Ring of Keys Collective Wants Your Heart to Say Hi

Until Beth Malone started giving interviews during the original Broadway run of Fun Home, to outsiders, it might have appeared as though the only queer people in musical theatre were cis men. Royer Bockus is ready for that stigma to die. A self-proclaimed “musical theatre lesbian,” she, alongside Andrea Prestinario and Holly Marie Dunn have founded Ring of Keys, a “National network of queer women + trans and GNC artists working on and offstage in musical theatre.” The goals of the network are manifold: to create community, serve as a hiring resource, and to diversify the leadership in the musical theatre world.

Bockus, a 2015 A-Camp alumnae of A-Camp (“the year of food poisoning,” according to her), and her friends started this network because they felt alone in the musical theatre universe. She was introduced to Andrea by a mutual friend, and they instantly connected. “I had felt so isolated as a queer woman in the musical theatre industry and… to get to talk to one other person about that experience has meant so much to me… I want more people who feel isolated in this industry to not feel isolated.” This desire turned into an opportunity for national and global networking that didn’t only aim to make queer folks feel less alone but hoped to show the musical theatre industry that queer women, non-binary people, and trans people existed and wanted to be recognized.

“The cis gay male quadrant of musical theatre seemed to figure out how to find one another a little better. They seem to be visible in a way that queer women and gender non conforming people are not and so our mission sort of expanded beyond just a social network to creating a visible network—meaning visible to the industry and to the public…because we are here.”

The network’s name comes one of the most memorable songs in Fun Home, “Ring of Keys”,  about the first time Alison Bechdel saw a butch woman as a child while in a diner. “When she [Little Alison] can finally see somebody that she identifies with, it helps her inform her own identity and standing in her identity,” Bockus said. “We wanted to be the ring of keys for a lot of other young, queer theatre-makers to go ‘if I can see it, I can be it. If I have an example then I can populate this world too; I don’t have to be someone else to exist here.'”

The network has goals that encompass changing the entire landscape of musical theatre. We talked about how writers, producers, and even the canon force AFAB folks (regardless of gender) into a particular feminine heterosexual aesthetic to succeed in musical theatre. The white cis men who are writing and producing musicals reinforce these aesthetics because “their idea of femininity…the way that women seem to be presented is pretty narrow,” says Bockus.

In addition to being a networking and hiring resource, the founders hope that community building will help queer actors to feel less afraid in auditions or rehearsals to advocate for directors to honor their own gender identities and expressions. “There’s no reason why the way I express my gender couldn’t be the way the character expresses her gender…” Bockus is especially interested in the ways the canon can provide opportunities for this to happen and cited an example from her residency at Oregon Shakespeare Festival this summer where a woman is playing Mercutio, not as a person in drag, but through the lens of her own gender identity. Bockus thinks that theatres are hungry for more diverse characters and actors regarding gender and sexuality, but the isolation queer women and trans folks experience, makes it hard for us to feel as though we can advocate that others honor our expressions.

Most exciting to me about the project is the network’s clarity about their commitment to creating a queer space that’s inclusive of trans people. In an interview with Stage and Candor, Bockus and co-creator Andrea Prestinario were clear that there is no room in Ring of Keys for trans exclusionary radical feminists (also known as TERFs). At a time when folks are claiming TERF as hate speech instead of a way to identify harmful members of the LGBTQ community, Ring of Keys’ radical inclusivity is refreshing. Bockus’ own understanding of the importance of including trans people in queer spaces came from her time at A-Camp. “I never want to be a part of any feminism that excludes women or people that don’t conform to any gender at all…” she said, concluding with the adorable metaphor  that “a queer space without trans people is…a cake without cake!” Amen, sister.

Membership is open for Ring of Keys to queer women and trans people who have worked professionally in musical theatre. Joining gives you access to a membership directory, job opportunities, a secret Facebook group, and hopefully, local outings with other queer folks in the industry. Ring of Keys hopes to have chapters all over America where meetups, collaborations, and relationships can grow. Through community building and networking, Ring of Keys hopes that no other queer woman or trans person in musical theatre ever feels like they’re the only one out there.

Watch Beth Malone Figure Out She’s a Lesbian In Her One-Woman Show “So Far” at Joe’s Pub

Luther Ingram, Jodie Foster, Kristi McNichol, and Connie Chung all play crucial cameos in Beth Malone’s So Far, and that’s all in the first fifteen minutes. The Fun Home star returned to her roots at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater in New York City on August 31st to perform a one-woman cabaret show following a rural lesbian through her tomboy childhood, an engagement (to a man!), her first stint as an actress in New York, another marriage (to a woman!), and her ever-tense relationship with her Colorado cowboy father.

Malone is slight in stature, but commands the stage with epic confidence, opening the act with Luther Ingram’s “If Lovin’ You Is Wrong (I Don’t Wanna Be Right)” — a song I didn’t know was so gay until Malone sang it. Her wit is biting, her story relatable, and her voice is like an angel’s. Using the storytelling aid of paper-plate puppets of Jodie Foster, Kristi McNichol and Connie Chung, we are transported through the countless childhood “aha” moments that should have led Malone to realize she was a big, fat, bleepin’ lesbian, but which only served to leave her confused into early adulthood.

Though it takes Malone until she’s already promised to a man to finally sleep with a woman for the first time and fully realize her lesbianism, her awkward and uncertain stumble toward this conclusion is one most queer women will recognize. A smaller (though, I imagine, still quite large) contingent will relate to her tragic and estranged relationship with her right-wing, Rush Limbaugh-enthusiast father, with whom she was once inseparable.

Malone tells us about getting an on-stage kiss from Barbara Mandrell at eleven — “on the LIPS!!!” — exchanging Christmas gifts with her mother in a parking lot, and getting type-casted on the New York musical theater scene: “‘Scrappy’ is a euphemism.”

With impeccable comedic timing and an ear for the queer in almost every musical genre, Malone is able to process in one show what many people are unable to process ever in their lives. It’s a lot. So much, in fact, that we are rewarded with a short reprieve from all the feelings with a mid-show interactive theatrical break called “Ask a Lesbian a Question,” during which Malone and Fun Home book writer Lisa Kron answer the audience’s most pressing questions as can only two very sarcastic lesbians can. When asked by a gay man about lesbian “labels,” Kron says she self-identifies as a “femme, top, coupon-cutting, childless MILF.”

So Far was written by Beth Malone and Patricia Cotter. Musical direction is by Susan Drausstrong and directed by Peter Schneider. The show is produced by LezCab, whose mission is to “create an accurate and meaningful representation of queer women in order to foster equality and community.” They accomplish this task through the magic of theater. They also host social networking events for queer women in the theater, which can be found on their events page.

“Fun Home” Made History Last Night and This Is Entirely About That

On the evening of June 7th, The Tony Awards were broadcast into a whole bunch of homes via teevee.

