with a career spanning almost 40 years. Most recently, he was seen on television in the lead role of Ernie Fontaine in the critically acclaimed television series Lodge 49, and he has appeared in the recurring role of Grandpa Willie in the hit CW drama All American for the past four seasons. Other credits include multiple episodes of All Rise; Snowfall and the new comedy How to Be A Bookie for HBO Max. Other recent credits include Insecure and Young Sheldon.

WHEN:
April 2 – April 23
• Sundays at 7:30 p.m.: April 2, April 9, April 16, April 23

WHERE:
Echo Theater Company
Atwater Village Theatre
3269 Casitas Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90039

PARKING:
FREE in the Atwater Crossing (AXT) lot one block south of the theater

TICKET PRICES:
$10

For more information visit:
www.EchoTheaterCompany.com
(310) 307-3753

LOS ANGELES – The Stage Raw Theater Awards celebrate excellence on Los Angeles-area stages. This year’s Stage Raw “I’m Still Here” Theater Awards Party will recognize productions that opened in the calendar year 2022.

Stage Raw is a community funded professional journalism website that was launched in 2014, in response to the decline of arts coverage in local mainstream and alternative media.

The Awards party will be held Monday night, April 17, 2023 at the Sassafras Saloon, 1233 N. Vine Street in Hollywood. Tickets are $20 for everybody, if purchased in advance. $25 at the door. (Capacity is limited and tickets will no longer be available once that capacity is reached.) Admission includes complimentary food, music, dancing and a cash bar.  All proceeds will be used to support the professional journalists of Stage Raw, and their ability to continue covering Los Angeles-area theater.  

Tickets can be purchased here: (Link)

Be sure to use the discount promo code “StageRaw” to bypass the $2.50 ticketing fee. (This is a service of ticketing agency onstage411.com).

CHANGES FROM PRIOR STAGE RAW AWARDS CEREMONIES:

This year, Stage Raw is recognizing productions in venues of all sizes, rather than focusing entirely on venues of 99-seats or fewer. 

Also, Stage Raw has changed its system of allocating recognition in response to the flaw in prior years of excluding excellent productions that were unable to attract a “quorum” of contributors. This year, each Stage Raw contributor has been allocated a number of votes, in proportion to the number of Stage Raw-reviewed shows they saw, and they have cast their votes to any person, production or in any category they choose. 

Explains Founding Editor Steven Leigh Morris: “The hoped-for effect of this system is to diversify the number of companies receiving awards by honoring the generational, ethnic, gender and aesthetic diversity of our individual contributors, who will each be selecting award winners.”

And finally, the entire feel of the event will be more of a party than an awards show. The actual ceremony will be 30-45 minutes dedicated to announcements, and the presentation of the “Queen of the Angels” and “Lifetime Achievement” awards. All of the other awards recipients will be named during this ceremony and can retrieve their awards at a table.

 

THE 2023 STAGE RAW AWARD FINALISTS/RECIPIENTS:

FIGHT CHOREOGRAPHY

Ahmed Best, Hooded, or Being Black for Dummies, Echo Theater Company

SOUND DESIGN

Dean Harada, Tea, Hero Theatre at Inner-City Arts

LIGHTING DESIGN 

Lap Chi Chu, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, 

Center Theatre Group, Mark Taper Forum

VIDEO/PROJECTION DESIGN

Hsuan-Kuang Hsieh, The Great Jheri Curl Debate, East West Players

Nick Santiago, Green Day’s American Idiot, Chance Theatre

SET DESIGN

Ann Beyersdorfer, Afterglow, Midnight Theatricals at the Hudson Theatre

John Iacovelli, The Brothers Paranormal, East West Players

Cindy Lin, Untitled Baby Play, IAMA Theatre Company

Rachel Myers, Power of Sail, Geffen Playhouse  

SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE

Aimee Carrero, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Geffen Playhouse

Alexandra Hellquist, On the Other Hand We’re Happy, Rogue Machine Theatre

Michael Matts, Angels in America: Perestroika, Foolish Production Company

Eileen T’Kaye, A Doll’s House, Part II, International City Theatre

COMEDY PERFORMANCE

Brent Grimes, Hooded, or Being Black for Dummies, Echo Theater Company

SOLO PERFORMANCE

John Rubinstein, Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground, New Los Angeles Repertory Theatre Company, Theatre West and Hudson MainStage Theatre

SOLO WRITING-PERFORMANCE 

Alex Alpharaoh, Wet: A DACAmented Journey, Greenway Court Theatre  

Colin Campbell, Grief: A One-Man Shitshow, The Broadwater

Ben Moroski, Dog, The Broadwater

Jesús I. Valles (Un)documents, Latino Theater Company

WRITING-PERFORMANCE

Judy Carter, A Death-Defying Escape!, Hudson Guild Theatre

LEAD PERFORMANCE

Hugo Armstrong, Uncle Vanya, Pasadena Playhouse

Kevin Ashworth, A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney, Theatre Planners at the Odyssey Theatre

Ramón de Ocampo, Hamlet, Antaeus Theatre Company

Jenny O’Hara, Little Theatre, Rogue Machine Theatre

Zachary Quinto, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Geffen Playhouse

Jennifer Shelton, A Doll’s House, Part II, International City Theatre

Michael A. Shepperd, Valley Song, International City Theatre

Kalean Ung, Macbeth, Independent Shakespeare Co.

DIRECTION

Nancy Lantis, The Sandman, Eclipse Theatre LA and Santa Clarita Shakespeare Festival

COMEDY DIRECTION

Ahmed Best, Hooded, or Being Black for Dummies, Echo Theater Company

DIRECTION/ENSEMBLE

Will Block and the ensemble of All is True or Henry VIII, The Porters of Hellsgate Theatre Company

Gregg T. Daniel and the ensemble of Radio Golf, A Noise Within

COMEDY ENSEMBLE

Can’t Pay? Don’t Pay!, The Actors’ Gang

ENSEMBLE

Anna in The Tropics, A Noise Within

Blues for an Alabama Sky, Center Theatre Group/Mark Taper Forum

The Colored Museum, Loft Ensemble 

Freestyle Love Supreme, Pasadena Playhouse,

If Nobody Does Remarkable Things, Pandora Productions at the Garage Theatre 

The Inheritance, Geffen Playhouse

Masao and the Bronze Nightingale, CASA 0101 and the Japanese American National Museum

ADAPTATION

James Fowler, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Open Fist Theatre Company

