Read without ads and support Scribd by becoming a Scribd Premium Reader.
See Premium Plans
 
 YOUR FREELGBTQ NEWSPAPER
© GAY CITY NEWS 2010 • COMMUNITY MEDIA, LLC, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
SERVING GAY, LESBIAN, BI AND TRANSGENDERED NEW YORK • WWW.GAYCITYNEWS.COM
 AMERICA’S LARGEST CIRCULATION GAY AND LESBIAN NEWSPAPER!
Gay City
NEWSNEWS
TM
JUNE 8-21, 2011VOLUME TEN, ISSUE 12
BY PAUL SCHINDLER
 W 
ith six days to go in the StateSenate legislative calendar  before the June 20 scheduledadjournment, leading New York mar-riage advocates and their ace-in-the-hole Albany ally, Andrew Cuomo, are push-ing forward with what everyone involvedinsists is an unprecedentedly unifiedfront –– one they say has held firm sincethe earliest days of the new governor’sadministration. That is all for the good, since the gay and lesbian community is going to needevery bit of unity, determination, savvy,and perhaps a measure of luck if the jobis to get done. With 32 votes needed for passage inthe Senate, where Republicans hold a narrow 32-30 majority, the tally of pub-lic supporters of the bill stands at 26. A source with direct knowledge of theeffort being waged from Cuomo’s officesaid the feeling there is that “the pathto success” involves everybody “stayingorganized and focused, and not going off on tangents.” That individual hastened to add thereis “a full-court press coming out of thehighest levels on the second floor,” thelocation of the governor’s executive offic-es in the State Capitol.Echoing what other advocates have been saying for months, Mark Solomon,Freedom to Marry’s national campaigndirector, last week told Gay City News,
 June 20 Deadline onMarriage Equality
State Senate in session onlysix more days before adjournment
■
COMMUNITY
Swift, StingingCriticism of LGBT Center‘Moratorium’
BY DUNCAN OSBORNE
 A 
 week after the Lesbian, Gay,Bisexual and Transgender Com-munity Center allowed a groupthat opposes Israeli government poli-cies toward Palestinians to rent spacefor three meetings there, the Center abruptly pulled that approval on June 2and announced an “indefinite moratori-um” on renting to groups that “organizearound the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”In a statement posted on its website,the Center wrote that it “has been forcedto divert significant resources from itsprimary purpose of providing program-ming and services to instead navigating between opposing positions involvingthe Middle East conflict.”On May 25, the Center allowed thenow banned group, Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, to rent space, andQAIA met at the West 13th Street build-ing for the first time on May 26. The Cen-ter’s June 2 statement said that QAIA “conformed to the Center’s applicationguidelines and signed its non-discrimi-
LGBT CENTER P. 14MARRIAGE EQUALITY P. 8
ONE ARM
22
 
 6
 
D
a
y
s
 
T
o
 
G 
o 
7X
 
2
WWW
.
GAYCITYNEWS
.
COM
8 – 21
JUN
2011
Gogo
®
Inflight Internet is available on the entire Boeing 767-200 fleet and select MD-80 and 737 aircraft for flights over the continental U.S. Visit AA.com/wifi for more details. Gogo is a trademark of Aircell LLC. AmericanAirlines, AA.com and AA.com/rainbow are marks of American Airlines, Inc.
one
world is a mark of the
one
world Alliance, LLC. © 2011 American Airlines, Inc. All rights reserved.
Even when you’reout of town, you’renever out of touch.With in-flight Wi-Fi on American, you canaccess everythingyou need to work,play or just say hellofrom 30,000 feet.
 
