4545 Park Boulevard #101
San Diego, California 92116
Box Office: 619.220.0097
Business Office: 619.220.6830

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 22, 2008

CONTACT: Dan Kirsch, Executive/Artistic Director
or Travis Guss, Patron Services Manager
619.220.6830

Diversionary Theatre announces 2008-2009 season of six plays
Two new musicals have West Coast Premieres; two special world premiere projects

“We always like to give our audience a couple of surprises,” said Dan Kirsch, Executive & Artistic Director of Diversionary Theatre, as he announced the 2008-2009 season.  “In addition to producing the West Coast Premiere of two new musicals, we’ll also produce Jean Paul Sartre’s classic fantasy No Exit.  We’ll work with local choreographers to create a new event, Dance/Theatre, creating new dance works inspired by past Diversionary productions.  And we’ll celebrate Harvey Milk, an early hero of the gay community, with a new play by local playwright Patricia Loughrey.

“We’re very proud of our unique mission – to tell lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) stories,” continued Kirsch.  “Other than No Exit, which was written in 1944, all of the other shows on our season have premiered since 2005.  We hope the community will come share our past and our future as we celebrate another new season of great theatre.”

The six-show season includes the new musical Yank!; Jean Paul Sartre’s classic fantasy No Exit, directed by Esther Emery; a new send-up of A Christmas Carol, Scrooge in Rouge – A British Music Hall Christmas Carol, directed by Rayme Sciaroni; the comedy As Much As You Can, directed by Antonio T.J. Johnson, in collaboration with San Diego Black Ensemble Theatre; Carol Lynn Pearson’s drama Facing East; and Douglas Carter Beane’s biting comedy The Little Dog Laughed, directed by Robert Barry Fleming.

Diversionary will also produce two special world premiere events as part of their Queer Theatre project: Dance/Theatre, where six local choreographers create new dance works inspired by a past Diversionary production, with Peter G. Kalivas as artistic director of the project; and Dear Harvey, a new work by Patricia Loughrey and directed by Dan Kirsch that celebrates Harvey Milk.

The plays
YANK!  West Coast Premiere!  July 10-August 17. 

Book and lyrics by David Zellnik, music by Joseph Zellnik.  Igor Goldin will direct as well as recreate Jeffry Denman's original choreography, with musical direction by Amy Dalton; in association with The Gallery Players (www.galleryplayers.com).  Featuring Tom Zohar, with Michael Ahmad, Zachary Bryant, Jacob Caltrider, Rocky DeHaro, Eric Dowdy, Tom Doyle, Juston Harlin, Tony Houck, Sven Salumaa and John Whitley.  An official event of San Diego LGBT Pride.   

Some WWII buddy stories didn’t make it into the history books.  A love song to Hollywood's "it takes one of every kind" platoon flicks and to 1940s Broadway, Yank! tells the story of a war reporter named Stu and an army private named Mitch who fall in love and struggle to survive in a time and place where the odds are stacked against them.  Suffused with period songs (swing, big band, boogie-woogie), Yank! explores what stories get told in wartime, and how WWII became the great catalyst in bringing gay men and women together.  “Yank! overlays a modern gay sensibility on a typical wartime crew to illustrate the sheer hell, internal and external, gay soldiers endured….More-complex emotions than many musicals allow are present.” - Back Stage.  Visit www.yankthemusical.com for more background and history of the show.  

NO EXIT.  September 11-October 5. 

The classic fantasy by Jean Paul Sartre, adapted from the French by Paul Bowles.  Directed by Esther Emery.  Hell is other people.  Two women and one man are locked up together for eternity in one hideous room in hell.  The windows are bricked up; there are no mirrors; the electric lights can never be turned off; and there is no exit.  The irony of this hell is that its torture is not of the rack and fire, but of the burning humiliation of each soul as it is stripped of its pretenses by the cruel curiosity of the damned.

In January, the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle named Emery the inaugural recipient of the Jack O'Brien Excellence in Directing Award.

SCROOGE IN ROUGE - An English Music Hall Christmas Carol.  West Coast Premiere!  November 20-December 21.

Book by Ricky Graham and Jeffrey Roberson.  Music & Lyrics by Jefferson Turner.  Directed by Rayme Sciaroni, with costumes by Jennifer Brawn Gittings.  Three actors play 23 roles in the gayest Christmas show you’ll see this year!  A new quick-change, cross-dressing version of the Dickens classic, set in a Victorian music hall.  “The clever pleasures of Scrooge in Rouge are abundant, varied, risque and virtually nonstop.  It is uproarious entertainment; a brilliantly constructed funhouse that works on so many levels… It plays giddy games of gender, identity, reality and theatricality, all within the framework of the music hall… There's a wonderfully unnecessary seaside number, for no reason other than it was obligatory music hall fare.  And there is a new Tiny Tim every night! – The Times Picayune (from the world premiere in New Orleans last Christmas season).
                       
AS MUCH AS  YOU CAN.  January 8-25. 

By Paul Oakley Stovall.  Directed by Antonio T.J. Johnson.  In collaboration with San Diego Black Ensemble Theatre.  Finding the funny in family conflict when a black gay man brings home his white lover.  When Jesse returns home to Chicago for his brother's wedding, he surprises his family by bringing along his Swedish boyfriend.  Jesse's three siblings have varying reactions to the couple: his half-sister is supportive and anxious for the family to fully accept them as a couple; his younger brother is resistant to welcoming a white man into their African-American family; and his deeply religious sister thinks that Jesse is betraying the memory of their deceased parents by "choosing" what she considers a sinful, unnatural lifestyle.  Through card games, language lessons, and literature, they all strive to live, love, and give as much as they can.  

Johnson is Executive Director of San Diego Black Ensemble Theatre, and as an actor, recently played the lead role in the Cygnet Theatre/SDBET production of August Wilson’s Fences.

FACING EAST.  March 19-April 5

By Carol Lynn Pearson.  Director to be announced.  The suicide of their gay son forces a Mormon couple to confront the limits of their spiritual teachings.  As an upstanding Mormon couple reel from the suicide of their gay son, they are stuck between their faith and their new reality when they encounter their son's partner for the first time.  Although centered on Mormon characters, the play is for anyone of any faith, anyone with a family, anyone who has felt the pain of loss, anyone with hope for change. 

The premiere of the play in Salt Lake City in 2006 coincided with the 20th anniversary of Pearson’s seminal book Goodbye, I Love You, the story of her life with her gay husband Gerald, their 12-year Mormon temple marriage, four children, divorce, ongoing friendship, and his death from AIDS in her home, where she cared for him.  Last summer the San Francisco Chronicle wrote: “Pearson has never remarried.  "That has been a disappointment in my life," she said.  There's also been grief along with joy, bafflement and a strange sense of wonder in the lives of her children.  As for her oldest, Pearson drew a deep breath before relating this chapter.  Like her mother, Emily married a gay man and subsequently divorced him.  That man is Steven Fales, creator of the widely traveled solo show Confessions of a Mormon Boy.  (Fales performed the show at Diversionary during the summer of 2005.)  Emily, hewing to her mother's past, is now writing a book about her life with a gay Mormon husband.”

THE LITTLE DOG LAUGHED.  May 7-31

By Douglas Carter Beane.  Directed by Robert Barry Fleming.  A biting, contemporary comedy about the price of Hollywood celebrity.  This comedy follows the adventures a movie star who could hit big if it weren’t for one teensy-weensy problem – his agent can’t seem to keep him in the closet!  Trying to help him navigate Hollywood’s choppy waters, the devilish agent is doing all she can to keep the star away from the cute call boy who’s caught his eye and the call boy’s girlfriend (wait, the call boy has a girlfriend?). Will there be a happy ending as the final credits roll?  “Theatergoers have cause to rejoice.  Devastatingly funny, with dizzy, irresistible writing that brings down the house.” – NY Times

Fleming won a 2008 Craig Noel Award for Outstanding Featured Performance by a Male in a Musical for his performance in Ain’t Misbehavin’ at the San Diego Rep.  He is an Assistant Professor and Theatre Director Designate of the Theatre Arts Program at the University of San Diego.

Special Events

Under Diversionary’s Queer Theatre banner, two new projects will have their world premiere.  Queer Theatre gives voice to the stories of LGBT people, and is supported by a grant from The James Irvine Foundation New Connections Fund.

DANCE/THEATRE.  February 5-8, 2009.  Inspired by Theatre/Created through Dance.  Peter G. Kalivas will be artistic director for this new project that brings past Diversionary productions to life through new dance pieces, created by local choreographers, including Javier Velasco (San Diego Ballet) and Deven P. Brawley (D'Shire Dance).

DEAR HARVEY.   By Patricia Loughrey.  April 23-25, 2009.  Directed by Dan Kirsch.  In 1978, Harvey Milk challenged the gay community to fight for our rights.  Thirty years later we celebrate his courage.  Loughrey will ask the community to participate in this project by writing a letter to Harvey Milk, expressing the gratitude for the freedoms we celebrate today because of his work and vision.

