Good advice from a drag queen.
(And the woman at left, of course, is not a drag queen, but Lynn Rafferty, one of the actors in Carolyn Gage's play "The Countess and the Lesbians," which I saw last night.)
I am, of course, a great fan of drag queens (and if you ever put one in a play, she will steal the show!) so last night, I was quite pleased to see not one, but two performing at the George. They did lovely artistic versions of Divinyls "I Touch Myself" (which I saw Christina Amphlett perform live when she & Joan Jett were touring Australia), and a killer (so to speak) version of Talking Heads' "Psycho Killer." I'm just an '80s girl at heart, I guess.
We ended up at the George after we closed down the Dragon. Working in reverse chronological order, we had drinks at the George with the usual suspects arriving in from their shows; I got to say hi to Steven Fales ("Confessions of a Mormon Boy") who looked at me like: I know you, how do I know you? And I said "from Zuni on 9th Avenue...we were at Doric Wilson's birthday party." He said his show is doing well, and I am going to try to see it tonight or tomorrow. I've actually got a good idea of stuff that people are talking about, and that I'm going to make a point to see. I also MUST see Dalliances (the South African show) because they are sharing the Writers Club with us and are beautiful, sweet people, and I am hearing very good things about it.
Of course, if I had a two-button mouse, I could copy the photos from their pages and put them in this blog, but I remain without a camera cord AND a two-button mouse. So I may resort to putting up pictures of my dragons and turtles.
At any rate, I saw two shows last night, both eminently rewarding. Even though I know David Pumo & Moe Bertran from NYC, and have seen their full length ("Auntie Mayhem" and was even in a festival with it several years ago in its nascent form), I had not yet seen "Love Scenes." (Come to Ireland to see a New York play...go figure).
It was worth the trip! Moe was absolutely riveting in all the different characters he played, all in search of (or in service of) true love. From a young hustler to a speaker at a PFLAG conference, to a drag queen in love, he just slayed me. I was crying in the last scene (in a good way). It made me miss my sweetie (see yesterday's post).
Everyone from "Some Are People" came to see the show, as did Ron B. They told me that Brian had come to see our show that night, and given a beautiful curtain speech. I also heard he mentioned us in a radio interview earlier in the day. The attendance is still lagging, and now that I am here and getting the lay of the land, I realize there are things I could have done before that would have helped, and I'm trying to play catch-up to a certain extent now. Next time, we'll know better!
Of course, if you are in Ireland and reading this, get your ass to Some Are People! Also England and Scotland. You have cheap flights, use 'em!
I kid. But not really.
The first show I saw last night was Carolyn Gage's "The Countess and the Lesbians," which got another great review in the Metro. It was a sold out house, and an audience that was rather "mixed" in terms of locals who wanted to see a play based on Irish history.
(Of course I presented our postcards to every member of the audience, and the curtain speech also mentioned Some Are People, so yay!)
I'm a great fan of Carolyn's, and we've been buddies since Saints & Sinners three years ago; we never get to see enough of each other, and in this case, I'M in Dublin for the world premiere of her new work, and she's in Arizona for a workshop of her Babe Didrikson musical.
I emailed her this morning and told her she should be proud of this production. It's really beautifully written, skillfully weaving in the actual words of the historic figures with a modern story of three lesbians trying to put on a play about Countess Markewicz and her sister, Eva Gore-Booth, and Eva's lover, Esther Roper. The modern story anchors the historical one, and each feeds the passion of the other.
The cast is uniformly solid (and beautiful) and the directing is sharp and focused.
So I have to book my tickets for tonight, and figure out how to best use my dwindling days. I still haven't actually done any "tourist" stuff. All I've done is walk the city and meet its people, and see good theatre, and eat lots of good food. So, you know, I don't feel like I've been wasting my time.
My Room for the Night (actually 2 nights) is a gorgeous one in the Clarion IFSC, the first modern business-style hotel I've been in. My room actually has a wraparound terrace overlooking the Liffey, and I can see all the cranes in the sky, working working working to make Dublin a 21st century city. I can also see the spires of the churches, and old Victorian domes, and hope they leave room for some of them in the new skyline.
So, the opening quote...the drag queens last night called up a girl onstage ("you know she's a lesbian...look at that haircut!") and it was her birthday, and they made her sing Happy Birthday to herself. Then they brought out a fancy cake and had her blow out the candles, and proceeded to threaten to throw the cake into the audience.
"It's like a wedding bouquet, they said...the one who catches it has the next birthday!" And damned if they didn't throw it into the audience.
And damned if some guy didn't catch it perfectly.
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