Michael Kearns' BLOODBOUND to Premiere at Highways Performance Space

Highly-acclaimed Los Angeles theatre luminary and legendary artist-activist Michael Kearns will debut his new full-length play Bloodbound at Highways Performance Space, 1651 18th Street in Santa Monica, CA, opening January 19th, 2018. Performances will continue through March 4th, with Mark Bringelson directing. Producers are Leo Garcia and Patrick Kennelly for Highways Performance Space, Ryland Shelton for Moon Mile Run, and Kirk Frederick, Executive Producer.

Bloodbound, starring Gordon Thomson as Anthony Shaw, Greg Ainsworth as Vincent Shaw, Mike Bash as younger Anthony, and Hunter Lee Hughes as younger Vincent, fights for the freedom to love against overpowering and unreasonable odds: familial implosion, interminable and unjustified incarceration, distorted sexual childhood boundaries, and roller coaster rides of mental illnesses involving all four family members-Mommy, Daddy, Older Brother, and Younger Brother.

Kearns' play tracks the lives of the two misfit brothers who are destined to love in spite of the gnarled realities they cannot avoid sharing. By remembering their past-in some cases, reliving critical, contradictory, and conflicting moments-perhaps the horrific fear of their mutual deaths (whether in a fetid hospital bed or a sweaty prison cell) will lessen as they approach the final curtain.

Gordon Thomson is best known for his role as the villainous, but dashing, Adam Carrington on ABC's Dynasty from 1981 through 1989, a role that earned him a Golden Globe nomination in 1988. Once Dynasty ended in 1989, Thomson moved on to daytime dramas, playing the role of Mason Capwell on NBC's Santa Barbara and co-starring on NBC's Sunset Beach. He also appeared on Days of Our Lives and The Young and the Restless.

In June of 2017, Michael Kearns was awarded in a ceremony at Los Angeles City Hall that kicked off the City's seventh annual Heritage Month. Mayor Eric Garcetti and Council member Mitch O'Farrell were among the city officials who cited Kearns with a Trailblazer Award, alongside Alexandra Billings, Sara Ramirez, and Alexei Romanoff. Kearns was specifically acknowledged for more than four decades of combining art and activism in a number of theatrical presentations with which he was involved, and a number of organizations he founded.

Kearns' trailblazing reputation includes many firsts: he came out in the mid-'70s, officially making him "Hollywood's first openly gay actor" with one foot in the mainstream industry and the other in the alternative art world. In 1991, he revealed his HIV-positive status on Entertainment Tonight and a few years later, he was the first HIV+, single, gay man to adopt. His daughter, he says, is "the most important force" in his life.

After Kearns' stunning career that encompasses acting, directing, producing, teaching, and various entrepreneurial assignments in the theatre-including his current Artistic Associate position at Skylight Theatre, Artistic Director of QueerWise, Founder and one of the Michael Kearns & Other Outies, and Artist-in-Residence at Housing Works-it is playwriting that seems to have captured the artist-activist's impassioned mode of expression.

Tickets: $25 general and $20 members/students/seniors at www.highwaysperformance.org.

To post a comment, you must register and login.