Is the White Knot the New Red Ribbon?

My friend Frank Voci started WhiteKnot.org as a visibility symbol for this new civil rights awakening we're seeing right now, a symbol for the belief in equal rights and non-discrimination for all people. He writes: "Whether you are gay or straight, please show your support by wearing the knot and telling people why you are wearing it. It may seem like a small thing, but imagine the white knot gaining the pervasiveness and instant recognition of the AIDS Ribbon. We can do it!"

Thousands of them were distributed at rallies last weekend. Here are instructions on how to make your own.

The AIDS ribbon certainly became a powerful symbol of solidarity and remains so today. A white knot seems an appropriate symbol using the language of marriage.

WhiteKnot [official site]

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Ted Stevens Loses, Cheney and Gonzales Indicted in Texas

The crooks are starting to fall.

Last night, the Alaska senate race was called for Mark Begich, putting corrupt Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens out of office:

"On the day the longest-serving Republican in Senate history turned 85, he was ousted by Alaska voters troubled by his conviction on federal felony charges and eager for a new direction in Washington, where Stevens served since Lyndon B. Johnson was president. Alaska voters 'wanted to see change,' said Democrat Mark Begich, who claimed a narrow victory Tuesday after a tally of remaining ballots showed him holding a 3,724-vote edge. 'Alaska has been in the midst of a generational shift - you could see it,' said Begich, the Anchorage mayor. Democrats now hold 58 Senate seats, when two independents who align with Democrats are included, with undecided races in Minnesota and Georgia."

Democrats are getting closer to a filibuter-proof 60-seat majority.

In other news, Vice PResident Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales have been indicted in Texas on state charges:

"Cheney's indictment on a charge of engaging in an organized criminal activity criticizes the vice president's investment in the Vanguard Group, which holds interests in the private prison companies running the federal detention centers. It accuses Cheney of a conflict of interest and "at least misdemeanor assaults" on detainees because of his link to the prison companies. Megan Mitchell, a spokeswoman for Cheney, declined to comment on Tuesday, saying that the vice president had not yet received a copy of the indictment. The indictment accuses Gonzales of using his position while in office to stop an investigation in 2006 into abuses at one of the privately-run prisons."

News clips, AFTER THE JUMP...

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Castro Residence of Gay Vietnam Vet Leonard Matlovich Recognized

Back in June I reported that the residence of Leonard Matlovich, a Vietnam war vet and gay rights pioneer who took up residence in San Francisco's Castro District in the late 70's and appeared on the cover of TIME magazine in September 1975 under the headline "I am a Homosexual", was to be recognized with a plaque thanks to the work of friends, including frequent Towleroad commenter Michael Bedwell.

Said Bedwell to the BAR at the time, "I wanted to memorialize him both to pay respect to him and to make newer generations aware of him. Mainstream society has countless examples of these which mark the people who came before, that inspire people, and reinforce people's identity themselves."

The TIME story concerned Matlovich's fight against the ban on gays in the military. According to the BAR: "He had told his commanding officers he was a homosexual but wanted to remain in the service. The Air Force kicked him out, and Matlovich sued the secretary of the Air Force. Matlovich settled out of court and received $160,000. The lawsuit did prompt the military after 1981 to switch from giving gay service members dishonorable discharges to honorable discharges."

Matlovich's headstone, in the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, DC, is well-known. It reads: "When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one."

The plaque had a dedication ceremony last Saturday at San Francisco's LGBT Community Center. It is now up at the corner of 18th and Castro. Matlovich died of AIDS in 1988. He was 44.

In related news, over 100 of the U.S. military's retired generals and admirals called for the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in a document released Monday.

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Huckabee: Gays Haven't Crossed 'Civil Rights' Violence Threshold

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee was on The View today talking about same-sex marriage and declaring that gay rights are not civil rights because gays have not had violence inflicted upon them like Blacks have.

