All politics are personal. None more so perhaps than the fight over gay marriage, currently playing itself out in California courts and on stage in Standing on Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays, which opens a new five-week run on May 9 at the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center’s Renberg Theatre.
Co-producer Stuart Ross and frequent Standing on Ceremony actress Peri Gilpin see the popular evening of celebrity-performed short plays by well-known playwrights as both galvanizing and accessible.
Stuart Ross
“I don’t think I’m as proud of anything as this,” says Ross, the Forever Plaid creator and co-writer/director of the upcoming Off-Broadway comedy, Old Jews Telling Jokes. “It did what it was supposed to do. When I first saw the show, it got me to act. To become an activist, I mean, and take action. How long has it been since there was any kind of contemporary writing instantly written for one specific social issue? I can’t think of many. So on that level it’s really unique for me.”
“I feel like the pen is mightier than the sword,” offers former Frasier and current Make It or Break It star Gilpin over lunch in Malibu. “It’s a gentler way to say these things. I think there’s so many ways they [the playwrights] access and hook into these characters. There’s humor and pathos, unusual people and normal people, people you can relate to and people you can’t. Some are funny and some are not funny.
“Everyone involved is striving for a real balance because that’s how the show is going to reach more people. So it’s got a real agenda outside of the acting and outside of the production. That’s why I really love this.”
Ross first attended Standing on Ceremony as an audience member when it debuted as a one-night benefit at the El Portal in September 2009. Conceived and directed by Brian Shnipper, SOC was created to raise awareness and money for gay marriage equality. Shnipper and associate producer Allain Rochel contacted several playwrights to write short pieces on the topic specifically for the evening.
“It sparked me into calling Brian and saying ‘anything I can do to help you get this to New York?’” recalls Ross. “He said, ‘Well, we’re thinking of going to…’ and he named some cities. I said, ‘That’s all great but I think this is good enough to go [to New York]. Once you get a little presence there, all that other stuff will come into place.’ I made some calls and got it into New York Theatre Workshop, which was great because that’s where we got people like Doug Wright, Paul Rudnick, Neil LaBute and Moisés Kaufman interested.”
James Patrick Stuart and Jack Plotnick at Largo
In June 2010, a star-studded cast of 35 actors performed 13 plays at the three-hour NYC event benefiting the Human Rights Campaign, Marriage Equality New York and New York Theatre Workshop. Veteran producer Joan Stein caught it and came on board as co-producer with Ross. The two suggested trimming the show to six actors and nine plays to tighten the evening to 90 minutes. On December 6, the producers launched a limited run at Largo at the Coronet, with a benefit hosted by Bruce Vilanch that coincided with the first day of the American Foundation for Equal Rights’ case before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Now the show moves to the Renberg Theatre, located in the LA Gay and Lesbian Center’s Lily Tomlin/Jane Wagner Cultural Arts Center at The Village at Ed Gould Plaza, for another limited run beginning with an April 25 preview. A portion of all proceeds will be earmarked to support the Center’s Vote for Equality program which “trains and mobilizes volunteers in Los Angeles to increase support for marriage equality.”
A different celebrity ensemble will be announced for each of the six Monday night performances. Past performers have included Jason Alexander, Eve Best, Matthew Broderick, Jonathan Cake, Judd Hirsch, Richard Kind, Hamish Linklater, Wendie Malick, Jefferson Mays, Deborah Messing, Debra Monk, Kathy Najimy, Zach Quinto, Jean Smart, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jon Tenney and Alfre Woodard.
Jean Smart, seated James Patrick Stuart and Wendie Malick
Actors scheduled to perform April 25 include Amy Aquino, Harriet Harris, John Getz, Peter Paige, Tom Everett Scott and Cynthia Stevenson. As of this date, those known for May 9 include Peri Gilpin, Julie Hagerty, Rachael Harris and John Rubinstein. Wendie Malick will return June 6.
The nine plays that currently make up Standing on Ceremony include The Revision by Jordan Harrison, White Marriage by Jeffrey Hatcher, London Mosquitoes by Moisés Kaufman, This Marriage Is Saved by Joe Keenan, Strange Fruit by Neil LaBute, This Flight Tonight by Wendy MacLeod, Altar of Words by José Rivera, The Gay Agenda by Paul Rudnick and On Facebook by Doug Wright.
Peri Gilpin: What’s the Problem?
Gilpin has performed several of SOC’s Largo shows at the behest of old friend Ross, whom she met when he directed Frasier. He subsequently participated in her annual Les Girls cabaret event, which benefits the National Breast Cancer Coalition Fund and marked its 10th anniversary last fall. She is also a board member of the Sarcoma Foundation of America.