Queer Theatre – Taking Center Stage.  Diversionary’s play development program will continue during the year with a playwriting class led by Patricia Loughrey, and readings of two or three new plays.  The program honors the ideas, the energy and commitment people have made to write LGBT stories.  More than 70 new plays with LGBT themes get submitted to the program each year.
     

The Year Ahead

Productions will have three to six week runs, with 16 or more performances per run.  Each show will preview on Thursday and Friday night, with openings on Saturday nights.  Performance schedule for the year is Thursday at 7:30pm, Friday and Saturday at 8:00pm, Sunday at 2:00 and 7:00pm, and selected Monday’s and Wednesday’s at 7:30pm.
Discounted six-show subscription packages ranging from $98 to $216 are now available through June 1 (prices go up on June 2).  The early bird discounts include a package with a 45% discount.  There are no handling/service charges for tickets purchased through Diversionary’s box office.
Single tickets go on sale six weeks before the opening date of each show.  Group sales for any show during the season can be arranged now by calling the box office. More information about all the shows and season subscriptions are available through the Box Office at 619.220.0097 or at their website at www.diversionary.org.
- END -

Diversionary’s mission is to produce plays with gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender themes that portray characters in their complexity and diversity both historically and contemporarily.

Major support for Diversionary Theatre is provided by the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture.

The Advocate
Issue 988 – July 3, 2007

|| First Person ||
Cover me
A lesbian veteran wins a GLAAD award for her gay play set in wartime—and who praises her in print? The Army.

By Zsa Zsa Gershick
Last summer my wife and I realized a longtime ambition: We mounted a Los Angeles production of my play Bluebonnet Court, a World War II–era lesbian love story about a New York reporter who finds sex and segregation alive and well while stranded in a dusty Texas town.

We played to sold-out crowds, got great reviews, and won honors including two NAACP Theatre Awards. And in March, Bluebonnet Court received the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Los Angeles Theater.

Major media outlets didn’t cover that GLAAD award.
But the Army did.

I’m a graduate of the Defense Information School, or DINFOS, trainer of all U.S. military P.R. people, journalists, and broadcasters. And now, I—a faggy-butch, cross-dressing lesbian and proud veteran of the armed forces—have become one of the “DINFOS luminaries.” The school’s alumni Web site, DINFOS.net—admittedly not an official Defense Department site—says so, proudly proclaiming me among “some of the most recognizable people in the world.”

Shock and awe, Mary: I write about gay folks—the people Gen. Peter Pace considers immoral. And as an openly gay woman, I’m not fit, by federal law, to wear an Army uniform. Yet I’m a “DINFOS luminary”? There’s a wee disconnect here.

Make no mistake, I am delighted to be a DINFOS alumna, and I appreciate the press. In fact, the site also features a separate item on my book, Secret Service: Untold Stories of Lesbians in the Military—an indictment of the military’s pointless and destructive “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy—trumpeting it as winner in 2006 of ForeWord Magazine’s Best Gay/Lesbian Nonfiction Book of the Year award. There’s even a link to Amazon.com for easy purchase.

Let’s hope sales to the Pentagon pick up.
But back for a moment to Bluebonnet Court. The central theme of the play is the importance of being honest with oneself—what we gain by being truthful, by facing reality, and what we lose when we fail to do so. So let’s be honest: The “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy is based on long-disproved psychoanalytic theories of the “homosexual” as inherently sick and unreliable and as such preserves prejudice, not military preparedness.

The American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1973. But the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines continue to call us unfit—despite all the evidence to the contrary.
Even if we’re “luminaries.”

Lesbians and gay men serve and have served proudly and well in all branches of the American armed forces (and openly in the militaries of many of our allies). There are about 1 million LGBT vets in the United States and 65,000 gay, lesbian, and bi troops on active duty at any given time, according to a 2004 study by the Urban Institute (using 2000 Census figures).

We often are uncommonly dedicated— the sharpest troops, earning the highest performance evaluations. We neither disrupt “good order and discipline” nor impair “unit cohesion.” The real bar to good order and discipline, the real destroyer of unit cohesion—a fact well-documented but continually denied—is prejudice along with the bad behaviors, including harassment and violence, that it promotes.

And the price tag of prejudice? Conservatively, nearly $200 million taxpayer dollars in the last decade alone, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office in a report issued in 2005.
But the real cost of “don’t ask, don’t tell” isn’t measured in dollars alone. The true cost of any policy is what we sacrifice as a nation in order to have it. With “don’t ask, don’t tell,” we’re sacrificing our dearest ideals of fairness, equality, and justice for all.

And that is a story the major media outlets should cover.

Backstage.com
It's Queer, It's Here, It's for Everyone
Across the country, LGBT theatre increasingly speaks to a wider audience.
June 18, 2007
By Gerard Raymond
Look at theatre fare across the country over the next two months: Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender theatre is busting out all over. Well, of course. It's June, and that means Pride Month — the traditional time to celebrate all things queer and LGBT. Pride celebrations are now an international rite, with roots going back to the Stonewall riots in New York City in 1969. But what happens the rest of the year? Back Stage spoke with several artistic directors responsible for running year-round, self-identified LGBT/queer theatres or special series, and we got responses as diverse as the communities and cities from which they hail.

Still Speaking to the Community
Lesbian- and gay-identified theatre companies started springing up around the country in the 1970s and '80s, when there was little or no gay representation in mainstream culture. Some of these companies — notably San Francisco's Theatre Rhinoceros (founded in 1977), Celebration Theatre in Los Angeles (1982), and San Diego's Diversionary Theatre (1986) — are still around today; the granddaddy of them all, New York City's TOSOS (which stands for "the other side of silence"), founded by playwright Doric Wilson in 1974, went into hibernation in 1979 but re-emerged as TOSOS II in 2001. Since the mid-1990s, however, the issue of lack of representation has changed noticeably, as the landscape of mainstream culture has expanded to include the likes of Tony Kushner's Pulitzer-, Tony-, and Emmy-winning Angels in America and Terrence McNally's commercial hit Love! Valour! Compassion!, as well as the numerous gay and lesbian characters featured regularly on network and cable television.

"Yes, you can't turn on the TV without getting gay characters — I get that from my dad and my aunts and uncles," says David Zak, artistic director of Chicago's Bailiwick Repertory Theatre, with a laugh. So how does that affect Bailiwick's annual Pride Series, a fixture for the past two decades? "To be perfectly frank, as things get more and more mainstream, we always debate whether our Pride Series is necessary," Zak acknowledges. "And every year we come back and say yes. There are still a lot of things to explore in the gay community in terms of our politics, and so many of the behaviors are either new to this generation or are the same behaviors that have been around in the community from the beginning."

Dan Kirsch, executive and artistic director of Diversionary Theatre, echoes that thought. "We know that people come out every day and that it's still a journey that has to be taken," he says. Kirsch points to Diversionary's upcoming production of Harvey Fierstein's landmark Torch Song Trilogy, slated for November. "Most people have only seen it as a movie," he explains. "Even though it's 25 years after the Broadway production, it's still timely and contemporary, and it's important to share that culture and community memory, as it were, with our audience." Diversionary's slate for next season also includes McNally's Corpus Christi. "We don't want to lose part of our culture because LGBT culture is being mainstreamed," Kirsch says.

"As long as we exist and we have our own culture, there's going to be a need, especially in cities that are not as culturally diverse as, say, Los Angeles or New York," observes Bill Kaiser, who for the past 15 years has performed a unique service by maintaining a national directory of LGBT/queer theatres and productions. His website, On the Purple Circuit, lists theatres across the country and provides valuable information for playwrights and producers. To Kaiser's point, we also found different approaches to gay theatre programming in the two major cultural capitals.

Reaching Beyond the Community
In Los Angeles, Celebration Theatre, which enters its 25th year this fall, has changed focus. Best known as a venue for long-running hits such as Naked Boys Singing! and the gay musical Pinafore!, Celebration will now present an annual season with a revised mission that embraces a larger audience, says Artistic Director Michael Matthews. "We don't want a theatre just for gay men and women," he explains. "We do plays with gay and lesbian themes, plays that should be able to connect with anybody." In New York, Artistic Director Mark Finley of TOSOS II says he looks for plays that reflect the author's individual voice rather than plays that are merely about being gay.

On the other hand, Jeffrey Corrick, artistic director of New York City's Wings Theatre (in existence since 1986), specifically targets a gay audience for his Gay Plays series. "Don't get me wrong: Brokeback Mountain and Will & Grace are great," he says. "But I think they're made for a straight audience and are skewed to reflect that. Theatre by gay people for gay people still has a real relevance."

Many long-running gay theatres have had to close their doors or reduce their output due to the drying up of funds, changes in audience habits, or sometimes just plain fatigue. Don Horn, who founded Triangle Productions in Portland, Ore., 15 years ago, has experienced a little of all of the above. "After a while, when you work full-time running a theatre and try to do 15 shows a year, you get burned out," he says. In 2005, Triangle lost its theatre space, where for 10 years the company had produced such gay landmark plays as Angels in America, Jeffrey, and Bent. Today, Triangle has to compete with larger, non-gay-identified institutions for similar plays. "We fought to do I Am My Own Wife," Horn says, "but because we don't have the huge box office, Portland Center Stage got that show." After a year's hiatus, Horn intends to keep Triangle going, with plans to produce a rock opera about Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan next February.