On the evening of June 7th, history was made when Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori became the first entirely female writing team to win for book and score; when Sydney Lucas sang “Ring of Keys” to theatre enthusiasts across America; when the only show ever on Broadway about a butch lesbian won Best Musical. Fun Home took five total Tony Awards: Michael Cerveris won for best actor in a musical, Sam Gold won best director of a musical, and Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron KILLED IT as previously mentioned.

On the evening of June 7th, I sobbed uncontrollably on my couch, refreshing my Twitter feed and various live blogs because this is a day I legitimately never anticipated.

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Fun Home is a show about memory; about writing memoir. There is no such thing as truth when human beings are involved: everything is wilting flowers and a writer (or a cartoonist) is constantly grabbing at thoughts and events that decay so much faster than we expect them to. I had the opportunity to see Fun Home, a musical based on the graphic memoir by Alison Bechdel, before it opened. They invited every lesbian in New York that has ever written words, I think. No expectations attached. We wound up sitting next to friends we hadn’t seen in a while (queers) and we screamed when we saw them squeeze past knees to sit in the two empty seats adjacent. But I digress. Which is perhaps appropriate, given the show is a show about memory. Digressions become the story.

I was, oddly enough in retrospect, worried the show wouldn’t pass The Bechdel Test. I’ve just become so accustomed to Broadway’s particular brand of misogyny — one which we all know and excuse, one which hasn’t stopped me from loving Broadway — that I couldn’t imagine any other kind of show. I was worried even though Fun Home originally opened at the Public, off-broadway; even though Lisa Kron did the book and lyrics; even though Jeanine Tesori wrote the music; even though it’s based on Alison Bechdel’s memoir in comics and that the book certainly passes. That’s how strong the flower-fication is with Broadway.

The show passes, of course it does, it has to, the show is centered on the character of Alison Bechdel. Three extraordinary people play Alison at various points in her life—Small Alison (Sydney Lucas) paints us a picture of childhood; Middle Alison (Emily Skeggs) is going to college (and coming out in college); Alison at age 43 (Beth Malone) is trying to string all the flowers together, to find the inbetweens that are memory. Not only does Fun Home have a named female character who talks to another named female character about something other than a man, it has a woman so dynamic and multifaceted that it takes three actors to play her. Watching someone harmonize with oneself, reverberating through the past and the future, is the closest thing I’ve ever seen to the experience of memory in performance.

My name is Alison, too, and I’m not the same person I was when I was Small Alison. I’m not even the same person I was five years ago, as Middle Alison; no one is.

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I found reminders of who I used to be when I reread the book before seeing the show—not just in memories (which are never to be trusted), but in the physical evidence. Like when I discovered I’d left a streak of blood at the bottom of page 14, despite having promised myself that I’d resist my typical urge to gnaw at my cuticles while reading this time, and then realized that the streak was dry. I’d bled on it five years ago, back in 2010.

In the middle of the chapter titled “In The Shadow of Young Girls in Flower” (borrowed from Marcel Proust with his tea-soaked madeleine memory), I found a leaf.

“Look at this!” I said to my fiancée Abby.

“You don’t remember that?”

“Not at all.” It wasn’t surprising—I have a memory like a wiffle ball.

“I found it there when I was reading your copy—I showed it to you. It’s from when you first read it, I think.”

Right! Yes, I’d been sitting on a stone bench in a grey henley outside Scott Hall, for once actually washed, dried and groomed because I had a raging crush on Professor A, the first masculine-of-center queer woman I’d seen regularly with my own eyeballs since coming out. A leaf fell into my book, like something that would happen in a stock photo.

I first read Fun Home while taking Professor A’s creative writing class at Rutgers University. I was twenty-two. The pages were xeroxed because it was a 101 class and we couldn’t be trusted to purchase anything. I don’t remember which chapter was assigned, but after reading it, I immediately went out and bought the whole thing.

I was newly out, newly heartbroken and newly back from Paris. I had newly beaten my disordered eating (sort of—at least I was putting food in my mouth again) and despite having cut a full two feet off my hair, I still managed to look like a cast member from the musical Hair— still soft like petals in the eyes, patchouli-scented, earnest and often reading in the grass. I still thought I was going to be an actress forever and I was about to graduate with a degree in theatre.

It was an exciting time full of great change; I was panicking. This is how I was, as Middle Alison.

My problems were tiny buds in comparison to those of Alison Bechdel’s. Her problems were in full bloom. I devoured the book in a time where I was barely eating, when I was trying so hard to be girly — I don’t do that now. I am now what so many women fear becoming: a masculine woman with short hair and a perpetual button down shirt. The leaf fell in the shadow of the young girl in flower and it stayed there. I probably hoped Professor A would pass by and see me reading it. I was probably wearing tie-dye under that grey henley. I was probably still wickedly skinny, pitching my voice higher and trying to laugh softly. Femininity was important, especially as an actress.

One of the last images in this chapter is young Alison as she sees a butch woman for the first time — her father, Bruce Bechdel, asks her if that’s what she wants to look like. It is a question loaded with shame, as most girlhoods are. She lies, “no.”

Five years ago, the panel struck me. But it didn’t reach me. It’s been a journey. Middle Alison didn’t recognize the message: this is you, this was you, this will be you. This is how you will look; you will look this gay. Alison today can’t figure out how she didn’t: the professor was a masculine of center woman; the leaf fell on these pages in particular; she (me) was so uncomfortable in her (my) body because it was undesirable for theatre and she (I) sought out this book when it called. Christ, I even share the author’s name, which has the curious effect of convincing me that all the characters are speaking directly to me, through the pages and into my world. That was me, but I couldn’t see it yet.

A different person would certainly have to play me, were this a musical of my life. I went from straining to be a flower-child in a flower press to comfortably taking up space in the men’s department; getting my hair cut with clippers; laughing like a barking dog instead of like a sighing plant, making noise only because it was moved by the wind. Now, people call me “sir” and get flustered when I open my mouth and sound a lot more like Glinda the Good Witch than they expected. But I don’t mind. I’m Alison, now. And I recognize just how damn hard it is to be Middle Alison.

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Perhaps saying “no” to masculinity wasn’t a lie. I wanted to be an actress, and actresses who are masculine don’t work. There are no roles for masculine woman. There are barely roles for women who take up space. So it wasn’t that I’d never seen a butch woman before these pages and didn’t know that masculinity was possible in women. It just didn’t occur to me that it was a possibility for me. So I kept trying to fit my body into clothes and plays that weren’t made for it.

There is a lot right about theatre culture, but there’s a lot wrong with it too—I felt the pressure, and when I was unhealthy-skinny I got cast so much more. Small is feminine, said the numbers to me. Broadway musical theatre was never meant to grow roles for women other than those of delicate flowers.

In the days leading up to seeing Fun Home at Circle in the Square, I tried to think of Broadway roles for masculine-of-center women in musicals. I’m no theatre historian, but I’ve taken so many Theatre History classes that knowledge has fallen on me like so many watermelon seeds, spit from the mouths of those who know better than I; they took root and planted jazz-hands in my heart forever.

