Gay City News, August 1, 2012 by Schneps Media

FREE VOLUME ELEVEN, ISSUE SIXTEEN AUGUST 1 - 14, 2012

Humm in London 19 Wall St. Backs Nups 11 Gay Polygamy? 9 Hoylman Runs 3

LGBT History

WRECKING BALL See Page 12

August 1, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

MARRIAGE Van Bramer marries longtime partner 16 Cover Illustration by Michael Shirey

Under the

British Breakdown

In the Noh

LGBT History to be replaced by condos

The stage shows a darker side of London

Silence and the Blues reign supreme

EDITORIAL PAGE 14 PAGE 31

SPECIAL SECTION PAGES 28-29

| August 1, 2012

COMMUNITY

The Anointed One Seeking Duane’s state Senate seat, the race is Brad Hoylman’s to lose BY DUNCAN OSBORNE

GAY CITY NEWS

ppearing before the Stonewall Democratic Club of New York City on July 25, Brad Hoylman first rattled off the long list of his friends, political and actual, who were there. Then he saluted Thomas Duane, the openly–gay state senator who has represented parts of Manhattan in the state Senate since 1998. “I have big shoes to fill,” said the 46-year-old Hoylman, who is running in the September 13 Democratic primary for Duane’s seat. “Any candidate running for this seat has big shoes to fill…Tom Duane was a lion.” The district includes the white, gay enclaves of Chelsea, Clinton, Hell’s Kitchen, the East and West Villages as well as Stuyvesant Town, Peter Cooper Village, and parts of Midtown Manhattan. In 1991, Duane was the first openly gay candidate elected to the City Council in a district that was drawn to be gay-winnable. That City Council district sits within Duane’s Senate district, and its gay population may have grown over the past 10 years. At a July 17 meeting of the commission that will redraw the City Council districts, Joseph J. Salvo, the director of the Population Division in the Department of City Planning, said that the council district had seen a 14.3 percent increase in population due to a “young non-family population being fed heavily by in-migration from the rest of the country.” Christine Quinn, an out lesbian and the City Council speaker, currently repre-

State Senator Thomas Duane with Brad Hoylman, who is seeking Duane’s seat, in New York City’s June 24 Pride March.

sents that district. Hoylman will soon marry filmmaker David Sigal, also 46 and his partner of 20 years. They are raising Silvia, their 18-month-old daughter. When Duane, 57, announced his retirement he said “Brad is one of my closest friends. We talked last night. I would be proud to be represented by Brad Hoylman.” Quinn, Congressman Jerry Nadler, who represents Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Assemblymember Deborah Glick, an out lesbian who represents the West Village, and other elected officials who share voters with Duane’s district have endorsed Hoylman. It certainly appears that all of the stars have aligned to put him into office.

“I hope so,” he said during an interview at Think Coffee, a Chelsea coffee shop. “I don’t think our community should take anything for granted. Certainly, I’m not.” His is opposed by Tom Greco, the straight owner of The Ritz Bar and Lounge, a popular gay bar. Greco is an officer in the McManus Midtown Democratic Club and the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club, a gay political group. Also running is Tanika Inlaw, a public school teacher. In their July campaign filings with the state Board of Elections, Hoylman had raised nearly $192,000 and had just over $171,000 in cash on hand. Greco had raised $20,600 with $13,600 in cash. Inlaw did not file any reports. Duane may have aided Hoylman with an early hint that he would be retiring. They spoke around May 19, when Quinn married Kim Catullo, her longtime partner, Hoylman said. “He told me he was considering stepping down at the end of the year,” Hoylman said. Duane announced his retirement on June 4. Hoylman filed his campaign committee with the state on June 5 and collected his first donation on June 7. Ballot petitioning began on June 26. All three candidates have qualified. This is Hoylman’s second run for public office. In 2001, he finished second in a field of seven candidates in a Democratic primary for a City Council seat representing lower Manhattan. Since then, Hoylman

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HOYLMAN, continued on p.13

One Year Later A year after marriage enactment, thousands have wed and spent millions doing so BY DUNCAN OSBORNE

GAY CITY NEWS

ayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn announced that one year after same sex marriage was enacted in New York, 7,184 same-sex couples had married in New York City and they generated an estimated $259 million in “economic impact” for those weddings. “The widespread reach marriage equality has had in New York extends beyond the fundamental need to make sure all people are free to marry the person of their choosing,” said Quinn, an out lesbian who represents Chelsea, in a July 24 press statement. “Our economy has also reaped the benefits full equality has to offer and the impressive economic impact same-sex marriage has and will continue to have on our city is a boon for New York and for all those who fought so hard to make equality a reality in New York State.” A gay marriage bill easily passed the state Assembly last year, as it had in each of the prior three years, and the state

Newlyweds with family and friends exiting the Manhattan marriage bureau on July 24, 2011.

Senate passed it on June 24 in a 33 to 29 vote. Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who fought for the legislation, signed it that day and weddings began 30 days later. Though July 24 was a Sunday, the city opened its five marriage bureaus and issued 659 marriage licenses and married 484 of the couples who received licenses. The spouses came from New York and 23 other states though 77 percent of the couples issued licenses that day were

from the city. According to the state Department of Health, 3,424 same sex couples have married in New York as of July 16. That state statistic excludes New York City and it may be low because couples are not required to report their sex on marriage licenses. New York City couples are also not required to report their sex on marriage licenses. The city estimated that “67 percent

of same-sex couples held wedding receptions at restaurants, homes, hotels or catering halls in the five boroughs, with 296,500 guests and 201,600 of them traveling from outside of the city.” In a study of 1,700 randomly selected same-sex and opposite-sex couples who married in New York City, the city estimated that the average cost of the weddings was $9,039 and “31 percent spent $10,000 or more.” The study estimated that approximately “235,900 hotel room nights were booked, more than 40,000 wedding announcements were printed, and 47,445 wedding favors were purchased.” The estimate of economic activity was produced by NYC & Company, the city’s tourism bureau. “Marriage equality has made our city more open, inclusive and free and it has also helped to create jobs and support our economy,” Bloomberg said in the July 24 statement. “New York has always been a great place to get married and since the passage of the Marriage Equality Act, we’re welcoming more and more couples, their families and friends from around the country and the world.”

August 1, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

POLITICS

As Council Districts Redrawn, Some LGBT Groups Silent Pride Agenda, Stonewall Dems skip hearings on Census-based revamp of city’s 51 seats BY DUNCAN OSBORNE

GAY CITY NEWS

aced with the prospect that New York City’s Districting Commission could alter City Council districts that have previously elected openly gay and lesbian members to that body, some gay political groups are preparing to submit testimony and data to the commission. “We definitely would not want to see the districts change in a way that would divide the LGBT populations in them,” said Michael J. Mallon, president of the Lesbian & Gay Democratic Club of Queens. “Usually, Council redistricting tends to be not very drastic.” The 15-member commission will use data from the 2010 US Census to redraw the lines for the Council’s 51 districts. The data shows that there have been some significant changes in the city’s demographics since the last census in 2000. Overall, the city’s population grew by two percent to just under 8.2 million, a figure that the city says was an

Benito Romano, chair of the New York City Districting Commission, at a July 17 meeting.

undercount. Whites declined by just under three percent, and the AfricanAmerican population fell by just over five percent. The Latino population grew by eight percent while Asians saw a nearly 32 percent increase over the ten-year

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period, going from 780,000 to just over one million. “The Asian population for the first time topped one million,” said Joseph J. Salvo, the director of the Population Division in the Department of City Planning, at the commission’s first meeting on July 17. The more significant data are the changes within districts. In Queens, which has elected two openly gay men — Daniel Dromm and Jimmy Van Bramer — to the Council, five districts saw declines in population, ranging from 0.4 percent to 10.1 percent. Other districts saw increases, though the largest was just 5.1 percent. The two districts at the northern end of Manhattan saw declines of nine percent and 3.5 percent, while two districts at the southern end saw increases of 13.1 percent and 14.3 percent. Salvo said the increases were due to a “young non-family population being fed heavily by in-migration from the rest of the country.” The district with the 14.3 percent growth is currently represented by Christine Quinn, the City Council speaker and an out lesbian. That district includes Chelsea, Clinton, and the West Village, three white gay enclaves. In Manhattan, the East Harlem and Lower East Side districts have also elected openly gay and lesbian councilmembers. Rosie Mendez currently represents the Lower East Side, and her district saw nearly five percent population growth. “We’ll probably do a meeting on the numbers,” Scott Melvin, president of the Gay & Lesbian Independent Democrats, a Manhattan club, told Gay City at the July 17 meeting. The city charter requires that

the districts have roughly the same population. This year, they must have about 160,000 people and the difference between the least populous and most populous districts cannot be more than 10 percent or about 16,000 people, said Thaddeus J. Hackworth, an attorney in the city’s Law Department, at the July 17 meeting. The districting pr ocess is also governed by provisions of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965. Due to prior violations of that act, changes to the Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Bronx districts must be approved by the Department of Justice or a federal court in the nation’s capital. Sexual orientation and gender identity are not among the protected classes in the Voting Rights Act, which could disadvantage lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender New Yorkers. New York City’s districting process, however, has explicitly political components. Seven of the commission members were appointed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, five were appointed by the Council’s Democratic majority, and three were appointed by the Council’s Republican minority. Other than making his appointments, the mayor has no further formal involvement in the process. The commission’s initial plan must be made public by September. A draft plan must be submitted to the City Council for comments and objections by November 5. The fact that the Council must approve the plan has led one political group to skip the process. “The City Council doesn’t respond, Christine Quinn responds,” Allen Roskoff, president of the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club. “I don’t see us having any influence over it as long as it’s in Quinn’s hands.” Roskoff has been a consistent Quinn critic on a number of issues. At an annual party he holds, Roskoff has had a male club member appear dressed as Quinn, and he married the drag Quinn to another club member dressed as Bloomberg. The Empire State Pride Agenda, the statewide gay lobby, and the Stonewall Democratic Club of New York City will not testify or submit data to the commission. The co-chairs of the Lambda Independent Democrats did not respond to an email or calls seeking comment. At the July 17 meeting, the commission elected Benito Romano, a Bloomberg appointee and a partner at the law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, as its chair. The commission will hold five public hearings, one in each borough, in August.

| August 1, 2012

LEGAL

ENDA’s Promise vs. Reality Anti-plaintiff bias seen in federal courts hearing employment discrimination cases BY DUNCAN OSBORNE

hile the queer community is pressing Congress to enact legislation that would ban employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, the federal courts have grown increasingly hostile to plaintiffs who bring employment discrimination cases. “The reality for plaintiffs in federal court is not necessarily a good one,” said Patricia A. Barasch, a partner at Schall & Barasch, a New Jersey law firm, and the president of the National Employment Lawyers Association. “A lot of cases get thrown out by judges in summary judgment motions before a plaintiff has an opportunity to have his or her case heard by a jury of his or her peers.” Soon after the Stonewall riots, the 1969 event that is seen as launching the modern gay rights movement, the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community pursued federal legislation that would give its members the sort of antidiscrimination protections that most Americans have. That goal is embodied in the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), a bill that would ban employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. ENDA passed the House in 2007 in a 235 to 184 vote. It has never received a vote in

“The reality for plaintiffs in federal court is not necessarily a good one,” said Patricia A. Barasch, a partner at Schall & Barasch, a New Jersey law firm, and the president of the National Employment Lawyers Association.

the Senate. With Republicans currently in charge of the House, the legislation is unlikely to get a vote. If ENDA was enacted, lawsuits brought under its provisions would be heard in the federal courts. Those courts generally do not like employment discrimination plaintiffs though there is “variability across the country in terms of the success of plaintiffs pursuing employment discrimination cases,” Barasch said. In a 2009 article in the journal, Harvard Law & Policy Review, Kevin M. Clermont and Stewart J. Schwab, two Cornell University law professors, surveyed federal courts data and concluded that from 1979 through 2006, “the plaintiff win rate for jobs cases (15%) was much lower than that for non-jobs cases (51%).” Typically in such cases, an employee is the plaintiff and an employer is the defendant.

They also found that defendants in employment discrimination cases won appeals of “pre-trial adjudication” losses 30 percent of the time versus plaintiffs’ 11 percent, and defendants won appeals of trial losses 41 percent of the time versus nine percent for plaintiffs. “For a plaintiff victorious at trial in an employment discrimination case, the appellate process offers a chance of retaining victory that cannot meaningfully be distinguished from a coin flip,” the authors wrote. “In this surprising plaintiff/defendant difference in the federal courts of appeals, we have unearthed an anti-plaintiff effect that is troublesome.” Some transgender employees have been successful in the federal courts when charging discrimination based on sex stereotyping, but there is no reason to believe that gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender employees would succeed in the federal courts where so many other employees have lost. Barasch most often brings cases in state courts, which are far more hospitable to employment discrimination cases. “I am more often in state court than I am in federal court because the protections for employees under state law are so much better than they are under federal law,” she said. Currently, 21 states and Washington, DC ban discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment, housing, and public

accommodations and 16 of those 21 also include gender identity as a protected class. The first of those laws was passed in 1982 and, more recently, states have been adding gender identity. Cities in some states without such laws have enacted anti-discrimination ordinances. At best, the state and local antidiscrimination provisions offer incomplete protection. “Many lawyers are going to state courts to bring claims because procedurally claimants have a better opportunity in state courts, but many states lack protection under state

“A new federal law is necessary precisely because of the uneven patchwork of protection in the states,” wrote Ann C. McGinley, a law professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

law and even where there is protection, many state laws lack remedies that make claimants whole,” wrote Ann C. McGinley, a law professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in an

email. “A new federal law is necessary precisely because of the uneven patchwork of protection in the states.” The other federal route for handling discrimination claims, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), is dealing with the aftermath of Bush-era budget cuts that reduced its staff by 30 percent and grew its caseload. At the close of the 2011 federal fiscal year, which ended on September 30, the EEOC had a backlog of 86,921 complaints brought against private sector employers. Barasch and McGinley said that passing ENDA would be valuable, the obstacles to enforcement in the federal courts notwithstanding. Enacting ENDA would put employers on notice that they cannot discriminate based on sexual orientation or gender identity. It might also encourage employers to adopt explicit policies banning such discrimination. And some complaints would succeed in the federal courts. “While federal courts have become more hostile to employment discrimination claims and this hostility is particularly obvious when combined with new efforts to dismiss cases early, an explicit law forbidding discrimination against LGBT people will make a difference,” McGinley wrote. “The courts would not be able to dismiss the clear-cut cases of LGBT discrimination that they dismiss now.”

