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Listen to Paul’s interview.

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players… One man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages. At first the infant, mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.  And then the whining school-boy… the lover,  sighing… a soldier, full of strange oaths… the justice, in fair round belly… The sixth age shifts into… the pantaloon, with spectacles on nose and pouch on side… Last scene of all, that ends this strange eventful history, is second childishness and mere oblivion: sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.” 

— Shakespeare

Welcome

Although I’m calling this website “a personal memoir in flux,” it is also my hope that the various sections will be of interest to people, whether they know me or not. “Out on a Lim” shares short observations on day-to-day life. “Limerances” chronicles longer remembrances of things past. “Limoscenes” presents descriptions of the plays I’ve written to date, with production photos. “Images in Limbo” shows pictures of the aging process, of me with family and friends. “Limpets” are the non-human dogs in my life, and “Limitations” are tributes to people who are no longer with us. So here I am, past imperfect, present progressive, future tense. Let me know what you think. — Paul

Mother Tongue: A Recreation in Two Acts

Mother Tongue3 Comments

Requirements:  14 characters played by 4F, 3M

Setting:  The action alternates between an office and a classroom in a midwestern university.  If possible, platforms and a limbo area can also be used for the various flashback sequences. 

Plot:  David Lee, a Chinese-American writer teaching in the English department at a midwestern university, is at a cross-roads in his life.  He has moved out of the house he has been sharing with his partner of nearly twenty years, and he is living temporarily in his office while continuing to teach his classes and working on his new play.  The work-in-progress starts out to be about his mother Lilian, a fourteen-year-old child-bride who leaves her parents in China to marry an older man in the Philippines in the late 1930s, but it soon turns out to be about himself as he finds himself undertaking the same sort of journey his mother did forty years ago.

Theme:  The nature of language itself, what we lose and/or gain when we give up one language for another; how our thought processes and maybe even our values are determined by the language(s) we speak and write,  perhaps even dream in.

Notes:  Lilian in this play is played by two women.  We meet Young Lilian at age 14, and see Old Lilian in her early 50s. While much of Mother Tongue is autobiographical, not all of it is factual.  That said, it should make no difference whether people know me personally or not.  Ultimately, the story of David Lee’s mother in her journey from China to the Philippines, and of David Lee himself in his journey from the Philippines to the United States, is the story of many people who leave one country for another, who abandon one culture for another, one language for another.

History:  Thanks to Mako, the play was first produced at East West Players in Los Angeles, Feb. 17-Mar. 6, 1988.  Paul Hough directed, and Alberto Isaac played the part of David Lee.  There was a staged reading at a theatre conference sponsored by the English department at the University of Kansas later the same year, again with Hough directing, and Isaac playing David Lee.  The play was subsequently produced by Actor’s Actors Inc. at the Cultural Center in Manila (Philippines), Apr. 20-22, 27-29 and May 18-19, 2001. Chris Millado was the director.

Short scene from the play:  David Lee teaches Freshman Composition and Literature at the University of Kansas. The various classroom sequences are organic and integral to the main narrative and action of the play itself.  I hope that the scene presented below illustrates this point.

(Scene 6: A week later, the classroom.  Lights up on the blackboard already in place.  On the table is a batch of tidily-stapled essays.  DAVID writes two short sentences on the board–“Lilian sings.  David doesn’t.”–then turns around to face the class.  He picks up the batch of essays and looks at his watch.) 

DAVID:  We’ve got a few minutes left, so before I return these gems to you, I’d like to talk briefly about the semicolon, and hope that in future you will know how to use this particular punctuation.  (Short pause.)  The most common usage of the semicolon is to join two complete sentences.  “Lilian sings.  David doesn’t.”  The period is perfectly acceptable, but it isn’t ideal.  It’s too divisive.  It chops up what might have been one thought into two independent thoughts.  A comma is a no-no, so what are we to do? 

We could turn the whole thing into a compound sentence by using a coordinate conjunction:  “Lilian sings, but David doesn’t.”  “Whenever Lilian sings, David doesn’t.”  Or, for that matter, into a complex sentence by using any number of subordinate conjunctions:  “Although Lilian sings, David doesn’t.  “Because Lilian sings, David doesn’t.” 

But what if subordination isn’t what we want?  Ahhhh, that’s when we fall back on the semicolon.

(David erases the period between the two sentences on the board and substitutes a large semicolon.)