And I could think of only one role: Shirley, from The Producers. She sings one phrase (“keep it gay”); she is fat, speaks in a humping voice with her thumbs in her tool belt; she’s a punch line, held up against the glamorous (feminine) gay men.

I’m not a person who gets upset with jokes made at my expense—I see nothing inherently wrong with Shirley in The Producers. To any person who’s spent time in technical theatre, that joke is about the business and the stereotypes therein (many lesbian electricians). But with an average audience, this subtlety might be reduced to laughing at a manly dyke. A woman who takes up space. Even so, I have no issue with it. My beef is that it’s the only role I can think of.

If I stretch real hard, I can include Joanne from Rent. But I have to stand on my tip toes to come close on that one — she is a lesbian, and androgynous, but not masculine. If I reach around in the other direction, I can include Peter Pan — but that character is a boy and I’ve reached too far again.

Maybe I’m forgetting someone, but that’s not really the issue, even though memory is the star of the show. The issue is that, whether the role exists or not, I couldn’t access it.

When I quit theatre, I was allowed to change; I didn’t have to reach, to contort, to shrink, to press. I didn’t have to bloom into a flower. But listen, here’s the point: if I had stuck with acting, to the point where I was maybe really good, or even great, and I auditioned for anything on Broadway there would only be one role for me to play. And that role didn’t exist when I left.

That’s why it’s hard to be Middle Alison, trying to figure out who you are in a culture where no mirrors reflect you. That’s why it’s hard to be Small Alison, and reach your roots into soil without having all the information.

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When Beth Malone stepped onto the stage as Alison Bechdel on the night I first saw Fun Home, I wept. I cried for almost the entirety of the performance. I tell you this because I missed things. I might have missed a connection, the stability of a lyric, the soft scent of a leitmotif sprouting. Such delicacies might have gone under-appreciated with tears and snot running down my face.

The only thing I could see in front of me was me. Even with our lives so vastly different, this was the mirror I never had in the place I wanted it most five years ago. I can blame the tears on the uncanny coat of pollen that is the personal intersection with a piece of art; I am allergic to something I’ve never been exposed to before and it feels so good. I could curl up in the shadow of this tree forever.

I saw myself in Malone’s portrayal of Alison—a walk with legs far apart, leaning forward; a tee-shirt and jeans; short, short hair. And I saw myself as a writer there, too— pen always between her fingers as she gestured, and toward the end of the musical frantically trying to draw things out as they vanished from her memory. Malone captured the experience of flowers dying in her hands: “What’s this? ‘Table in the living room with / jack in the pulpit.’ Oh. Oh. I was going / to draw that in this panel.” Oh. Oh. Why am I crying again at this musical? I can’t quite remember.

I saw myself in Small Alison, too. The song “Ring of Keys” illustrates the moment where Alison sees the butch woman for the first time. I knew what was coming when the clank and noise of the diner began and I grabbed my fiancée’s hand, expectantly. It opens with Small Alison arguing with her father, as she has been the whole show, about wearing a barrette. He argues the barrette can suitably function to keep her hair out of her eyes.

“So would a crewcut,” Small Alison replies. It was a song about desire sung by a child; not sexual, but physical. The desire to know, to understand. To find one’s reflection in a sea of people not like you. I understand that—every gay person understands that. It’s not a song I ever thought I’d see on Broadway, a song about seeing yourself in adulthood (“It’s prob’ly conceited to say / But I think we’re alike in a certain way,” she sings), for finding a woman “handsome.” That is how I was, as Small Alison.

And it was just broadcast during The Tony Awards.

And Middle Alison. Gosh. Middle Alison. We get to see Middle Alison realize her first crush, on a woman called Joan (Roberta Colindrez). We see the first time they have sex, the aftermath — Middle Alison sings that she’s changing her major to Joan, still in white underwear and socks. Joan remains asleep as Middle Alison whisper-trills, “So by the time you’ve woken up / I’ll be cool, I’ll be collected / And I’ll have found some dignity / But who needs dignity? / ‘Cause this is so much better.” I remember stepping into the hallway in my underwear, bare feet on cold tile, after I slept with my version of Joan and jumping around. I was confused but optimistic and I liked it. That is how I was, as Middle Alison.

They were all there, all together, all singing, all occupying the same space on the stage. All these Alisons who are one person. Broadway grew up. Broadway presented everything in a woman that it had been distilled to laugh at. The show already made history without the Tony Awards. And then.

Tonight, this kind of representation was awarded. Tony history was made with the first all-female team winning for best score — women take up space with their songs and stories. Children who saw Sydney Lucas sing might have found a mirror; every gay adult found a mirror for the kid they once were. Actresses who might have otherwise sent themselves through the flower press can point to this musical and say, there. There. It is the Best Musical. For once in our damn lives, something made for mainstream labeled the masculine queer woman as “best.”

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This is a show about memory. If singing with yourself works backwards, could it work forwards too? Since my Middle Alison and my Small Alison live in me though they are long gone, does that mean they saw this? I’d have to assume yes—that they took note of the remarkable resemblance between Joan and the woman who broke our hearts back then; that they know we have a song to belt out while doing the dishes that does not require the suspension of our own disbelief; they can see we quit acting for so many reasons, and that if this show — the only show about a masculine-of-center lesbian on Broadway ever — had won a Tony back then, that would have been one less reason. One more road sign. One more way we could have seen ourselves in the world while we were panicking. It is so hard to be Middle Alison, to be Small Alison, but I think they feel better, somehow.

I would’ve saved so much time I lost in searching. But mostly, I think, my Alisons are excited to feel the cartoon tap tap on her wrist and the un-shy, un-floral and unabashed belted song: “I think we’re alike in a certain way.” Tonight, the theatre world just told us they know us. They sang it to us. Thank you, Alison Bechdel. Thank you, Fun Home.

“It Shoulda Been You” Is Heartwarming, Relevant To Your Interests

feature image via shutterstock

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If you’re going to see a show on Broadway this season, go see “Fun Home,” the much talked about, Tony nominated play that Kaitlyn promises will remind you how hard it is to understand who we are. That’s a no-brainer. However, if you’re going to see two shows on Broadway, I strongly recommend “It Shoulda Been You,” the hilarious and heartwarming musical that opened in style on April 14. Because y’all: this show is highly relevant to your interests.

At first glance, “It Shoulda Been You” doesn’t seem like anything special. The first half of the hour-and-forty-minute long musical follows the wacky pre-wedding hijinks and relatively minor obstacles standing in the way of a seemingly picture perfect different-sex couple wanting to get married. The jokes all tread well worn comedic ground. For example, there’s deluge of one-liners from family members who object to the impending Jewish/Christian wedding — a storyline which harkens back to the 1922 hit “Abie’s Irish Rose,” still the third longest running play on Broadway. It’s well done, but simply by nature of the material, it’s nothing to write home about.