Gay Polygamy? Massachusetts gay divorce blocked by prior Vermont civil union BY ARTHUR S. LEONARD

he Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has ruled that a same-sex marriage contracted in that state was void under the Massachusetts law against polygamy, because one of the spouses had never formally dissolved a prior Vermont civil union. The court's unanimous ruling means that a pending divorce action to end the marriage will be dismissed. According to the July 26 opinion by

Chief Justice Roderick Ireland, Todd J. Warnken, entered into a civil union in Vermont in 2003. There is no proof that his civil union partner is deceased or that the civil union was legally dissolved. In 2005, Warnken and Richard Elia were married in Massachusetts. In 2009, Warnken filed for divorce. Elia counterclaimed stating that Warnken had an “undissolved civil union." This posed a question: Was the Massachusetts marriage ever valid, considering that Massachusetts has a

polygamy statute that says that a marriage is void from its inception if one of the parties already has a husband or wife? If there was no valid marriage, then there would be no need for a divorce. The court decided that for purposes of construing the marriage and polygamy laws, a Vermont civil union should be recognized as "the equivalent of a marriage" in Massachusetts. In Massachusetts, same-sex marriages began in May 2004 following a November 2003 ruling by the Supreme Judicial

Court. Between those dates, the state legislature asked the court whether a civil union law would meet state constitutional requirements. The court said that only marriage would satisfy the equality requirements of the Massachusetts constitution and that civil unions and marriages are not the same thing Arguing that his Ver mont civil union is irrelevant to the validity of his Massachusetts marriage, Warnken

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MASSACHUSETTS, continued on p.13

August 1, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

COMMUNITY

Where Was the Board? Collapse of two queer community groups leads to questions about governance BY DUNCAN OSBORNE

GAY CITY NEWS

Performer Tym Moss entertains the crowd at the July 21 Bronx Pride event, which may be the last such event.

GAY CITY NEWS

rom 2006 through 2009, Lisa Winters, then the executive director of the Bronx Community Pride Center, used $338,674 of the non-profit’s money to pay for personal expenses, including $15,953 for her dog walker, $12,000 for meals, $9,604 for pet supplies, and $1,884 for “purchases at liquor stores,” according to a 2012 report from the city’s Department of Investigation (DOI). That report “discovered a lack of board oversight and control over Winters,” the DOI concluded. The daughter of Michelle Lopez, then the board chair, stayed in Winters’ home “for some time during 2008.” Winters took the daughter on a cruise that the agency purchased to auction off at a fundraiser. Former and current employees, both anonymously and named, told board members that Winters was stealing and had been drunk at work, but Lopez, who declined to comment, dismissed some of these complaints when Bill Goeren, another board member, brought them to her attention saying the allegations wer e “unfounded” and the employee “had an issue with Winters,” the DOI wrote. In fair ness to the board, Winters took steps to hide her actions. She had the agency’s bank statements sent to her home. When the board asked for copies, she refused to turn them over. Winters told agency staff that all communications with the board had to go through her and any employee who did not comply would be fired. The board fired Winters in 2010 and reported her actions to the city. The Bronx district attorney was already watching Winters. On June 26 of this year, she was arrested and charged with 23 counts of falsifying business records and one grand larceny count. Her attor ney, Ilona Coleman, did not respond to a call seeking comment. Bronx Pride, as the agency is commonly known, is not alone. In 2007, Michael Roberson took over Brooklyn’s People of Color in Crisis (POCC), an AIDS group. A federal audit concluded that from July 1, 2007 through June 30, 2008, he spent just under $80,000 on personal travel, hotels, dining out, clothes, gym memberships, and cash transfers to friends. Bronx Pride closed its doors earlier this year and POCC was forced to close in 2008. “Clearly, the boards had issues is one way to look at it,” said Marcus S. Owens, a partner with Caplin & Drysdale. a law fir m with of fices in Washington, DC and New York City. “It appears in these cases that the board members could have done more than they did.” Owens is the former director of the non-profit organizations division of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). He noted that thieves tend to act in secret. “When you have embezzlement, sometimes discovering that is not easy,” he said. “Embezzlers often take pains to cover their tracks.” Boards should have members, outside consultants, or both who can assist them in

Antonio Centeno, a former Bronx Community Pride Center board member, at the July 21 Bronx Pride event.

unearthing wrongdoing. “I’d be willing to bet that probably there was no outside accounting firm doing audits,” Owens said. “Often that will pick up weaknesses of internal controls.” The responsibilities of boards of directors fall under two broad headings — they must protect an agency’s money and they must manage the agency. “They have to make sure that not only the monies are being put into the programs, they have to be sure that the right people are being brought in,” said Lindsay J.K. Nichols, the communications director at GuideStar, the leading source of nonprofit information. Board members are usually asked to raise money as well.

“That is typically the case and that is something certainly we recommend, but it’s not only fundraising,” Nichols said. Antonio Centeno joined the Bronx Pride board in September of 2010 after Winters was terminated. The agency had debts of roughly $300,000 on a budget of roughly $1 million. “When I came on, I came on to try and salvage the organization,” Centeno said at the July 21 Bronx Pride celebration that was produced this year by an ad hoc committee. “There was a lot to do.” The agency was struggling and trying to raise “unrestricted funds” as opposed to the government funds that are used for specific programs and that made up most of its annual budget. When Republicans took over the House in 2010, they eliminated member items and Bronx Pride lost $250,000 in annual support fr om Congressman Jose Serrano, a Bronx Democrat. “That started really hurting us,” Centeno said. “By losing that contract now we didn’t have enough just to make it.” The agency delivered a range of services to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Bronx residents and it mounted the Bronx Pride event. The ad hoc committee pulled together half of the $5,000 needed for city permits. Peter C. Frank, a ad hoc committee member, said losing the agency was “a shame.” It left unanswered questions. “I don’t know what kind of fiscal controls were in place,” he said at the July 21 event. The committee is vowing to resurrect Bronx Pride. “Hopefully, by next year there will be a new community center in place,” Frank said. Should it open, the new center will be a “membership-based organization” with open board meetings and more financial oversight. “I would make sure that all employee fiscal expenditures would have to be reviewed or approved by an officer of the group,” Frank said.

| August 1, 2012

POLITICS

Wall Street Continues Funding Marriage Hedge fund chief Paul Singer gives $1 million to Freedom to Marry BY DUNCAN OSBORNE

GAY CITY NEWS

s members of the Gay Liberation Front stepped on to Fifth Avenue to join the 2009 Pride March, they took up a chant that they used 40 years earlier when the group organized the first march to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall riots, which are seen as marking the start of the modern gay rights movement. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Ho, ho, homosexual, the ruling class is ineffectual,â&#x20AC;? they chanted with some humor. In 2012, it would seem that the â&#x20AC;&#x153;ruling classâ&#x20AC;? is a highly prized and welcome supporter of the lesbian and gay community efforts to win marriage in America. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I think Paul [Singer] is really setting the bar,â&#x20AC;? said Marc Solomon, the national campaign director at Freedom to Marry, a pro-gay marriage group. Singer gave $1 million to Freedom to Marry earlier this summer and raised additional funds from Clifford S. Asness, Daniel S. Loeb, and Seth Klarman, also hedge fund managers. â&#x20AC;&#x153;That group of people together have committed more than $1.5 million,â&#x20AC;? Solomon said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We hope that is a trigger to others to step up and get involved.â&#x20AC;? Singerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s son, Andrew, is gay and married his partner, Corey Morris, in Massachusetts in 2009. Paulâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s charitable giving appears to follow his interests as well as those of his children and spouse. Through a family foundation, Paul gave $1.8 million to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) at a time when Andrew was volunteering at the organization. Paul has given millions to gay groups and causes. He has been especially generous with organizations that are fighting for same sex marriage. In June of this year, Paul gave $1 million to establish the American Unity PAC, a

Marc Solomon, the national campaign director at Freedom to Marry, at the organizationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Chelsea office.

political organization that will support pro-gay marriage Republicans. His support for the marriage cause shows he is a devoted father. â&#x20AC;&#x153;First and foremost, he loves his son and he loves his son-in-law,â&#x20AC;? said Solomon who has met the father about a half dozen times. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I imagine that is one of the main impetuses for getting involved.â&#x20AC;? In published reports, the elder Singer is described as conservative, but with a libertarian streak. â&#x20AC;&#x153;His political philosophy is really libertarian,â&#x20AC;? Solomon said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;He wants limited government.â&#x20AC;? Singer is closer politically to Dick Cheney, who Solomon quoted twice in an interview saying â&#x20AC;&#x153;Freedom means freedom for everyone,â&#x20AC;? than he is to Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council or other social conservatives. Freedom to Marry and other gay groups have been making a concerted effort

to recruit more Republicans and more conservatives to the marriage cause. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We know that to win we canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t just have support from people on the left,â&#x20AC;? Solomon said. But Singer has supported conservative causes and politicians that might cause confusion, or worse, in some in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community. In its 2010 fiscal year, Singerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s foundation gave $500,000 to the American Enterprise Institute, $325,000 to the Manhattan Institute, and $25,000 to the Witherspoon Institute, all conservative groups. Witherspoon was a funder of a recent study by Mark Regnerus, a University of Texas sociology professor, that found that having gay parents led to ill effects in children. The study was attacked by the gay community. An audit done for Social Science Research, the journal that

published the study, concluded that the study was flawed, and the auditor said it should not have been published. The foundation also gave $500,000 to Military Families United, a group that lobbied on Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Ask, Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Tell repeal. That group never responded to calls or emails from Gay City News asking what position it took on repeal, and advocates for repeal did not recognize it as an ally. The three House members lobbied by the group voted against repeal. Singer is a longtime supporter of the Republican Party and Republican candidates, including some who are antigay. Last year, Singer gave $1 million to Restore Our Future, a political action committee that is backing Mitt Romney with independent expenditures. Singer is also as ardent a capitalist as he is a supporter of same-sex marriage. His hedge fund, Elliott Management, with assets in the billions of dollars, has established so-called vulture funds that bought the sovereign debt of the Congo and Peru for pennies on the dollars and then sued those countries in American and British courts to recoup the full value of the debt. Those suits came at a time when some activists, notably Bono, the singer, and economist Jeffrey Sachs, were seeking to have such debts forgiven by Western nations and lenders. In 2008 published reports, the Elliott vulture funds were estimated to be worth no more than one or two percent of Elliott's total assets. Singer did not respond to an email seeking comment and it is not clear if Elliott is still in that business. Gay groups, like many in the community, tend to be very pragmatic about working with those on the right and Freedom to Marry is no exception. â&#x20AC;&#x153;In my work life, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m focused on one thing and one thing only and thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s winning the freedom to marry,â&#x20AC;? Solomon said.

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August 1, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

COMMUNITY

Manhattan building that housed early gay activists to be replaced with condos BY DUNCAN OSBORNE

GAY CITY NEWS

Workers at 186 Spring St. may be heading towards demolishing the historic site.