PLAY WRITING

Carla Ching, Revenge Porn, Ammunition Theatre Company

Bernardo Cubria, The Play You Want, Road Theatre Company

Kelly McBurnette-Andronicos, The House of Final Ruin, Ophelia’s Jump

Murray Mednick, Three Tables, Padua Playwrights at the Zephyr Theatre

PRODUCTION EXCELLENCE IN QUEER STORYTELLING 

Interstate, East West Players

DISTINGUISHED MUSICAL REVIVAL

Oklahoma! Center Theatre Group/Ahmanson Theatre

DISTINGUISHED PRODUCTION

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Open Fist Theatre

The Penelopiad, City Garage

Roe, Fountain Theatre

Uncle Vanya, Pasadena Playhouse

DISTINGUISHED SEASON 

The Road Theatre Company (The Play You Want, Beloved, Bright Half Life, According to the Chorus) 

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT

Maria Gobetti and Tom Ormeny (Victory Theatre Center)

Frédérique Michel and Charles Duncombe (City Garage)

QUEEN OF THE ANGELS

The SB116 Coalition (Teri Ball, Beatrice Casagran, Elina DeSantos, Emmanuel Deleage, Martha Demson, Christopher Maikish, Leo Marks, Marc Antonio Pritchett and Vanessa Stewart)

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The 2023 Stage Raw “I’m Still Here” Theater Awards Party is supported through the generous sponsorship of the following companies and individuals: Antaeus Theatre Company, Crimson Square Theatre, Dina Morrone, DEMAND PR, The Geffen Playhouse, The Hudson Theatres, IAMA Theatre Company, Lucy Pollak Public Relations, Macha Theatre Company, Ophelia’s Jump, Road Theatre Company, Sandra Kuker Public Relations, Santa Monica Playhouse, Sierra Madre Playhouse, Theatre 40, Theatre of NOTE, and The Victory Theatre Center.

THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. – 5-STAR THEATRICALS is proud to announce the first show of its 2023-2024 season, the Tony Award winning, RAGTIME: THE MUSICAL, book by Terrence McNally, music by Lynn Ahrens, lyrics by Steven Flaherty, conductor and musical direction by Tom Griffin, choreography by Michelle Elkin and directed by Jeffrey Polk.

RAGTIME: THE MUSICAL opens on Friday, March 24, 2023 and runs through Sunday, April 2, 2023 at the Kavli Theatre at the Bank of America Performing Arts Center (formerly the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza), 2100 Thousand Oaks Boulevard in Thousand Oaks. 

Based on the novel by E.L. Doctorow, this musical tapestry depicts an African-American family, a Jewish immigrant family, and a wealthy white suburban family in turn-of-the-century America, who collide in pursuit of the American Dream.

Nominated for 13 Tony Awards® including “Best Musical,” and winning for “Best Original Score” and “Best Book of a Musical,” Ragtime is a powerful portrait of life during the turn-of-the-century, exploring America’s timeless contradictions of freedom and prejudice, wealth and poverty, hope and despair.    

           CREATIVE TEAM AND CAST

JEFFREY POLK (Director) Directed and Choreographed: The Color Purple, Smokey Joe’s Cafe, Memphis (The Musical), Ain’t Misbehavin’. Choreographed: Dreamgirls, (TUTS, Houston with Sheldon Epps, Director), Kiss Me, Kate, (Pasadena Playhouse, Sheldon Epps, Director), Blues In The Night, (The Wallis, Beverly Hills, Sheldon Epps, Director).  Guest Director with “The Young Americans” and “Heartglobal Outreach World Tours.”  Mr. Polk has performed on Broadway, national tours, TV and film.

MICHELLE ELKIN (Choreography) Select credits include: “Sutton Foster Live” with Jonathan Groff (PBS), “Young Sheldon” resident choreographer (CBS), “Younger” (TV Land), “The Wonderful Mrs. Maisel” (Amazon), “Me And My Grandma” with Rhea Perlman, “Baby Daddy” (ABC Family), TNT pilot “Dawn” directed by Sam Raimi, Lifetime’s reality show “Your Mama Don’t Dance,” “Kristin” starring Kristin Chenoweth, and tap sequences in ABC Family’s “Bunheads.” Theater: Live musical numbers featuring Tony Award winner Sutton Foster with special guest Joshua Henry for the NSO at Kennedy Center, New York Pops at Carnegie Hall and the Houston Symphony. Theater: Something Rotten (Broadway World Nominee) Sister Act The Musical (Broadway World Nominee), Hunchback Of Notre Dame (Broadway World Nominee) Children Of Eden (Broadway World Nominee); Little Shop Of Horrors (Straz Center), The Goodbye Girl  (MTG). Feature films: Wild Hogs, What Just Happened. Associate Choreographer credits include; “Dancing With The Stars,” Sister Act at Pasadena Playhouse, “Emmy Awards” with Jane Lynch, “Academy Awards” with Hugh Jackman and the Broadway show, Wonderland(Marquis Theater). 

TOM GRIFFIN (Musical Director/Conductor)is a nationally recognized musical director and conductor for professional musical theater.

Tom was musical director for the Los Angeles productions of Disney’s Beauty and The Beast, The Music Man, Annie, “13” The Musical, Bye Bye Birdie, Sweet Charity, West Side Story, The Scarlet Pimpernel and Joseph & The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, the national tour of My Fair Lady for Theatre Of The Stars, the Alabama Shakespeare Festival’s productions of A Christmas Carol, Peter Pan, 25th Annual Putnum County Spelling Bee, Disney’s Mary Poppins, the East Coast Premiere & New York Workshop of Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory and The Pioneer Theatre Company’s productions of Once, A Christmas Carol, Elf, The Musical, Peter & The Starcatcher, Oliver, Newsies and Once On This Island. 

Tom has received awards for his musical direction of shows including the Broadway revival of You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown (Los Angeles premiere), for which he received a Garland Award for Best Musical Direction, and Side Show (Los Angeles premiere), for which he received a Los Angeles Drama Critics Award for Best Musical Direction, as well as eight Theatre LA Ovation Award nominations. 

Tom was the musical conductor of Disney’s Beauty and The Beast on two national tours and served again as musical director for the show’s run at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta.  Tom’s other productions include Grease, The Mystery of Edmond Drood, the West Coast premiere of My Way, A Connecticut Yankee, Honk! The Musical, the West Coast & Los Angeles premieres of The Last Five Years, the West Coast premiere of The Spitfire Grill, 70 Girls 70, Baby, Alice in Wonderland, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Jungle Book, Aladdin, Fatty, Oklahoma, The Wizard of Oz, Inside the Music and Club Indigo, for which he also won a DramaLogue award for Best Musical Direction. 

The Cast of RAGTIME: THE MUSICAL will feature Marty Austin Lamar as “Coalhouse,” Brittany Anderson as “Sarah,” Misty Cotton as “Mother,” Michael Scott Harris as “Father,” Hank Jacobs as “Tateh,” Samantha Wynn-Greenstone as “Emma Goldman,” Ceron Jones as “Booker T,” Monica Ricketts as “Evelyn Nesbit,” Jeremy Ingraham as “Younger Brother,” Steven Perren as “Grandfather,” Jacob Hoff as “ Harry Houdini,” Josh Christoff as “JP Morgan,”  Davis Hamilton as “Henry Ford,” Lila Dunham as “Little Girl,” Daxton Bethoney as “Little Boy (Edgar)” and Jordan Jackson as “Sarah’s Friend/Ensemble.” 