By contrast, Joe Bailey recently inaugurated the first season of Who Wants Cake? Theatre, a new LGBT company in Detroit. "Theatre in Detroit is not as large as it is in other metropolitan areas, so I thought it would be a really good area of opportunity," he says. He opened Del Shores' Southern Baptist Sissies in a new leased theatre in the suburb of Ferndale — home of Affirmations, Detroit's new LGBT center — to coincide with the city's Gay Pride Day at the beginning of June.

In San Francisco, Ed Decker, artistic and executive director of the New Conservatory Theatre Center, says that when he started the company's year-round Pride Season 13 years ago, "gay theatre was exclusively tailored to the gay community." He adds, "Of course, our work still speaks very keenly and specifically to the LGBT community, but it also opened up the dialogue for all communities to interact with our stories."

In the mid-'80s, AIDS was the urgent and even defining issue for most gay theatre. Diversionary Theatre, for instance, was established in response to the health crisis. And Bailiwick's first Pride Series, in 1988, was mainly focused on AIDS. The antidote to those dark days arrived some years later with the comedy Party, which began its highly successful run at Bailiwick. According to Zak, other cycles followed: "Boys-in-their-underwear plays, and porn-star plays, too, were the vogue for a while, but once you had all the video choices, there was no need to see your local guys running around unless the material was great." Naked Boys Singing! is still a hit around the country, and three years ago Bailiwick created its own version, Barenaked Lads, now in its third edition.

LGBT theatre fare is wide and varied. At Celebration, Matthews has chosen not to do plays that focus on nudity. "I ended up losing a lot of the audience," he says, "but then people started catching on to the artistic direction. His current offering is a 30th-anniversary production of the not specifically gay-themed Gemini by gay playwright Albert Innaurato. At NCTC, Decker has premiered new work by established gay authors — Terrence McNally's Crucifixion and Edmund White's Terre Haute. "We've become known as the place where these artists can come and flesh out new work on the West Coast," Decker says.

Its current attraction is Richard Greenberg's Tony Award-winning Take Me Out. At Wings in New York, Corrick is interested in "plays that reflect a gay experience in other times and other cultures" and recently revived Clint Jeffries' The Jocker, a tale about gay hobos in 1931. Bailiwick's current offering is the U.S. premiere of Jerry Springer: The Opera, which has a gay sensibility but is not part of the theatre's LGBT programming. Its Pride Series kicks off June 20 with Dangerous, an all-male adaptation (nudity included) of Les Liaisons Dangereuses by the London-based Shamelessboyz Theatre Company. Zak says he goes through some 200 unsolicited manuscripts every year; for the Pride Series, he is on the lookout for playwrights who are ahead of the curve in terms of gay-related issues. "We did our first gay-marriage play about 13 or 14 years ago, and that's been done to death now," he says.

Where Are the Lesbians?
The elephant in the room, of course, is work for and by lesbians. In all fairness, everyone seems acutely aware of this huge gap in their theatres' programming. Corrick says Wings' nearly 100 percent gay-male subscriptions have gone down significantly whenever he has scheduled a lesbian-themed play: "At three different points in the last few years, we have specifically run a women's series, but we've had a hard time finding someone to be artistic director of that series." At Bailiwick, Zak says they've yet to figure out how to add the right lesbian work to the mix. "Gay men will go and see every musical ever written and have this whole continuum of gay plays," he says. Decker tried producing a program exclusively for women for five years, he reports: "First I thought it was because I was a guy running that program, and so I made it completely female-driven and female-curated, but the women just didn't feel comfortable coming here."

Apart from known economic disparities between the sexes, the identification of LGBT theatres as primarily gay-male venues is certainly a factor. Marian Jones has firsthand experience of this. In 1998 she started the Ivy Theatre in West Hollywood, Calif., after previously running a women's-works program at Celebration. She says she never had a problem getting audiences after founding her lesbian-identified theatre: "I had almost full houses every night for all the shows I produced at the Ivy." But the Ivy went dark when she left the state for two years. She has now revived it with a broader mission.

"We're still producing lesbian playwrights, but I'm going to be producing a series of other cultural events — new music and art pieces — until I find a piece of theatre that I want to produce," Jones says. On the brighter side, she points to the independently produced lesbian musical The Break Up Notebook, which enjoyed a successful run in Los Angeles and is now scheduled for a co-production at Diversionary Theatre starting in July. Contrary to the trends, the theatre's Kirsch has also programmed a second lesbian-themed work, Zsa Zsa Gershick's Blue Bonnet Court, whose San Diego run begins next March. Celebration's next production, opening in July, is Still Photos by Vanda, a play about two women who fall in love with each other in the 1940s.

Works by women and lesbian playwrights and equally underproduced artists of color, however, are a staple at the Theater Offensive, a Boston-based company founded in 1989 to promote queer culture and politics. According to Artistic Director Abe Rybeck, the Theater Offensive's audience is almost 60 percent women, because the majority of its work is created by women. A recent production, the lesbian-themed musical Surviving the Nian, winner of a 2007 Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation Award, was written by Hong Kong-born Melissa Li, an alumna of the Theater Offensive's own True Colors: Out Youth Theater program. Rybeck is now developing Shackles and Sugar, a provocative new play by Letta Neely, a black lesbian playwright and poet. "A lot of theatres, when they look at her work, see risk and the challenges of getting an audience, as opposed to just the phenomenal writing," he says. "No one else is doing what she is doing."

Rybeck adds, "So many of the works that have had mainstream success have roots in alternative theatre — queer or experimental." He points out that before Fierstein's Torch Song Trilogy was put together, the individual pieces were honed at small queer or alternative theatres. "We really need to open our minds further," he says. The Theater Offensive grew out of a gay men's guerrilla troupe, United Fruit Company, and its programs include A Street Theater Named Desire, which performs in gay cruising grounds to promote safe sex and AIDS education. The activist troupe plays to about 450 men between midnight and 3 a.m. each night in the summer. "That's more than we get into our little theatre," Rybeck says.

A New Approach for a New Century
In the first decade of the new century, many theatre companies are indeed opening their minds further and expanding their vision. The 30-year-old Theatre Rhinoceros has redefined itself as "radically queer," according to its artistic director, John Fisher. "There's a lot more fluidity in sexuality today, and our theatre embraces a broader spectrum of behavior." The San Francisco institution's current attraction is Fisher's own play Special Forces, which he describes as "a queer perspective on the Iraq war," featuring a drag queen who entertains the troops. Tim Cusack, co-artistic director (with Jason Jacobs) of New York City's Theatre Askew, also embraces the concept of queer in its broadest possible sense and says he'd like to move away from theatre that's based specifically in the gay community.

Citing the antecedent of Charles Ludlam's Ridiculous Theatrical Company, Cusack says, "We're not interested in playing only to upper-class white gay men." He reports that at Theatre Askew's 2004 inaugural production, Bald Diva!, a queer adaptation of Ionesco's The Bald Soprano, gay couples regularly walked out because the show was critical of gay marriage. Cusack was pleased that some found the work offensive. "If you get down to it, there's no such thing as normal, and everybody feels 'queer' in some way or another," he says. "The areas of slippage can be useful for creating theatre."

Theatre Askew's current production, I Google Myself, has a gay playwright, director, and company; the characters are men who have sex with other men but who do not define themselves as gay. "We're looking at different outsider perspectives and trying to build a critique of our own community from within it," Cusack explains. Thanks to the successful Off-Off-Broadway run of its previous show, an adaptation of the BBC miniseries I, Claudius, Theatre Askew discovered that its biggest audience is straight women in their 20s and 30s. "We want intelligent, artistically savvy, and politically aware audiences, and their sexuality is irrelevant to us," Cusack says. "It's not what's between their legs and what they do with it, but what's between their ears."

May 24, 2007
Diversionary Theatre celebrates major gift from Sherry Henderson & Barbara Ramsey Estate

Their friends described Barbara Ramsey as having ‘a passion for life and adventure,’ and ‘life was a constant amazement’ for Sherry Henderson. Both women served in the Navy, met when it was not possible to reveal your sexual orientation, shared 15 years together, and both died of cancer – Sherry in December 2001 and Barbara in April 2005.

Their friend Deva Claridge said that Diversionary Theatre was extremely important to Barbara in her coming out process. An unexpected phone call last December notified Diversionary that the Henderson/Ramsey estate had left $100,682 to the Theatre.

“We are awed by this generous gift,” said Ruth Howell, President of the Theatre’s Board of Trustees. “Barbara and Sherry were long-time subscribers, and their gift to Diversionary will give many others the opportunity to continue to celebrate LGBT culture and history through the ongoing productions of the Theatre.”

