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About the time And He Made A Her
showcased at the Cherry Lane theater (1961), I
was arrested for sexual (I was innocent) whatever.
Richard Barr bailed me out of jail and I ran to
the safety of the Caffe Cino, sat at a table and
wrote (just like in the movies) Now She
Dances! (I should have dedicated it to the
cop who entrapped me, and who, years later,
encountered me in a leather bar, leered, and
suggested maybe he and I might... but that's
another play.)
Now She Dances! began as a response
to the hilarious histrionics and fruity language
of Lord Douglas' translation of Oscar Wilde's
Salome. Written with overwhelming
earnestness in no-doubt equally florid French,
Wilde's play has become a touchstone for
decadence, equating lavender eau de cologne and
slavering smears of silver eyeshadow with
degeneracy. I decided to rewrite it as The
Importance of Being Salome (Richard Barr
found the right title in one of the last lines
of the play). The resulting play became an angry,
ironic, nightmare metaphor for the trial of Oscar
Wilde (the quintessential closet queen, it was
Wilde's determination to establish his
heterosexuality in court which lead to his fatal
second trial).
The Cino cast of Now She Dances! was
headed by the ever articulate Tom Lawrence (Lane),
with zany Zita Jenner (Lady Herodias), and the so
very beautiful Lucrezia Simmons (Miss Salome) and
Joe Cino's favorite actress, Jane Lowry (Gladys).
If you were there, you still remember the soup
speech. The one act Cino play was extended into a
two act version for the Playbox in the East
Village in the late 1960s. On the way to the first
rehearsal, Jane Lowry and Sloane Shelton traded
roles on the 10th Street crosstown bus the way
bobbysoxers used to switch sweaters. Opening
night, the actor playing Bill, flying high on
psychedelic drugs, was too busy watching all the
pretty lights to bother coming on stage for his
entrance. A happier memory was Berrilla Kerr
swathed in yards of scarlet swishing satin,
slipping away from dinner "unnoticed".
In 1976 Now She Dances! was rewritten
once again for TOSOS. Druid high priestess Sally
Eaton (from the cast of Hair), and later Caroline
Yeager gave harrowing and searing performances in
brilliant and totally different interpretations of
Miss Salome. Glamorous Mary Portser, forever juvenile
Dale Carman, Machiavellian Michael O'Brien, jaunty
John Michel, matinee idol John Murphy (and later the
towering Brian Benben, mischief making Marianne
Leone and Greg - the hottest man I ever saw -
Michaels) kept Salome dancing for nearly a year in
the Church Street basement home of TOSOS.
The play was again thrown into the rewrite mill
where it ground round and round until Steve Bottoms
convinced Larry Johnson to convince me to finish it
(a debt waiting payment). The new (and hopefully
final version) premiered in Glasgow, Scotland in
the winter of 2000 with Steve Bottoms directing. For
the first time Now She Dances! was played
in tandem with Oscar Wilde's Salome. The
cast was doubled, the actress cast as Salome also
assayed Miss Salome (I suggested a gender switch,
the Herod from the Wilde in drag as Lady Herodias;
Herodias to beard up as Sir Herod, but nobody ever
listens to me.)
A very complex and difficult play, in Now
She Dances! even the levels have levels. For
all it's insanity and layered complexity it is my
most fiercely autobiographical play. Painfully
private and highly sensitive details of my youth
are shattered, stitched back together and scattered
liberally throughout the play. No, they are not
the ones you think they are.
Audiences generally have no problem with the
play's complexity, gleefully enjoying it moment to
moment. On the other hand, most academics and the
gay intelligentsia tend to loath it. Perhaps the
character of Lane hits too close to home?
New York City, June 17, 2000
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