Think of the semicolon as a period on top of a comma, the halfway point between a period and a comma–not a complete stop, but also longer than a pause, a sort of intermission.  (Short pause.)  Are there any questions?

(He starts to distribute the essays as the lights slowly fade to black for the end of Act One and the intermission.) 

Availability:  From Aran Press, and also from the author.

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Flesh, Flash and Frank Harris: A Recreation in Two Acts

Flesh Flash and Frank Harris1 Comment

Requirements:  35 parts which can be played by 5F, 8M

Setting:  The bedroom and study of Frank Harris in Nice.  Prominently displayed in one corner is a life-size plaster reproduction of the Venus de Milo.  For the flashback sequences, there is a limbo area downstage, and also various platforms upstage.  Mid-morning, late August, 1931.

Plot:  Because he was the editor of the prestigious Fortnightly Review and then the Saturday Review, and also because he had a knack for cultivating and befriending all the important people of his day, Frank Harris was the toast of London society by the time he was in his early 30s.   Among his intimates were George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, the Prince of Wales, Princess Alice of Monaco, etc.  But Frank lived lavishly and squandered his wealth.  To raise money, he wrote and published My Life and Loves, his scandalous autobiography which was immediately banned as pornography, and seized by authorities on both sides of the Atlantic.  When the play begins, Frank Harris is again penniless at age 76 in 1931, living with his unmarried daughter in a small apartment in Nice.  His old friend George Bernard Shaw is coming to visit, and Frank expects to borrow money from him.  While waiting for Shaw to show up, Frank entertains his daughter with wonderful stories from the past, and it is through these stories that we learn not only about his scandalous “life and loves,” but also his spectacular “rise and fall.”  When Shaw finally appears, we get a battle of wits between the two men.

Theme:  It goes without saying that there can be great platonic friendships between men, and also between women, but is friendship between men and women ever truly possible, especially if sex is involved?

Notes:  Frank Harris is portrayed in this play by three different actors–Young Frank from age 11 to 18, Middle Frank from age 26 to 60, and Old Frank from age 61 to 75.  The three Franks see each other and talk to each other throughout, but Young Frank knows about himself only through age 18, and Middle Frank  only through age 60.  Old Frank is the only one who knows his entire history but, at age 76,  his memory is starting to fail him; to say nothing of the fact that, all his life, Frank Harris has always been accused of twisting and sometimes even fabricating facts to suit his own literary purpose.  As he puts it, “Facts frequently get in the way of the Truth.”  This play tries to portray the Truth as Frank Harris saw it.

History:  The play was first produced in Lawrence, Kansas by the Lawrence Community Theatre, on April 23-27, 1980.  Mary Doveton was the director.  It was subsequently produced Off-Broadway in New York by Shelter West Company, October 27-Nov. 20, 1983 and Jan. 20-Feb. 12, 1984.  Judith Joseph directed.

Sampling of reviews:
“In Flesh, Flash and Frank Harris, we come to understand this unusual and many-faceted man….With Shaw, Wilde and Harris sharing the stage, you’d expect witty dialogue, and it’s there in abundance.” — N.Y. Theater Voice
“Lim has skillfully told the whole story…with humor, pathos and dramatic force.” — Glenn Loney, After Dark
“Well-crafted structure.” — Village Voice
“A highly-literate script….Lim has become the most noteworthy of our regional playwrights.” — The Kansas City Star
“Titillating and provocative…something like witnessing historical figures come to life in a wax museum.” — The Lawrence Journal-World

Short scene from the play: Old Frank is telling Middle Frank and Young Frank about the first woman he married, an older woman who also happens to be a very wealthy widow.  In the flashback that follows, MRS. EMILY CLAYTON emerges from “the memorhy pool,” dressed in a fashionable evening gown of the late 1880s.  MIDDLE FRANK has wandered off by himself at an evening party, and she has followed him to the library. She watches him downing his port.

YOUNG FRANK: (Incredulously.)  I was married to that?  Oh, surely, I could have done better.  Even Mrs. Mayhew in Kansas was better than that!

OLD FRANK: (Laughing.)  That is a widow worth over ninety thousand pounds.  Also, after three decades of marriage to a man 38 years her senior she was plainly ripe for…

EMILY:  Mr. Harris?

MIDDLE FRANK: (Turning around to face her.)  Yes?

EMILY:  I was beginning to think you’d left the party without saying goodbye to anyone.