Born in Oswego, Illionis, Sherry K. Henderson was the third woman to earn the wings of a Naval Flight Surgeon and the first woman to receive the Surgeon General’s award in recognition of demonstrated excellence and leadership, cooperation, flight aptitude and scholastic achievement. In November 1994, Sherry earmarked on her ‘second career,’ working for six years as a full-time clinician at Student Health Services at San Diego State University. She loved and was loved by the students and staff, and considered this position the happiest and fulfilling of all her medical experiences.

A native of Walsh, Colorado, Barbara L. Ramsey had a large group of friends that she considered her chosen family, who miss her lust for life, quick wit and loving support. Barbara served for 20 years with distinction as a Navy nurse, retiring as a Commander after various assignments worldwide. After the Navy, she became active in the San Diego community, most recently as a patient Advocate on the Sharp Health Care Board to develop a new cancer center. A life-long adventurer, she developed a passionate love of baseball, the mountains, desert, theater, cinema, cycling and hiking. She was a voracious reader and also loved listening to KPBS radio.

Diversionary is proud to celebrate the lives and accomplishments of Barbara and Sherry during the run of the play Bunbury. Following the Sunday, June 3 matinee, their friends will gather at Diversionary for a reception to celebrate the joy Barbara and Sherry brought to their lives. In honor of their gift, Diversionary is offering complimentary tickets to active or retired military women for the Sunday, June 3 matinee. Please call the box office at 619-220-0097 for details.

Diversionary Theatre was started in 1986. The mission of the theatre is to produce plays with gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender themes that portray characters in their complexity and diversity both historically and contemporarily.

“This gift and others like it allow Diversionary to continue our mission of celebrating LGBT lives through new and classic plays,” said Dan Kirsch, Diversionary’s Executive and Artistic Director. “The funds are board restricted, with the objective of building an operating reserve of six months. Thank you, Barbara and Sherry, for the great start to our goal.”

Imagine the perfect date. A perfect relationship. The perfect parents. A perfect faith. Imagine you were ten again and your Mom and Mama just made you the perfect pancakes! It’s time to use your imagination! Diversionary has a whole new season of comedy, drama and music – a classic from Harvey Fierstein, a passion play by Terrence McNally, and three plays and musicals where Diversionary will stage the second full production.

Diversionary has also commissioned a new musical for families. The Daddy Machine will have it’s world premiere in January 2008, written by Patricia Loughery with music and lyrics by Rayme Sciaroni, both local artists. “Sometimes an innocent comment by a patron begins a whole new way of looking at our audience and community,” said Dan Kirsch, executive and artistic director. “One night more than a year ago, a patron asked why Diversionary didn’t do a show that he could bring his 3-year-old to. Today we proudly announce that Diversionary has commissioned Patricia and Rayme to help us create a whole new genre of LGBT family theatre.

“We’re very proud of our unique mission – to tell lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) stories,” continued Kirsch. “Whether you’re coming for a heartfelt laugh or a thought-provoking moment, we hope the community will come share our past and our future as we celebrate another new season of great theatre.”

The six-show season includes “The Break Up Notebook: The Lesbian Musical;” “The Busy World is Hushed,” Harvey Fierstein’s “Torch Song Trilogy,” which will celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the Tony Award-winning Broadway production; “The Daddy Machine,” commissioned by Diversionary; “Bluebonnet Court,” a co-production with Moxie Theatre; and Terrence McNally’s “Corpus Christi.”

Diversionary will also do a workshop of David Sexton’s new project, “Manhunt-The Musical;” present a special weekend run of Steven Fales new cabaret show, “Mormon American Princess;” and continue their new play reading program, Queer Theatre-Taking Center Stage, in February 2008.

The plays

The Break Up Notebook: The Lesbian Musical. Co-Produced by Rose Marcario. Book by Patricia Cotter, music and lyrics by Lori Scarlett. July 12-August 12. Directed by Peter Schneider, musical direction by G. Scott Lacy, choreography by Christine Kellogg, and featuring Beth Malone as Helen, with Melissa Fernandes, Jeannine Marquie, Chrissy Burns, Mei-Ling Downey, Molly Lahr, and Tori Roze. A hilarious, touching and sexy musical comedy for anyone who has ever had a broken heart and lived to tell about it! Helen Hill is 33, completely adorable, slightly neurotic and has just been dumped by her long term girlfriend. With the support of her best gay boyfriend and her butch femme gal pals, Helen jumps back into the dating pool…two-stepping twelve-steppers, anxiety prone lawyers, a dominatrix, dental dams, grrrl bands, rebound dates, hot girl-on-girl action, and maybe… the girl of her dreams. Scoring a stunning upset victory in last year’s theatre award season, the show was honored with Los Angeles’ highest theatre honor, the 2006 Ovation Award for World Premiere Musical and recently received the 2006 Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Musical Score. An official event of San Diego LGBT Pride.

The Busy World is Hushed by Keith Bunin. October 4-28. A complex look at why religion, faith and the human heart can’t always be reconciled. An engaging drama about conflicts of family and faith. A tale of a loving mother, a troubled son and the man who may be able to heal the breach between them. “…intricacies of faith—as well as issues of sexuality, love and loss—are addressed in this provocative and moving new play…a refreshing take on the overlap between religion and homosexuality.” - Theatermania.com.

Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song Trilogy. November 15-December 16. Directed by G. Scott Lacy. A riotously funny and poignant story of an aging drag queen and his attempts to connect with someone…anyone!! A Theatrical Event! Diversionary celebrates the 25th Anniversary of the Broadway production. At the height of the post-Stonewall clone era, Harvey Fierstein challenged both gay and straight audiences to champion an effeminate gay man's longings for love and family. His creation, Arnold Beckoff, was a fully realized character who had an active sex life, a tragic love story, and a gay teenage foster son. The play won Fierstein two Tony Awards, for Best Play and Best Actor in Play.

The family friendly world premiere of The Daddy Machine. Commissioned by Diversionary Theatre. Book by Patricia Loughrey. Music and lyrics by Rayme Sciaroni.. January 18-27. Co-directed by Siobhan Sullivan and Rayme Sciaroni. Two moms, two kids, one singing dog and 62 dads! It’s the first day of summer vacation – time for the special pancake breakfast at Stonewall’s house. But Mama lost a filling, Mom’s taking her to the dentist and the kids are home alone. Sue is happy to be left in charge, but when Harry accidentally invents a daddy-making machine, no one can contain the chaos. All Stonewall wanted was for someone to assemble his doghouse… was that too much to hope for? Audience participation. Fun for ages 4 and older. Based on the children’s book by Johnny Valentine.

Bluebonnet Court by Zsa Zsa Gershick. March 20-April 13. A co-production with Moxie Theatre. Directed by Delicia Turner Sonnenberg. Sex, civil rights and finding family in the most unusual places. In 1944, during World War II and the waning days of Hollywood's glamour era, a wisecracking New York reporter is on her way from Manhattan to Hollywood and a coveted spot as an MGM contract writer. When she’s waylaid on the outskirts of Austin, Texas, it’s more than her car that gets an overhaul. “The play offers real wit and disarming sensuality. With a …sweet summer romance, Bluebonnet Court is a mighty cozy place to spend the night.” – Los Angeles Times. Winner of the 2007 GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Los Angeles Theatre, two NAACP awards and critical acclaim from Variety and The Advocate.

Corpus Christi by Terrence McNally. May 8-June 1. Directed by Nic Arnzen. If Jesus were gay and grew up in 1950’s Texas… Terrence McNally's (Love! Valour! Compassion!) contemporary telling of the life of Jesus is presented in thoughtful, vividly human ways. Using the ages-old story, he shows the fight against cruelty, division, hatred and, above all, hypocrisy. Named one of the best plays of the year by Time magazine in 1998, McNally provides us with one of the most moving passion plays written, an affirmation of faith and a drama of power and scope. Arnzen recently directed a very successful production of the play in Los Angeles, which is touring to the Edinburgh Festival this summer.

Special Events

Manhunt – The Musical by David Sexton. September 6-16. A workshop production. Book and lyrics by David Sexton (It’s a Fabulous Life). Musical collaborators: Rick Leonard & Gerry Dieffenbach. Directed by Peter G. Kalivas. What’s YOUR screen name? Based on the popular website Manhunt.net, this workshop brings a whole new meaning to top, bottom or versatile! Adult content, laughs and guilty pleasures!

Morman American Princess by Steven Fales. November 1-3. According to Steven (Confessions of a Mormon Boy), “God has seen me through excommunication, divorce, prostitution and drugs, now we’re working on narcissism—and it’s not going well.” More stand-up, more singing, more irreverent, and more political!

Queer Theatre – Taking Center Stage. Diversionary’s new play development program continues in February 2008 with readings of two or three new plays. The program honors the ideas, the energy and commitment people have made to write LGBT stories. More than 60 new plays have been submitted to the program already this year.