GAY CITY NEWS

rnie Kantrowitz recalled a Thanksgiving at 186 Spring St. when he and other early gay rights activists had “20 guests for dinner.” The meal lasted longer than one day. “It became an all weekend affair with people wandering in and out of the house,” he said. “Nobody knew who they were. It was a very trusting kind of feeling.” Kantrowitz lived in the building, which was built in 1824, from 1971 to 1973 and he shared the space with Jim Owles and Bruce Voeller who, like Kantrowitz, were leading voices in the early gay rights movement. Kantrowitz, now 71, was an officer in the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA), an early political group, and a founder of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). Owles, who died in 1993, was also a founder of GAA and GLAAD. His 1973 run for City Council made him the first openly gay candidate to run for political of fice in New York. In 1973, he was a founder of the Gay & Lesbian Independent Democrats (GLID), a political club. Voeller, who died in 1994, was a founder of what is now the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF). He ran the group from 1973 to 1978. He was also in the leadership of the community’s response to AIDS. “There was political discussion in the house by leaders of the political organizations,” Kantrowitz said. GAA’s Wooster Street headquarters were nearby. “This building was just a couple of blocks from the Firehouse so it was very convenient,” Kantrowitz said. Though the four -story house lacked a “charter,” Kantrowitz said, there were aspects of life there

A rendering of the condominiums that will replace 186 Spring St., a building that was home to some early gay activists.

paring dinner and then cleaning up. And the tenants changed over time. “The cast of characters changed

“The current [Landmarks Preservation Commission] has shown very little interest in protecting or recognizing the city’s LGBT history,” Berman said. that were communal. On every day except Sunday, one member of the household was responsible for pre-

e v e ry once i n w hi l e,” Kantr ow i tz said. “Somebody would drop out and somebody would drop in,”

The building’s proximity to the Firehouse made socializing and sex that much easier. GAA held regular dances in the Firehouse as an alter native to gay bars that were seen as taking advantage of gay men and lesbians. It was not uncommon “to go fishing in the Firehouse and bring your catch home,” Kantrowitz said. “Indeed there was a lot of swapping of partners during that big weekend,” he said. “There was a lot of sex going on. You have to remember what the era was like. Sexuality was very free and foremost in our minds.” A company, Nordica Development, wants to build “luxury loft-style condominiums” on the site, and that will require that 186 Spring St. be

demolished. That has drawn objections from the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, which asked in 2006 that a large part of the South Village be designated a historic district. “We’ve been asking the city to do something about this area for years now,” said Andrew Berman, the society’s executive director. Gener ally, the city has not protected sites that have historic value to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community. “The current [Landmarks Preservation Commission] has shown very little interest in protecting or recognizing the city’s LGBT history,” Berman said. “There is definitely no site in New York City that is designated because of its importance to LGBT history.” The Stonewall bar on Christopher Street, the site of the 1969 riots that are seen as launching the modern gay rights movement, is a state and federal landmark, but New York City has not protected it. “The state of New York and the federal government have recognized that the site is of importance to LGBT history, but our very own Landmarks Preservation Commission has not,” Berman said. GLID, NGLTF, the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club, a political group, and openly-gay elected officials, including City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, state Senator Thomas Duane, and Assemblymember Deborah Glick, have opposed the demolition of 186 Spring St. The commission declined to landmark the building after deciding that few of its original elements remain, though it is now weighing the connection to the gay rights movement. “Subsequent to this deter mination, we received information about the building’s connection to the gay rights movement,” Elisabeth de Bourbon, the commission’s spokesperson, wrote in an email. “We are going to weigh those associations in the context of the building's architectural characteristics and will make a decision as soon as possible on whether to recommend it to the full commission.” For Kantrowitz, protecting the site is an obvious choice. He said “It’s part of the story of New York.” The construction on the site is moving forward. Stephane Boivin, the president of Nordica, did not respond to an email and calls seeking comment.

| August 1, 2012 MASSACHUSETTS, from p.9

stressed this holding by the court. If the stateâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s highest court ruled in 2004 that civil unions are different from marriages, and the Massachusetts polygamy ban refers only to husbands and wives, not to civil union partners, then his Massachusetts marriage was valid and a divorce is necessary to terminate it and, incidentally, he was not guilty of polygamy. The court disagreed. Ireland wrote that refusing to recognize a civil union would be "inconsistent with the core legal and public policy concerns" that the court had articulated in its same-sex marriage rulings: "protection and furtherance of the rights of same-sex couples." The court also found another "compelling reason" in the context of this case: "to avoid the uncertainty and chaos that would otherwise result." The problem is that if the same individual could have a valid Vermont civil union with one person and a valid Massachusetts marriage with another at the same time, "he would have two legal spouses, each of whom could expect virtually the same obligations from

ä&#x2030;´

him, such as spousal or child support, inheritance, and healthcare coverage." What if Todd had died, for example, leaving a surviving Vermont civil union partner and a surviving Massachusetts spouse to fight over who is entitled to inheritance rights? "Likewise," wrote Ireland, "[Warnken] could demand the same obligations from each of his spouses. Preventing complications such as these is one of the purposes of the polygamy statutes." Having recognized the Vermont civil union in this context, the court found the application of the polygamy statute to be an easy step, rejecting Warnken's argument that because Vermont civil union partners are not referred to in the Vermont Civil Union Act as "husband" or "wife" to be irrelevant. Since polygamy is against public policy in Massachusetts and Warnken has a legal spouse in Vermont, "his marriage to the [Elia] was void," Ireland wrote. No need for a divorce. Karen L. Loewy and Bennett H. Klein from Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, the New England LGBT public interest law firm, represented Elia.

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HOYLMAN, from p.3

has been involved in civic and political groups. He served three terms as chair of Community Board 2 where he grappled with the closing of St. Vincentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Hospital and Medical Center and the expansion plans of New York University. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m very proud of the fact that I led Community Board 2â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s unanimous opposition to NYUâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s plan,â&#x20AC;? he said at the Stonewall meeting. The Bloomberg administration has championed development, often over the objections of local communities, in a process that is seen as favoring builders. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s often building at the expense of neighborhoods,â&#x20AC;? Hoylman said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The community needs to be at the table at the beginning stages of discussions.â&#x20AC;? Hoylman is also concerned with increasing funding for city schools, creating more affordable housing, and addressing income inequality. There are a few gay community agenda items that are unfinished in Albany. â&#x20AC;&#x153;As much as Tom achieved in Albany, he left a few things to fight for,â&#x20AC;? Hoylman said. The Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA), which would add gender identity to the state human rights law, has yet to get a vote in the state Senate. A statewide network of agencies that serves the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community needs more funding as do services for people with HIV and AIDS. Hoylman would also like to see New Yorkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ban on surrogacy overturned. He and his partner had to travel to California to contract with the surrogate who gave birth to Silvia. Hoylman, the youngest of six siblings, was raised in a small town in West Vir-

GAY CITY NEWS

ä&#x2030;´

Tom Greco outside The Ritz Bar and Lounge, a popular gay bar he owns. Greco is vying for the state Senate seat held by Thomas Duane.

ginia. His performance at West Virginia University won him a Rhodes scholarship that took him to Oxford University in England for a year. He spent a year volunteering on Bill Clintonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 1992 presidential campaign and then earned a law degree at Harvard. Hoylman, an intellectual property lawyer, worked at two of the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tonier law firms and then spent 12 years at the Partnership for New York City, a major business lobby. In interviews and in his campaign material, Hoylman emphasizes his pro bono work and his community service. He betrays some sensitivity to the suggestion that he was simply waiting for an office to open so he could run without challenging an incumbent. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Nobody can accuse me of being an upstart,â&#x20AC;? he said and added, â&#x20AC;&#x153;All of those endorsements I got in the first 24 hours are, I hope, a testament to the work Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been doing in neighborhoods.â&#x20AC;?

Dear Guys who like guys, Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness began with me.

your P.S. get your history straight and nightlife gay.

August 1, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR PUBLISHER & CO-FOUNDER JOHN W. SUTTER

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AIDS Conference Gave Gay Men Little to Celebrate

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The mood at the XIX International AIDS Conference was exultant. For the first time in roughly 20 years, the biennial confer ence was held in the US. This was made possible by the Bush and Obama administrations ending the ban on HIV-positive individuals traveling to America. But that was just the beginning of the celebration. Advocates and public health officials believe they have found interventions that, while not 100 percent effective, will prove to be power ful prevention tools when used together. Among these new inter ventions is pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), a daily regimen of Truvada, an anti-HIV drug, which was marginally effective, as in less than 100 percent effective, in keeping HIVnegative gay and bisexual men who took the drug in clinical trials from becoming infected with the AIDS virus. A second new intervention is voluntary circumcision. Like PrEP, voluntary circumcision showed mar ginal benefits for heterosexual men in Africa who underwent the surgical procedure. Another development that has been several years in the making is using HIV testing and treating those who test positive for HIV with antiretroviral drugs as a way of reducing the amount of virus in a person's body and

so reducing their infectiousness. Obviously, treating HIV-positive people pays benefits to those individuals as well because they live longer, healthier lives. The theory here is that if all of these strategies are deployed at one time in one population, their combined effect will cut new HIV infections. Some attack HIV’s ability to infect others and others, notably treatment, r educe the amount of HIV that is available to infect other people. When these are combined with traditional interventions, such as condoms and safe sex instruction, this will deliver a knockout punch to HIV. These strategies made it possible for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to say at the conference that we cannot “commemorate the birth of a generation” that is “free of AIDS,” but we are “closer to that destination than we’ve ever been.” Similarly, aidsmeds. com quoted Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Aller gy and Infectious Diseases, saying, “We are on scientifically solid ground when we say we can end the HIV/ AIDS pandemic. We have the scientific tools to consider an AIDS-free generation.” Heady stuff. And welcome stuff after more than three decades that began with the absolute horror of the epidemic that eventually succumbed to effective treatments. The attendees at the conference were right to be excited. These interven-

tions will very likely reduce new infections in populations that have a low rate of new infections and have a relatively low number of individuals who are alr eady infected. Gay and bisexual men are not such a population. We are a high incidence, high prevalence population. We also enjoy a lot of sex and a lot of partners during that sex. We h a v e a p r o v e n a b i l ity to overcome the ef fects of marginally effective interventions. But then, these strategies were not designed for us, or at least for widespread use among us, nor was this conference terribly interested in us. At the conference, the Global Forum on MSM & HIV published over 120 research abstracts on transgender people and gay and bisexual men that the confer ence organizers had rejected. The forum produced this document after reviewing the 2010 abstracts and finding that 2.6 percent of the sessions that year concerned gay and bisexual men and “only 1.1% of sessions focused on transgender people.” These two populations may have some of the highest rates of new infections and highest prevalence in the world. Her e in the US, ther e is no question that these two populations have the highest incidence and highest prevalence. And we had more bad news on that front from the conference. The HIV Pr evention T rials Network found an over -

all new infection rate of 2.8 percent per year among African-American gay and bisexual men in this sixcity study. That is near ly double the rate among their white peers. Among African-American gay and bisexual men who were 30 o r y o u n g e r, t h e r a t e w a s “5.9% per year, three times the rate among U.S. white” gay and bisexual men, the study authors wrote. Such rates are cumulative. After 10 years at 2.8 percent per y e a r, 2 8 p e r c e n t o f t h a t population will be infected if that rate is maintained. H e r e i n N e w Yo r k C i t y , we have known for at least six years that new HIV infections were increasing among young, Black gay and bisexual men. Our city health department denies it, but I believe we are seeing increases in new infections among young Latino and white gay and bisexual men as well. So what were the attendees at the XIX International AIDS Conference celebrating? All those nice liberals, and plenty of them were gay and lesbian, were whooping it up because of these new developments will ease the burden of HIV on heterosexuals. And who was ignored? As they have from the start of the AIDS epidemic, they ignored us. This country, this world, has never spent serious cash on HIV prevention. Ever. That money was never spent because it was us faggots who were getting infected. This conference was a more polite version of what gover nment has been doing since the start of the epidemic. The world threw a party. And we were told to stay the hell away.

CORRECTIONS In a June 20-July 3 story on Mariela Castro's visit to the New York Public Library ("Castro and Controversy at the Public Library," by Michael Luongo), Gay City News incorrectly identified a question about agricultural work camps established in the 1960s for Cubans seen as unfit for military service as

focused instead on the camps where people living with HIV were incarcerated beginning in the late 1980s. The HIV camps were not addressed during Castro's Public Library appearance. Due to an editing error, Gay City News incorrectly reported that an

American Civil Liberties Union petition seeking Supreme Court review in Edie Windsor's federal court challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act ("ACLU Seeks Supreme Court Review in Windsor DOMA Suit," by Arthur S. Leonard, July 18-31) was dated June 16. The petition was filed on July 16.

| August 1, 2012

PERSPECTIVE

The Two Faces of US Policy BY NATHAN RILEY othing illustrates the continued tensions between science and morality than the opening of the XIX International AIDS Conference and the US announcing it would embark on a “significant expansion of the war on drugs” in Africa. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton addressed the Conference promising “a generation that is free of AIDS.” She wasn’t making a pie in the sky promise — until a vaccine or cure, HIV transmission will remain a global problem — but she did promise access to treatment that would prevent infections from progressing into AIDS. But on the same day that 20,000 scientists, public health officials, activists, and journalists gathered at the AIDS conference, the New York Times reported that “The growing American involvement in Africa follows an earlier escalation of antidrug efforts in Central America.” America’s dual policies of harsh enforcement and public health measures called harm reduction were seen in other ways. Sex workers were barred from the conference by US immigration policy. They held an alternative meeting in India — The Sex Worker Freedom Festival — in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), the home of the largest sex worker union in the world. The 65,000 sex workers in the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee have received funds from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which also funded efforts to replicate the model in six other

Indian states. Collectivization is regarded as an important public health tool; HIV rates among sex workers in Kolkata are drastically lower than in Bombay, where collectivization has not occurred. Michele Sidibe, the executive director of UNAIDS, said he was “extremely inspired” by the “Freedom Festival” as “it is a wonderful example of people who face stigma and discrimination speaking out and taking control of their own destinies." With a growing clarity UN health officials are saying that legal discrimination harms AIDS prevention by preventing drug users, sex workers, and men who have sex with men from receiving accurate and empowering advice. Criminalization means reduced use of condoms and higher infection rates. This evidence is moving the international AIDS movement in a radical direction. The Global Commission on HIV and the Law, which was supported by the United Nations Development Program, issued unambiguous recommendations to the AIDS conference. They rejected the claim that prostitutes are victims of sex traffickers. After warning that “nations have squandered the potential of the legal system,” they conclude that “punitive laws, discriminatory and brutal policing and denial of access to justice are fueling the epidemic. These legal practices create and punish vulnerability.” The commission called for an end to criminal sanctions against sex work and the end of mandatory testing for HIV and sexually transmitted infections. Drug users are also at risk. The global commission was dismissive of zero tol-

erance goals, recommending that law makers “decriminalise the possession of drugs for personal use, in recognition that the net impact of such sanctions is often harmful for society.” Other policing practices in highincome nations must be reformed as well. “Anti-human-trafficking laws must be used to prohibit sexual exploitation and they must not be used against adults involved in consensual sex work.” The commission called for enforcement of laws against child abuse while “clearly differentiating such crimes from consensual adult sex work.” The report methodically dismantles the justification for policing practices put forward in cities like New York, Washington, D.C., and New Orleans. The commission calls for change so that, “Existing civil and administrative offences such as ‘loitering without purpose,’ ‘public nuisance,’ and ‘public morality’ are not used to penalise sex workers and administrative laws such as ‘move on’ powers are not used to harass sex workers.” New Yorkers would do well to consider the commission’s recommendation, as community groups like the LGBTQ youth organization Streetwise and Safe have documented the intersection of stop-and-frisk with the profiling of transgender women as sex workers and the confiscation of condoms as evidence in prostitution prosecutions. Globally, the commission’s recommendations are a significant defeat for coalitions who call all prostitution sex trafficking and assume public revulsion will lead to behavioral changes that will abolish prostitution. Advocates from many

