INTERVIEW: Pride Plays festival continues on, with help from Playbill
Photo: Pride Plays began in 2019 with a reading of Brave Smiles, and now that work will be presented again in 2020. Photo courtesy of Pride Plays / Provided by Matt Ross PR with permission.
In June 2019, the world descended upon New York City to not only celebrate Pride Month, an annual tradition showcasing and honoring LGBTQ culture and history, but also to remember the 50 years that had transpired since the influential Stonewall Uprising in 1969. There were remembrances, special presentations, the Pride Parade, concerts, parties and somber moments of reflection.
One of the most memorable additions to the calendar last year was the Pride Plays theatrical festival performed at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater in the West Village. The multi-day event, which highlighted the work of queer artists, was produced by Doug Nevin and Broadway actor Michael Urie, and directed by Nick Mayo. Although originally intended to be a one-off celebration in honor of last year’s momentous anniversary, the idea was met with so much enthusiasm and success that the team decided to make the event an annual showcase.
Then the coronavirus hit.
This June, Rattlestick and the team of Nevin, Urie and Mayo were meant to have lightning strike twice, but the pandemic had other plans. Still, they didn’t want to cancel outright, so they have refashioned the program and are about to kick off a month-long virtual celebration. Every Friday in June, beginning June 5, Pride Plays will offer a live-stream of a different LGBTQIA+ work. Then after four presentations, the celebration comes to an end with a special June 28 virtual concert. In addition there will be many industry and private readings throughout the month.
The Pride Plays festival is here and not going anywhere.
“So, as you know, Pride Plays took place on Pride Weekend to celebrate 50 years of Pride since the Stonewall Uprising,” Mayo said in a recent phone interview. “It was intended to be a one-time thing, but due to the rapturous response and the success and the joy and the sharing that was happening around that time, it could not have gone better. So we thought, we can’t wait to do it again next year and gather with members of our LGBTQ community to hear these stories. So we went about scheduling and planning and went on our retreat in December and opened a submission process. Over 250 queer playwrights submitted their plays from all over the country, and we picked our plays. And we were ready to go.”
Mayo and company even issued a major press announcement that Pride Plays was coming back, and the winning playwrights were notified. Then, in March, when the world went into disarray, the creative team got together (but still apart) and tried to find a way forward.
“We were going to have stay front-footed and flexible, and still, like all of us at that time, we thought, well, we’ll be open by June,” he remembers. “It wasn’t until they announced that the Pride Parade was canceled that the three of us looked at each other and said, ‘All right, we need to start thinking about what our alternative plan is.’ And it was never a question of whether we were going to do something; it was the question of how are we going to do something. … So we started to put our brains together. We had already contacted all the playwrights to be a part of the festival. We were well down the line of the creative process, and literally within hours of that conversation, the three of us saying we’ve got to do something, Playbill called us and asked if they could be our media sponsor for the festival. And it was kind of like the gay gods were smiling upon us. There was a little bit of magic that happened that we were asking for the ‘how,’ and the ‘how’ really did come to us with such a great partnership with Playbill.”
Audience members can tune into the live stream each Friday at 7 p.m. EST on Playbill.com. The first presentation will be Brave Smiles … Another Lesbian Tragedy, performed by The Five Lesbian Brothers, consisting of Maureen Angelos, Babs Davy, Dominique Dibbell, Peg Healey and Lisa Krone. The original live-stream date was June 5, but that has been postponed.
Other plays in the month-long series are by Donja R. Love (one in two), MJ Kaufman (Masculinity Max) and Mart Crowley (The Men From Boys). It should be noted that Crowley’s play will be directed by Zachary Quinto.