The Year Ahead

Productions will have four or five week runs, with 16 or more performances per run (Daddy Machine will have 10+ performances, to be determined). Each show will preview on Thursday and Friday night, with openings on Saturday nights. Performance schedule for the year is Thursday at 7:30pm, Friday and Saturday at 8:00pm, Sunday at 2:00 and 7:00pm, and selected Monday’s at 7:30pm. All performances of Torch Song Trilogy will start 1/2 hour earlier.

Discounted six-show subscription packages ranging from $92 to $212 are now available through June 17 (prices go up on June 18). The early bird discounts include a package with a 45% discount. There is no handling/service charges for tickets purchased through Diversionary’s box office.

Single tickets go on sale six weeks before the opening date of each show. Group sales for any show during the season can be arranged now by calling the box office. More information about all the shows and season subscriptions are available through the Box Office at 619.220.0097 or at their website at www.diversionary.org.

Diversionary Theatre announces major gifts from Dr. Fritz Klein

              San Diego, August 22, 2006.  At a Celebration of Life for Dr. Fritz Klein last night at Diversionary Theatre, the Board of Trustees of the Theatre announced three major gifts Dr. Klein left to Diversionary in his will.

              Through notification by Dr. Klein’s estate, Diversionary is the recipient of:

• A gift of $250,000, restricted to starting an endowment fund.
• A gift of the building, which houses the Theatre at 4545 Park Boulevard.
• A gift from Dr. Klein’s Charitable Remainder Trust, which is estimated at $50,000-$60,000.

              “We are incredibly honored that Fritz would care for Diversionary so deeply that he felt the need to have his gifts continue our mission for years to come,” said Ruth Howell, Vice President of the Board of Trustees.  “His gifts are overwhelming, and the Board is putting appropriate policies into place to ensure the gifts provide for the Theatre for many years into the future.”

              According to Dan Kirsch, Executive and Artistic Director of Diversionary, the gifts will come in at different times once the estate is settled. 

              “Fritz had been a major donor of Diversionary for a number of years, with an annual operating gift of $15,000 each year since 1998,” said Kirsch.  “Upon arrival of the gift from Dr. Klein’s Charitable Remainder Trust (estimated gift is $50,000-$60,000) sometime this fall, $15,000 of the monies will be designated as Fritz’s annual operating gift for the current fiscal year, and the balance of the monies will be invested and used for annual operating gifts for an additional three years.”

              While the Charitable Remainder Trust monies help with current general operations, the new endowment fund will provide monies for future programs and operations.  “The $250,000 gift is restricted to seeding a new endowment fund,” stated John Grah, Treasurer of the Board of Trustees.  “Once a donor gives a restricted gift, we are required to use it only for that purpose.  We will invest the gift, and each year take some of the earnings and move it into Board Restricted funds for programs and operations.”

              The final gift, the building at 4545 Park Boulevard, includes a mortgage of just over $400,000.  “The Board is assessing the best use of this gift,” said Grah.  “The building includes several private offices that produce rental income, and it is likely we will assume the mortgage and that the rental income will cover the mortgage.  However, with ownership of the building comes the responsibility of upkeep, and we are creating a plan for a maintenance fund to take care of the facility.”

              Howell added, “We are in the process of carefully thinking through and deciding how best to proceed with and manage these incredible assets for our future.  Regarding the property, when it is eventually transferred to Diversionary, we as a Board, as an organization, understand that we must receive it in the same spirit it was given: with careful thought and a responsible vision for what will best serve the Theatre and the community for many, many years.” 

              Diversionary chose to announce the gifts now even though they will come in at separate times over the next year.  “As you might expect with gifts of this magnitude, we are in the discovery process, and we’ve enlisted the help of many professionals to help get advice on best practices,” said Grah.  “We wanted to share the news with the community early in the process because so many people cared both about Fritz and Diversionary, and as Fritz was both our landlord and a major donor, people were wondering if Diversionary was going to be okay.”

              At the Celebration of Life, Diversionary Theatre board member Mary Stockton talked about Dr. Klein’s gift as it relates to the future.  “In the short time I knew Fritz, I learned that he planned his giving and wanted to use his gifts as an incentive for others to give,” said Stockton.  “He knew that an endowment would do just that.  He knew that whenever money was needed, instead of a one-time gift, a challenge in the form of a matching gift would encourage others to give, to think about the future.  He updated his will.  He had legal documents in place to ensure that his gifts would go where he wanted them to go.  We thank him for his inspiration, and hope the community will rise to his challenge.”

              The closing of the Celebration of Life included the announcement of the Diversionary Theatre Fritz Klein Award.  According to board president Carlos Legaspy, “We wanted to find a way to emulate the spirit of Fritz and those gifts by honoring others who give to the theatre through extraordinary gifts of financial support or contribute or volunteer important services.  The award will be given in the future at the Board’s discretion and will honor those who give of their riches in the ways that Fritz gave to us.”

              Guests at the Celebration of Life event included Victoria Hamilton, Executive Director of the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture; Matthew Weeden, an actor who recently appeared in Diversionary productions of “The Twilight of the Golds” and “When Pigs Fly;” Chuck Zito, former Executive Director who flew in from New York for the event, and many leaders from the LGBT and arts communities.

              Dr. Fritz Klein, leader and pioneer of the bisexual movement, died on May 24 at the age of 73.  Dr. Klein is best known for groundbreaking sex research and as a tireless activist for bisexual issues and the bisexual community.  Early on, he realized that there was little knowledge about bisexuality and in 1974 he placed an ad in the Village Voice for a meeting that resulted in the creation in New York of the “Bisexual Forum.”  In 1978 he wrote The Bisexual Option and also co-authored Man, His Body, His Sex. Dr. Klein moved to San Diego where he founded that city’s “Bisexual Forum” in 1982, wrote several books, and founded and became editor of The Journal of Bisexuality.  In 1998, he founded the American Institute of Bisexuality and served as chairman of the board up until his death.  Dr. Klein also served on the Diversionary Theatre Board of Trustees for the past six years.  He is survived by his life partner, Tom Reise of San Diego.

              Diversionary Theatre was started in 1986.  The mission of the theatre is to produce plays with gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) themes that portray characters in their complexity and diversity both historically and contemporarily.  The annual operating budget for the 2006-2007 fiscal year is $456,000.

              Current member of the Board of Trustees are: Carlos Legaspy, President; Ruth M. Howell, Vice President; Bill McClain, Secretary; John A. Grah, Treasurer; Scott Aylward, Vicki Estrada, Jeri Feldman, Ken Riley, Shane A. Stahl, Mary Stockton and Jeffrey Wergeles.  Jonathan Dunn-Rankin serves ex-officio.  Diversionary staff members are: Dan Kirsch, Executive & Artistic Director; Bret Young, Managing Director and Travis Guss, Patron Services Manager.

              For more information about Diversionary Theatre, visit their website at www.diversionary.org or call 619.220.6830.

May 30, 2006

A Final Bow
Diversionary fondly remembers our friend and patron Dr. Fritz Klein
1932-2006

The American Institute of Bisexuality (AIB) announces and mourns the loss of Dr. Fritz Klein, AIB's founder and Board Chairman. He died Wednesday morning, May 24, following a cardiac arrest at home in San Diego, California. He was 73.

Born Fred Klein, Dr. Klein is best known for his pioneering sex research and the development of the multi-dimensional Klein Sexual Orientation Grid, which measures the complexity and fluidity of sexual orientation.

The Klein Grid, first published in 1978, expanded on the "zero to six" Kinsey scale. The Klein Grid measures actual sexual experiences, but also sexual attractions, fantasies, emotional preference, social preference, lifestyle and self-identification as they relate to a person's past, present and ideal future. Klein's research showed that these factors can change over time for an individual, and vary not just between but also within groups of straight, gay and bisexual people. He concluded that people generalize from their own experiences and feelings to assume, often wrongly, that other people must experience their own sexual orientations the same way.

As a result, Klein concluded sexual orientations are too complex to be broken into simple, well-defined categories. Nonetheless, he was a tireless activist especially concerning bisexual issues and community. He was known all over the world for his groundbreaking research and writing, ranging from the academic publication of the Klein Grid in the Journal of Homosexuality in 1985 to popular books and articles concerning bisexuality, as well as a novel, Life, Sex and the Pursuit of Happiness published in 2005 by Harrington Park Press.

Klein was born in Vienna, Austria in 1932. While still a small boy, he fled with his family to New York City to escape anti-Semitism and the impending war. He later studied medicine in Switzerland at Bern University and received an MBA from Columbia University. Dr. Klein was a board-certified psychiatrist for 30 years in New York and San Diego until his retirement. Early in his career, he realized that there was a void in knowledge about sexual orientation, specifically in the area of bisexuality. He placed an ad in the Village Voice for a meeting that resulted in the creation in New York of the "Bisexual Forum," which recently celebrated its 20th anniversary. During this period he wrote The Bisexual Option, 1978, and co-authored: Man, His Body, His Sex (Doubleday & Co.) in 1978.

After moving to San Diego , Dr. Klein founded the "Bisexual Forum" for that city in 1982, wrote several books, and founded and became Editor of The Journal of Bisexuality.