Lesbians Lust for Everything BY KELLY JEAN COGSWELL

should stop being the dyke whining in the godforsaken wilderness and complaining to the cactuses about how lesbians barely make a blip in mainstream culture. Straight men are satisfied with our cameos in porn as two housewives making out until a carpenter or plumber turns up with his big tools. Women shy away from the lavender menace as if we have nothing to do with them because we only dance around Maypoles in May. (Yes, that was a dick joke). The LGBT community is often no better. Lately, trans- and gender issues are way more compelling than

our own while G men still use the L word as a punch line, pretty much like they always have. A couple months ago, when blogger Alan Jacobs suggested that r elationships should “start with the kind of intimacy that is more like friendship than anything else, and to trust that sexual satisfaction will arise from that,” noted gay writer Andrew Sullivan’s hilarious response was, “On what planet does Jacobs live? Planet lesbian?” BWAH HA HA. What a douche bag. It was tempting to blast Sullivan for the sneer in that word, “lesbian.” He embraced the Victorian assumption that two wimmins together never actually screw, or go mad from desire: we just hold hands and sim-

per at each other, making our experience so absolutely foreign to his gay, manly one, we deserve a whole separate planet. But I didn’t write anything at the time. I couldn’t muster the energy, not when lesbians so often seem to agree. Last column I dumped on the new Lesbian Political Action Committee, because with their focus on reproductive rights and women’s issues, the most lesbian thing about them was their name. In fact, lots of young female homos reject the label, declaring that they prefer the noncommittal “queer,” which is ever so radical and chic. Or even “gay woman,” because it sounds more ladylike, and with the “woman” on board, it doesn’t quite

nations expressed growing fear of the anti-trafficking movement and its “raid and rescue” missions to save benighted sex workers. In Uganda, already under fire for considering the death penalty against homosexuals, an anti-prostitution drive is humiliating sex workers and trumping up charges to arrest them and their advocates. Kyomya Macklean, a human rights defender and former Ugandan sex worker, says the anti-trafficking movement and US restrictions on its foreign aid foster this anti-prostitution campaign and “rescue missions” focused on prostitutes are becoming a new burden. The model for the anti-trafficking coalition is Sweden, which made prostitution legal and johns buying sex a finable offense. The anti-prostitute nature of the law is apparent, says Pye Jakobsson of the Rose Alliance. Jakobsson is a sex worker and staunch critic of the 1999 law. It’s sham legalization; the premise is that all prostitution is men perpetrating violence against women. This model is adopted by the health care system. The cult of the rescue of the victims leads to the denial of services to sex workers who won’t stop because they are “suffering from false consciousness or need psychological help because of their failure to realize that sex work is self-harm.” In this way, the helping professions are made to serve conformity and overcome the free choices of adults. The perspective offered by the global commission shows the gap between conventional morality and the scientific evidence that overcoming stigmatization and gaining hope and a sense of empowerment are needed for real behavioral change. And this can only occur when a person voluntarily undertakes the task. And the two faces of US policy were a major subtext at the UN conference.

bar the door to men, which we're told is rude, prehistoric, and unlikely to advance our careers. You can hear them worrying about what the neighbors think as they declare labels conveniently passé and defend their position so vigorously they give off the sulfuric stench of lesbophobia, afraid the word lesbian will make them small and ridiculous. As if generic humans were so great, so dignified. I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered the indy girl-on-girl site Autostraddle.com, which doesn't shy away from the word lesbian and is as comfortable with culture as politics, publishing articles on the endless possibilities of peanut butter and the realities of dyke life in African countries. Because sometimes lesbians bond over politics and sometimes it's a shared

䉴

COGSWELL, continued on p.18

August 1, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

MARRIAGE

Van Bramer An Honest Man, At Last Queens city councilmember marries longtime partner BY DUNCAN OSBORNE

JESSE WINTER

immy Van Bramer, 42, the openly-gay City Councilmember who has represented parts of western Queens since his 2009 election, married Dan Hendrick, 41, his partner of 13 years, in a ceremony on July 28. "We are overjoyed that so many family and friends witnessed our wedding Saturday night,” the newlyweds said in a statement. “For over 13 years we have been in a committed and loving relationship, yet before marriage equality passed last year, we were denied the right marry one another. At this time, we are grateful for our loving families, friends, and the numerous neighbors, constituents and even complete strangers who wished us well on our union.” The wedding was held at Studio Square in Long Island City, a venue that features panoramic views of Queens and Manhattan. Roughly 225 friends and family attended. Audrey I. Pheffer, the Queens county clerk, officiated. The couple wrote their own vows. Much of the food, flowers and party favors were locally sourced. The flowers were from Brooklyn Grange, an urban rooftop farm, and the candy that guests received was from Malu, a Queens ice cream and sweet shop.

Jimmy Van Bramer and Dan Hendrick tied the knot on July 28.

“Our happiness at having fulfilled our dream of getting married knows no bounds,” the couple’s statement continued. “We are grateful to live in a state and city that recognize that we are equal and should not be discriminated

against. And we'll redouble our efforts to make sure that all Americans can get married to the one they love.” Hendrick is the communications director at the New York League of Conservation Voters.

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| August 1, 2012

COMMUNITY

Gay City News’ Parent Sold to Information Technology Executive Jennifer Goodstein to publish Community Media properties including the Villager, East Villager, Downtown Express, Chelsea Now BY DUNCAN OSBORNE AND LINCOLN ANDERSON

he parent company of Gay City News has been sold to a business executive with experience in information technology and e-commerce. “I was looking for something in New York that had quality and integrity behind it,” Jennifer Goodstein said of purchasing Community Media, LLC. effective July 31. The new company is called NYC Community Media, LLC. The award-winning newspaper chain also includes the Villager, the East Villager/ Lower East Sider, Downtown Express, and Chelsea Now and was operated for the past 12 years by John W. Sutter. “John has maintained, over the years, a very strong reputation of having a place where people can find a trusted source of what’s happening,” Goodstein said. “I do feel that, looking at the condition of the papers — I think the hard work is done.” Goodstein was a key e-business executive at MetLife for ten years. Prior to that, she was director of information technology for instruction and curriculum at a Maryland school district. Commenting that New York City is “anything but vanilla,” Goodstein said that “the diversity” of the neighborhoods and the issues the chain’s newspapers cover is a compelling factor in her interest in assuming control of the properties. Asked what he was most proud of during his tenure, Sutter, who is 62, said, “Working with a group of committed professionals who believe in community journalism. Covering the best neighborhoods in the entire world. Trying to write fairly, forcefully, and independently about events that have meaning in the lives of our readers, week in and week out.” Goodstein, 47, is married to Les Goodstein, who is a senior vice president at New America Inc. They live in Manhattan and have a college-age son, Steven. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Gay City News began publishing in March of 2002 when Troy Masters and Paul Schindler joined forces with Sutter to bring their newspaper, LGNY, into the Community Media fold during the difficult post-9/11 economy. The social and political progress

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of New York's lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community has been breathtaking over the past ten years, and, backed by the resources and expertise of Community Media, Gay City News deployed a powerful team of veteran LGBT journalists to follow it. “I couldn’t be more proud of the jour nalists who contribute news, commentary, and arts coverage to Gay City News,” Schindler said. “They have made Gay City News the awardwinning newspaper that it is. Given Jennifer’s passion for newspapers, I look forward to working with her to continue the tradition.” Masters, who has published LGBT newspapers and magazines since 1988, including OutWeek, QW, and LGNY, will continue as associate publisher. Schindler will remain editor-in-chief. Gay City News and its sister publications garnered a significant share of awards, with Community Media regularly being acknowledged as among the top five newspaper groups in New York State. Over the past 12 years, the group has won more than 200 awards for excellence in the New York Press Association’s Better Newspaper Contest. The Villager is a three-time winner of the Stuart Dorman Award as the best community weekly in the state. In March, Community Media was honored with 27 awards, ten of them for Gay City News, including recognition for excellence in local government reporting, editorial pages, arts coverage, graphic illustration, use of color, and advertising.

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August 1, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

HEALTH

PrEP Approved, Insurance Coverage Unclear Distributing and paying for HIV prophylaxis is next obstacle BY SAM SPOKONY

eeks after federal approval of the first drug for HIV prevention, health advocates are divided over what the next step should be and it is unclear whether access to the expensive pills will be paid for by government programs and private insur ers. Truvada, a pill combining the anti-HIV drugs tenofovir and emtricitabine, was approved for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on July 16. The decision follows years of speculation in the medical and gay communities about whether P r E P, a o n c e - d a i l y r e g i m e n u s e d b y H I V negative individuals to decrease their risk of becoming infected, might slow the spread of the AIDS virus. “Instead of just trying to distribute it in massive numbers, we need to understand how we’ll deliver PrEP, and to whom we’ll deliver PrEP, along with making a good case for whatever investment that will require,” said Mitchell Warren, executive director of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition (AVAC). Warren wants private insurers and Medicaid and Medicare, the gover nment-run insurance plans, to cover PrEP costs. Warren said he is looking forward to new demonstration projects — one funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and another by the Califor nia HIV/AIDS Research Program — that will focus on possible implementation strategies within different population groups. M i c h a e l We i n s t e i n , p r e s i d e n t o f t h e A I D S Healthcare Foundation, has continued his long and increasingly lonely fight against PrEP by vowing that his organization would oppose Medicare or Medicaid coverage of the drug. “We believe this will lead to more infections,” he said, referring to the FDA approval. Weinstein said that, aside from any medical implications, he believes that paying for the drug through government programs would be a “bad use of public funds.”

䉴

COGSWELL, from p.15

passion for the gooey brown stuff. Last week, I remembered a different kind of food. Dyke books, dyke art. The kind you get when you remember that labels aren't nooses, but fuses, which can go off with a bang. First, I read Eileen Myles' novel, "Inferno." What a wonderful, ambitious work. She claimed a prominent place in the literary canon in the name of dykes and poets everywhere and stuffed it full of her own life, which could have been mine,

Mitchell Warren, executive director of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition.

PrEP is estimated to cost between $8,000 and $9,000 per person per year, according to a report released last month by Fenway Health, a Bostonbased gay clinic. Many medical professionals and advocates currently agree that PrEP, in the US at least, will provide its most immediate benefit to men who have sex with men who are at high risk of becoming infected. Whether Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurers will pay for PrEP will be integral to the drug’s success. A spokesperson for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said that the

or yours. I'm an amnesiac, and her story reminded me how growing up in a hetero world I just kind of assumed I was straight even though I mooned after beautiful women and was struck dumb by them. One of her most important themes was that coming out as a dyke, as a lesbian, was as much a leap of imagination as it was a pussy on pussy act. And Friday I went to Dixon Place to see the show, "Gomez and T r o p i c a n a D o J a n B r e w e r. " T h e y tur ned their two dyke Latina bodies, a smear of lipstick, some cow-

agency could not comment on the possibility of PrEP coverage. But he noted that T ruvada, as part of an antiretroviral treatment regimen for HIV-positive individuals, has been covered by Medicare Part D formularies for several years. Private insurers also typically cover Truvada for HIV treatment — although most of those plans involve cost sharing — according to Susan Pisano, a spokesperson for America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), a national trade association. Her organization does not make coverage recommendations. Pisano said that AHIP members generally use medical reviews, clinical trial reports, and decisions from federal agencies such as the FDA and CMS when choosing whether or not to cover a drug. She said that it is too early to tell if insurers will decide to cover Truvada as PrEP. Truvada’s manufacturer, Gilead Sciences, did not respond to a request for comment. And as advocates and insurers began pondering a course of action for Truvada in its prevention role, a new clinical trial began last month to investigate the potential of a different PrEP drug. The NEXT -PrEP Study will determine the efficacy and safety of using the drug maraviroc, which, like Truvada, is an antiretroviral first used in HIV treatment. It is expected to yield results by mid-2014. “We don’t like to put all our eggs in one basket,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the division of the NIH that is sponsoring the NEXT PrEP Study. “Whether you’re talking about drugs for treatment or prevention, it makes good sense to keep alternatives at the ready.” Fauci would not give an opinion on insurance coverage or other policy decisions, but stressed that the distribution of PrEP requires prudence. “It’s an important piece of the toolkit of combination preventions, but it’s not for everyone,” he said. “Rather than being widely used, it should only be taken by high-risk individuals.” “And if a person decides they want to use PrEP, that doesn’t mean that they should not also use a condom,” Fauci added.