Yet a little over halfway through, an unexpected twist sends the expected story careening off the rails. I don’t want to spoil it for you, so I’ll just tell you this: I wish I brought tissues. Much to my surprise, I felt a deep emotional investment by the time they got to what the play is really about. I started crying as I watched the bride — played by Sierra Boggess of Russian Broadway Shut Down and a variety of much beloved Broadway shows — steel herself before sharing some very important personal information with her mother. My cheeks were not dry again until well after curtain call had ended.

Directed by David Hyde Pierce (who you probably know as Dr. Niles Crane on Frasier) with book and lyrics by Brian Hargrove (a television writer and Hyde Pierce’s husband), there’s definitely a sitcom-y influence that shines through. The jokes are more suitably described as “safe” than “clever” or “legitimately hilarious;” at times, you’d almost swear you could hear the echo of a laugh track being piped in. Characters are given all the depth of a sterling silver punch bowl, and in spite of the spectacular twist at the end, we don’t see an awful lot of growth. Although many critics panned the play for these reasons, I really appreciated it. To my mind, the stereotypical setup served as a rather aggressively normalizing backdrop. This play never would have made it in the time of “Abie’s Irish Rose;” to be honest, I’m not even sure it could have been done 10 years ago.

Regardless of any shortcomings in the script, the production more than makes up for it with its cast. Receiving top billing in this show are Broadway veterans Tyne Daly (of Cagney and Lacey, who publicly campaigned against Prop 8) and Harriet Harris (Desperate Housewives and “Standing on Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays“), whose impeccable comedic timing carried the entire first half of the play. “Jenny’s Blues,” sung by powerhouse Lisa Howard as the sister of the bride, was an absolute showstopper. And Montego Glover of Memphis (who performed at the Trevor Project’s TrevorLIVE last year) was hilarious too, even if her character was sadly underused.

Almost all of the action in this play revolves around women and their relationships, but if you care, there were also some men in the play that I didn’t find annoying! Notably: the wonderful Edward Hibbert (an out and proud actor and veteran of 11 seasons of Frasier), David Burtka (aka Neil Patrick Harris’s husband), and Josh Grisetti (Rent).

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“It Shoulda Been You” is currently playing at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre.  For tickets and information, visit itshouldabeenyou.com.

“Fun Home” the Musical is Messy, Hilarious, Nostalgic, and Totally Worth It

The show is over, the lights come up. The actors take their bows; small Alison jumps on big Alison’s back, and they all run out of the room. Throughout the audience, people are sniffling, rifling through their bags for any tissues they may have missed. I almost ask the woman next to me if she needs a hug. Because while the last 100 minutes gave us plenty of opportunity for laughter, shock and nostalgia, the overwhelming feeling in the room that night is wistful sadness.

Fun Home, the musical adaptation of the Alison Bechdel graphic memoir that so many of us love, opened on Broadway on April 19. Since then, it’s received a dozen Tony nominations, among other awards and accolades, and many of its performances have sold out. The one I saw did; two empty seats in front of me appeared to be the only no-shows in the entire Circle in the Square theater. The crowd was diverse in age and appearance, but everyone seemed taken in by the story of an adult Alison (Beth Malone) remembering a chaotic youth marked by her father’s strange behavior and eventual suicide.

The three versions we get of Bechdel — “Small Alison,” “Middle Alison,” and just plain “Alison,” according to the playbill — are each in a discovery phase of their shared life. Both young Alisons are stumbling toward maturity, trying to express themselves to a father who has a wholly different vision of her. Adult Alison knows he won’t understand, but continuously kicks herself for not explaining better, demanding answers. Early on, she announces what those who have read the memoir already know: This story will end with her father, Bruce (Michael Cerveris), committing suicide. She has limited time to speak with him before then, to learn what she can about how his warped, intangible trajectory affected her own development.

Because Alison is a lesbian, as she discovers in stages charmingly familiar to queer viewers. She is also a cartoonist, drawn to a medium her father refuses to take seriously. She doesn’t know what she wants to be like as an adult, but it’s not reflected in any of the adults around her. Her mother, Helen (Judy Kuhn), is robbed of her own dreams and resigned to living with a man who has no affection for her. Bruce, a big, shouting, singing force, is nonetheless opaque, living with lies and loneliness. Middle Alison (Emily Skeggs) starts to get an idea of the right track for her when she falls in love with Joan (Roberta Colindrez‘s truly dreamy, self-described collegiate dyke) but even then struggles to really say the words: I am a lesbian. And when she finally does, her parents act like they don’t hear her. It’s the same struggle that millions of young queer people endure every day, one that I endured.

That’s why I felt stung during one of small Alison’s pivotal scenes. Eating in a diner with her father, who is busy reading, Alison notices a delivery woman no one else seems to pay much attention to. She is strong, a butch with short hair, boots and, Alison sings triumphantly, a large ring of KEYS! Alison, who has struggled to dress comfortably while her father pressures her to fit in with other girls, revels in the realization that a grown woman could dress like this and be okay. She has received the first piece of her role model puzzle. Sitting in the audience, hearing those around me laugh at an admittedly silly musical number, made me want to get up and defend the girl on stage. Her story is the one that’s still developing! I thought. This is a huge deal for her! Take this seriously! 

Like many of my reactions to this play, this one came from a deeply personal experience as a queer woman. Which is great, and powerful, and exactly what good theater should inspire. But weirdly enough, it was a moment in which I felt othered — in a theater with visibly queer people! during a play about a lesbian and her gay dad! — acutely aware of all those in the audience who were there out of curiosity about something they had never experienced. It made me empathize even more with adult Alison, who throughout the play cringes and blushes at her younger selves’ more awkward moments.

Media representations of childhood are inherently revisionist — reproduced by adults, they search for complex meaning in youthful experiences that, while multifaceted and complicated, were lived by a less-developed mind. To a child, cause-and-effect reasoning is a blunt tool, and varied daily experiences are often viewed sequentially rather than in relation to one another: I didn’t eat my lunch; then I was starving all afternoon; then I had three servings at dinner; then I threw up on the carpet; then Mom got mad at me. An adult would see each situation as leading to the next (if I had eaten lunch, I wouldn’t have gotten sick; if I hadn’t overeaten at dinner, my parent wouldn’t be upset) but a child doesn’t necessarily connect the dots. And an adult looking back on a situation from their childhood may connect dots that shade experiences in a way their younger self never felt.

Fun Home gets that. Throughout the story, adult Alison wanders the set, observing small details and wondering aloud if she’s remembered correctly. At times, she rushes to sketch details before they disappear; in other moments, square lights appear around multiple scenes simultaneously, as if she’s viewing the comic strip in her head faster than she can transcribe it. Staged in the round, the play has just enough set detail to keep the eye bouncing while characters bound in and out through a multipurpose door. Scenes flow organically from one to the next, and bare-bones representations of Bechdel’s father’s same-sex dalliances inspire a truly impressive amount of discomfort. Small Alison never knew about her dad’s affairs, and middle Alison can only piece together the components her mother reveals. But neither she nor the audience needs a full play-by-play to feel how wrong the encounters are.