The Ensemble will feature (in alphabetical order): Christopher D. Baker, Emily Cochrane, Domo D’DAnte, BK Dawson, Julia Feeley, Glen Hall, Tyler Marshall, Almand Martin, Jr., Donovan Mendelovitz, Kristen O’Connell, Will Riddle, Zara Saje, Leasa Shukiar, Kumari Small, Tania Pasano Storrs and Dekontee Tucrkile.  

The Youth Ensemble will feature (In alphabetical order): Delilah Bank, Tanner Cox, Camryn Daniels, Madelyn Freidman, Harley Grey, Harrington Gwin, Madison North, Calulla Sawyer, Weston Walker-Pardee , Poppi Wilbur-McDaniels and Olivia Zenetzis.

The Design Team of RAGTIME: THE MUSICAL features: Lighting Design by Brandon Baruch; Costume Design by Shon LeBlanc; Sound Design by Jonathan Burke; Props Design by Alex Choate; Hair and Wig Design by Luis Ramirez.  The Production Stage Manager is Erin Nicole Eggers.

ABOUT THE PRICING AND SCHEDULE

RAGTIME: THE MUSICAL opens on Friday, March 24 and runs through Sunday, April 2, 2023 at the Kavli Theatre at the Bank of America Performing Arts Center (formerly the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza), 2100 Thousand Oaks Boulevard in Thousand Oaks.

Performances are Fridays at 8pm; Saturdays at 2pm and 8pm; Sunday, March 24 at 2pm and Sunday, April 2 at 1pm; with an added performance on Thursday, March 30 at 7:30pm.

Tickets are on sale now and may be purchased at the Bank of America Performing Arts Center Box Office located at 2100 Thousand Oaks Boulevard in Thousand Oaks, or through www.5startheatricals.com, or by phone at (800) 745-3000. 

For groups of 10 or more, please call Group Sales, 5-STAR THEATRICALS at (805) 497-8613 x 1.     

Ticket prices range from $35 – $90.  For ticket and theatre information, call (805) 449-ARTS (2787).  

COVID PROTOCOLS for RAGTIME: THE MUSICAL at the KAVLI THEATRE

There will no longer be any COVID vaccination requirements for The Bank of America Performing Arts Center.  In compliance with the Ventura County Public Health Order masks or face coverings are highly recommended for all persons, regardless of vaccination status.

HOLLYWOOD – In a world that seems increasingly governed by Tik Tok performances, and streaming media through our phones, the godmother/father of all media still rules supreme: live theater.

Psychologists have studied it and found that theater patrons flex their brains more, develop critical thinking, dig deeper into self-awareness and open up deeply felt empathy. A scientific project found that after a live theater production, the viewers “showed changes in their attitudes towards racial discrimination, income inequality, welfare, corporate regulations, wealth redistribution, and affirmative action. They also increased their charitable giving after the performance.”

While he never followed a YouTube influencer, the challenger to society’s mores, Oscar Wilde said, “I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.”

The Road Theatre Company , a multi award-winning theater named as one of the top ten intimate theatre companies, is the wellspring of Los Angeles’s creative theater. It represents everything theater should, and must be, to feed the imaginative and critically thinking mind and soul of America. Its mission is not to just to present theater, it is to create it. Located in the heart of the Noho Arts District, the company is an ensemble of 150+ theatre artists fiercely committed to the development of new plays. To further that mission, the company has launched Under Construction, a collaborative group of new and established playwrights dedicated to socially and politically relevant storytelling for the American stage. 

Taylor Gilbert, the founder and artistic director told me, “The Road Theatre Company was started when a group of actors, including myself, were in a very bad play. We left the stage after its second performance. We cleared out the dressing room and said, ‘We can do better than this!’ We walked into Jerry’s Deli and started brainstorming. Two months later, with a group of fellow actors from all over, we opened in a very dreary but exciting warehouse district and have been true to our mission since: To produce politically and or socially relevant new work not previously seen in Los Angeles. Now 31 years later we are still striving to do just that.”

LGBTQ and ally authors and playwrights, here is your chance to be discovered!

Fourteen years ago, after over a decade and a half of success producing new plays, the Road Theater Company expanded the initiative to find new work by launching the Summer Playwrights Festival.

The festival is now one of the largest staged reading festivals in the nation.

The concept is simple. Playwrights submit their work blindly, their identity is essentially anonymous, and the hundreds of submissions are vetted by a group of designated readers.  Those readers then elevate finalists to the artistic board who make the final decisions. The ten winners from that process are presented as the stage readings which comprise the festival. The 14th annual Summer Playwrights Festival will take place over ten exciting days from Friday, July 7- Sunday July 16th, 2023.  Each reading is followed by a talk-back with the playwright and director. 

Playwright submissions come from all over the country, and the festival is a great opportunity for LGBTQ writers to get their stories heard and presented. “We have playwrights who have done nothing, we have playwrights who have been produced on Broadway,”  Taylor tells me. “You can be from any background of writing and if your play is good, we’re going to look at it. We’re going to read it.”

She continues, “We’re not looking for any specific thing, we’re just looking for a writer who trips our mind a little bit. We’re looking for something that’s exciting and new and young. It’s interesting for us to be able to look at a play that we can cast in any way we feel possible — opening up our casting and to do conscious casting that reflects a more diverse and more inclusive festival and company.”

“I think at this point in time, we’re probably looking at things for a cast of around four or five people. Such a cast gives the opportunity with the smaller budget that we have in order to be able to produce more shows during the year. That doesn’t mean that we can’t do a reading of a play that has a larger cast than that. And it doesn’t mean that we won’t produce it. “

Taylor gives some insight into what submissions would speak to her, “When I read something that I feel is honest and real and close to someone’s heart. That’s what draws me into a piece. And it doesn’t mean it has to be pedestrian, which it can be, or somewhat fantastical. We appreciate storylines that include LGBTQ+ stories. We did one last season. It was fantastic production, that piece. We love being able to produce whatever we feel is so beautifully written that it just needs to be seen.”

Past playwrights that have been accepted  have included John Patrick Shanley, Steve Yockey, William Mastrosimone, Harrison David Rivers, Jami Brandli, Lisa B. Thompson, Franky D. Gonzalez, D.L. Coburn, Lisa Loomer, Sharr White, Marisa Wegrzyn, Craig Wright, Wendy Macleod, Lucy Thurber, Mo Gaffney, Keith Huff, Brett Neveu, Scooter Pietsch, Craig Pospisil, Julie Marie Myatt, and Martyna Majok. 