boy hats and a doll, into the raunchiest, funniest, most irreverent, most obscene performance I've watched in I can't remember how long. They were so fucking daring, so fucking free, being homo and hetero, men and women, white and Hispanic, hell, even goddesses and demon Chupacabra politicians like you'll only see at the Republican National Convention. It boggled the mind. I sometimes forget that dyke artists exist, leading the way to creating a multiverse inside the boundaries of that terrifying word "les-

bian" that we haven't finished with yet. And never will, because that's the thing with identity and language. Wor ds shift. Or the world does. I like it best when we rock it ourselves instead of cowering. So what if we're shoved to the margins? There are all sorts of inter esting things in the folds of couches, jettisoned at the side of the road, in the wilder ness. Every one of our lesbian lives redefines the syllables assigned to us. Br eaks the mold. Or could. If we weren't so afraid. If we dared to grab it and run.

| August 1, 2012

THEATER

World on the Verge of a Breakdown Olympics light up London, stage shows the dark side BY ANDY HUMM ondon got a fresh coat of paint in advance of the Olympics, but the dark side of Austerity Britain and a world hurtling towards economic catastrophe was on full display in West End playhouses. Most chilling — and entertaining — was the “Sweeney Todd” at the Adelphi (thru 9/22) with Michael Ball (the original Marius from “Les Miserables”) almost unrecognizable as the antihero Demon Barber of Fleet Street and Imelda Staunton (of “Vera Drake” fame) a revelation as Mrs. Lovett. She seizes center stage with hilarity amid the blood, guts, and glory of her gruesome business. Director Jonathan Kent originated this production at the Chichester Festival Theatre and set it in DepressionEra London — desperate times call for desperate pies. While Anthony Ward’s set adds to the gloom, the bracing juxtaposition of tender love, base venality, revenge, and butchery in this SondheimWheeler masterwork shine through in a company of great voices. Fast forward to 1963 and London on the verge of the swinging ‘60s in a revival of Matthew Bourne’s 2002 “Play Without Words” based on “The Servant” and transformed into a dizzying dance of classes and genders. Post-war rationing is a memory, rigid censorship is loosening, and taboos are being broken as we move from the angry young men of the ‘50s to the Mad Men era. Bourne ingeniously deploys three dancers for each of the five principal characters as they sensuously and sometimes menacingly wriggle out of their black-and-white world into a brave new one of unsure roles. The cast is supported by Lez Brotherston’s set and Terry Davies’ searing jazz score (thru 8/5). In “The Physicists,” by the Swiss modernist Friedrich Durrenmatt, now at the Donmar Warehouse, we’re in even lower depths — an insane asylum housing just three men who think they are Newton, Einstein, and under the direction of King Solomon. Or do they? Stick around for the second act of Josie Rourke’s debut as artistic director of the Donmar as all is explained and then unraveled again on Robert Jones’ white-on-white set. In 1962, Durrenmatt wrote that the mad men physicists had put the world on the verge of nuclear extinction. Commerce prevails over science and morality, especially as embodied by Sophie

HUGO GLENDENNING

Jack Lowden (Eric Liddell) and James McArdle (Harold Abrams) in “Chariots of Fire.”

Thompson’s deliciously absurd nuthouse director who emerges as the savviest of all the geniuses — if you don’t care about the world ending. The planet avoided nuclear destruction, but all I could think about is that most successful physicists today write impenetrable formulae for unregulated credit default swaps that will crush the world economy in the very near future. Credit the Royal Court Theatre for bringing us a new play, “Birthday” by Joe Penhall, featuring fist fucking, butt fucking, and urethral insertion — all in a maternity ward. In the play, Penhall has applied his rich imagination to the growing phenomenon of male pregnancy. And he can’t resist the cheap jokes. Only Stephen Mangan, who triumphed on Broadway in “The Nor man Conquests,” could pull off the role of man-with-child. He and his stage wife (Lisa Dillon) play this situation for laughs without resorting to mugging, “Birthday” is less illuminating than it ought to be under Roger Michell’s able direction. Llewella Gideon, as the nononsense midwife, is a treasure. The Olympic-proud British are making room for colonials. The Menier Chocolate Factory, which has given new life to Stephen Sondheim and Harvey Fierstein shows before they end up on Broadway, is offering Fierstein’s “Torch Song Trilogy” directed by Douglas Hodge (ZaZa in “La Cage Aux Folles” and coming to Broadway in “Cyrano de Bergerac”). The production stars David Bedella as Arnold Beckoff, the role Fier-

stein originated and won the Tony for. While no one can match Fierstein’s performance, Bedella does a creditable job. The second act is very cleverly choreographed. The final act with Arnold’s mom (Sara Kestelman) has lost none of its emotional power. There are several winning touches, not least a group torch song at the curtain. The National Theatre’s relationship with Steppenwolf, the Chicago theater company, brought us Lisa D’Amour’s dark, suburban drama, “Detroit.” The production premiered at Steppenwolf in 2010, just closed in London, and is headed for New York under Austin Pendleton’s direction. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, “Detroit” approaches profound, but gets lost in the quirks of its unsubtle characters. A mix of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” with a Lanford Wilson elegy for lost America, it tells us little about our dying culture. It does have five actors who are fully committed to their work. In the National’s Olivier Theatre is “Timon of Athens,” “Shakespeare’s coldest and cruelest play” according to scholar James Shapiro — and that’s saying something about the man who gave us Lear, Macbeth, and Titus Andronicus. To make this difficult play work, you need Nick Hytner to direct, Simon Russell Beale to star, and the resources of the National Theatre to stage. That’s what we are blessed with. They worked over the unfinished play and created a tale for our times about the power of money. This production is not for Shakespeare

enthusiasts only. (Thru 11/1 when it will be televised worldwide by NT Live.) A less successful update is Polly Findlay’s production of Don Taylor’s 1986 version of “Antigone,” set in the modern war rooms of Creon (Christopher Eccleston) and also at the Olivier. While all the protagonists state their cases emphatically, none do so regally or with any apparent belief in their deeply held principles. (Closed) No updating at Shakespeare’s Globe where Mark Rylance, the former artistic director there and two-time Tony winner for comedies “Boeing, Boeing” and “Jerusalem,” keeps the laughs coming in the funniest “Richard III” I have ever seen. With an all-male cast in Elizabethan dress, this isn’t camp, but a vision of the amoral king as a joker who is constantly getting over on the decent people around him until it all catches up with him in the end. This is the most complete version of the play I’ve seen with the long scenes with the little princes included. Rylance makes Richard’s treachery against these kids work splendidly under Tim Carroll’s direction. He is aided by fine supporting performances, notably Samuel Barnett (Tony-nominated as the gay student in “History Boys”) as Queen Elizabeth and Roger Lloyd Pack as Richard’s co-conspirator Buckingham. (To 10/13 at the Globe then at the Apollo 11/6-2/2) Less important struggles are seen in the double bill “South Downs” by David Hare and “The Browning Ver sion” by Terrence Rattigan at the Harold Pinter Theatre, but lives are still on the line. We’re in all-male English public (prep) schools with Hare evoking his awkward adolescence through a gayseeming, middle class intellectual (John Blakemore played by Alex Lawther) amid posh boys. It’s all about how his life is saved by tea and sympathy from the actress mum (Anna Chancellor) of one of the popular boys in school (Jonathan Bailey) who is looking out for him. A sweet story, even if Hare is unsparing in the boys’ views on the “queers” who teach them and watch them swim nude. “The Browning Version” shifts the focus to an uptight Greek teacher, Andrew Crocker-Harris played with heartbreaking reticence by Nicholas Farrell with Chancellor as his philandering wife and Liam Morton as Taplow, the boy who moves him with a special gift only to have the sincerity of that gesture called into question. These are thoughtful, unpredictable plays on serious themes, leavened with humor and humanity. (Closed)

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LONDON, continued on p.27

August 1, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

| August 1, 2012

August 1, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

IMPORTANT PATIENT INFORMATION PREZISTA (pre-ZIS-ta) (darunavir) Oral Suspension PREZISTA (pre-ZIS-ta) (darunavir) Tablets Read this Patient Information before you start taking PREZISTA and each time you get a refill. There may be new information. This information does not take the place of talking to your healthcare provider about your medical condition or your treatment. Also read the Patient Information leaflet for NORVIRÂŽ (ritonavir). What is the most important information I should know about PREZISTA? t P REZISTA can interact with other medicines and cause serious side effects. It is important to know the medicines that should not be taken with PREZISTA. See the section â&#x20AC;&#x153;Who should not take PREZISTA?â&#x20AC;? t P REZISTA may cause liver problems. Some people taking PREZISTA in combination with NORVIRÂŽ (ritonavir) have developed liver problems which may be life-threatening. Your healthcare provider should do blood tests before and during your combination treatment with PREZISTA. If you have chronic hepatitis B or C infection, your healthcare provider should check your blood tests more often because you have an increased chance of developing liver problems. t 5FMM ZPVS IFBMUIDBSF QSPWJEFS JG ZPV IBWF BOZ PG UIF CFMPX TJHOT BOE symptoms of liver problems. t %BSL UFB DPMPSFE VSJOF t ZFMMPXJOH PG ZPVS TLJO PS XIJUFT PG ZPVS FZFT t QBMF DPMPSFE TUPPMT CPXFM NPWFNFOUT

t OBVTFB t WPNJUJOH t QBJO PS UFOEFSOFTT PO ZPVS SJHIU TJEF CFMPX ZPVS SJCT t MPTT PG BQQFUJUF PREZISTA may cause severe or life-threatening skin reactions or rash. Sometimes these skin reactions and skin rashes can become severe and require treatment in a hospital. You should call your healthcare provider immediately if you develop a rash. However, stop taking PREZISTA and ritonavir combination treatment and call your healthcare provider immediately if you develop any skin changes with symptoms below: t GFWFS t UJSFEOFTT t NVTDMF PS KPJOU QBJO t CMJTUFST PS TLJO MFTJPOT t NPVUI TPSFT PS VMDFST t SFE PS JOGMBNFE FZFT MJLF iQJOL FZFw DPOKVODUJWJUJT

Rash occurred more often in patients taking PREZISTA and raltegravir together than with either drug separately, but was generally mild. See â&#x20AC;&#x153;What are the possible side effects of PREZISTA?â&#x20AC;? for more information about side effects. What is PREZISTA? PREZISTA is a prescription anti-HIV medicine used with ritonavir and other antiHIV medicines to treat adults with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1) infection. PREZISTA is a type of anti-HIV medicine called a protease inhibitor. )*7 JT UIF WJSVT UIBU DBVTFT "*%4 "DRVJSFE *NNVOF %FGJDJFODZ 4ZOESPNF When used with other HIV medicines, PREZISTA may help to reduce the amount PG )*7 JO ZPVS CMPPE DBMMFE iWJSBM MPBEw 13&;*45" NBZ BMTP IFMQ UP JODSFBTF UIF OVNCFS PG XIJUF CMPPE DFMMT DBMMFE $% 5 DFMM XIJDI IFMQ GJHIU PGG PUIFS JOGFDUJPOT 3FEVDJOH UIF BNPVOU PG )*7 BOE JODSFBTJOH UIF $% 5 DFMM DPVOU may improve your immune system. This may reduce your risk of death or infections that can happen when your immune system is weak (opportunistic infections). 13&;*45" EPFT OPU DVSF )*7 JOGFDUJPO PS "*%4 BOE ZPV NBZ DPOUJOVF UP experience illnesses associated with HIV-1 infection, including opportunistic infections. You should remain under the care of a doctor when using PREZISTA. Avoid doing things that can spread HIV-1 infection. t %P OPU TIBSF OFFEMFT PS PUIFS JOKFDUJPO FRVJQNFOU t %P OPU TIBSF QFSTPOBM JUFNT UIBU DBO IBWF CMPPE PS CPEZ GMVJET PO UIFN MJLF toothbrushes and razor blades.