Said Huckabee: "People who are homosexuals should have every right in terms of their civil rights, to be employed, to do anything they want. But that’s not really the issue. I know you talked about it and I think you got into it a little bit early on. But when we’re talking about a redefinition of an institution, that’s different than individual civil rights. We’re never going to convince each other...But here is the difference. Bull Connor was hosing people down in the streets of Alabama. John Lewis got his skull cracked on the Selma bridge."

No doubt Harvey Milk, Matthew Shepard, Teish Cannon, and the thousands of other victims of anti-gay hate crimes would beg to differ, if they could. As Think Progress notes, "Huckabee’s lame violence threshold is nothing more than a shoddy attempt to conceal his deep and fundamental homophobia."

Watch it, AFTER THE JUMP...

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On the Stage: Streamers and The Language of Trees

Kevin Sessums recently reviewed All My Sons, Speed-The-Plow and A Man for All Seasons for Towleroad. You can also catch up with Kevin online at his own blog at MississippiSissy.com.

One of the great joys of attending off-Broadway productions is that one gets to discover amazing new actors and actresses and to rediscover others. Sometimes the plays even astound. But usually it’s the performances that remain longer in the memory than the plays, which, more often than not, are written by promising playwrights at the beginnings of their careers.

Recently I’ve caught a few productions that contain some of the best performances I’ve seen in a few seasons. Let’s start, however, with one that was not by a new playwright but by a veteran - David Rabe. His Streamers - the third play in his Vietnam trilogy which includes The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel and Sticks and Bones - is receiving a first-rate revival at the Roundabout Theatre’s off-Broadway redoubt on 46th Street, the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre. I saw the original production back in 1976 at the Mitzi Newhouse Theatre at Lincoln Center when Joseph Papp was serving as its producer as well as at his Public Theatre. I had only recently moved to New York and was “blown away,” to use the vernacular of the day, by that production, which was the first time I had ever seen and heard homosexuality discussed and displayed with such openness on a stage. The impact of seeing that performance lingers still. That 1976 production was directed by Mike Nichols - it transferred with some cast changes from the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven - and won the New York Drama Critics award for Best American Play that year, as well as a Drama Desk. It was nominated for a Tony in 1977 but lost to The Shadow Box.

It was, in fact, back in 1976, my first instance of seeing actors unknown to me who moved me beyond measure - especially the late Peter Evans, who later became a close friend of mine during his equally acclaimed performance in David Mamet’s two-hander A Life in the Theater which costarred the legendary Ellis Rabb, at the then Theatre de Lys on Christopher Street. I followed Peter home one night around the corner from the theatre where he lived in a walk-up on Hudson. The next night I waited outside a store next door to his brownstone and pretended to be looking into its window and struck up a conversation with him when he was returning home from that evening’s performance. We became instant friends and remained so for many years. Peter died of AIDS and his loss was not only a personal one, but an inestimable one to the theatrical community. One of the most moving moments I’ve ever spent in a theatre was his memorial service held at Playwrights Horizons, where he had scored another triumph in Jonathan Reynolds’s Geniuses - which would be, come to think of it, another great play to revive in one of New York’s off-Broadway theatres.

At that memorial service, another of his good friends, Victor Garber, sang one of the most beautiful renditions of “No One is Alone” from Into the Woods I still have ever heard. After the service, his lover, director Gerald Gutierrez and best girlfriend, playwright Wendy Wasserstein, and I hoisted our drinks at Chez Josephine - all of us red-eyed from crying - to our beloved Peter and now they too, sadly, tragically, are gone. Forgive me for going on about Peter, but for those of you out there who might have known him, you’ll understand. He was a gentle soul. And a giant talent. And deserves to be remembered.