 Artists performing the readings have included Bryan Cranston, Laurie Metcalf, Jason Alexander, Zachary Quinto, Ann Cusack, Kathy Baker, Jennifer Tilly, Perry King, Rondi Reed, Tom Irwin, Nancy Travis, Gregory Harrison, Gale Harold, Robert Pine, Michael O’Neill, Harold Gould, Jon Polito, James Eckhouse, Lila Crawford, and Zoe Perry.

ONLINE SUBMISSION INFO: 

To submit your play, use this link: https://roadtheatre.org/event/summer-playwrights-festival-14-submission-info/

– Each submission is read and evaluated by Road Company members with recommendations made to the Artistic Board and SPF Producers who then read and evaluate the recommended scripts and make the final choices for the plays that will be given staged readings at SPF14.

-Each play receives a minimum of two reading evaluations. The SPF14 staff regrets that we do not provide feedback on any submitted materials.

-This year, SPF will strive to further reduce bias from our evaluation process, while at the same time taking into consideration race, gender, and other factors in our choice of plays. We are asking the playwrights to remove all identifying information from their scripts.

-Plays of any length or genre are eligible.

-To be included in SPF 14, the work must remain unproduced on the west coast and unpublished through July 16, 2023.

-Early submissions are strongly encouraged.

-No agent is required.

-ONLY electronic copy applications are accepted. No hard copies, please.

PLAY FORMAT GUIDELINES (SPF14):

-All scripts must be in a PDF file format.  No hard copy submissions will be accepted.

-Please remove ALL identifying information about the playwright from the script. 

-The title of your file should be the title of the play only.

-Plays must be paginated and include a list of characters.

-Please include a synopsis of your play on the submission form.

SUBMISSION WINDOW (SPF14):

-We will accept submissions for SPF 14 between February 1st  through 11:59 pm on March 15, 2023.   We cannot accept any plays past this deadline, so please plan accordingly.

-Plays of all lengths (ten-minute, one-act, full-length) are eligible for submission during this time.

-Official SPF 14 selections will be announced by June 7, 2023.

SUBMISSION FEE (SPF14):

-$20 for scripts over 30 pages (full length) and $15 for scripts under 30 pages (short form).

-The fee can be submitted via this link: SPF Submisson Fee 

Upon payment, you will receive two emails in your inbox. The first will be a receipt of payment and the second will include details with script submission instructions.

If the fee is a financial hardship, please email [email protected] to have it waived, no questions asked. 

FOLLOW THE ROAD FOR THE LATEST UPDATES:

For all inquiries and further information, contact:  
www.facebook.com/roadtheatre 
www.instagram.com/roadtheatre 
www.twitter.com/roadtheatre 
www.youtube.com/roadtheatrecompany

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Rob Watson is the host of the popular Hollywood-based radio/podcast show RATED LGBT RADIO.

He is an established LGBTQ columnist and blogger having written for many top online publications including Parents Magazine, the Huffington Post, LGBTQ Nation, Gay Star News, the New Civil Rights Movement, and more.

He served as Executive Editor for The Good Man Project, has appeared on MSNBC and been quoted in Business Week and Forbes Magazine.

He is CEO of Watson Writes, a marketing communications agency, and can be reached at [email protected] .

NEW YORK – Marking the fourth holiday-themed touring production from Jinkx Monsoon and BenDeLaCreme, The Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Show could do no wrong with the LGBTQ+-heavy crowd, at the first of two sold-out December 2/3 gigs at NYC’s storied Town Hall.

That the show landed at a venue known for hosting progressive organizations and artists such as the ACLU and Bob Dylan was a fitting choice. Although they came to play, not fight, the headliners would cap their wonderfully silly and unabashedly sexual performance with a forceful rebuke of homophobic violence and call for corrective measures powered not by righteous anger, but by radical love.

But enough about the last ten minutes. You came to read about a show by two you know from RuPaul’s Drag Race who’ve used that platform as both springboard and calling card—and that is what you shall get. 

Written by and starring Jinkx Monsoon and BenDeLaCreme, The Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Show takes its rightful place in the ever-expanding canonical universe Big Banged into existence beginning with 2018’s To Jesus, Thanks for Everything and followed by All I Want for Christmas is Attention (2019), The Return of the Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Show, LIVE! (2021), and The Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Special—a one-hour, made-for-TV program that first ran on HULU in 2020 and became an instant classic, with all the line-quoting, repeat viewing appeal of Rankin/Bass at their batshit crazy best. It’s highly recommended at least once a year (handily beating a Hallmark movie for Christmas in July celebrants).

Fans of past Jinkx/DeLa stage shows who crave more of the same while hungering for something new will go home from 2022’s installment feeling as if they’ve eaten the same slice of cake inexplicably cradled in the palm of their hand. In other words, this show takes up residence right along the border separating seen-it-before from ain’t-seen-nothin’-yet. Familiarity shows itself exactly as it should—in the bickering and bonding between two wildly contrasting personality types locked in an eternal struggle to convince the other one they’re going about things the all wrong.

As self-appointed Activities Director of whatever happens to be happening at any given moment, Connecticut-raised BenDeLaCreme is the embodiment of a starchy but well-meaning perfectionist undermined by the very methods she uses to achieve that elusive enlightened state. At the opposite end of the spectrum is Jinkx Monsoon—a booze-swilling, pleasure-seeking, chaos-embracing pagan with a moral code so focused it invites comparison to DeLa’s penchant for extremism. 

That the duo stubbornly travel different roads but somehow end up at the same destination is a frequent narrative motif throughout their work, one that never fails to pay off. Both queens experience an occasional fleeting awareness of this irony, promptly tucking it away until the plot reaches its inevitable point of détente.

And as the rules of comedy fittingly dictate, they do need to be at war with each other, always on the brink of a nuclear option. In that manner, especially when there’s no common enemy to fight, the conflict-prone odd couple milks their classic mismatched comedy team dynamic for all it’s worth. Not that they need to. Sold separately, both can hold their own as artists. Jinkx won RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 7 this year, and DeLa toured with the immensely satisfying matrimony farce Ready to be Committed.

But when offered as a two-for-one, as is the case with these annual Holiday Shows, the strange brew of charisma, chemistry, and unconventional choices supersizes the well-established personas of each performer while mapping some new terrain in a comedic landscape once surveyed by Burns and Allen, Burnette and Lawrence, Randall and Klugman, and Saunders and Lumley. (Don’t know some or any of these names? One can easily imagine a steely-eyed Jinkx, in her raspy Smoker’s Baritone, growling, “Oh, go look it up.”)