Bruce is the loudest character in the play, and it would be easy to think of him as its main character. He’s the only one whose story gets a beginning, middle and end. But that would be a shortsighted view of what Fun Home is, and why it’s so important. The play, like the graphic memoir, is not just Bechdel’s recounting of her father’s painful, semi-closeted life. It’s an investigation, a desperate search to pin down how who Bruce was made Alison into who she is.

It’s also a hilarious, emotionally sharp retrospective on growing up, from the delightful disco-themed commercial small Alison and her brothers record for the funeral home, to middle Alison’s declaration that she’s changing her major to Joan. The story interjects these joyous scenes with less comfortable ones of Bruce’s dalliances or family arguments, because that’s really what it’s like when you’re young. Good things happen, then bad ones, then funny ones, then awful ones.

Malone told the New York Times the story maintains that strict, investigatory sense as a reflection of Bechdel’s personal ethos: “Even her look is all about telling the truth — no ornamentation, nothing pretty. She hates lies — lies and embellishments are what got her dad killed.”

Without lies or embellishments, all Fun Home has is one woman’s messy set of memories. But those recollections are brilliantly recounted by actors who really seem like a family struggling to understand one another. Three representations of Bechdel feel both distinct and familiar, and the music is strong without overpowering the story. In the end, the play sticks with you for the same reasons the memoir did when you first read it: It reminds you how hard it is to understand who we are.

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Fun Home is playing now at Circle in the Square theater in New York. Tickets are available at Telecharge.

Fun Home the Musical Snags 12 Tony Award Nominations

The 2015 Tony Award nominations were announced this morning. Fun Home, the musical based on Alison Bechdel‘s celebrated graphic memoir, led the way with 12 nominations, including the coveted Best Musical trophy. (An American in Paris tied Fun Home with 12 nods, as well.) Is it a coincidence that a musical about a lesbian artist and her gay father received a nomination for Broadway’s biggest award the same morning the Supreme Court of the United States began hearing arguments about same-sex marriage? Yeah, but it feels serendipitous to pull up the New York Times home page and see the stories sitting side-by-side.

The fact that Fun Home is up for 12 Tonys is just another bit of happiness in a steady stream of good fortune the musical. It was also nominated for the Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History, nine Lucille Lortel Awards (of which it won three, including Outstanding Musical), the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, seven Outer Critics Circle Award, and two Drama League Awards. It also won an Off-Broadway Alliance Award for Best Musical and an Obie for Best Musical. It opened on Broadway to sell-out crowds last weekend and received the kind of glowing reviews NYT theater critics usually reserve for Neil Patrick Harris.

And it’s the first mainstream musical about a young lesbian. It’s a really good time to be Alison Bechdel, is what I am saying.

Here is a full list of Tony nominees.

Best Leading Actor in a Play
Steven Boyer, Hand to God
Bradley Cooper, The Elephant Man
Ben Miles, Wolf Hall Parts One & Two
Bill Nighy, Skylight
Alex Sharp, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Best Leading Actress in a Play
Geneva Carr, Hand to God
Helen Mirren, The Audience
Elisabeth Moss, The Heidi Chronicles
Carey Mulligan, Skylight
Ruth Wilson, Constellations

Best Leading Actor in a Musical
Michael Cerveris, Fun Home
Robert Fairchild, An American in Paris
Brian d’Arcy James, Something Rotten!
Ken Watanabe, The King and I
Tony Yazbeck, On the Town

Best Leading Actress in a Musical
Kristin Chenoweth, On the Twentieth Century
Leanne Cope, An American in Paris
Beth Malone, Fun Home
Kelli O’Hara, The King and I
Chita Rivera, The Visit

Best Revival of a Play
Skylight
The Elephant Man
This Is Our Youth
You Can’t Take It With You

Best Revival of a Musical
On the Town
On the Twentieth Century
The King and I
Best Featured Actor in a Play
Matthew Beard, Skylight
K. Todd Freeman, Airline Highway
Richard McCabe, The Audience
Alessandro Nivola, The Elephant Man
Micah Stock, It’s Only a Play

Best Featured Actress in a Play
Annaleigh Ashford, You Can’t Take It With You
Patricia Clarkson, The Elephant Man
Lydia Leonard, Wolf Hall Parts One & Two
Sarah Stiles, Hand to God
Julie White, Airline Highway

Best Featured Actress in a Musical
Victoria Clark, Gigi
Judy Kuhn, Fun Home
Sydney Lucas, Fun Home
Ruthie Ann Miles, The King and I
Emily Skeggs, Fun Home

Best Musical
An American in Paris
Fun Home
Something Rotten!
The Visit

Best Play
Disgraced by Ayad Akhtar
Hand to God by Robert Askins
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Simon Stephens
Wolf Hall Parts One & Two by Hilary Mantel and Mike Poulton

Best Book
Karey Kirkpatrick and John O’Farrell, Something Rotten!
Lisa Kron, Fun Home
Craig Lucas, An American in Paris
Terrence McNally, The Visit

Best Score
John Kander and Fred Ebb, The Visit
Wayne Kirkpatrick and Karey Kirkpatrick, Something Rotten!
Sting, The Last Ship
Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron, Fun Home

Best Scenic Design of a Musical
Bob Crowley and 59 Productions, An American in Paris
David Rockwell, On the Twentieth Century
Michael Yeargan, The King and I
David Zinn, Fun Home

Best Orchestrations
Christopher Austin, Don Sebesky and Bill Elliott, An American in Paris
John Clancy, Fun Home
Larry Hochman, Something Rotten!
Rob Mathes, The Last Ship

Best Scenic Design of a Play
Bunny Christie & Finn Ross, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Bob Crowley, Skylight
Christopher Oram, Wolf Hall Parts One & Two
David Rockwell, You Can’t Take It With You

Best Costume Design of a Play
Bob Crowley, The Audience
Jane Greenwood, You Can’t Take It With You
Christopher Oram, Wolf Hall Parts One & Two
David Zinn, Airline Highway

Best Lighting Design of a Play
Paule Constable, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Paule Constable and David Plater, Wolf Hall Parts One & Two
Natasha Katz, Skylight
Japhy Weideman, Airline Highway

Best Director of a Musical
Sam Gold, Fun Home
Casey Nicholaw, Something Rotten!
John Rando, On the Town
Bartlett Sher, The King and I
Christopher Wheeldon, An American in Paris

Best Scenic Design of a Play
Bunny Christie & Finn Ross, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Bob Crowley, Skylight
Christopher Oram, Wolf Hall Parts One & Two
David Rockwell, You Can’t Take It With You

Best Director of a Play
Stephen Daldry, Skylight
Marianne Elliott, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Scott Ellis, You Can’t Take It With You
Jeremy Herrin, Wolf Hall Parts One & Two
Moritz von Stuelpnagel, Hand to God

Best Lighting Design of a Musical
Donald Holder, The King and I
Natasha Katz, An American in Paris
Ben Stanton, Fun Home
Japhy Weideman, The Visit

Best Choreography
Joshua Bergasse, On the Town
Christopher Gattelli, The King and I
Scott Graham & Steven Hoggett, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Casey Nicholaw, Something Rotten!
Christopher Wheeldon, An American in Paris

The awards ceremony will be hosted by Alan Cumming and Kristin Chenoweth on June 7 at Radio City Music Hall, and broadcast live on CBS.