8 - 21
 JUN
2011
Remembrance
 /
3
Gay Theater Pioneer Doric Wilson Dead at 72
Out playwright at Caffe Cino from early ‘60s was also lifelong activist
BY ANDY HUMM
D
oric Wilson survivedthe birth of the off-off-Broadway movement,three nights of the StonewallRiots, and 50 years of writingand producing gay theater.But when the play about Doric himself is written, theplaywright will be stuck with thecliché that this bear of a man with an enormous heart suc-cumbed to a weak ticker anddied on May 7. He was 72.Doric came to prominencein 1961 at the legendary CaffeCino, the birthplace of off-off-Broadway run by Joe Cino at 31 Cornelia Street in Greenwich Village since 1958. It was whereplaywrights John Guare, Rob-ert Patrick, María Irene Fornés,Lanford Wilson, William Hoff-man, and Jean-Claude vanItallie got their starts as well. When Doric met Cino, he –– like almost all newcom-ers –– was asked his sign. Theanswer “Pisces” got him a per-formance date of March 18,1961 for “And He Made Her,” a reworking of the Adam and Evemyth.Doric participated in threenights of the Stonewall Riots, but he was out long beforethen, writing gay-themed work  by the early 1960s.Robert Patrick said, “One of his four Cino plays, ‘Now SheDances,’ takes the trial of Oscar  Wilde, turns it into the story of Salome which Wilde himself had dramatized, puts it in Vic-torian times, and then, off of the modern streets of New York  — Cornelia Street where theCaffe Cino was — as its Johnthe Baptist, it brings on a gay rights protestor before there were gay rights protestors. How many innovations is that?” After Stonewall, Doric also worked as a bartender andmanager at such legendary gay  bars as the Spike and Ty’s, as well as at Brothers and Sisterscabaret. Writer and activist Perry Brass, who knew Doric fromthe early ’70s at the Gay Activ-ists Alliance (GAA), wrote on his blog that Doric loved “keepinggay theater alive in New York (and elsewhere). When I say ‘gay theater,’ I mean like gay theater  with no apologies. Because gay theater is different from say,‘Angels in America’ or the next episode of ‘Glee’ when Curt stilldoesn’t get to kiss his cute boy-friend.”Brass wrote that Doric “wasone of the inventors of gay the-ater, when it was crazy, disrup-tive, transgressive, shocking,tacky, funny and absolutely  wrap-your-lips-around-it lov-able.”In 1974, Doric founded thefirst professional gay theater company, The Other Side of Silence (TOSOS), with Billy Blackwell, John McSpadden,and Peter del Valle. They did works by everyone from Cowardand Orton to McNally, Patrick,and the other recently departed Wilson, Lanford –– not to men-tion Doric himself, who wrote“Street Theater,” about theStonewall Riots, and “The West Street Gang,” about gay peoplephysically fighting back against gay-bashing.He earned the first Rob-ert Chesley Award for Lifetime Achievement in Gay and Lesbi-an Playwriting in 1994 and wasrecognized for Artistic Achieve-ment at the New York Innovative Theater Awards in 2007. With Barry Childs and Mark Finley, Doric revived TOSOS as TOSOS II in 2001, eventually dropping the “II.” Jack Schlegelof Out Professionals recalledthat his group played a key rolein the resurrection of TOSOS when the three came to an OPprogram at Manhattan’s LGBT Community Center.“Doric said, ‘This is the audi-ence for TOSOS!’” Schlegel toldGay City News. The revived company started with staged readings and went  back to doing fully staged pro-ductions, including a site-spe-cific production of “Street The-ater” at the Spike.Childs, administrative direc-tor of TOSOS, said Doric “deep-ly… cared about giving new andemerging playwrights a chanceto have their work seen andtheir voices heard.”Finley shared that Doric had been in poor health for the past two years with respiratory andheart problems. “He told me,‘I can really feel myself slowingdown,’” he said.“He really loved really goodactors and loved to tell stories,”continued Finley, who got hiredas Doric’s director after the twomet at a cabaret and hit it off.Finley is the artistic director of  TOSOS.Rick Hinkson, a director at  TOSOS, knew Doric from 1986 when he lived in Seattle, whereDoric had moved to be close tohis elderly mother.“He was such a large pres-ence physically and mentally,”he said, “that people didn’t know how precarious his health was.”Hinkson said Doric was close tofinishing his last play, “Boy Next Door,” a comedy about an agingporn star and an OOB play- wright loosely based on Robert Patrick.Doric Wilson was born Feb-ruary 24, 1939 in Los Angeles, but grew up on his grandfa-ther’s Kennewick, Washingtonranch. His high school Englishteacher flunked him for writinga play in fulfillment of a classassignment, after insisting that none of her students was smart enough to do so and accusinghim of plagiarism. Undeterred,Doric went on to write 12 full-length plays and nurture innu-merable others.Edward Albee, who had once been lovers with Doric, told Gay City News, “We went back a long way. I saw his work at the Cino.He was a good guy and a goodplaywright.” Albee once told Doric he was“too nice to be a playwright.” Terrence McNally, who had work produced by TOSOS,called Doric “a great pioneer.”Marshall Mason, the longtimedirector of Lanford Wilson’s work and founder of Circle Rep, where Doric was a foundingmember in 1969, said Doric’s“Now She Dances” “was the first play that I saw in New York.”He said that Jane Lowry, whostarred in that production, wasDoric’s “muse.”Lanford Wilson, who diedin March, said in 2004, “If thepress had discovered Caffe Cinothree years earlier, it would have been Doric everyone was talkingabout instead of me.” Lanford’s breakthrough “The Madness of Lady Bright” bowed at the Cinoin 1964. Actor and playwright DavidDrake wrote on Facebook intribute, “I thank you, Doric, for giving me the first line I spokeon a NY stage in your mas-terpiece ‘Street Theater.’ Of course, because it came from your mind, Doric, that line got a laugh… every night.”Ever the activist, Doric’sown last Facebook posting onMay 6, the day before he died, was, “Tell Congress: End gov-ernment handouts to rich oilcompanies.”I interviewed Doric for a charity photo calendar called“Legends of the Village” sev-eral years ago, and his famoushumor was prompted by itspublication. “I love the calen-dar,” he told me, “but who’s thefat guy who jumped betweenme and the camera?”Of why he loved theater somuch, he wrote, “The wonder-ful words, the laughter, theimpossible made magic by theringing of a bell –– that’s what I remember most. I remember everything but the dates.” William Hoffman, playwright of “As Is,” remembers Doricfrom 1965, when they workedat Hill & Wang.“Doric and I both wearingsuits, kind of cruising eachother,” he said. “Nothing every happened, but I realized that this man was beautiful.”Hoffman was with Doric at his last birthday bash.“He loved the cabaret singersand the operas singers,” Hoff-man recalled. “He was literally in ecstasy. It was the happiest moment of his life. You couldsee it in his expressions. Heloved performers, the theater,and gay people.”
Doric Wilson, with his mother Marjorie, at Manhattan’s 1974 Gay Pride March.
Lanford Wilson said, “If the presshad discovered Caffe Cino three years earlier, it would have beenDoric everyone was talking about.”
Search
Search History:
Searching...
Result 00 of 00
00 results for result for
  • p.
    • Notes
    Load more