As for the premise: It’s 2022, and DeLa anticipates the impending celebration of Jesus’ birth by working herself into a royal tizzy, having sensed, Princess-and-the-Pea-like, that something isn’t quite right. Observing much “planetary pitchiness” and more eggshells than usual “in the global nog,” DeLa recruits a reluctant Jinkx to time travel with her into past decades, from the 1960s onward—until they will presumably save Christmas by fixing whatever mistake created “the ever-declining Hellscape we once called our world.” Add to that some supernatural elements plucked wholesale from A Christmas Carol, and you’ve got more than enough pop culture references to hang the plot on. (“More than enough” being the only substantial critic’s takeaway: The Dickens classic is such a meaty bone, it deserves its own exclusive piece of satire. The ghosts used as guides to past/present/future could have been substituted by any number of imaginative options, as the writers excel at justifying huge narrative shifts with flimsy, throw-away logic.) 

Of course, the large-looming, increasingly convoluted time travel thread itself is a wonderfully constructed conceit, an excuse for the show to stuff its stocking with every imaginable goodie on a diehard fan’s wish list. We’re talking giant puppets, RuPaul’s Drag Race references, filthy jokes, gasp-inducing wardrobe reveals, cutting zingers, and an all-cast production number depicting the Christ Child’s conception and birth as if it happened in the 1980s—when Journey rocked the top of the charts and everyone went to the gym looking like they had just seen Flashdance at a movie theater right next to a store that only sold headbands and leggings.

For practically every decade visited, there’s an original or parody musical number benefitting immensely from the show’s expertly choreographed dance ensemble. These six players—Chloe Albin, Mr. Babygirl, Elby Brosch, Shane Donohue, Jim Kent, and Ruby Mimosa—are on stage more often than not, and bring an actorly approach to the task at hand, whether it involves playing a candy cane, a reindeer, or sweet baby Jesus—fresh from the womb and already one of rock’s most gifted lead guitarists. (Pay attention, Grindr bottoms: That’s the kind of range expected when your profile says “verse.”)

That our gals manage to bring the timeline back into acceptable alignment will come as no surprise. The real appeal of the show is seeing the onetime reality TV stars doing their own thing and doing it spectacularly, without manufactured drama and meanspirited betrayals. Fact is, there’s plenty of mud being tossed, but done for the purpose of humor alone, it never lands with much force let alone stains.

What does linger is the potentially jarring—but effectively done—tonal shift during the show’s final 10 minutes, serving as a shot of confidence that sends the largely LGBTQ+ crowd back into a world where the weapons-grade nastiness we’ve laughed at all night long won’t be hurled by a member of the tribe or an ally who’s in on the joke. After calling out the world they just spent two-plus hours fixing for its ever-present homophobia and potential for violence, Jinkx holds DeLa tight and sings Looking at the Lights, a contemplative number that swaddles the jam-packed, 1,500-seat venue in a blanket of radical love. Maybe enough to survive the holidays at an unhospitable family member’s home, or at your own place, all alone. “We don’t need to be okay,” sings Jinkx, to recovering perfectionist DeLa. “There’s no right way to be.”

Composed by Major Scales, Jinkx delivers Looking at the Lights in a hushed manner worlds apart from the assertive vocal stylings she’s been crushing all night. Lyricist BenDeLaCreme has called the 2021 song “the first I’ve ever written that’s just earnest and didn’t break itself with a joke… As someone who’s always struggled with the holidays, this is more than just a song about pandemic loneliness. It’s about friendship and community.”

That sense of kinship is the gift we all hope to get, all year long. As such, it’s one Jinkx and DeLa say they’ll be touring with at this time of year—every year—for as long as the fates allow. Until then, this empowering nugget from the Jinkx/DeLa-written anthem, Everyone is Traumatized by Christmas:

No matter where you come from, no matter who you are
There’s something ’bout this holiday that’s sure to leave a scar
An overbearing family, no family at all
Run over by a reindeer or just working at the mall

…

[DeLa]
But, at least they’re not alone

[Jinkx]
At least you’re not alone

[Both]
No, you’re not alone if you’ve been traumatized!

“The Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Show” has sold out its upcoming performances in cities including Austin, TX, San Diego, CA, and the December 18 show at LA’s Orpheum Theatre. Limited tickets remained for the Orpheum’s Dec. 19 show at the time of this article’s publication. 

For tickets, click here. Super VIP and VIP Meet & Greet packages available. The tour continues through Dec. 30 with stops including Seattle, WA, Portland, OR, and Vancouver, BC. For those unable to see them live, highly recommended is 2020’s “The Jinx & DeLa Holiday Special.” Rent or purchase via Vimeo on Demand, iTunes, Google Play, VUDU, and Amazon Prime.

“The Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Show” is co-written and co-created by BenDeLaCreme and Jinkx Monsoon, directed by BenDeLaCreme, and produced by BenDeLaCreme Presents, a company comprised of producers BenDeLaCreme, Kevin Heard, and Gus Lanza. 

For millions of GenX-ers, the music of Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo – Benatar’s longtime lead guitarist, collaborator, and producing partner, and her husband since 1982 – has been an iconic generational touchstone for over four decades. This might be especially true for queer GenXers, who found inspiration during their formative years in the defiant spirit that resonated through many of the duo’s songs.

One of those queer GenXers was Bradley Bredeweg, the out co-creator of another queer touchstone, television’s “The Fosters,” which became a hit for five seasons on FreeForm with its story of a lesbian couple raising five adopted children. Now, Bredeweg – a self-described “theatre kid” – is helping to bring Benatar and Giraldo’s music to a new generation of rebellious youth with “Invincible,” a new musical which intricately weaves the couples legendary catalog with inspired new songs to reimagine Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” for the 21^st century.

“When I got into writing for television, I realized that I missed the equal exchange that happens between the people on the stage and the audience,” explains Bredeweg, who spoke with the Blade ahead of his show’s November 22 opening at Beverly Hills’ Wallis Center for the Performing Arts. “I love film and television, obviously, I’m so grateful for it, but after a couple of years of doing it, I was like, ‘I miss that inner theatre child, so I’m gonna moonlight.’”

The result of his “moonlighting” turns Shakespeare’s classic Verona setting into a modern, war-torn metropolis, and places his timeless tale of star-crossed lovers in a time of great transformation. Love and equality are forced to battle for survival as a newly-elected chancellor works to return the city to its traditional roots and destroy a progressive resistance that is trying to imagine peace in a divided world – and if you think that sounds familiar, it’s by design. It’s current run at the Wallis is its world premiere, but if things go as hoped, this is just the first step toward Broadway.

According to Bredeweg, however, it’s far from the beginning of his show’s journey.

“About twelve years ago, I realized I hadn’t read ‘Romeo and Juliet’ since high school and decided to read it again,” he tells us. “The next day I had to take a road trip – this was back in the era when I still had a CD book in my car – and I came across the “Best of” album of Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo, so I popped it in and started driving. And because the story was obviously fresh in my head, I was listening to all these songs and realizing that if you line them up a certain way they totally tell the tale of ‘Romeo and Juliet.’ I wrote a first draft a couple of weeks later and then I just put it away and forgot about it.”