Dr. Klein founded the American Institute of Bisexuality (AIB), a public benefit charity, in 1998 to encourage, support and assist research and education about bisexuality, and served as Chairman of the Board up until his death. He was known for being outspoken, controversial and compassionate, and for his love and support of theater and the arts.

Though he had recently been diagnosed with cancer, his death from cardiac arrest was sudden and unexpected. He is survived by his life partner, Tom Reise of San Diego and two brothers, George and Seymour of New York City. He chose to donate his body to science. A celebration of his life is being planned. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to San Diego's Diversionary Theatre.

AIB (also known as the Bisexual Foundation) encourages, supports and assists research and education about bisexuality, through programs likely to make a material difference and enhance public knowledge and awareness.

April 26, 2006

Diversionary Theatre announces 2006-2007 season of six plays

New play by South African playwright to have U.S. Premiere

A singing pig.  A sarcastic friend.  A dancing angel.  A sexy rent boy.  A frightened puppet.  A fictitious character.  These six mini-descriptions represent Diversionary Theatre's 2006-2007 season of six plays and musicals.

"We're very proud of our unique mission – to tell lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) stories,” said Dan Kirsch, executive and artistic director. "Whether you're coming for a night of entertainment or an insightful moment, we hope the community will come share our past and our future as we celebrate another season of great plays."

The six plays include two musicals – Howard Crabtree's "When Pigs Fly"and a new gay Christmas musical – and works by familiar playwrights Nicky Silver and Paula Vogel.  Through their new play development program, Queer Theatre – Taking Center Stage, Diversionary will present the United States premiere of a new play by South African playwright Ashraf Johaardien.  Diversionary continues to work with top San Diego directors – Lisa Berger, David Brannen, Joey Landwehr, Rosina Reynolds and Rick Simas.

The Plays

Howard Crabtree’s When Pigs Fly.  Conceived by Howard Crabtree and Mark Waldrop; sketches and lyrics by Mark Waldrop; music by Dick Gallagher.  July 21-August 13.  Directed by Rick Simas; musical direction by Rayme Sciaroni.  A side-splitting musical extravaganza!  A fun-filled evening of great music, uproarious laughter, and high camp.  The production was honored with two Drama Desk awards and two Outer Critics Circle awards during its long off-Broadway run.  An official event of San Diego LGBT Pride.

The Maiden’s Prayer by Nicky Silver (“Fit To Be Tied”).  September 8-October 1.  Directed by Joey Landwehr.  Sibling jealousy, sexual escapism, and the ghost of an alcoholic past threaten to destroy the lives of five friends and lovers as they are forced to combat the differences between love, dependency and real estate in this dark comic drama.

It’s a Fabulous Life.  Book by David Sexton, Songs by Albert Evans & David Sexton, with additional music by Eric Alsford and Andrew Sargent.  November 17-December 10.  Directed by David Brannen.  A gay holiday musical take on “It’s a Wonderful Life.”  A young gay man wishes he hadn’t been born gay, and an angel grants his wish!  Showboys, drag, dancing reindeer, and a gospel singing dyke!

The United States premiere of Happy Endings Are Extra by Ashraf Johaardien.  January 17-February 11.  Directed by Rosina Reynolds (recently directed both “Beautiful Thing” and “The Twilight of the Golds” at Diversionary).  A woman who loves a man who loves a rent boy.  “A brave, funny, erotic, and honest work that deserves to be seen.” -LitNet.  Part of Diversionary’s Queer Theatre-Taking Center Stage new play development program, underwritten in part by The James Irvine Foundation.  South African playwright Johaardien will be in San Diego for the opening.

The Long Christmas Ride Home: A puppet play with actors by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Paula Vogel (“Baltimore Waltz,” “How I Learned to Drive”).  March 23-April 15.  Directed by Lisa Berger (recently directed “Looking for Normal” at Diversionary in May 2005).  Past, present and future collide for a troubled family of five.  Humorous and heart-wrenching, proving that magic can be found in the simplest breaths of life.  Puppets by the Puppetry Center of San Diego.

Bunbury by Tom Jacobson.  May 18-June 10.  A serious play for trivial people.  An Oscar Wilde offstage character from “The Importance of Being Earnest” comes to life and inadvertently changes the ending of several classic plays, including “A Streetcar Named Desire,” “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” and even “Waiting for Godot.”

Queer Theatre – Taking Center Stage

Diversionary’s new play development program, Queer Theatre – Taking Center Stage, will present the U.S. premiere of the aforementioned “Happy Endings Are Extra” as part of its regular season.  In addition, two other major staged readings will take place in February 2007 with the playwrights present.  This program is underwritten in part by The James Irvine Foundation as part of their New Connections Fund.

Passing Ceremonies by Steve Willis.  February 17-19.  Directed by Dr. Floyd Gaffney.  Harlem Renaissance artist Richard Bruce Nugent and modern-day poet Essex Hemphill meet between ‘earth life’ and ‘paradise’ and converse about what it meant to be black, gay and artists.  The play will celebrate LGBT Black History month with Ebony Pride San Diego.

Do Geese See God by J.D. Eames.  February 24-26.  Topher’s life is all about the words, until she’s hit by lightning and left with a speech impairment.  Her recovery forces her to develop a new relationship with words and with her lovers and friends.

Over 60 new LGBT plays were submitted to Diversionary this past year.  Dramaturge Patty Loughrey read and organized Queer Theatre – Taking

Center Stage into a coherent and potent program for Diversionary.  The Theatre has also begun conversations with Family Matters about how to best start programming to serve the many LGBT families in our community. 

The Year Ahead:

Mo`olelo Performing Arts Company will become a resident tenant in the next year, renting space in October for a three week run of their new production “Since Africa.”

The year ahead will also bring collaboration with The LGBT Community Center’s Women’s Resource Center with the spoken word event OutSpoken this fall, and with the Gay Men’s Chorus of San Diego for the Trolley Follies of 2007, a gala cabaret to benefit both organizations, in March 2007.

Productions will have four week runs, with 18 or more performances per run.  The Theatre will continue to start Thursday night performances at 7:30pm.  There is no handling/service charges for tickets purchased through Diversionary’s box office.

Discounted six-show subscription packages ranging from $83 to $156 are now available through June 11 (prices go up on June 12).  “Our ‘First Nighter’ subscription package really took off last year,” said Kirsch.  “These subscribers come during the first two weeks of run, receiving a 33% discount, and it helps get word out on the street early in the run about the show.”

Single tickets go on sale a month before the opening date of each show.  Group sales for any show during the season can be arranged now by calling the box office.

More information about all the shows and season subscriptions are available through the Box Office at 619.220.0097 or at their website at www.diversionary.org.

- END -

Diversionary’s mission is to produce plays with gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender themes that portray characters in their complexity and diversity both historically and contemporarily.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 12, 2005
Special Events
November 14: Chuck Zito reads from his new novel
December 6 & 7: Concert version of "A Man of No Importance"

DIVERSIONARY THEATRE TO PRESENT SPECIAL EVENTS
TO CELEBRATE 20TH ANNIVERSARY YEAR

As part of its 20th Anniversary Year celebration, Diversionary Theatre will present special events throughout the year. "We're very excited to bring back familiar faces and create new partnerships as part of our anniversary celebration," stated Dan Kirsch, executive director.

Chuck Zito, Diversionary's former executive director (2002-2004) moved back to Manhattan after his time in San Diego to work on his first novel. "A Habit for Death," his first book in the Nicky D'Amico mystery series, will be published by Midnight Ink (a division of Llewellyn Press) in the Fall of 2006. "A Habit for Death" opens with the sudden demise of young Sister Sally. She collapses on stage at St. Gilbert's Summer Musical Theater during a rehearsal of "Convent of Fear." Luckily for St. Gilbert's, Nicky D'Amico, a young stage manager looking for a break from New York City's summer heat, is on the scene. He works to find out who done it – and to get closer to his favorite chorus boy!

As executive director of Diversionary, Zito was responsible for producing shows like "Gross Indency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde," "M Butterfly" and "Lot's Daughters."
Zito will read from his new novel on Monday, November 14 at 7:30pm. Suggested donation is $20 per person. A reception will be held following the reading.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, December 6 and 7, San Diego State University's Musical Theatre Program will grace Diversionary's stage with a concert version of the acclaimed musical "A Man of No Importance." Based on the 1994 film that starred Albert Finney, A Man of No Importance tells the poignant story of Alfie Byrne, a bus conductor living in 1960's Dublin. An ardent fan of Oscar Wilde, Alfie is determined to stage Wilde's play Salome at his church, despite the objections of church authorities. In the process of fighting for the play, Alfie is forced to confront his own sexuality.

The show was created by the "Ragtime" team: book by Terrence McNally, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens and music by Stephen Flaherty. McNally is best known in the LGBT community for the play "Love! Valour! Compassion!" The SDSU production is directed by Rick Simas.
Linda Winer of Newsday had this to say about the musical: "Wilde is very much the muse and guiding spirit in this gentle, deeply moving musical, whose beautiful, pristinely crafted score and literate book are the work of the "Ragtime" team."