“So every Friday there’s amazing, wonderful queer theatre content for people to tune in and celebrate Pride in that way,” said Mayo, who himself has appeared on Broadway in How to Succeed …, South Pacific and The Ritz. “No one is getting together in space. We are all quarantined in our homes. Some of the brothers from Five Lesbian Brothers are in California, Long Island, New York City … so everything is being done virtually. We’re rehearsing on Zoom and a platform called StreamYard. We’re lucky enough to have some of the technical support of Playbill.com to help us in the curation of that, but we’re rehearsing entirely digitally. Every play has a director, a stage manager and an associate director involved, so the team tries to mimic as much as a common, ‘normal’ rehearsal process. Actors receive their daily schedules. Instead of saying which rehearsal room you’re in, there’s a Zoom link, so it really is trying as much as possible to make it a normal rehearsal process. Everyone rehearses for about five or six times the week prior in the evenings, and then we do a tech rehearsal for three days next week — Wednesday, Thursday and Friday afternoon — and then we go live on Friday night.”
Performing via Zoom has provided different challenges, but theater professionals always find a way to make it work (the show must go on, after all). For Mayo, he has realized that connectivity is a major challenge. He needs to ensure that everyone can be seen and heard, but luckily they had a test run in March when they presented Urie in Buyer & Cellar, a one-man show he has previously performed in.
“We worked very, very, very hard on a one-person show with two devices and one person in one living room,” he said. “Then, if you add a cast of eight people, you have eight different lighting schemes, eight different internet connectivities to navigate. The variables are huge, so it’s a lot more risky. It’s different than working in space together, right. I mean we all prefer being in space together because we can navigate challenges together. There are certainly things that you lose control over, and so it’s a great exercise in surrendering. How do you surrender to things you can’t control? And I’m beginning that process, so, yeah, there’s lots of different challenges. How to make actors speak to each other when they’re halfway across the country?”
Urie, Mayo and Nevin like to call themselves the three-headed monster. They share many responsibilities, and their collaboration is one of the keys to success for Pride Plays. Their relationship with one another goes back several years.
“I went to college with Michael at Juilliard, and then as actors we did How to Succeed in Business Together Without Really Trying about a decade later,” Mayo said. “We have a short-hand in terms of our relationship. So in terms of dividing the responsibilities, Doug and Michael are the producers of this. This was their idea, their baby, and they sought me as a director. So I sort of handle the nuts, bolts, logistics, contracts, actors, stage managers … so I sort of do all the brass tax. The three of us share responsibilities beautifully. We’ll slip into different hats many different times because we realize there’s so much to do. Even with the virtual online festival, it’s going to be 15 plays in the month of June. Four plays on primetime, and then our private developmental labs of new queer work. So we slip in and out of different hats easily and really complement each other with our strengths. Doug is an incredibly successful lawyer. I work in fundraising and major gifts at Broadway Cares / Equity Fights AIDS, and Michael is a remarkably talented actor and director.”
The Friday night live-streams will actually benefit Broadway Cares, so Pride Plays is truly built upon the premise of giving back to the LGBTQ community.
“I’ve always found that my queerness is my special power, the fact that I’m an out, proud gay man is my secret strength,” Mayo said. “It’s not such a secret, but it’s my strength. I have found such solace in the queer community from such a very young age and have found family, chosen family and am inspired by the history of our community. I’m inspired by the challenges that are still in front of us. I truly am learning every day what I don’t know about my community and how my community needs help or where my community needs help, so for me it’s the opportunity to provide a platform, an opportunity, a stage. But it really is the members of the LGBTQ community that come together and tell the stories. All I’m doing is giving a space. The magic happens in the telling of the stories. All I’m doing is creating an atmosphere and an energy for the members of our community to come together and tell stories. At the end of last year’s festival, when it was all done — 19 plays in five days, 250 artists — as the last curtain call went down, and we were all dancing, and Terrence McNally was sitting in the front row, and we had just done a 50-person reading of Some Men … it was almost like I understood what the word Pride meant for the first time. I was proud, not only of myself, but I was proud of the community.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Pride Plays, produced by Doug Nevin and Michael Urie, and directed by Nick Mayo, will be presented throughout the month of June. The event is co-sponsored by partners Playbill and Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre. Click here for more information.