Much later, in 2015, he walked into a Los Feliz bar called the Rockwell (“It was this really cool kind of spot that we don’t have a lot of in LA, because we’re not a theatrical town”), where cabaret performances were sometimes mounted by visting Broadway talent and Jeff Goldblum would do a gig every Wednesday night. Inspired by the vibe, he suddenly remembered “this thing I had come up with all those years ago” and impulsively pitched the idea of putting it on to the bar’s manager. I said, ‘I’ve got this crazy idea where I want to combine Shakespeare with Pat Benatar,’ and she said, ‘That’s insane, but I’m a huge fan of your show and I love it, so let’s do it.’”

This early incarnation (then called “Love is a Battlefield”) was an unprecedented hit, enjoying a six-month run to sold out houses – that is, until Benatar and Giraldo’s manager attended a performance and recorded a video of the whole thing on his iPhone. He showed it to Benatar and Giraldo, and they were intrigued; but at the time, unbeknownst to Bredeweg, they were working on developing their own life story as a musical using their songs, so they sent a “cease and desist” letter to the Rockwell and the show was forced to shut down.

“It was heartbreaking, for all of us,” says Bredeweg, “because we knew we had something with real potential.”

Then, a year later, he got a call from a producer who told him Benatar and Giraldo wanted him to come to New York and discuss his musical.

“Of course, I said yes and got myself there immediately. We took a meeting on their tour bus, and we started talking about the musical they were developing, and suddenly we all started to move in the direction of doing ‘Love is a Battlefield.’  By the end of it we were all laughing about how we had started out with a ‘cease and desist’ order and here we were talking about coming together to do a show.”

In part, says Bredeweg, the couple was convinced to change course by their discussion of the proliferation of so-called “jukebox musicals” that have increasingly populated Broadway in recent years. 

“We talked about how they have a shelf life, especially if they’re focused on a specific artist. They have a built-in audience, but beyond that, how can they stand the test of time? The real test of a timeless musical is if, in 40 years, every high school is doing it. I think that’s why we went back to using their iconic music to reinvent this epic, timeless tale.”

Another part of the appeal was how aptly the couple’s songs fit into Shakespeare’s classic – a coincidence, perhaps, but one that might be better described as synchronicity.

“When Pat and Neil met back in the late seventies it was supposed to just be a working relationship, but they fell head over heels in love with each other,” Bredeweg says. “When I got close to them, they told me they had been called the ‘Romeo and Juliet of the music world’ because the labels and managers and PR people were trying to break them up. They wanted Pat to stand on their own and Neil to just be her producing partner, and so much of what the two of them were creating at that time was about that struggle, about fighting that music industry system and saying, ‘let us figure this out for ourselves.’ That’s why so much of their music works inside of this story.”

For Bredeweg, the chance to realize his vision struck an intensely personal chord, too.

“I was always obsessed with the classics, but as a gay kid growing up in the eighties, I knew I felt different from everyone else, and as much as I loved them, I couldn’t really ‘attach’ to any character inside them. Nothing felt familiar to me, everything was from the point of view of a white cisgender person – and I always had these dreams, if I ever had any say, that I would love to tackle these classics in a different way and reposition them for a more diverse audience.”

In keeping with this mission, “Invincible” doesn’t just make Verona into a more modern city, but a more diverse one as well. The Capulet and Montague houses are run by the women, whose husbands are both dead; Romeo’s chum Benvolio is nonbinary, and falls in love with Juliet’s nurse; Juliet’s cousin Tybalt is secretly in love with her would-be husband, Paris; Paris himself is the city’s new chancellor, seeking the marriage as a means to control the vast Capulet fortune and deploy it to shore up his political power. In Bredeweg’s updated take on the tale, it’s a story about powerful men with powerful motives, with a matriarchy fighting against the traditional patriarchy and a younger generation trying to take control of its own destiny – and to ensure that it includes the freedom to love who they want.

“That’s obviously something the queer community can really understand,” says Bredweg. “We’ve been there and done that, the fight for marriage equality is all about that. It’s very much at the center of the show, and it was a big reason why I wanted to tackle the story, why I’ve rewritten so many characters with queer identities – taking these figures we thought we knew and giving them a more modern point of view.”

“Our culture is shifting in such huge ways,” he continues. “It goes back to my experience of not being able to find myself in these old tales. We are looking at our past, and pieces of art or the written world, or things in our politics, and we’re trying to reinvent these pinnacle moments in a way to make sure that history doesn’t always repeat, to move forward in different directions that are better for all of us. Especially the younger generations – they’ve stepped into this word where they’ve had no say in how chaotic things feel, and they are trying to take control of their identities and their path forward. That’s really what’s at the heart of our show.”

“Invincible” is not, of course, the first time “Romeo and Juliet” has been deconstructed and rebuilt as a musical; apart from the obvious example of “West Side Story,” the recent London import “& Juliet,” now a hot ticket on Broadway, presents an alternative version of the story in which the title character doesn’t kill herself, set to the music of pop songwriter Max Martin – responsible for hits from Britney Spears, the Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, and Céline Dion, among others.

Bredeweg isn’t worried about the competition.

“I never think about that kind of thing,” he tells us. “There’s always room for interpretation with classics of this stature. There’s space for both.”

His production, of course, has the added advantage of showcasing the music of two deeply-beloved icons whose recent induction into the Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame has catapulted their names back into the public arena in a big way – not that they were ever very far out of it.

For Bredeweg, though, the Benatar/Giraldo connection has always been much more than just a way to make his show marketable. It’s the whole reason “Invincible” even exists.

“Pat captured my heart as a young gay kid for obvious reasons. There was something about her music, and her energy and messaging.
“It made me feel that if someone as powerful as her could exist, then I could, too.”

“Invincible” continues its run at the Wallis until December 18. For tickets and more details, visit their website.

By Curtis Galloway | LOS ANGELES – Rogue Machine Theatre’s recent run of “A Great Wilderness”, written by Samuel D. Hunter and directed by Elina de Santos, was a harrowing story, to say the least. It explores the complex ideas behind conversion therapy or sexual orientation and gender identity change efforts.

As a conversion therapy survivor, I knew that I needed to see this production as I am always more than happy to see conversations about this topic. While the cast was excellent and the overall theatrical presentation was entertaining and very engaging, I feel that the script itself lacked direction and proper handling of the main topic, conversion therapy.

The show opens in an old cabin, which we will stay in for the duration of the story, with the two main characters, Daniel & Walt, standing off in silent opposition. Daniel, a teenager, has just been sent away to a remote cabin run by Walt, an elderly man that is about to be moved into an assisted living home. We learn quickly that Daniel was sent there by his mother after he was caught watching homosexual pornography, and Walt is known for “helping”  kids change their sexual orientation through religious means. To be plain, Walt is a “conversion therapist” and has been running a conversion camp with his friend Tim and ex-wife Abby. 