t % P OPU IBWF BOZ LJOE PG TFY XJUIPVU QSPUFDUJPO Always practice safe sex by using a latex or polyurethane condom to lower the chance of sexual contact with semen, vaginal secretions, or blood. Ask your healthcare provider if you have any questions on how to prevent passing HIV to other people. Who should not take PREZISTA? %P OPU UBLF 13&;*45" with any of the following medicines: t alfuzosin (UroxatralÂŽ) t EJIZESPFSHPUBNJOF % ) & ÂŽ, EmbolexÂŽ, MigranalÂŽ), ergonovine, ergotamine (CafergotÂŽ, ErgomarÂŽ) methylergonovine t cisapride t pimozide (OrapÂŽ) t oral midazolam, triazolam (HalcionÂŽ) t the herbal supplement St. Johnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Wort (Hypericum perforatum) t the cholesterol lowering medicines lovastatin (MevacorÂŽ, AltoprevÂŽ, AdvicorÂŽ) or simvastatin (ZocorÂŽ, SimcorÂŽ, VytorinÂŽ) t rifampin (RifadinÂŽ, RifaterÂŽ, RifamateÂŽ, RimactaneÂŽ) t sildenafil (RevatioÂŽ) only when used for the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension. Serious problems can happen if you take any of these medicines with PREZISTA. What should I tell my doctor before I take PREZISTA? 13&;*45" NBZ OPU CF SJHIU GPS ZPV #FGPSF UBLJOH 13&;*45" UFMM ZPVS healthcare provider if you: t IBWF MJWFS QSPCMFNT JODMVEJOH IFQBUJUJT # PS IFQBUJUJT $ t BSF BMMFSHJD UP TVMGB NFEJDJOFT t IBWF IJHI CMPPE TVHBS EJBCFUFT

t IBWF IFNPQIJMJB t BSF QSFHOBOU PS QMBOOJOH UP CFDPNF QSFHOBOU *U JT OPU LOPXO JG 13&;*45" XJMM harm your unborn baby. Pregnancy Registry: You and your healthcare provider will need to decide if taking PREZISTA is right for you. If you take PREZISTA while you are pregnant, talk to your healthcare provider about how you can be included in the Antiretroviral Pregnancy Registry. The purpose of the registry is follow the health of you and your baby. t BSF CSFBTUGFFEJOH PS QMBO UP CSFBTUGFFE %P OPU CSFBTUGFFE We do not know if PREZISTA can be passed to your baby in your breast milk and whether it could harm your baby. Also, mothers with HIV-1 should not breastfeed because HIV-1 can be passed to the baby in the breast milk. Tell your healthcare provider about all the medicines you take including prescription and nonprescription medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements. Using PREZISTA and certain other medicines may affect each other causing serious side effects. PREZISTA may affect the way other medicines work and other medicines may affect how PREZISTA works. Especially tell your healthcare provider if you take: t NFEJDJOF UP USFBU )*7 t FTUSPHFO CBTFE DPOUSBDFQUJWFT CJSUI DPOUSPM 13&;*45" NJHIU SFEVDF UIF effectiveness of estrogen-based contraceptives. You must take additional precautions for birth control such as a condom. t NFEJDJOF GPS ZPVS IFBSU TVDI BT CFQSJEJM MJEPDBJOF 9ZMPDBJOF 7JTDPVTÂŽ), quinidine (NuedextaÂŽ), amiodarone (PaceroneÂŽ, CardaroneÂŽ), digoxin (LanoxinÂŽ), flecainide (TambocorÂŽ), propafenone (RythmolÂŽ) t XBSGBSJO $PVNBEJOÂŽ, JantovenÂŽ) t N FEJDJOF GPS TFJ[VSFT TVDI BT DBSCBNB[FQJOF $BSCBUSPMÂŽ, EquetroÂŽ, TegretolÂŽ, EpitolÂŽ QIFOPCBSCJUBM QIFOZUPJO %JMBOUJOÂŽ, PhenytekÂŽ) t NFEJDJOF GPS EFQSFTTJPO TVDI BT USB[BEPOF BOE EFTJQSBNJOF /PSQSBNJOÂŽ) t DMBSJUISPNZDJO 1SFWQBDÂŽ, BiaxinÂŽ) t NFEJDJOF GPS GVOHBM JOGFDUJPOT TVDI BT LFUPDPOB[PMF /J[PSBMÂŽ), itraconazole (SporanoxÂŽ, OnmelÂŽ), voriconazole (VFendÂŽ) t DPMDIJDJOF $PMDSZTÂŽ, Col-ProbenecidÂŽ) t SJGBCVUJO .ZDPCVUJOÂŽ) t NFEJDJOF VTFE UP USFBU CMPPE QSFTTVSF B IFBSU BUUBDL IFBSU GBJMVSF PS UP lower pressure in the eye such as metoprolol (LopressorÂŽ 5PQSPM 9-ÂŽ), timolol (CosoptÂŽ, BetimolÂŽ, TimopticÂŽ, IsatololÂŽ, CombiganÂŽ) t NJEB[PMBN BENJOJTUFSFE CZ JOKFDUJPO t NFEJDJOF GPS IFBSU EJTFBTF TVDI BT GFMPEJQJOF 1MFOEJMÂŽ), nifedipine (ProcardiaÂŽ, Adalat CCÂŽ, Afeditab CRÂŽ), nicardipine (CardeneÂŽ) t TUFSPJET TVDI BT EFYBNFUIBTPOF GMVUJDBTPOF "EWBJS %JTLVTÂŽ, VeramystÂŽ, FloventÂŽ, FlonaseÂŽ) t CPTFOUBO 5SBDMFFSÂŽ)

| August 1, 2012

August 1, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

THEATER

Of Errant Nymphs and Bloody Kings Rare“Nymph Errant” revival lacks energy, solo “Macbeth” is surprisingly exciting BY CHRISTOPHER BYRNE the diminutive Clurman Theater does this show no favors. That the musicians h e C o l e P o r t e r m u s i - take up half the stage renders the procal, “Nymph Errant,” is duction even more clumsy. The score the story of Evangeline is a collection of specialty comic numEdwards, a young girl bers that include the regrets of an aging who is freed from finish- prostitute (“The Cocotte”), required Porter digs at boorish touring school and intends to ists (“They’re Always return to staid, old Albion NYMPH ERRANT Entertaining,” “Ruins”), a to settle down with her catalog of all the alluring maiden aunt and marry Clurman Theatre parts of the body from the man she loves. She 410 W. 42nd Street Tue., Wed. at 7:30 p.m.; the patella to the “lymgets sidetracked and travThu.-Sat. at 8 p.m.; Sun. at 3 p.m. phatics” (“The Physician”) els through Europe and $50-$65 and my favorite about a the Middle East where 212-239-6200 or cross-dressing disaster she encounters her classwww.prospecttheater.org (“Georgia Sand”). Each of mates who are enjoying their newfound freedom and post-bacca- these songs reveals another sexual fruslaureate sexual awakening. Handed from tration for Evangeline and sends her on nightclub producer to nudist to sheik, the road again searching for love, or a Evangeline finally arrives home with, for more athletic facsimile. Will Pomerantz, who directed and all her efforts otherwise, her virtue intact, choreographed, has but her spirit champing THAT PLAY missed the irony that at the bit. characterizes the In its day, this silly Stage Left Studio songs and is so much implausibility was greet214 W. 30th St. 6th Floor a part of Porter’s take ed with moral outrage Schedule Varies through November 19 on sex and moraland tremendous popu$25 ity. Where the show lar success. It was also Tickets and Information should bubble and be red meat to Porter, who www.stageleftstudio.net titillating and naughty, fashioned one of his it’s straightforward, most lighthearted and charming scores around the tale. It was bland, and lacking all sexiness. He bora hit in London in 1933, but never made rowed the chair dancing by girls in their it to Broadway, and is probably best undies from “Chicago,” but it has no known to theater fans who revel in the edge, and we’ve seen it before. His cast is reasonably good, but Jennifer Blood obscure. The Prospect Theater Company as Evangeline is uneven. At times her deserves respect for taking a chance on singing is unsupported, often weak, the show, but the labored production at and seemingly beyond her as a singer

LEE WEXLER

Tom Gualtieri in “That Play: A Solo Macbeth.”

and actress, particularly on the big tap number “Georgia Sand” that falls flat. (If you want to hear how that song should be done, find Andrea McArdle’s recording from the late 1980s.) The show really bogs down in the performance of Cady Huffman, who plays all the older women. In the big songs, she mugs, belts, and strains in her upper register, all the while never landing the laughs. It’s a disappointment. Somewhat better is the per for mance by Natalie E. Carter, who is brassy and bawdy but doesn’t have

the technique for the long and deceptively complex song “Solomon,” which is sung while Evangeline is plotting her escape from a harem in which she is held captive. It was the only moment when I could relate to what was happening on stage. Shakespeare is often victimized by gimmickry. The crimes done to The Bard over the years have been legion, so the prospect of enduring 90 minutes of one actor playing all the parts in “Macbeth” raised red flags. Happily, in the first five minutes of “That Play: A Solo Macbeth,” I was waving a white flag and surrendered to the artistry, charm, and humor of Tom Gualtieri who, along with Heather Hill, has cut Shakespeare’s shortest play down to its greatest moments and interspersed them with commentary and audience interaction. It is an insightful and moving commentary on political power, intrigue, and ambition. These themes are in the original, but Gualtieri’s asides and interplay with the audience give them a contemporary feel. Gualtieri is masterful playing each part with clarity and specificity. He manages the range of outsized emotions that characterize Shakespeare’s bloody play, but remains endearing and charming as himself. All of this might seem a bit precious if Gualtieri wasn’t so convincing. His intensity is mesmerizing and his understanding of the language is impressive. The result is more exciting and engaging than many full productions of “That Play” I’ve endured. This is an absolute delight.

Lovers Divided, United in Song and Dance The Paris Opera Ballet performs a classic Pina Bausch work BY ELI JACOBSON he Paris Opéra Ballet performed “Giselle” on its recently completed US tour, but also presented the late Pina Bausch’s dance-opera staging of Christoph Willibald Gluck’s “Orpheus and Eurydice.” The company is known for its classical ballet style, rigorous technical standards, and lack of overt theatricality. When it was announced that the temple of classical ballet was perform-

STEPHANIE BERGER

Stéphane Buillion (far left), Maria Riccarda Wesseling (mezzo-soprano, seated in black), and Marie-Agnès Gillot (standing, far right) with members of the Paris Opera Ballet.

ing a work by the modern muse of dance theater, it seemed a perverse case of institutional miscasting. The success of the experiment is a tribute to the Bausch’s genius and the versatility and discipline of the Paris Opera Ballet. Bausch’s work returned the ballet company to its original 17th-century roots blending dance and opera in one spectacle. Bausch, who died in 2009, first staged “Orpheus” in 1975 for her company the Tanztheater Wup-

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BALLET, continued on p.27

| August 1, 2012

FILM

A Special Friendship A quiet coming of age story that alludes to a deeper love BY GARY M. KRAMER

dancing. In one particularly telling scene, Yolanda’s mother catches her he title characters of “Mos- daughter dancing while wearing her quita Y Mari” are 15 year- husband’s cowboy hat. But rather than old neighbors in the Hun- fight, Yolanda and her mother dance tington Park section of Los together until Yolanda tries to raise a Angeles. These high school question about her parents’ relationsophomores meet when Mari (Vene- ship. Her mother tells her not to worry cia Troncoso), a new girl in school, has about the “life stuff” and concentrate to share a geometry book with Yolanda on her schoolwork. It stifles any chance of Yolanda understanding some of the (Fenessa Pineda). “You look like a little fly,” Mari tells Yolan- desires she’s feeling. The other dancing scene involves Yolanda, and nicknames her Mosquita. And so begins an intimate and intense friend- da and Mari. Their rhythmic closeness reveals the special bond ship between the bookish MOSQUITA Y MARI these two teens share. Yolanda and bad girl Mari, It’s a beautiful scene that who smokes pot in the Directed by Aurora Guerrero shows their connection school bathroom. The film Distributed by The Film Collaborative and sexual tension withchronicles the influence Spanish & English the teens have on the other Opening August 3 at the Cinema Village out making it overt. “Mosquita Y Mari” is 22 E. 12th Street and how their friendship cinemavillage.com subtle — almost to the masks a deeper desire. point where little of nar“Mosquita Y Mari” does have lesbian overtones, but rative consequence happens. The film despite their mutual infatuation, the builds its drama as minor conflicts develgirls explore their growing attraction op between the title characters. When only briefly in a scene late in the film in Mari gets her job, Yolanda feels slightwhich they lie together on a couch. The ed. Mari experiences jealousy because next day, Yolanda tries to address what Yolanda is determined to go to college. happened only to be met with Mari’s The issues do not remain issues very shrug and a change of subject. But the long. Other situations arise to challenge lack of any explicit sexuality does not the characters in the last act, when Mari make writer/director Aurora Guerrero’s needs to raise money and the students film any less interesting or absorbing. have a final exam. If the characters handle the situations Watching these two young girls grapple about school and money in a contrived with their feelings about is compelling. Guerrero brings an authenticity to manner, Guerrero maintains a sure her characters and their location that hand. She lets viewers bask in the texture of the characters’ lives. From Mari’s informs the film’s drama. In Yolanda’s storyline, her parents efforts to find work in various shops in insist she get good grades, which she Huntington Park, to the local bodega does until Mari enters her life and she is owner, Don Pedro, who dispenses gossip too distracted for schoolwork. Yolanda’s to both Mari and Yolanda’s parents, the parents want her to go to college and film is realistic with a wonderful atmothey emphasize this at every opportunity. sphere. Guerrero’s arty touches, such as In contrast, Mari would rather get a GED filming the characters in slow motion or than go to school. Her concern is helping playing with music, sound, and editing to enhance a dimension of a scene, are her single mother pay the past due bills. Despite, or because of, their respec- welcome storytelling devices. The filmmaker is also blessed with fantive family pressures, the girls conspire to spend time together. Yolanda uses tastic, natural performances from her two the excuse she is helping Mari study to leads. As Mari, the tall, slender beauty, go hang out with her neighbor. Mari, Troncoso is adept at showing how her who has taken a job distributing flyers, character’s mood changes whenever she skips work and meets up with Yolanda. is with Yolanda. But Pineda gives the more They go to an abandoned warehouse accomplished performance as an assured to while away the afternoons when not young woman who becomes empowered playing video games at a nearby arcade. as she is enamored of her best friend. A It’s engaging to watch the girls bond over scene late in the film where Yolanda sheds music, ride a bicycle together, or sit in a a tear is incredibly moving. “Mosquita Y Mari” may feel slight — the Mercedes, singing. Music in particular drives the film, film goes for small emotional moments, as and some of the most touching moments when Yolanda puts colored highlights in in “Mosquita Y Mari” feature Yolanda her hair — but it yields a solid payoff.