 

 

 

“Fun Home” The Musical Is Officially Heading To Broadway, Thank Goodness

Feature image by Joan Marcus

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Hey, do you remember that book that changed your life, that book called Fun Home? You know, the Alison Bechdel comic book memoir about coming out and her relationship with her dad that launched a thousand queer book club discussions? Well GUESS WHAT, the musical adaptation of Fun Home will open at Broadway’s 700-ish-seat Circle in the Square Theater on April 22! The date is significant because it’s IMMEDIATELY before the normal Tony Awards cut-off date, so you know they’re gunning for Best Musical next year. But you guys. BROADWAY. The big time! The biggest stage a musical can aspire to play on, so to speak! This is an enormous deal!

Transferring from Off-Broadway to Broadway is notoriously difficult, particularly for shows that aren’t well-known properties, since it costs millions of dollars to mount each production and since it can be difficult to draw in large audiences. What that generally translates to, when you’re a queer woman who is a feminist and a fan of musical theater, is a lot of sighing and accepting the fact that you’ll almost never see yourself reflected onstage unless your sexuality is a punchline, Rent notwithstanding. (This applies to professional and amateur productions [and generally to queer women but not queer men, and to queer women of color waaaaaay more than white queer women], but that’s a much larger conversation for another day.) I mean, seriously, it’s rare enough to get a show that’s not based on a movie or music anthology to Broadway at all, let alone a show written by women, let alone a show about a masculine-of-center queer woman! What a time to be alive. This could be the start of something new, do you hear the people sing, let the sunshine in, etc.

Casting for the Broadway production will be announced at some point in the (hopefully near) future. In the meantime, I strongly recommend listening to the Off-Broadway cast recording, featuring performances from Beth Malone, Michael Cerveris and Judy “Pocahontas” Kuhn, among others. Also, you should watch this clip from the Drama Desk Awards of Sydney Lucas as Young Alison singing “Ring of Keys,” which is about her first encounter with a butch woman. You guys, I can’t even believe there is a song about that. This is so crazy, I can’t believe this show is transferring to Broadway, somebody hold me.

“Fun Home” is Relatable, Brilliant and Paving the Way for Women Musical Theatre Writers

Feature Image via BroadwayWorld

Every so often, I see a musical that changes my life. That’s a big statement, but my life revolves around musical theatre and the feelings it gives me, so it’s inevitable that I’ll be deeply affected by a musical. I’ve only seen three musicals that caused this life-changing sensation, so when I saw Fun Home at The Public Theater, sparks flew, and I saw fireworks. Fun Home is a new musical (!), based on Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel (!), written by two women (!), about a lesbian (!). I didn’t know much about the musical prior to seeing it for the first time (yes, there have been multiple viewings), as I had never read the source material (which is a fancy term for the book on which the musical is based).

Here’s the thing about musicals: it takes a long time, a lot of rewriting, and a lot of money to get one from page to stage. A musical can easily take ten years from its first draft to a major New York or regional production. Fun Home has journeyed through readings and workshops in different cities. In the fall of 2012, the musical was produced in the Lab Series at The Public Theater. This was my first exposure to it.

In the Lab Series, the writers were in the audience, making script changes on a daily basis. In labs, sometimes there are small changes: a line gets rewritten or a joke that doesn’t land gets cut, but sometimes entire songs and chunks of book (dialogue) are rewritten, cut, or added. You could see the show twice and it would be completely different. The writers take their cues from the audience. In the rehearsal room, a line, lyric, musical progression, etc. could seem great, but it may not work in front of the audience. This is one of my favorite things about live theatre: the audience is a player in the production.

After a year of revisions (and anticipation), Fun Home has returned to The Public Theater in a fully-staged Off-Broadway production. I saw the musical three times in previews (changes were still made until opening night), and once after it opened, and I felt all the feelings. Fun Home centers around the protagonist, Alison, in three phases of her life. There’s Small Alison (Sydney Lucas), who is in elementary school, Medium Alison (Alexandra Socha), who is in college, and Alison (Beth Malone), who is in her forties. At its core, Fun Home is about Alison discovering and accepting her sexuality and its relation to her father’s sexuality and his death. Lisa Kron‘s book and lyrics prove that no one is ever too young or too old to come of age. Jeanine Tesori’s music complements the tone and spirit of Alison and her family’s awakenings.

As every musical should, Fun Home has a mixture of light-hearted and heart-wrenching songs. My favorite is “Changing My Major,” which explores Medium Alison’s euphoria after her first sexual experience with a woman. Socha is wonderful as the college freshman, riding the emotional roller coaster of vulnerability, excitement, and nerves of discovering one’s sexual orientation. Small Alison has an inspiring song about seeing a butch woman for the first time, perfected by Lucas, who has more spunk than I’ve ever seen in a kid. Watch out for her; I see a big career in her future. Malone ties the piece together as the adult version of Alison, reflecting on her past and trying to make sense of her relationship to her father. Judy Kuhn, who plays Helen Bechdel, Alison’s mother, makes brilliant, subtle acting choices and broke my heart with her solo number. Michael Cerveris, who plays Bruce Bechdel, Alison’s father, is equally strong, as his relationship with himself, his wife and Alison play a key role in the musical.

In musical theatre, I am used to seeing straight female protagonists fall in love with straight men. There’s nothing wrong with that, but as a lesbian, it is nice to see queer protagonists struggle with issues that are similar to mine. Not only does Fun Home put a lesbian center stage, the lesbian character is a fully developed, three dimensional human being with thoughts, feelings, and complex issues. Alison is trying to make sense of herself and her family in different stages of her life, which is something to which I deeply relate. I have struggled with accepting myself and my sexual orientation, and I’ve discovered the complexity of how learning to love myself affects my family. I saw myself in all three Alisons, I saw my mother in Helen, and I saw my father in Bruce. I have a complicated relationship with my father, and every moment I witnessed Alison communicate with Bruce, I saw my relationship with my dad. The most beautiful part of a musical theatre, to me, is seeing myself on stage. As a writer, my goal is for audience members to see themselves in characters and situations I have written, as lived by actors.

As mentioned before, Fun Home is written by two women. The visibility of women writers is very important in musical theatre. The majority of musical theatre writers are white, gay, cisgender men. While musical theatre boasts a world of acceptance, rainbows, and unicorns, women writers are in the minority, and I have been discriminated against as a woman and as a lesbian. A well known television and theatre actor once told me that lesbians “belong on the softball field.” He was joking, but his comment was not abnormal. Women writers are seen as over-emotional creatures, and we’re not taken seriously.