Over the course of two hours, Daniel goes missing in the woods, Abby and Walt reveal that their son was gay and committed suicide due to their attempts to have his sexual orientation changed, and Daniel’s mother seemingly prefers her son stay missing rather than face the world that she knows is unkind to “people like him”. 

There is no doubt, that the show had a fantastic cast. The six characters were neatly defined as their own individuals with distinct personalities and lives of their own. Each action was meaningful and thought out, to the smallest detail. The emotion brought through each character enticed you to believe that it was actually happening before your eyes. It was everything good casting should be.  

My main issue with the production sat in the script, specifically the sympathy it garnered for Walt as a conversion therapist.

From personal experience, when talking about conversion therapy and specifically the conversion therapist, we need to be careful not to create a sympathetic tone. A Great Wilderness focused too much on the life and struggles of a conversion therapist that, in his old age, is trying to come to terms with his life, the mistakes he has made, and his past attractions.

This brings feelings of sympathy and emotional connection to the character, that does not deserve sympathy. One character notes that they knew Walt through the community as a weird old man that abuses children in his cabin by trying to make them straight. They noted that as they grew to know him they realized that people will say what they want, but they knew he “never harmed those kids”. 

Toward the end of the show, we get the initial beginnings that Walt is starting to doubt the conversion therapy he has been providing his whole life, but we never really get to him denouncing it or talk directly about it.

At the end, we finally get to see Daniel stumble back into the cabin after being missing in the woods. He describes seeing flames (from a wildfire nearby) and having a revelation from God that he can change and that he wants to pursue what Walt initially set out to do, make Daniel straight.

For me, this left the door way too open for interpretation that, yes, conversion therapy is bad, but what this guy did really wasn’t. It misses the whole point and ideology behind why conversion therapy exists in the first place. Anti-LGBTQ sentiments that something is wrong with the individual are at the heart of all of it, and no amount of feel good cabin, “I just want to help” can cover that up. 

Overall, the production of “A Great Wilderness” was captivating and fantastic. The cast did an amazing job and they should all be proud, as should the theatre. I left having mixed feelings, as you have now read, but I stand by my evaluation that it casts too much sympathy on a character that has spent his life making other’s lives worse and more confusing.

************************

Curtis D. Galloway is the Founder & President of Conversion Therapy Dropout Network in Los Angeles, California. Curtis grew up in a small town in Southern Illinois. When he was 16 years old he was subjected to conversion therapy; an experience he was later able to use to ban conversion therapy in his home state.

Now living in L.A., Curtis has taken his activism to the next level and founded the Conversion Therapy Dropout Network to bring survivors of conversion therapy together in community and solidarity.

When you ask someone if they know who Joey Arias is, the answer you get will depend on the person you ask.

New Yorkers will likely be able to tell you he’s a longtime fixture of the Manhattan performance art and cabaret scene who’s been doing his best to make the city queer since the seventies, when he staged and performed fashion shows with his co-workers in the storefront windows at Fiorucci.

Others might know him from his association with queer disco icon Klaus Nomi, or his lengthy stint with Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas, or from his mind-blowing collaboration show with puppeteer Basil Twist, “Arias with a Twist.”

Many will be aware of him as a pioneering drag artist and a regular performer at Wigstock; and most, though they may know nothing else about him, will at least remember him from his appearance on Saturday Night Live in 1979, when he and Nomi danced and sang backup for David Bowie in three now-iconic musical numbers.

“Imagine spending a week with David,” he reminisced to the Blade during a conversation we had with him last week. “Rehearsing for hours, and talking and having fun with him. And then, right before we were going on for that first song, we were standing there and he said, ‘After today your lives are going to change.’ And then we all laughed and we walked out onto the stage, with me and Klaus carrying David.”

Arias, who performs at LA’s Catalina Jazz Club at 7pm on October 20, is understandably proud of – and still a little starstruck by, perhaps – that experience, but it’s not the definitive moment of his career, no matter how famous it might be. Nor does he think of his reputation as a drag pioneer as his crowning achievement – in fact, he tells us, “I always HATED drag.”

It seems an odd statement from someone who spent his childhood, inspired by the films his parents frequently took him to see and the cartoons, books, and comic books that fed his imagination, dressing up and recreating them when he was left alone in the house.

As an example, he told us of a time he convinced some other boys in the neighborhood to join him for a re-enactment of “Cleopatra,” with him decked out like Liz (with some help from his mother’s makeup kit) and the other boys in their underwear, of course. Mom and Dad came home early, that time, he recalls.

Laughing, he recalls, “My mother was screaming, ‘Oh my God, you look like Cleopatra, what did I do to you?’ And here I am, seven years old, doing all this!”

Dressing up was always – and still is – something he loved to do. “I never thought of it as drag,” he insists. “If I liked something, I would dress like that – it could be a cowboy, for instance, only it would be something like an alien cowboy.”

Years later, in New York, friends would take him to drag bars and he would want to leave (“I’d see a guy on the stage doing Barbra Streisand and I would be like, ‘Let’s get OUT of here!’”), but then an opportunity came that he couldn’t refuse; he was invited to Andy Warhol’s Halloween Party, and the theme was drag.

“My friends helped me get dressed up, and I came up with this character named Justine DeSade. When I showed up, everyone was like, ‘Wow, who are YOU?,” and Andy came up and he was taking pictures, saying “Wow, wow!” He leaned up and whispered to me ‘Who are you really,’ and I told him my name and he said, ‘You need to stay like this all the time.’”

He was still resistant to it, however, but when Lady Bunny persuaded him to do Justine at Wigstock, her appearance there became an annual tradition. That led to more requests, including a drag calendar, Queens of New York (“All the girls were like, ‘What? You put Miss Arias on the cover? She isn’t even a drag queen!”), and bookings to perform his popular cabaret singing act in drag. Realizing, finally, that he was being paid less to perform as a man than as a woman, he deciced, “I think I’m going to be doing drag now.”

“Then drag became like the punk of the nineties,” he says, “and now it’s mainstream.”

That’s why, in the last few years, he’s distanced himself from the word “drag.”

“The minute you say it, people go to RuPaul,” he explains. “They don’t see the image of what I do now, which is more, just, androgyny – otherworldly, beautiful, chic, elegant, silhouette-y, you know? I look at it like a Kabuki actor, or a Geisha. That’s my influence too, I studied Geisha dancing, I did some Kabuki work in Japan – it’s all about beauty, graceful movements, it’s other-worldly, it’s minimal and gorgeous. ’Drag Race’ is incredible, but it’s not me. I don’t do it like that.”

It’s this graceful, other-worldly persona he feels most at home in when he performs – when he sings, really, because he has always thought of himself as a singer more than many of the other things for which he has become legendary. “I feel free, I feel good, I feel high on life and imagery, on making people smile and dream,” he tells us. “I want them to hear beautiful music that makes you think, with smart lyrics, and to look and the stage and say, ‘Look at this beauty, look at this dream!”