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August 1, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

IN THE NOH

The Blues and Silence! Reign Lillias White and Jenifer Lewis: Divas Rule, Silence! Returns, Louise Brooks’ Favorite Actress BY DAVID NOH illias White, that power house of Broadway theater, has a thrilling project afoot, “Big Maybelle: Soul of the Blues,” opening at the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor on August 2. She plays Maybelle Smith (1924-72), the legendary blues singer who recorded “96 Tears,” “One Monkey Don’t Stop No Show,” and the Grammy Hall of Fame inducted “Candy.” White admitted this was a different kind of sound for her. “It’s hardcore blues,” she said. “Her voice was not those melodic, high, beautiful Lena/Sarah tones, but a gritty gutbucket sound and I have been going to my voice teacher, Susan Eichhorn, to get some coaching into how to make it work in my voice and not ruin it. It’s a challenge that I’m willing to deal with.” Raised in New York City, White always sang. What she really wanted to do was dance, but everyone round her focused on her voice. I just love what I do, performing and moving an audience,” she said. “I’ve been blessed. God has given me a gift and I’ve been lucky to express it in different formats and shows. I look back in wonder at how I was able to do this, raise kids, travel and all that, but I love it, with always new discoveries to be made.” Cy Coleman, the composer and jazz pianist, called White a force of nature after meeting her during the show “Barnum” (1980). He wrote her Tony Award-winning role in “The Life.” “We connected immediately,” White said. “I had been singing his songs for years but didn’t know who he was. When I met him and connected the dots, he was this sunshine-y face with a big smile and these little, funny-looking hands (for a piano player) with fingernails that reminded me of my grandmother’s: like seashells that fanned out from the bed of the fingernail.” Winning the Tony was “surreal. My

CAROL ROSEGG

GIOVANNI APONTE

Lillias White will open in “Big Maybelle: Soul of the Blues” at the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor on August 2.

mother and children were there, and my then boyfriend. It made me feel like I really belonged in the theater, a really great brava!” White recorded “Rescue Me” for Madonna’s “Immaculate Conception” album (1990). “She was lovely to me and Catherine Russell, and at one point the producer asked if she wanted to join us singing background,” White said. “She said, ‘No, they’ve got it.’ She was originally scheduled to be in my show ‘Rock and Roll – the First 500 Years’ (1982), which was ahead of its time and closed after only

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nine performances, which broke my heart. Madonna was hired to do Janis Joplin, I think, but dropped out at the last minute for her recording contract. Everybody was like, ‘Oh, she doesn’t want to do Broadway! She wants to be a recording artist — huh!’ But everybody has to find their niche and I’m happy for her and hope she’s happy.” Paul Levine, the show’s writer/ director said, “There’s been a wonderful magic around this experience. Lil and I love each other and we did this workshop, and wanted to continue. She was at [producer] Marty Richards’ birthday party, four months ago. He’s not terribly well and he said to her, ‘If there’s one more thing I can do before I go, it would be something with you. Do you have anything?’And she said, “As a matter of fact, I do.’ She put us in touch and he read it, heard the music and fell in love with it. He’s come in as a producer and, coincidentally, twenty years ago, was a founding member of Bay Street

Theatre, as well. He kicked in what we call ‘enhancement money,’ but I would have paid him to be involved with this, as he is such an intelligent, master producer.” Divas dominate the summer, as with Jenifer Lewis, who shook the foundations of 54 Below on July 24. In a fabulously smart and witty show by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, she was a hilarious and sharp raconteur who tur ned the air blue with more “Muthafuckas” and “Bitches” than I’ve ever heard in one evening. An incomparable sasstress, she has an expressive, soulful voice when delivering scrumptious material like her show’s title song, “Black Don’t Crack,” a rapid, raucous diva history of showbiz, “Sang Bitch,” and her menopause ode, “Hot Flash.” She had ex-boss Bette Midler, sitting with husband and Nathan Lane, wiping away tears of mirth and emotion when she recalled having to step over the star’s inert body to perform “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” in concert. She gave Midler her due as the ultimate teacher when it came to expressing that pesky emotion, vulnerability, onstage, before launching into a heartfelt “Here’s to Life.” “Silence! the Musical!” made its second Of f-Br oadway transfer to Times Square’s new Elektra Theater on July 25. I knew I had to be there again if only for the tremendous belly laughs. The show has gotten better in the past year, faster and tighter, with every cast member per for ming at convulsing full throttle. Jen Harris’ hilarious Clarice Starling is perfectly contrasted with David Garrison’s gravely measured, spot-on Hannibal Lecter. They are sublimely supported by Stephen Bienskie’s creepily affecting Buffalo Bill, Annie Funke’s deliriously funny Catherine, “Queer as Folk’s” Randy Harrison as an amusingly fey Dr. Chilton, Topher Nuccio’s uproarious nerdiness, Callan Bergman’s marvelous dancing, Deidre Goodwin’s Sapphicly flavored FBI agent, and Harry Bouvy’s astonishing versatility in a passel of roles. There, I’ve mentioned the entire cast because they damned well deserve it, and I cannot wait to get the cast album and relive the sick, sick silliness of it all. Contact David Noh at thenoh@aol. com and check out his new blog at nohway.wordpress.com.

| August 1, 2012

For more white male struggle, there is the stage version of “Chariots of Fire” at the Gielgud Theatre adapted by Mike Bartlett and directed by Edward Hall. I liked the movie and they’ve done their best to make it a compelling live action event with tracks laced into the audience. It brings us back to a time when the biggest controversy in sport was the Judaism of one runner, Harold Abrahams (James McArdle), and the Christianity of Eric Liddell (Jack Lowden), whose insistence on Sunday observance threatens his participation in the big race. It’s spirited with regular runs by handsome, fit men in outfits that are back in fashion in London. But the shining performances are in supporting roles from two Nicks — Nickolas Grace as the Duke of Sutherland and Colonel Keddie and Nicholas Woodeson as the coach, Sam Mussabini. (To 11/10) My visit was capped off with Bernard Shaw’s “The Doctor’s Dilemma” just opened at the National’s Lyttleton. The script moves while integrating the lacerating comedy and incisive social commentary Shaw is known for. Director Nadia Fall in her solo debut at the National makes great use of a company of exceptional talent in roles small to leading, notably David Calder as Sir Patrick Cullen, finding layers as the eldest doctor, and the languid Tom Burke is compelling as the rebellious artist and consumptive.

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SIMON ANNAND

LONDON, from p.19

Anabel Kutay and Richard Winsor in Matthew Bourne’s “Play Without Words.”

What starts out as a debate about medical practice among doctors in the swank office of Sir Colenso Ridgeon (Aden Gillett) moves to a debate about who deserves to live or die over a fancy dinner and in the artist’s slummy studio. It is a thought-provoking and entertaining production, not least because none of the hands wink at this material from more than 100 years ago. They make it work by playing it straight and attuned to the ways and mores of the

time it was written — a hallmark of the National — while making it feel as if it is happening anew in 2012. (To 9/12)

COMING UP IN LONDON THEATRE: “Proud” about a gay, 17-year old Olympic boxer bows at The Lost Theatre (to 8/12). “This House” is a new play about UK politics in 1974 at the National’s Cottesloe (9/18-12/1). Fiona Shaw is doing “Scenes from an Execution” at the National’s Lyttleton (10/2-

BALLET, from p.24

pertal. She restaged the piece in 1991 and it came to the Paris Opéra Ballet two years later. The piece was presented as part of the Lincoln Center Festival and closed on July 22. Since it was originally staged in Germany, the vocal parts are performed in German though Gluck created his own French version for high tenor. Similar to the Hector Berlioz adaptation, the title role was given to a female alto. The added French dances — the Dance of the Furies and the Dance of the Blessed Spirits — were rightfully included. Bausch removed Gluck’s happy ending; Love does not restore Eurydice to Orpheus, and Orpheus expires uniting the lovers in death while the chorus repeats the mourning lament from Act I. Bausch saw the work as an abstract journey from grief through stages of violent denial to peaceful acceptance Marie-Agnès Gillot as Eurydice. to an embrace of death itself. Each protagonist is represented by a singer and a dancer. Bausch’s style is not representational — the craved fouettés and pirouettes were further vexed. The German choreographer showed a brilliant handancers embody the inner life of the characters and the emotional colors of the music. Symbolic imagery dling of mass movement, but also trusted stillness and simplicity. Seeing that the melody of abounds, one tormented spirit in Hades grasped for a suspended apple that was ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE Orpheus’ aria “Che faro senza Euridice” (sung auf deutsch) created all the emoalways out of reach. The singers prestion and dramatic tension necessary, ent the exterior action of the characters Paris Opera Ballet Lincoln Center Festival Bausch has the dancing Orpheus prosin simple stylized gestures that contrast David H. Koch Theater trated, frozen in grief upstage, back to with the angular, frenetic movements of www.lincolncenterfestival.org the audience while the singing Orpheus the dancers. sings the lament downstage front while The dancers wore costumes in many colors while the singers wore simple, black unisex cradling the body of his dead wife. Everything is still gowns. The lack of surtitles and Bausch’s evasion of except for the music that fills the stage, the hearts, and naturalistic realism left many in the audience unfamil- the minds of listeners. Bausch’s dance vocabulary is based on tension and iar with the opera and German at a loss. Those who

STEPHANIE BERGER

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11/7). Richard Bean gives us a new version of “The Count of Monte Cristo” at the National’s Olivier (11/17-1/16). Out gay Roger Rees is doing “What You Will” at the Apollo about his relationship with Shakespeare (9/18-10/6). There’s a very well-reviewed “Long Day’s Journey into Night” here at the Apollo with David Suchet and Laurie Metcalf until 8/18. A star-studded season of plays directed by Michael Grandage, the great former director of the Donmar, starts in December including “Privates on Parade” with Simon Russell Beale, “Peter and Alice” with Judi Dench and Ben Whishaw, “The Cripple of Inishmaan” with Daniel Radcliffe, and Jude Law as Henry V. Not too shabby for a new venture. Details at www.MichaelGrandageCompany.com. For details on all other productions, go to www.londontheatre.co.uk

MUSEUM HIGHLIGHTS: There is a spectacular exhibit at the British Museum, “Shakespeare: Staging the World,” about the times the genius lived in. Priceless artifacts are on display, right down to the eyeball of one of the Gunpowder Plot conspirators. The audio guide is narrated by Sir Antony Sher. The British Library has an equally impressive show of manuscripts, first editions, and recorded readings in “Writing Britain: Wastelands to Wonderlands.” Many gems, including drafts of Wilde’s script for “Earnest” and Joyce’s work on “Ulysses.”

release, and her focus is on psychological and emotional energy working through the movements of the body. The French dancers’ clarity, control, and precision gave one a sense of seeing the choreography in high definition. There were no blurry lines and shapes and contrasts clearly emerged. Stéphane Bullion, the dancing Orpheus, channeled strong emotion from his elegant semi-nude frame with a mixture of abandon and strict control. Marie-Agnès Gillot, a tall imposing classical ballerina with a penchant for modern ballet (the company’s correlate to Martine Van Hamel and Wendy Whelan), also had a cool, controlled intensity as Eurydice. Bausch’s choreography is fully a part of the onstage environment. The sets and costumes, by her late husband and collaborator, Rolf Borzik, create stark and varied expressionist landscapes that are integral to her vision. The musical elements under the baton of baroque specialist Thomas Hengelbrock were first-rate. The musicians and singers of the Balthasar -Neumann Ensemble und Chor (the chorus sang from the pit) performed Gluck’s music with clarity and elegance. Mezzo-soprano Maria Riccarda Wesseling as Orpheus had a dark, expressive tone that lacked some definition and strength at the register extremes. Yun Jung Choi as Eurydice and Zoe Nicolaidou as Amor might have profitably swapped roles. Choi’s bright, straight-toned soprano seemed better suited to the perky god of love than Nicolaidou’s darker, more womanly soprano. The Paris Opéra Ballet was founded in 1669 and is the oldest national ballet company in the world. It hasn’t been seen in New York since 1996. For New York area music and dance lovers, Orpheus’ journey of loss was a journey of discovery and artistic enrichment.

August 1, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

On the heels of winning multiple awards at the 2012 Fringe Theatre Festival in Toronto, Pandemic Theatre presents a solo show by gifted Iranian actress Tara Grammy, who plays a trio of endearing characters. You’ll meet an Iranian-Canadian teen girl, a flashy gay Spaniard, and an Iranian engineer who drives a taxi. Their lives collide in surprising ways, walking the treacherous line of comic and tragic. This heartfelt, irreverent piece promises to teach you about Iranians — and about yourself. VENUE #4: Jimmy's No. 43 (43 East 7th Street between 1st & 2nd Aves); FRI 10 @ 5:15; SAT 11 @ 2; FRI 17 @ 7:15; SUN 19 @ 5:30; FRI 24 @ 5; SAT 25 @ 7

ANNE PETERSON

Every summer, New York City is awash in a sea of performance festivals — mostly tiny, scrappy affairs with just a handful of shows. Some of these upstarts appear one season and vanish a couple of years later without a trace. By far the largest, most durable, and the most daunting is the New York International Fringe Festival, now in its 16th year. FringeNYC boasts 190 shows in 20 downtown venues in just over two weeks. It’s the Granddaddy of theater fests, offering a mix of subjects, style, and — let’s be real here — quality. But how to choose? Any FringeNYC aficionado knows that the fest offers something for everyone, especially the gays. As always, nearly a quarter of the plays touch on LGBT themes and this year covers an astonishing gamut of cultural diversity. You’ll find irate Iranian-Canadian taxi drivers, disenfranchised public defenders, straight strippers, an Arab-Jewish take on Romeo & Juliet, suicidal teens, runaway Austrians, and quiche-eating lesbians. There seems to be a preponderance of confessional solo shows this year, striving to find a commonality among the differences.

MAHMOUD

The cast of “5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche.”