Last Broadway season (2012-2013), pop icon Cyndi Lauper, who wrote the score for Kinky Boots, was the first woman to ever win the Tony Award (think Oscars or Grammys, but for Broadway) for Best Score without a male co-writer. This is big time. I can count on one hand the number of female Broadway musical theatre writers. Since Fun Home debuted Off-Broadway this fall, the visibility of women writers and queer women characters have been discussed. While I hope Tesori and Kron are paving the way for women writers, at least the conversation is being started.

The future of female musical theatre writers is looking up. Intern Grace compiled a playlist of musical theatre songs written by women, and there are many emerging female musical theatre writers. Many of these women are bookwriters, but more and more women are writing lyrics and music. As a female musical theatre writer who writes with a female composer, I’m excited for the continued growth of female musical theatre writers.

If you’re in New York City, please do yourself a favor and see Fun Home at The Public Theater. It’s an amazing piece of theatre, and it will touch your heart.

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Rachel Kunstadt is a librettist/lyricist, pursuing an MFA at the Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She is a founder and the Producing Artistic Director of LezCab, a cabaret series celebrating queer women in musical theatre. She resides in Manhattan with her shih tzu, Bernie. www.rachelkunstadt.com. Tweet her @rkunstadt.

You Should Go: Fun Home the Musical is Finally Real, Going to Be Magic

Musical theatre has more than its fair share of critics. I’m not sure whether I can even say “critics,” because it’s often less “reasoned, engaged analysis” and more “people laughing and pointing at other people singing and dancing onstage.” Some dude at The Evening Standard called musical theatre an “innately idiotic form” and I’m not immune to this kind of thinking either: I often catch myself justifying (to whom?) musicals as a guilty pleasure, uncritically and unthinkingly consumed.

Bleedin’ snobs, the lot of us.

I get it. When musicals are bad, they’re really bad. Both We Will Rock You and Rock of Ages made me want to bang a guitar repeatedly against my head, and I’m glad that I will likely not live to see Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark (at the rate they’re going, neither will some of the cast). Sometimes you’re into your third overwrought Queen rendition and you’re stuck between rethinking every life decision you’ve ever made that got you to this point… and trying to quash that little bit of you that wants to sing along.

Avenue Q piqued my interest in musicals, Wicked cemented it. The Phantom of the Opera gave me significant pause — perhaps all of this was really overrated after all? — but then The Lion King reminded me that masks can make magic, not just disguise stalking and jealousy as romance. Les Misèrables is my current reason for being. (If you’re ever in London, by the way, booking in advance can get you tickets for ~£15-25 and the view’s not half-bad from the upper circle. Unless you’re afraid of heights.)

See, done well, I dare say there are few things that rival the immersive experience of the musical. Sure, you can keep mocking “people acting and then singing at the same time, and quite possibly dancing too,” but I’ll just be here constantly in awe of people acting and singing and dancing all at the same time.

You leave the theatre and some people will love it, some people will hate it, but absolutely everyone will get the songs stuck in their heads. It’s a gift that keeps on giving, as my mother learns every time my youngest siblings (aged 7 to 18) happily and loudly garble their way through “Do You Hear the People Sing?”.

Now all of this has just been a terribly lengthy way to tell you why I’m really, really excited that Fun Home’s off-Broadway debut will take the form of — yes! — a musical.

From four-time Tony Award-nominated composer Jeanine Tesori (Caroline, or Change) and Tony-nominee Lisa Kron (In The Wake, Well) comes a fresh, daring new musical based on the acclaimed graphic novel by Alison Bechdel. When her father dies unexpectedly, graphic novelist Alison dives deep into her past to tell the story of the volatile, brilliant, one-of-a-kind man whose temperament and secrets defined her family and her life. Moving between past and present, Alison relives her unique childhood playing at the family’s Bechdel Funeral Home, her growing understanding of her own sexuality and the looming, unanswerable questions about her father’s hidden desires. Directed by Sam Gold, FUN HOME is a groundbreaking, world-premiere musical about seeing your parents through grown-up eyes.

With Fun Home, Alison Bechdel took the graphic novel — another medium that is similarly derided (and that I feel just as strongly about) — and spun a haunting emotional masterpiece. It was a book that not only reached into me with its words but left soft-edged, ink-washed images lingering at the back of my mind long after I’d left the last page. I’d held onto it in a new country then, newly alone, and all I wanted was to be able to share it.

So now I am so excited to see what Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron are going to do at the Public Theater, bringing Fun Home to audiences old and new. I can’t quite imagine how it’ll turn out just yet, I’ll admit, but that’s exactly what makes the thought of it so fascinating and I have high hopes. Maybe there will be dancing (sadly probably not). Most likely there will be new duets for you to sing along to with your human of choice. And if there weren’t enough reason for me to want to go already, Bechdel personally swears by Sydney Lucas‘s performance as “Small Alison,” and I am of the sort that is immediately charmed by anything done by anyone below the age of 12.

Except — due to fiddly matters of “being on the wrong continent” — I can’t actually go.

I briefly considered stopping over in NYC on the way to LAX for A-Camp 4.0, but my wallet (and sense) won’t allow it. So this is where you come in! NYC-based queers, watch this for me. Do it for everyone who loves musicals, queers, and queer musicals. I’m counting on you.

September 30 – November 3, 2013
425 Lafayette Street, New York City
$81.50 – 91.50 (regular price) / $45 (member price)

Purchase tickets online or call 212-967-7555. Accessibility information (as well as information on rush/student tickets) is also available on Public Theater’s website.

Read A F*cking Book: Alison Bechdel’s “Are You My Mother?”

In 2006, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, a melancholy and devastatingly honest memoir about her father’s life and death, garnered incredible praise and acclaim and pushed the boundaries of what readers expected from the genre of graphic novels. Six years later, in Bechdel’s newest book, Are You My Mother?, she examines her relationship with her mother, the woman who was left behind when her father (maybe, probably) killed himself in Bechdel’s 20s. Bechdel’s mother is still living, making the process of writing about her a complicated and recursive process. In that way, especially compared to Fun Home, the telling of which seems to be made possible largely by her father’s tragic and, in some ways, disloyal death, it seems almost like an impossible project. But  it’s clear that it was an important one for Bechdel, all-consuming even, and we watch her relationship with her mother and her own preoccupation with it develop in unexpected and deeply affecting ways.

There are two things that are universally acknowledged as boring to write about: therapy sessions and dreams. Are You My Mother? deals heavily in both. But whereas explanations of therapy and dreams usually work to try to cheat at narration, to bring the reader to the same sense of epiphany that the writer experienced in the shortest distance necessary, AYMM deals with them differently. Much as in real life, therapy and dreams aren’t avenues to instant answers; they’re part of a story about the work one puts into finding answers, and about how hard it is to ask yourself the necessary questions. Whereas Fun Home was lent something of a natural ‘arc’ by her father’s death — at the beginning of the story he was alive, and by the end he wasn’t — there isn’t as much of an intuitive structure to an endeavor like AYMM, which Bechdel (and her mother) aptly refer to as a “metabook.” So in lieu of what we would traditionally call a “story,” the book sometimes feels like a therapy session, or like a dream. The narrative loops back upon itself, obsesses over the same symbols and anecdotes over and over, and takes time to linger upon its own preoccupations. Like in the world of a dream, nothing is really linear; things happen simultaneously, and the distinctions between characters blur; Bechdel associates herself with Virginia Woolf, and Victorian psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott is conflated with her mother, as well as being referenced to her therapist, who’s compared to her other therapist, who’s maybe also her mother. Are you following?