Peter played Richie in that 1976 production of Streamers, which is the role of the urbane Manhattanite who is quite open about his homosexuality - especially for 1965 when the play is set and even more especially inside a Virginia army barracks where the action of the play takes place. The inchoate chaos of the Vietnam war hangs over the social chaos that is happening outside those barracks in the racially charged America of the time. The relationships of the soldiers in the close confines of the barracks highlight the chaotic tensions that were gripping the nation. Rabe, moreover, uses Richie’s homosexuality to highlight the other social tensions that were straining society until there is a tragic eruption that is, indeed, warlike in its severity and shocking suddenness.

Richie is obviously in love with a fellow soldier, Billy, a mild-mannered midwesterner, who seems so confused by such affection that he can’t completely rebuff it until it’s too late. The other two main characters are African Americans - the go-along-to-get-along Roger and the temptestuous Carlyle, who understands Richie’s carnal needs but cannot control his own more base ones. The performances in the Roundabout revival are all first-rate. Hale Appleman is making a stunning New York debut as Richie. There is a sly simplicity to his portrayal of the anything-but-simple Richie. And he is able to imbue Richie with a kind of tortured grace. It is a brave performance because it seems so lacking in bravery.

J.D. Williams as Roger is the most professionally adept of the actors in this production. There is a smoothness to him he is able to translate into the role itself. Brad Fleischer as Billy sometimes lets the character’s own tentativeness spill over into his own talent. But Ato Essandoh as Carlyle - in a role that originally forever seared Dorian Harewood into my theatre-going mind - shows no tentativeness at all in delving deeply - and could it be? - heartbreakingly into his character’s deepseated and appalling danger. Appleman and Essandoh are giving the kinds of performances that more than anchor this melodramatic play; they are giving ones that will be remembered by new theatregoers of 2008 as they watch them over the next few years mature into their stature as truly gifted stage actors.

The title of the play comes from the soliloquy of one of the drunk sergeants who end each of the play’s acts with their gruff and touching bluster. (In the original they were memorably played by Dolph Sweet and Kenneth McMillan and now are just as memorably played by John Sharian and Larry Clarke.) The title involves the term for parachutes that do not open but stream downward above the condemned man attached to them. And here’s another detail, proof of what great roles Rabe has written in this play. The film version was directed by Robert Altman. Richie was played by artist Roy Lichtenstein’s son, Mitchell; Billy by Matthew Modine; Carlyle by Michael Wright; and Roger by a very young David Allan Grier. At the Venice Film Festival, where the film premiered, the whole cast was awarded with the Best Actor award. Maybe the Obies or New York Drama Critics could give this cast - masterully directed by Scott Ellis - the same kind of honor this year.

T T T 1/2 (out of 4 possible T's)

Streamers, Roundabout Theatre Co., Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre, 111 West 46th St., New York. Ticket information here.

***
THE LANGUAGE OF TREES

Downstairs at the Roundabout’s Steinberg Theatre, in the center’s blackbox, is another play about war, The Language of Trees, written by recent Brown graduate Steven Levenson. The play is about the early years of the Iraqi conflict when a father and husband, played admirably by Michael Hayden, goes over to the Middle East to serve as a translator and is captured and tortured. There is a disjunctive quality to the play as it goes back and forth between where he is held captive and the life of his wife and child and their busybody neighbor back home. But perhaps such jarring disjunctiveness is the playwright’s point. But it becomes even more pronounced when a kind of magical realism takes over in the war scenes as Bill Clinton joins the cell in which the translator is kept.

Continued, AFTER THE JUMP...

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Towleroad Guide to the Tube #393

JOE LIEBERMAN: Harry Reid press conference on decision to allow Joe Lieberman to keep his chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security Committee despite his attacks on Barack Obama during the campaign season.

CATHOLIC CARDINAL STAFFORD: Criticizes Obama as "aggressive, disruptive and apocalyptic."

PACKERS FAN: A bear who's a big Packers fan.

HABANERA: David Schmader at Slog says this old Sesame Street clip is maybe his earliest childhood memory. We must be the same age.

Check out our previous guides to the Tube here.

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