BECOMING BUTCH

FRINGENYC

Check out our picks of the 10 most tantalizing LGBT shows at FringeNYC.

STANDBY THE MUSICAL The Fringe wouldn’t be the Fringe without at least one show with “The Musical” tacked onto its title. But instead of the typical raucous romp, we have a plaintive story of heartache and hope, putting the human spirit to the test (think “Next to Normal”). The premise is intriguing: Five travelers with all sorts of unresolved baggage find themselves in a kind of purgatory terminal, waiting for a crucial flight. Will they find redemption in the next life? With book and lyrics by Alfred Solis and music by Keith Robinson and Amy Baer. If you can’t wait to see the show, check out the original soundtrack on iTunes. VENUE #10: The Players Theatre (115 MacDougal Street between West 3rd and Bleecker); FRI 10 @ 7; TUE 14 @ 2:30; SAT 18 @ NOON; WED 22 @ 5; THU 23 @ 7

Johnson. VENUE #3: Theatre 80 (80 St. Marks Place, btwn 1st Avenue and 2nd Avenue) Fri 10 @ 7 Sun 12@2:45 Mon 13@3 Sun 19@1 Fri 24 @ 9

5 LESBIANS EATING A QUICHE

Reboots of Alice in Wonderland are plentiful and, to be honest, often stultifying. But this version is from the infinitely entertaining Jersey City-based Elixir Productions, the theater troupe responsible for several crowd-pleasing dark dramas at the Fringe in recent years. Down this bunny hole the calculating Alice stumbles upon height-altering cocktails, swinging twinks, and clues to online matchmaking. Expect a comic adventure in pansexualism, kink, and subversive desire that grows curiouser and curiouser. VENUE #8: La MaMa (74A East 4th Street between 2nd Avenue & Bowery); MON 13 @ 8; THU 16 @ 4:15: FRI 17 @ 4; SAT 18 @ 9; FRI 24 @ 4:15

Evan Linder and Andrew Hobgood have concocted a warped comedy worthy of Charles Busch. The year is 1956. The event is the annual quiche breakfast held by the Susan B. Anthony Society for the Sisters of Gertrude Stein. When communists threaten their idyllic town, hilarity ensues. Presented by the New Colony theater company and fresh from a successful run in Chicago. Come see the show that Time Out calls “Sharp, smart and hysterically funny.” VENUE #1: The Living Theatre (21 Clinton St. between Houston and Stanton); FRI 10 @ 5; SAT 11 @ 8; WED 15 @ 10:30; THU 16 @ 4; FRI 17 @ 7:30 CHRISTIAN SCOTT

VARIOUS DOWNTOWN VENUES August 10th through 26th Visit fringenyc.org for complete schedule or FringeCentral, 1 East 8th Street (at 5th Ave) $15 in advance, $18 at the door Get tickets at ticketweb.com or 866-468-7619

clients. And big hassles. Will he be able to keep his horny clients satisfied? VENUE #8: La MaMa (74A East 4th Street between 2nd Avenue & Bowery); SAT 11 @ 5; MON 13 @ 3:45; THU 16 @ 7; SUN 19 @ 9:30; SAT 25 @ NOON

Vincent James Arcuri appears in “Becoming Butch.”

This twisted coming-of-age, bio-play finds Vincent going from the rough-and-tumble streets of Queens, NY to life among the queens in West Hollywood, CA. Follow Vincent on his unlikely odyssey through baseball, soap operas, speech lessons, and more, all with the aim of finding what it means to become butch. Written and performed by cute-as-a-button Vincent James Arcuri, the work enjoyed critically acclaimed runs in Los Angeles and on Atlantis cruises. Don’t miss this “smartly written tour de force.” VENUE #11: The Steve & Marie Sgouros Theatre (115 MacDougal Street between West 3rd and Bleecker); FRI 17 @ 3; TUE 21 @ 2:45; THU 23 @ 6:30; FRI 24 @ 8; SAT 25 @ 5:45; SUN 26 @ NOON

THE HILLS ARE ALIVE! Okay, this one may not have an overt gay theme, but it sure has a fabulous sensibility. This new dark musical comedy imagines “The Sound of Music” as “Survivor,” following a prominent Austrian family traipsing across the Alps into Switzerland to escape the Nazis. But what’s it really like to climb every mountain and ford every stream with seven brats and no toilet paper? Singing about favorite things can only take you so far. Come for the squabbling siblings in braids and lederhosen, stay for the witty musical numbers, sung by a surprisingly accomplished cast. With music by Eric Thomas Johnson and book and lyrics by Frankie

ALICE & THE BUNNY HOLE

DOGS: A BITING COMEDY When a gay Israeli theater director sets out to create an Arab-Jewish Romeo & Juliet musical with a group of hotheaded men, the rehearsal room morphs into a battlefield fraught with mutual alienation and rage, and the production threatens to implode. Written by Ido Bornstein, the goal was to shed light on the Arab-Israeli conflict from a genderbased angle that is at once comic and provocative. Presented by TheaterCan, based in Tel Aviv, Israel. VENUE #14: New Ohio Theatre (154 Christopher

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FRINGE, continued on p.29

HAVE I GOT A GIRL FOR YOU A few years ago, gay musical theatre actor Josh Mesnik (“Jewtopia”) found himself out of work and drowning in bills and alcohol. So he got his life back on track by going through rehab and getting a job, not back on stage, but in a whole new kind of theatre. He ended up running the largest female escort agency on the East Coast — a high-end outfit with big-name

ROBERT A. TERRANO

BY DAVID KENNERLEY

Patrick Martin (l.) and Dan Johnson (r.) in “Alice & the Bunny Hole.”

GADI DAGON

| August 1, 2012

Lavi Zytner (center) and cast members in TheaterCan’s production of “Dogs: A Biting Comedy.”

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probing mash-up of memoir and object lesson, promising an “unabashed experiment in grief, hope, and sexuality.” But does it have full-on nudity? Come see for yourself. VENUE #6: The White Box at 440 Studios (440 Lafayette Street between Astor Place & East 4th Street); FRI 10 @ 7; WED 15 @ 4; THU 16 @ 9:30; SAT 18 @ 4:30; SAT 25 @ 5; SUN 26 @

FRINGE, from p.28

Street between Greenwich Street and Washington Street); THU 16 @ 6:30; SUN 19 @ 5; TUE 21 @ 2; THU 23 @ 8:30; FRI 24 @ 10:15

PIECES “Pieces” does not refer to the beloved gay dive bar in the West Village. It alludes to body parts — lots of ’em — deposited around Beverly Hills. The victim? An openly gay Hollywood mogul. The accused? A damaged youth with a checkered past. The public defender? A conflicted gay man disconnected from his community. According to press notes, this take-no-prisoners drama “examines a culture fighting against fragmentation even as it moves toward unprecedented and political visibility, and the personal cost of divisiveness.” Sound a bit trenchant for the Fringe? Come see if writer Chris Phillips and director Brian Zimmer can actually pull this off! VENUE #12: Cherry Lane Theatre (38 Commerce Street between 7th Avenue & Hudson Street); SAT 11 @ 12:30; TUE 14 @ 5:45; WED 15 @ 6:30; THU 16 @ 4:30; SUN 19 @ 8

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Ryan Kipp in “REDlight.”

NEW If you saw “Magic Mike” and are hankering to see a live, gay and, shall we say, stripped-down version, this play’s for you. Playwright/actor Ryan Kipp gives us a peek inside the seamy VIP rooms of a notorious gay club in Atlanta, through the eyes of Gavin, a stripper who happens to be straight. But be warned, this is no light parody. Instead, this solo bio-play delivers a

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REDLIGHT

Chris Salvatore in “Pieces.”

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| August 1, 2012

SAT.AUG.4

COMMUNITY Trans on the Sands

WED.AUG.8

PERFORMANCE Hedda Reigns

Join the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center’s Gender Identity Project for its annual beach event for trans and gender-non-conforming people, their partners, friends, and allies. 18 and over. Aug. 4, 12 – 5 p.m., Coney Island Beach. For info, contact cherrera@gaycenter.org or call 646.556.9293.

BENEFIT Icons on the Island

August 3rd. A Different Magic Kingdom

Join Hedda Lettuce for “The Carpets Match the Drapes,” an evening of comedy, singing, and many surprises that will keep the audience at the edge of their seats. Hedda appears at XL Cabaret, 512 W. 42nd St., Aug. 8, 8 p.m. Hedda returns on Aug. 15, 22, 29. Hedda is followed by the Hot Mess show with Lady Bunny and Bianca Del Rio.

THU.AUG.9

THU.AUG.2

MUSIC The Will Clark Show feat. P*rno Bingo @ The Ritz

Our World as DuBois and a troupe of fabulous drag queens take you on a twisted — and very adult — journey, catapulting you back to your childhood into a Magical Kingdom where dreams come true. This 70-minute extravaganza features high-energy dance numbers, comedy, dazzling costumes, and lipsyncing. This show offers a happy ending — if you believe in fairies, that is. At the Laurie Beechman Theater, 407 W. 42nd St. Runs Fridays Jul. 27 – Aug. 10, 10 p.m. Tickets are $15 (plus a $15 food/ drink minimum). To purchase tickets, call 212-3523101 or visit www.SpinCycleNYC.com.

Daniel Nardicio presents Alan Cumming with special guest Liza Minnelli. The crown jewel of Nardicio's star studded Fire Island Icon Series, the Tony winner and the Oscar winner will sing and tell stories accompanied by Grammy winning composer Lance Horne. A portion of the proceeds will benefit Broadway Cares Equity Fights AIDS. The Ice Palace, Cherry Grove, Aug. 4. Two shows, 8 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. Tickets, prices and more info at www.dworld.us.

PERFORMANCE Candy From Strangers

Get out of the Xtreme heat and get into a night of HOT music by two up and coming out gay recording artists. Matthew Hashimoto and Nicholas Park bring a night of queer music to The Ritz to benefit the animal rescue organization, Rock and Rawhide. Your host Will Clark and Rock and Rawhide rocker chick Kylie Edmond preside over the evening of kick ass music, cheap drinks, dollar bingo cards, and hot men. Plus DJ Chauncey Dandridge. The Ritz Bar and Lounge, 369 W. 46th St., Aug. 2, 7 – 9 p.m.

FRI.AUG.3

PERFORMANCE A Different Magic Kingdom

Dallas DuBois hosts Distorted Diznee, an outrageous Las Vegas-style take on some of the most beloved animated classics. Come be Part of

Candy Samples returns in The Sweet Taste of Candy, a sweet treat that audiences love. The songwriting chanteuse belts her signature classics “Green Bean Casserole,” “Boy Crazy,” “Tap Tap,” inspired by the Larry Craig sex scandal, and “If I Had Only Left (Two Shots Earlier).” The Duplex, 61 Christopher St., Aug. 3, 10 p.m. Candy returns on Aug. 10 at 7 p.m. Tickets are $12 plus a two-drink minimum. Reserve online at samplemycandy.com or call The Duplex Cabaret Hotline at (212) 255-5438.

NIGHTLIFE Overdressed for Fire Island Daniel Nardicio presents the Dworld Underwear Party Friday, The Ice Palace, Cherry Grove, Aug. 3, 11 p.m. Includes a naked male dessert table and a 1 a.m. performance by The Stage Door Johnnies. Admission is $15 or $10 if you come in a jockstrap.

ON SALE Etheridge Live Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. via Ticketmaster for Melissa Etheridge’s Oct. 24 live performance at the Hammerstein ballroom. The two-time Grammy winner will begin a North American tour to support her latest studio album, 4th Street Feeling, which will be released on September 4th on Island Records.

BENEFIT The Will Clark Show feat. P*rno Bingo @ The Ritz

MON.AUG.6

CABARET Broadway Near Broadway

Marti Gould Cummings opens a new show at the XL Lounge at The Out NYC @42nd Street and 10th Avenue, Aug. 6, 9 p.m. Joining Cummings will be Broadway’s Tituss Burgess. The show features a live piano and talk show format. No cover.

TUES.AUG.7

THEATRE Big Maybelle Premieres

Previews of Tony-award winning Lillias White in “Big Maybelle: Soul of the Blues” begin. This new musical in two acts tells the story of legendary blues singer Maybelle Smith. Premiere on Aug 11 runs through Sept. 2 at the Bay Street Theatre at Sag Harbor. Tickets and info at 631-725-9500 or www.baystreet.org.

KARAOKE Sing Out Marti Gould Cummings at the Barracuda Lounge@22nd Street and 8th Avenue, Aug. 7, 11 p.m. Cummings will host Kuda Karaoke. The winner will take home $100. DJ Scott Jones.

Superstar Sam Colt and actress Amelia Fowler celebrate Mr. Eagle 2011 C.B. Kirby’s birthday. Event will help Braking the Cycle raise funds for Housing Works. The Ritz Bar and Lounge, 369 W. 46th St., Aug. 9, 7 - 9 p.m. Plus DJ Chauncey Dandridge.

FRI.AUG.10

NIGHTLIFE More Tighty Whiteys

Daniel Nardicio presents the Dworld Underwear Party Friday, The Ice Palace, Cherry Grove, Aug. 10, 11 p.m. This time with a naked 2 a.m. pool party. Admission is $15 or $10 if you're in a jockstrap.

SUN.AUG.12

DAY LIFE The Morning After

Daniel Nardicio presents The Sunday Gospel Brunch, Island Breeze, Cherry Grove Aug. 12, 12 – 4 p.m. Features Flotilla Debarge singing and Robbyne Kaamil preaching with gospel by DJ Baby K.

August 1, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

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