THE WIND IS US: THE DEATH THAT KILLED CAPOTE Set for United Solo Theatre Festival at Theatre Row

Playwright Mike Broemmel will see his second one-actor play about an LGBTQ+ historical figure hit the stage at United Solo this fall at Theatre Row in Midtown. The Wind Is Us: The Death that Killed Capote starring Eddie Schumacher will be part of the 2024 festival of solo actor productions on October 12, 2024, at 2:00 p.m. Broemmel’s play about LGBTQ+ rights leader Harvey Milk, I’m Harvey Milk, was part of the 2023 United Solo Festival.

In discussing the inclusion of his play about Truman Capote at the dynamic theatre festival, Broemmel makes mention that earlier in his career he never would have imagined that he would be a playwright, let alone one whose body of work includes plays about iconic LGBTQ+ historical figures. In addition to the pair of Broemmel’s plays that are included in the United Solo portfolio, Broemmel has two other plays about LGBTQ+ historical figures: Divinely Alone: A Picnic with Divine that chronicles the life of the actor and drag queen of the same name as well as cabaret about entertainer and transgender activist Christine Jorgensen

Despite Broemmel’s seeming surprised that he has ended up with four projects taking on major LGBTQ+ historical figures, the earlier days of his adult life in the late 1980s and into 1990s suggest that having this latest project with these themes on the boards Off-Broadway is an understandable if not “to-be-expected” progression. Broemmel was an early target of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church, the Topeka, Kansas-based congregation best known as the “God Hates Fags Church” and with a troop of mostly related congregants that garnered national attention picketing funerals of such people as Matthew Shepard and U.S. soldiers killed in combat.

“The attacks by the cult reached a crescendo when I was a candidate for the Kansas State Senate in a district that included the Westboro Baptist Church and the compound in which the church’s followers lived. They would picket events I attended with signs emblazoned with a variety of truly pejorative terms. Oftentimes, the signs would include images of my face, complete with horns coming out of my head and either 666 or triangles scrawled across my forehead.” Broemmel explained.

Ultimately Broemmel obtained a bit of what fairly can be called comeuppance against Westboro Baptist Church. “A few years after I ran for office, I opened a gay dance club down the street from Westboro Baptist Church,” Broemmel said. “I took some level of satisfaction knowing that I opened the door to members of the LGBTQ+ community being on the doorstep of this horrible hate group.”

Broemmel’s The Wind Is Us: The Death that Killed Capote follows the life of author Truman Capote from his days researching his iconic “non-fiction novel” In Cold Blood until his death in 1984. Pathos and comedy combine to reveal how and why Capote’s life collapsed, resulting in his premature death. The play stars Eddie Schumacher as Truman Capote.

“Being in Kansas in late 1980s and early 1990s I was able to connect with people who had first hand knowledge of Truman Capote’s time in Kansas doing research for In Cold Blood. These people included the gentleman who ran the Kansas prison system at the time the pair of killers that were central figures in Capote’s book were incarcerated and executed,” Broemmel said.

Part of the United Solo Theatre Festival at Theatre Row, The Wind Is Us: The Death that Killed Capote will be staged October 12, 2024, at 2:00 p.m. Tickets are available at United Solo Theatre Festival Fall 2024 - Building for the Arts (bfany.org)

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