Tickets are $50 per person. A reception with Irish desserts will follow the concert. Proceeds will benefit both Diversionary Theatre and SDSU Musical Theatre Program.

Both events will be held at Diversionary Theatre, 4545 Park Boulevard, San Diego. Tickets are available only through the Diversionary box office at 619.220.0097. More information is available at their website at www.diversionary.org.

October 12, 2005
CALENDAR LISTING:
Chuck Zito reads from his new novel "A Habit for Death"

Chuck Zito, Diversionary's former executive director (2002-2004) moved back to Manhattan after his time in San Diego to work on his first novel. "A Habit for Death," his first book in the Nicky D'Amico mystery series, will be published by Midnight Ink (a division of Llewellyn Press) in the Fall of 2006. "A Habit for Death" opens with the sudden demise of young Sister Sally. She collapses on stage at St. Gilbert's Summer Musical Theater during a rehearsal of "Convent of Fear." Luckily for St. Gilbert's, Nicky D'Amico, a young stage manager looking for a break from New York City's summer heat, is on the scene. He works to find out who done it – and to get closer to his favorite chorus boy!

WHAT: A reading from "A Habit for Death" by Chuck Zito

WHEN: Monday, November 14 at 7:30pm

WHERE: Diversionary Theatre, 4545 Park Boulevard, San Diego, CA 92116

TICKETS: Suggested donation: $20
Box Office: 619-220-0097 and on line at www.diversionary.org

October 12, 2005
CALENDAR LISTING:
Concert version of "A Man of No Importance"

San Diego State University's Musical Theatre Program will grace Diversionary's stage with a concert version of the acclaimed musical "A Man of No Importance." Based on the 1994 film that starred Albert Finney, A Man of No Importance tells the poignant story of Alfie Byrne, a bus conductor living in 1960's Dublin. An ardent fan of Oscar Wilde, Alfie is determined to stage Wilde's play Salome at his church, despite the objections of church authorities. In the process of fighting for the play, Alfie is forced to confront his own sexuality.

The show was created by the "Ragtime" team: book by Terrence McNally, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens and music by Stephen Flaherty. McNally is best known in the LGBT community for the play "Love! Valour! Compassion!" The SDSU production is directed by Rick Simas.

WHAT: A concert version of the acclaimed musical "A Man of No Importance"

WHEN: Tuesday and Wednesday, December 6 and 7 at 7:30pm

WHERE: Diversionary Theatre, 4545 Park Boulevard, San Diego, CA 92116

TICKETS: Tickets: $50.00. Proceeds to benefit both Diversionary Theatre and SDSU Musical Theatre Program.
Box Office: 619-220-0097 and on line at www.diversionary.org

October 2, 2005
From Moxie, expect 'more diverse and honest female images on stage'
From the San Diego Union Tribune
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20051002/news_lz1a02moxie.html

The gender gap will close just a bit on Friday when Moxie launches its first full season with Liz Duffy Adams' "Dog Act." Four plays on Moxie's five-play season at Diversionary Theatre are by women.

"We are dedicated to becoming the largest producer of female playwrights in Southern California," says artistic director Delicia Turner Sonnenberg. "We want to expand the kinds of roles that women can play. We want to present more diverse and honest female images on stage. But that doesn't mean that we don't do male playwrights or have men onstage too."

Turner Sonnenberg came to San Diego six years ago when her husband Jerry, a set designer, began his graduate studies at UCSD. After the birth of their first child, a son named for the great African-American playwright August Wilson, she won a Theatre Communications Group grant that supported two years of work as an associate artist at the San Diego Repetory Theatre.

She was involved in casting, planning and coffee-fetching, and eventually co-directed the Rep's solid production of David Auburn's "Proof."

Encouraged by Rep boss Sam Woodhouse and by her mentor and friend Deborah Salzer, founder of the Playwrights Project, she directed six of the Project's winning scripts at the Old Globe. She staged a moving production of Euripides'little-seen "Children of Heracles," a well-cast look at Diana Son's provocative "Stop Kiss," a strong, thematically revealing all-female "Othello" and a terrific production of David Linday-Abaire's quirky "Kimberly Akimbo."

Featured in several of those shows for the tiny 6th@Penn and Women's Rep were the actors with whom she last year formed Moxie: Jo Anne Glover, Liv Kellgren and Jennifer Eve Kraus.

Turner Sonnenberg appreciates men like Patch and Woodhouse, men who run theaters yet will acknowledge, when pressed, that men produce the work they're attracted to, that supports their world view – "and that usually means work written by men."

So she and her cohorts decided, she says slyly, to do likewise. "I decided to do the work that I'm attracted to. And in my case that's work by women," she says. "We knew they were writing great plays and winning prizes so we wanted to give them the opportunities they often don't get."

Moxie plans to headquarter its theater in Encinitas and, until the foundersfind a suitable space, will produce from Diversionary's resident theater.

Alert to the needs of parents, Moxie is also offering a local first – childcare during some matinees. Kids with moms or dads watching a show will learn to create collages, make fresh lemonade and sing musical theater-style in a series of play workshops themed to each show. Reservations for the play tables are required.

"Dog Act" previews at 8 p.m. Friday, opens at 8 p.m. Saturday and runs Thursdays through Sundays at Diversionary Theatre, 4545 Park Blvd., University Heights. Information: (760) 634-3965 or www.moxietheatre.com.

– ANNE MARIE WELSH

September 11, 2005
ARTS LETTERS
Article gets his vote for 'Critics Choice'
From the San Diego Union Tribune
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050911/news_1a11artslets.html

Thank you, thank you, thank you! for the wonderful article on the evolution of Diversionary ("A place to call their own; A community sees itself on stage at Diversionary, celebrating 20 seasons as one of the oldest gay theater companies in the nation," Sept. 4).

I served on the board of directors during the tough times of the late 1990s and was one of four who interviewed and hired Chuck Zito, which proved to be a turning point for the theater. Before Chuck, it was touch and go as to whether the doors could remain open. I've watched the theater evolve from a "drop trou" cute boy agenda to a legitimate contender for "Critics Choice" recognition, thanks to a dedicated board and Chuck. Dan Kirsch is a fine successor and has hit the ground running. I'm so happy for him that the first production of his tenure was the hit "Morman Boy."

With all due respect to (Diversionary founder) Tom (Vegh) and (former artistic director) Gayle (Feldman), edgy is great, but it doesn't put bodies in the seats. If you have a few millionaire donors who are able to support the theater, you can get away with lots of "edgy." Diversionary doesn't have that option, at least not at this juncture. What most of our patrons want are well-cast plays that don't hit you over the head with the "gay experience." I think both Chuck and Dan recognize that fact, and I think the selections of the past several years bear that out.

Peter Jarman
San Diego

Your piece on Diversionary Theatre was a welcome recognition of a remarkable, wonderful and valuable local theater. An important acknowledgment was missing, however, which I'm sure Tom Vegh and everyone at Diversionary would not want to leave uncorrected.

Robert Nuismer was an integral part of the theater's early evolution, a fine actor in his own right and a marvelous man – who we sadly lost to AIDS far too early in his life. I had the privilege of working with him in the cast of "Bent," staged at the then "Bowery" theater. Welton Jones wrote of his performance at the time that he was "touching in his vulnerability, eloquent physically and refreshingly innocent of acting tricks."

He is very much missed by us all, and belongs in any mention of Diversionary's development.

Wilson Adam Schooley
La Mesa

Set the record straight on gay theater history

Anne Marie Welsh's article on gay theater contains one error. The first gay play produced at the Caffe Cino "in which gay characters were portrayed as humans, not as villains, depressives or deviants" was not "The Madness of Lady Bright" (1964), but Doric Wilson's "Now She Dances!" (1961).

Robert Patrick
Los Angeles

This is to correct some inadvertent misstatements in Anne Marie Welsh's article.

Three years before Lanford Wilson's wonderful play, two plays of mine ("Now She Dances!" and "Pretty People" – both 1961) portrayed gay characters "as human, not as villains, depressives or deviants." Both plays were highly successful at the time.

"Now She Dances!" may have been the first play Lanford saw at the Cino. It all happened so fast back in the early 1960s that to pick any one play to date the beginning of the post-Stonewall "gay theater" is a huge mistake and at best the accident of Cino calendar availability. It excludes some very important plays, notably Robert Patrick's brilliant "The Haunted Host."

TOSOS (theater) never "folded." After a number of years of producing and directing, I decided to focus my energy again on my own playwriting and did not feel I, as the company's artistic director, should self-produce under the TOSOS banner. Also, I had been funding TOSOS from my tips as a bartender in the newly liberated gay bar scene, and as I had become a bit old to continue presenting myself as a "sex-object," I felt it prudent to retire. As it was pointless to expect to find funding in our community, I had to let TOSOS go dormant. The production and creative staff of TOSOS went on to help present my plays "The West Street Gang," "A Perfect Relationship," "Forever After" and "Street Theater."

