After years of development at SKYLAB*, readings in Los Angeles and at New York's Circle in the Square, and a two-year setback by the coronavirus, LAVENDER MEN written by Roger Q. Mason (they/them), directed by Lovell Holder, has finally made its world premiere.
As a high bar for gender non-conforming people, it is a shining star of storytelling. As a commentary on the life of an American icon, it is slightly hyperbolic although not entirely unsubstantiated according to whichever modern essays you might be reading about the subject matter. The term "lavender men", in fact, is not an original concept.
Principally, the play borrows its title from an essay by Carl Sandburg who described unusual friendships between men as "lavender" in nature. Sandburg, a celebrated poet, and the son of Swedish immigrants, born and raised in Galesburg, Illinois on January 6, 1878, is without a doubt a definitively contextual observer of the times. In the year of his birth, memories of the Civil War were still fresh. As a boy, he met actual Civil War veterans and even old associates of Lincoln.
Sandburg collected and classified Lincoln material for thirty years with the intent to separate Lincoln the man from Lincoln the myth. In doing so, he endeavored to relate with graphic detail, the humanness of the man he so admired. His painstakingly researched, two-volume account of Abraham Lincoln's life (The Prairie Years [1926] and The War Years [1939], although beset with errors and both praised and panned by professional historians, was one of the monumental biographical works of the century.**
Sandburg's writing, later, though, also had a detrimental effect. A very dark period of the 1930s was heavily influenced by this same work and lavender as a consequence was barbarously lexicalized. Where many aspects of queer culture often skirted under the radar of mainstream society via the symbolism of lavender, Gay men in America were now taunted for possessing a "dash" or "streak" of the unique color. Subsequently, however, rather than bringing about the end of its subversive use, lavender evolved over the decades as a symbol of protest and pride for the LGBT community and remains so today. Hence, perhaps, why the title matters so much for this play.***
According to both the director and playwright, who is also Taffeta, the play's contemporary narrator, LAVENDER MEN began as an investigation of Abraham Lincoln's [alleged] queerness. In the interim of becoming a full-blown stage play, the piece made it onto the highly prestigious 2020 Kilroys List.****
The evolving work also had an early separate life as a short film based on the script as, "TAFFETA", a black, plus-sized, genderqueer person's searing self-portrait of body dysmorphia, food addiction and queer loneliness in the age of intimacy. It premiered at OutFest in Los Angeles and at Geena Davis' Bentonville Film Festival.
The dialog begins hot at the crossroads of dishy physical comparison and historical bias in this steady, quippy script. A sort of gossip rag mix of fact and fiction of Taffeta's personal fantasia - a medley of themes, variations, and interludes all designed around her own free compositional fancy. She retells the story of Lincoln via scenes with his alleged lovers true or untrue. And really, it doesn't matter. Nor does it seem to be the point as the play goes on.
Taffeta (Roger Q. Mason) is everything Lincoln is not: Black, Filipinx, queer, TGNC (transgender and gender non-conforming), and plus-size. Taffeta is a present-tense figure role-playing inside a story about the past; an outsider attempting to escape her own loneliness and alienation in both worlds. And it takes all this machination to accomplish it. And it took an awful lot of research after the fact for me to understand it.
LAVENDER MEN assumes a lot about the audience. Mostly that everyone is familiar with the homosexual references about Lincoln in the first place. I certainly wasn't. So, what happens during the performance, intentional or not can be confusing as well as disarming, especially for people who are not gender fluid, which seems to be the intent.
Taffeta's dialog is often an attack on the audience rather than a composition about Lincoln. A passive character study with a blow-horn built in so that you don't doze off into your own fantasy about who she is and what SHE represents - a BIPOC person, struggling through racial bias, negative body image, and the hurt of not fitting into her own community or any community perhaps. The depth and feeling that goes into the work is intense. And although the presentation might seem like a child's dreamscape attempt to sort through stages of self-discovery, Taffeta is far more sophisticated in her words and intentions than that.
By juxtaposing herself with this iconic figure she's no longer shouting into the darkness. She is in your face and you won't deny her anymore, because she's taken someone beloved and forced you to look at him in a different way. And if she can get you to shift your perspective about a person as iconic as Abraham Lincoln maybe you can begin to understand where she is coming from.
LAVENDER MEN is a provocative piece of reconstructionism but it doesn't easily achieve its desired end. As smartly written as it is, it's complicated. And it takes more than just a few hours sitting in the theater to understand. Nevertheless, it's time well spent. And we can't help but finally see Taffeta herself, perhaps for the first time, in the way she wants.
*Skylight Theatre's resident playwrighting
**** The Kilroys' List is a gender parity initiative to end the "systematic underrepresentation of female and trans playwrights" in the American theater industry. Gender disparity is defined as the gap of unproduced playwrights' whose plays are being discriminated against based on the writer's gender identification and intersectional identities of race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, age, and ability.
PLAYWRIGHTS ARENA & SKYLIGHT THEATRE COMPANY PRESENT
THE WORLD PREMIERE OF
LAVENDER MEN
WRITTEN BY Roger Q. Mason
DIRECTED BY LOVELL HOLDER
SCENIC DESIGN: Stephen Gifford
LIGHTING DESIGN: Dan Weingarten
COSTUME DESIGN: WENDELL CARMICHAEL
SOUND DESIGN: Erin Bednarz
ORIGINAL MUSIC: DAVID GONZALEZ
PROP DESIGN: MICHAEL O'HARA
DRAMATURG: DYLAN SOUTHARD
CHOREOGRAPHER: JOBEL MEDINA
INTIMACY DIRECTOR: Ann James
CASTING DIRECTOR: RAUL CLAYTON STAGGS
PUBLICIST:JUDITH BORNE
ASSOCIATE PRODUCERS: TYREE MARSHALL, Michael Kearns
PRODUCERS: Gary Grossman, Jon Lawrence Rivera
PHOTO BY JENNY GRAHAM: Roger Q. Mason, Alex Esola, Pete Ploszek
LAVENDER MEN opens at 8:30pm on Saturday August 6 and runs 8:30pm Saturdays, 3pm Sundays, 7:30pm Mondays through September 4, 2022 (No performance August 8).
ASL performance August 28.
Skylight Theatre is located at 1816 ½ North Vermont, LA, 90027. Street parking or local pay lots. No late seating.
Everyone must present proof of FULL VACCINATION against COVID-19 along with a government-issued photo ID in order to attend. Face masks are required to be worn indoors at all times. Tickets start at $20. More information: LavenderMenPlayLA.com
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