It would be forgivable if you weren’t; the book moves between the past and present, reality and dream world, her own life and those of Virginia Woolf and Donald Winnicott, and musings on her relationship with Bechdel’s mother interspersed with actual conversations with her mother about the content of the book as it was being written. These last sections, the ones in which Bechdel depicts herself trying to negotiate the book she’s writing about her mother with her mother, are in some ways the most gripping; the fact that they were happening in the moment of writing gives them a kind of urgency that the rest of the book, with its ouroborous of a narrative, doesn’t always have. When Bechdel’s mother pointedly asserts her disdain for the entire genre of memoir, and Bechdel (well aware of the context of her mother’s disapproval) offers “Yeah, but don’t you think that… that if you write minutely and rigorously enough about your own life… you can, you know, transcend your particular self?” it carries the particular kind of very honest and very sad resonance that is only achieved by writing minutely and rigorously about your own life in the truest way you can.

Women who have dared to write about their own lives have often faced backlash — been called navelgazing, self-absorbed, petty, or just boring. Women who have dared to write about their personal lives have also faced consequences within their personal lives, with the loved ones whose names have appeared on the page feeling hurt and slandered, and understandably so. Emily Gould comes to mind — she spoke about the conflict it caused with her own mother when her book of essays, And the Heart Says Whatever, came out.

But we come up against over and over again this problem of, I want to be able to apologize to her in a way that is meaningful. And it is really hard to accept the apology of someone who is essentially saying, “I apologize to you for this thing that I may well do again.” Yeah. That’s a really tall order for my mom. …my mother will also say things to me – like, she has told me that she thinks that when we talk to each other, that I am constantly sitting outside the conversation observing it and mining our interactions for material, and this is not the case. I understand why she would think that. It is totally a natural thing to think, but I feel so insulted by it because on the one hand she is telling me “I do not trust you.”  Which, okay.

(It seems worth noting that Bechdel was, in fact, taking notes on many of the conversations she had with her mother over the course of writing this book, writing down the content of their talks on the phone almost verbatim as to be able to reference them later.)

As many reviewers of this book have (accurately) observed, the relationship between women and their mothers is something that’s of enormous significance in many of our lives, and more than worth a book. But it’s also an undertaking that can potentially change that relationship forever, and be very painful to both parties. Which is perhaps the greatest success of AYMM; rather than attempting to gracefully sweep that weird and complicated reckoning under the rug, it foregrounds it. We watch the awkward, stilted attempts on both Bechdel and her mother’s part at dealing with the fact of this book, and see that there are some things that can’t be made okay by mother/daughter love, and see that on the whole, mother/daughter love is way too deep and tangled to be encompassed or conquered by a book. And that’s enormously important to see in women’s writing, I think. Because if you can’t talk about the act of trying to talk about it, then it’s hard to be as honest as you need to be to say something worth reading.

Critics haven’t necessarily responded particularly well to the book’s premise or its approach to narrative; the Guardian review “Psychology boils away the particulars of individual experience to arrive at abstract generalities,” and the  LA Times said that “…she does an unwieldy dance around these issues, over-intellectualizing her story, relying on extended interior or critical monologues at moments when narrative alone, she seems to feel, will not suffice.” Which some readers will indubitably find to be true. But what some critics perhaps fail to take into account is the project of writing minutely and rigorously enough about your own life to transcend the particular self. Because truly Are You My Mother? isn’t just about this narrative, or about the particular self of Bechdel or her mother; it’s about how hard it was for Bechdel’s mother to have this book written and why, despite how much she wanted to avoid hurting her mother, Bechdel was so driven to do it anyways. It’s about why we circle back and obsess endlessly about our parents, both in therapy and in our lives. It’s about the part of growing up that is giving up on getting exactly what you wanted out of a person you love so that you can move on with your life. It’s a book about why we write books like this; more specifically, about why women tell these stories and ask these kinds of questions out loud despite the legitimate personal and professional risks it may entail. Which seems, inarguably, a story worth telling.

Adam Lambert Kills It With Queen at VMAs, Fun Home To Be a Musical

ADAM LAMBERT:

Adam Lambert was unfortunately missing in action at our own VMAs in LA this year but he somehow showed up at the MTV European VMAs in Belfast, Ireland of all places. Get ready for eight minutes of Adam in black leather as he joins Queen on stage for a medley of the classics, “Show Must Go On,” “We Will Rock You,” and “We Are the Champions.”

[yframe url=’https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-XlIRaBH6c’]

You might also remember our young, make-up free Glambert auditioning for Idol with the Queen classic “Bohemian Rhapsody”:

[yframe url=’https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5-pXsAQLq4′]

Finally, an update via Twitter regarding the delay of the first single off his upcoming musical masterpiece:

RICKY MARTIN:

What a long way we have come from some serious sexuality denial to now being granted Spanish citizenship so he can take advantage of their gay marriage law and marry his boyfriend! Ricky is currently raising his twin three-year-old sons with his partner Carlos Gonzalez Abella. He spoke about the possibility of getting married when he appeared on Larry King last year:

“Yes, we could go to Spain and get married. We can go to Argentina and get married. But why do we have to go somewhere else? Why can’t I do it in my country where the laws are – you know, protecting me? I can go to Spain. I have many friends in Spain. And get married. And make it very beautiful and symbolic. But… I [can’t] do it in the backyard of my house. I want to have that option. I don’t want to be a second class citizen anymore. I pay my taxes. Why can’t I have that right?”

QUEEN LATIFAH:

Add one more homo to the list of daytime talk show hosts. She is partnering with Will Smith’s Overbrook Entertainment to create her own syndicated talk show, but she’ll sit out the current round of competitive development with the hopes of launching in fall 2013.

FUN HOME:

Lisa Kron and composer Jeanine Tesori are adapting Dykes to Watch Out For creator/cartoonistAlison Bechdel’s phenomenal graphic novel Fun Home (coincidentally chosen as Autostraddle’s Book Club #4!) to a stage musical via the Sundance Institute Theater Program! As a taste for what you’re in for, I’ll leave you with an excerpt from the original source material which focuses on Alison’s relationship with her father and coming to terms with the fact that she’s gay:

“My father and I grew up in the same small Pennsylvania town and he was gay and I was gay and he killed himself and I became a lesbian cartoonist.”

IF GOD WAS A HOT GIRL DJ:

Check out this list of 10 female DJs you should know!