“Peri has a knack for this kind of thing with an effortlessness that makes everything so wonderful for this kind of show,” Ross enthuses. “She takes her moments and really explores the script to find the truth that relates to her.”
According to Ross, Gilpin was responsible for getting former Frasier writer Joe Keenan to pen a new satire in which a disgraced evangelist and his wife insist that his fling with a male prostitute has strengthened their marriage. He also has a new piece by Jenny Lyn Bader called Oppression and Pearls that he hopes to place in rotation as well. “We’re always on the lookout for more plays, especially with parts for women and by women.”
Peri Gilpin
“I was aware of the show before Stuart asked me to do it,” says Gilpin. “I do think they’ve been an assertive group without being aggressive. You know? They’ve been taking things one thing at a time and as it’s grown, they’ve invited more people into the fold. They have more plays than time to do them. So they’re rotating in plays, they’re rotating in actors and now they’ve found a home at the LA Gay & Lesbian Center. Now so many young people will see this and see they have a whole legacy of people older than them that really care.”
Ross says he has been having an “exchange of ideas for the cause” with Jon Imparato, director of cultural arts at the LAGLC’s Lily Tomlin/Jane Wagner Cultural Arts Center, which include “going in and working with kids and having them write on these things. People have been sending us essays their kids are writing. London Mosquitoes seems to really excite teenagers. My friend Caroline Aaron’s daughter wrote a piece for school about the evolvement of society and how London Mosquitoes brought her into an awareness she hadn’t thought about before. She’s 15.”
To Gilpin, the Kaufman piece about a widower trying to make sense of the loss of his longtime lover would make a compelling film about resistance to gay marriage within the gay community itself. “One time Jane [Leeves of Hot in Cleveland] and I were offered to be in a movie together,” she explains. “It was about a lesbian couple getting married but they were too freaked out to do it. I hesitated to tell you the story because I don’t want to insult anybody. But I went to the guy who produced it and said, ‘We’re too young for this. You need older people.’ And he was like, ‘Why?’ And I said, ‘Because if Jane and I wanted to get married, we would go get married.’”
London Mosquitoes eloquently equates the genetic evolution of a new species of mosquito found in London’s Underground with the metamorphosis of Paul and Joe’s five-decade partnership. Both are forced by necessity to transform over time.
“Paul and Joe needed to change in order to have their lives together because their relationship was taboo,” Gilpin elaborates. “So they morphed into something else and were even better for it. Paul doesn’t want to talk about gay marriage after getting used to this kind. He says something like, ‘So just eradicate my whole life. We were married.’ I think that’s a beautiful point.”
Both Ross and Gilpin admit the show needs to reach out to straight people who are against gay marriage and not merely preach to the converted.
Wendie Malick
“The more I’m able to spend time reaching out beyond my circle of the easy ones to call, the better,” emphasizes Ross. “I have some friends in the Valley from various organizations I work with that aren’t in the business and they came to the Largo. They immediately said, ‘What can we do to help?’ They called all these people who are a little right of center to tell them they must see this show. That’s the best thing that can happen.”
“I keep sending out e-mails to my friends saying please forward this on to someone who hasn’t really decided,” Gilpin explains. “People are really entrenched in how they feel and they have all these reasons…[But] there’s not one thing anyone can say [against gay marriage] that holds any water for me. People need to be allowed to be who they are openly. That’s what our forefathers came here to establish. That’s what we’re all about. What’s the problem?”
As someone happily married to artist Christian Vincent for 12 years with two twin daughters, Gilpin at times finds the gay marriage fight “ironic because there are so many hetero couples that live together and don’t want to do the marriage thing. I know couples who’ve gone to a therapist and divorced to stay together because there’s something about that tie that screws up their relationship. So that’s happening on one side of this issue and on the other side, as I said before, there are older gay couples who really don’t want to make this commitment just to make a point.”
“I was listening to Fran Lebowitz in her documentary [Public Speaking],” Ross adds. “She was saying, ‘No, I don’t want to get married, but I really have to support the people who do because that’s the point.’”
Gilpin narrated a 2007 documentary called The Year of Paper that followed three couples – one straight, one lesbian and one gay – for three years. The latter two married in San Francisco when Mayor Gavin Newsom briefly opened the door for gay marriages in 2004. “The straight couple broke up after six months,” notes Gilpin. “They got married at the Burning Man festival.”
**All production photography by Chuck Green including front page photo of co-producer Joan Stein and Peri Gilpin.
Standing on Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays, produced by Joan Stein and Stuart Ross in association with the LA Gay & Lesbian Center, plays Mon., 8 pm: April 25 (preview), May 9 (opening), May 23, June 6, 20 and 27. Tickets: $35 and $50. Renberg Theatre, 1125 N. McCadden Pl., Los Angeles; 323-860-7300 or www.standingonceremony.net.
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