Mark Finley, Barry Childs and I revived TOSOS to major critical success in 2000 as TOSOS II.

Sorry to pick-the-nits, but we have such a limited comprehension of our history, it is important that what little there is should be correct.

Doric Wilson
New York

September 4, 2005
A Place to Call Their Own
From the San Diego Union Tribune
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050904/news_lz1a04divers.html

A community sees itself reflected on stage at Diversionary, celebrating 20 seasons as one of the oldest gay theater companies in the nation
By Anne Marie Welsh
THEATER CRITIC

In Phyllis Nagy's "Girl Bar," a play that explores and explodes lesbian stereotypes, girl-bar regular Charlotte imagines a future in which George Bush, Anita Bryant and Nancy Reagan join hands with gay gals in worldwide solidarity. When that happens, she dreams, there'll be no need for a girl bar.

And perhaps no need for a gay theater like Diversionary, which produced two of Nagy's defiantly dreamlike and original plays in 1997.

But until then?

"Until gay people can marry and have the same rights as everyone else, there will always be a need for a niche theater like Diversionary," said Gayle Feldman, who directed the Nagy works in 1997 while she headed the company. "I, for one, will never tire of seeing people like myself represented onstage and that's just not happening anyplace else."

TV shows such as "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" have made gay style and a glossy version of gay culture popular with the masses. And playwrights such as Richard Greenberg now create gay characters in thoughtful, entertaining comedies embraced by middle-of-the-road regional theaters and even Broadway.

Still, Diversionary is the city's only theater company committed to dramatizing stories of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people. The company opens its 20th season Thursday with Paul Rudnick's madcap "Valhalla," marking an anniversary that makes it one of the oldest gay theater companies in the nation.

While specialized companies devoted to women's issues (Women's Repertory) and African-American plays (San Diego Black Ensemble) have become defunct here and elsewhere, Diversionary founder Thomas Vegh agrees with Feldman that the Park Blvd. company may never become obsolete.

"To me, the theater serves the community with craft and passion and substance, but it's also a museum of gay and lesbian culture that needs to be preserved and presented," said Vegh. "It's our history. And when a diverse audience mixes together in a dark room and they pretend together, they are experiencing an awareness of others that can't be had any place else."

Current Diversionary head Dan Kirsch pointed to his recent co-production of "Confessions of a Mormon Boy" as an example of such diversification. The New York-bound solo show by writer-performer Steven Fales last month proved the theater's biggest hit since "M. Butterfly" of five years ago. "Mormon Boy" brought in "young and old, gay and straight people, even a lot of Mormons," said Kirsch.

"A group of 10 Mormon women who said they were more 'liberal' than most" of their co-religionists came one night, Kirsch reported. They enjoyed the hilarious and moving show about a closeted Mormon husband and father whose "out" life included stints working for a gay escort service.

Though he's still battling a small deficit, Kirsch said that such co-productions and collaborations are on his agenda. "We are stressing collaboration with other theaters as we plan to take small steps toward insuring our future for the next 10 years," he said. "The audience now includes confirmed theater-goers who are just looking for good work wherever they find it, then our loyal GLBT audience of subscribers who may not go to other theaters, and then that huge untapped gay market that may never have been to a play before."

Evolving 'community'
An afternoon's conversation with Vegh, Feldman and Kirsch, who steered the theater during three distinct eras, quickly teased out three different visions of the theater's mission. Their trialogue showed just how heterogeneous and ever-evolving "the community" Diversionary serves is. ("The community" is shorthand for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people who come together as such; also, GLBT.)

Diversionary was born against the backdrop of the AIDS epidemic, but it evolved along with the political advances and setbacks for gay rights in the larger culture. The theater's history reflects those social changes and, artistically, also connects to the national development of gay theaters.

When Harvey Fierstein's "Torch Song Trilogy" moved from the Glines, a tiny gay theater founded in 1976 in Manhattan, to Broadway and won best play and actor Tonys in 1984, the awards focused mainstream attention on a downtown breed of theater artists devoted to generating gay art for an increasingly "out," if imperilled community.

That same year Tom Vegh first produced theater as part of an AIDS education effort at SDSU. With the AIDS epidemic overwhelming the gay community just as the first wave of "out" gay consciousness and demands for gay rights were flooding into mainstream culture, Vegh's production was titled "The AIDS Show." AIDS, in this case, was an acronym for Artists Involved in Death and Survival.

That educational effort and his second show, Philip Real's "Lunch" and "Dessert" – the first about gay men, the other about two lesbians – were restaged as fundraisers for the "No on 64" campaign fighting a Lyndon LaRouche initiative that would have, among other anti-AIDS measures, quarantined people who tested positive for the virus.

So when Vegh incorporated and chose his theater's name in 1986, Diversionary educated, entertained and raised funds. The remounts of "The AIDS Show" and the Real plays were staged on the dance floor of West Coast Production Company, a popular gay disco on Hancock Street near Old Town.

"It had a sunken dance floor with rails on three sides. It was perfect for performance. It was also a test for me," Vegh said. "I knew that if this worked in this space with this material I'd forge ahead. Then, I would set out to do more shows, hire a cast and give it a go."

Vegh reached out to the larger political community, involving Christine Kehoe, now a state senator (then the editor of the Gay Times), in post-performance discussions, as well as best-selling novelist Armistead Maupin and others. "That was the beginning of a long-term relationship with Christine," said Vegh, who resigned in 1989.

Nationally, and here, the repertory of early gay theater companies tended to split into two categories: AIDS plays such as Larry Kramer's potent "The Normal Heart" and what one theater historian calls "cute boys in underpants" plays, that is, sex comedies with flashes of nudity that provided "an understandable respite from the grim realities of the former."

As the AIDS-mortality rates began to drop, in part because of the educational activism of artists, the content of many gay-themed works began to shift. Such plays as Terrence McNally's "Love! Valor! Compassion!" stillvalidated the experience of GLBT audiences. But because of their quality and their widespread appeal to mainstream audiences, such dramas also educated straight society about a people and culture they had long ignored.

Feldman, a no-bull activist and versatile actor, first worked with Diversionary as a stage director in 1994 during the company's initial season at its permanent home on Park Boulevard. She took over as its first (and still only) female artistic director in 1996. Key to her vision was her insistence upon a "fifty-fifty split" in the programming between works written by and representing gay men and those by and representing the experience of lesbians. Also high on her list of priorities: bringing Latino artists and audiences, and people of color, into the theater's mix.

Kirsch, the administrator and producer now in his first year there, seems to be following in the measured footsteps of his predecessor, Chuck Zito. Zito did not direct or act; like Kirsch, he was a producer and during his four years (2001-2004) at Diversionary, he turned the theater away from both "cute naked boy shows" and experimental new work toward a more carefully-balanced and less edgy roster of plays. He also hired experienced directors for individual shows, and paid actors enough to ratchet up the quality and consistency of the performances.

'Go farther'
Diversionary's uneven history, both managerially and artistically, has served to dramatize the difference between gay playwrights whose ideology puts their sexual natures first, and playwrights who happen to be gay (McNally, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee or Tony Kushner) and who attempt to represent the complexity of human experience through an assortment of characters.

Scores of strong plays of both kinds – and some clunkers too – have been on the boards at Diversionary as it moved from the disco to a Balboa Park puppet theater to a community center in Golden Hill to its attractive permanent digs. (The other artistic directors were SDSU drama prof William Peterson in 1991-92, Robert Joseph from 1993 to 1996, and Wayne Tibbetts from 1998 to 2000.)

Depending upon the times and the artistic director involved, the theater has tilted toward the ideological and educative, the flamboyant and sometimes frivolous, the artistically challenging and ambitious during the Feldman years, and the smoothly balanced middle of the gay-road during the halcyon Zito years.

While "Go farther" might have been Vegh's motto; "Stay balanced" might well be Kirsch's.

Aside from Vegh, said Feldman, one other man was "absolutely crucial to the existence of Diversionary": John Mitchell, who was managing director of the theater for many years, the company's treasurer and also a board member. "Without him, the theater wouldn't have this space. He was the visionary in terms of moving the space to a legitimate theater building. We just wouldn't be here without him. Period.

"Writer-performer Steven Fales helped Diversionary to a popular hit with his "Confessions of a Mormon Boy," co-produced with the theater.

Feldman, now a real estate agent who still acts in independent productions around town, recalls the early days when Robyn Samuels, an original member of the Hot Flashes comedy troupe, performed with Sheri Hopwood in "Dessert."

"You had two women. My god, how revolutionary!" Feldman said, directing her goading remarks to Kirsch. "That was 50-50. And I'd like to see that again. And I don't. You're supposed to represent gays and lesbians."

Kirsch pointed out that Diversionary now attempts to reach bisexuals and transgendered people as well. And he reminded her that "there were women in all the productions this year and we have so many female directors," naming Rosina Reynolds and Delicia Turner Sonnenberg, who will direct three of the new season's shows.

"Female directors are great," said Feldman, "but we need the stories, not just a lesbian character now and again. This i