When pressed to define this androgynous stage presence as something separate from “drag,” he says he prefers to simply call it “Joey.”

That’s a reflection of the way he’s always felt about gender presentation, a rejection of labels that seems very much in tune with the increasing visibility of the trans and non-binary people as a part of the queer community at large. “All that stuff is right out there now,” he gushes. “It’s right in your face. That’s why all these politicians are freaking out.”

Yet though queer culture may finally be catching up to him, don’t expect Joey Arias to rest on his laurels.

“I mean, I’m older now, but there’s so much more to do,” he tells us. “I’m still on the warpath, performing and expanding people’s minds.”

He ruminates for a moment, then reflects, “I feel like I am part of a new consciousness. We live in a different time, everything is going so fast, there are things we don’t even know about that are there already, waiting for us. I say, ‘Let’s go!’ It’s easy to think about giving up, but there are always more dreams, more hope. Just keep going!

With a sly chuckle, he concludes, “Remember, it’s always the last inch that counts.”

Once in a while, a reviewer can find themselves stymied by the sheer force of the impact they felt from the thing they are meant to impartially review.

For one reviewer, at least, “The Inheritance” is just such a thing.

That’s why, in tackling the challenge of communicating my response to this epic play, I have set aside my usual policy of “keeping myself out of the equation” and instead decided to adopt a first-person, subjective voice – for it would be impossible for me to pretend that there wasn’t something personal about my relationship with it. I would argue, in fact, that such a pretense would be impossible for any gay man, because “The Inheritance” is about each and every one of us.

Written by Matthew López and divided into two full-length parts, it’s loosely adapted from – or rather, inspired by – gay author E.M. Forster’s classic 1910 novel “Howards End.” Instead of dealing with the mores and customs of Edwardian English society, it’s a contemporary story set in New York, focused on a group of gay men living in the years after AIDS decimated an entire generation of their friends and elders.

That’s all I knew when I walked in the door of the theatre, apart from its production history – an acclaimed and award-winning 2018 London premiere directed by Stephen Daldry, followed by a multi-Tony-winning transfer to Broadway the subsequent year – and its reputation for inducing a powerful cathartic response from LGBTQ+ audiences. That’s all you really need to know, too.

In the West Coast premiere production staged by director Mike Donahue at the Geffen Playhouse, I worried that the New York setting might feel a little out-of-step with the Los Angeles queer community, but it didn’t take long for me to attune myself to the vast landscape of common ground lying just beneath the surface details.

As I watched actors assuming their positions on the stage before showtime, carrying laptops and books and getting comfortable in a way that evoked a casual afternoon at Starbucks more than an austere theatrical presentation, I was struck by a feeling of being among them, rather than apart.

When someone on the stage finally spoke, that feeling did not disappear; it lingered and remained a part of my perspective even across the lengthy dinner break between the show’s three-hour-plus parts, and even when the players assumed a more traditionally theatrical approach in telling the massive story.

That story, like all great stories, is made up of many smaller stories, each layered and intersecting among the others. Its major figures – long-term couple Eric and Toby (Adam Kantor and Juan Castano), child-of-privilege Adam and down-on-his-luck hustler Leo (both Bradley James Tejada), and older couple Walter and Henry (Bill Brochtrup and Tuc Watkins) – move between past and present, moment and memory, even actor and character, surrounded by an ensemble of others who step in and out of roles as required.

Together, at the prompting and with the guidance of E.M. Forster himself (Brochtrup, again), they enact a sweeping tale that encompasses a hundred years of history and more, in which each of their individual fates is decided by a chain of events and choices that extends far beyond themselves.

To say more about the narrative would be both difficult and unfair. My readers should be afforded the opportunity, just as I was, to let it all unfold as it happens.

When they do, they might find themselves caught up, perhaps even despite themselves. I confess, when I took my seat before the performance, I was carrying a bit of healthy skepticism. Surely, I thought, the play could not live up to all the hyperbolic buzz which surrounded it; after all, hadn’t reviews for the Broadway production been mixed? Hadn’t some critics demerited the piece for being shallow, or for diverging into lengthy debates about queer culture and political ideology?

My skepticism lasted only until the first moment I felt tears unexpectedly welling up behind my eyes. It came remarkably soon, over a simple throwaway line that conjured such a primal response that I reacted to it before my critical brain had a chance to understand why.

This was a phenomenon that repeated itself countless times throughout the play; more than that, there were many moments, cumulatively built, that engaged my intellect yet still overwhelmed me with emotional response. It’s rare for me, as a longtime veteran of watching theatre, to be fully moved in this way – and the fact that it happened not once, but numerous times throughout “The Inheritance,” was an unexpected gift I was grateful to receive.

In expressing that gratitude, I must single out some among the individuals responsible, but it should be acknowledged that, for me, there was not a single weak link in the chain.

Brochtrup, distinctly differentiating his two important roles with the skill of a seasoned thespian, also captures the things which connect them with shimmering clarity; Kantor’s Eric is as endearingly real as the best gay friend you’ve ever known; Castano’s Toby is a dynamo, electrifying to watch and dominating the stage – appropriately so – during every scene he’s in; Tejada (who joined the production as a last-minute replacement after an injury required a previously cast actor to depart the role) is heartbreakingly vulnerable in each of his dual roles, and compelling in his ostensible position as the central voice of the narrative; Watkins’ Henry, who must surmount the challenge of being likable in a role which positions him as an antagonist, succeeds with his understated, close-to-the-chest performance in doing exactly that; and lastly, Indigenous actress Tantoo Cardinal is a blessing in a late-appearing role that gives her a chance to distill the myriad emotions we’ve felt so far into a single, profoundly resonant monologue –delivered without a trace of manipulative sentimentality.

I could talk about more. I could talk about Jamie Todd’s scenic design or Josh Epstein’s lighting or Sara Ryung Clement’s costumes, but my praise for each of these elements can be conveyed appropriately by saying they are executed with elegant and effective simplicity; I could list all the awards the piece has won in its previous productions, but you can easily look that up yourself. I could discuss themes and literary references, or the metaphoric application of the title to the play itself, but that would be pedantic.

What I will say instead is that while watching “The Inheritance” I felt like I was watching my own life being enacted on the stage. I recognized myself and every gay person I have ever known in every character, and my own history and experience reflected in thousands of ways, both large and small, throughout.

This was more than a play, it was a tribal ritual, an invocation of community connection and shared experience that stretches back across millennia and forward into an uncharted and uncertain future. In seeing it, I felt seen – an expression never fully comprehended until lived firsthand.

It made me proud of my queer heritage; it made me feel lucky and honored to be a gay man.

Who can ask for a better inheritance than that?