MIDDLE FRANK: (Pouring himself another glass of port.)  Oh no, Mrs. Clayton.  I wouldn’t do that.  I was just…

EMILY:  Hiding from all the mothers with unmarried daughters?  Ahhhh, Mr. Harris, you must get used to that.  Eligible young bachelors are a rarity in our circle. Tell me, how does it feel to be the most talked-about man in London tonight?

MIDDLE FRANK:  Am I the most talked-about man in London tonight?

EMILY:  Come, come, Mr. Harris.  It’s not everyday a 30-year-old maverick gets appointed editor of the Fortnightly Review!  (Pause.)  And what do you think of our unmarried daughters?  Some of them can be quite charming, I’m told.

MIDDLE FRANK:  I’m afraid I really do not care for young girls.

EMILY:  Oh?

MIDDLE FRANK:   (Obviously enjoying himself.) Women are, in my opinion, like wine.  Red Bordeaux is like the lawful wife:  an excellent beverage that goes with every meal, always acceptable, but entirely predictable.  If a man accustomed to Red Bordeaux wants something more exhilirating, chances are he’ll turn to champagne.  Champagne is like the woman of the streets:  always within reach, although its price is out of all proportion to its worth.

EMILY:  Please continue with your analogy.  I find the conceit most stimulating.

MIDDLE FRANK:  Moselle is the girl of fourteen to eighteen:  light, quick on the tongue, has little or no body.  The memory of it is fleeting and fragile.  Burgundy I think of as the woman of thirty:  more generous, more body, a perfume which lingers.
(He refills his glass again.  He holds up the decanter of port and smiles.)
And then we come to port, the woman of forty or older:  richer and sweeter than all the others, keeps excellently and ripens with age, but can only be drunk freely by youth.  Yes, if one is young and vigorous, the best wine in the world is crusted port, half a century old.

EMILY:  And you, Mr. Harris, which of all these wines do you prefer?

MIDDLE FRANK: ( A twinkle in his eye.)  It is port I am now drinking.

OLD FRANK: ( To YOUNG FRANK.)  Ahhh, you were in your element then!  Magnificent, just magnificent!EMILY: ( Slowly.)  Mr. Harris, I have at home a very fine bottle of crusted port.  I’ve been saving it since my husband died.  If I give a small party Friday next and promise to let you sample the port, will you come?

MIDDLE FRANK:  Of course.  I will be delighted

EMILY:  Good.  I shall send my carriage to fetch you….Until next Friday, then.  Goodnight, Mr. Harris.

(End of scene.)

Availability:  From Aran Press, and also from the author.

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Woeman: A Recreation in Two Acts

Woeman

Requirements: 5F, 1M

Setting: A small studio apartment in an old building near Columbia University, New York City.  Saturday afternoon, late June, the present.

Plot:  Something has happened to Charlie Womack, a photo-journalist in his mid-30s. All we know is that he is in the hospital, and that his mother has called an impromptu meeting in Charlie’s apartment.  Arriving at different intervals are Luette, Charlie’s 15-year-old daughter; Hildaberta, a German exchange student who lives in the same apartment building and who has been having an affair with Chairlie; Edgarda, Charlie’s ex-mistress, an older woman who continues to pay his bills; Geraldine, Charlie’s beautiful ex-wife and Luette’s mother; and, of course, Matilda, Charlie’s formidable mother, a registered nurse in her mid-50s.  Charlie himself appears only in flashbacks, as each of these women share painful stories about their respective relationships with Charlie.  The final image in the play is that of Charlie sitting on his bed in a catatonic state, as the five women strip his apartment, taking things that belong to them or that they might have given to Charlie in happier times.

Theme:  Thresholds of physical and psychological pain, and how much a man can endure before he snaps.  The conceit was to write a play about five important women in the life of one man, and how each of these women appeals to one of his five senses.  The man is “complete” as a human being only when all five women are in seeming harmony in his life.  What would happen to such a man if these women were to withhold or withdraw their support suddenly, in quick succession, within a 24-hour period?  Would such a man be reduced to catatonia?

Notes: Sometime in 1977, two students at the University of Kansas told me stories about themselves which stayed with me, stories which would not go away until I put them down on paper.  One story was told in excruciating detail by Steven Johnson, at an evening gathering, about a car accident he had been in, in which his right hand was nearly severed, but reattached (badly) by surgeons through a series of operations. He showed us his hand, how he could not move his fingers separately. Move one finger, and all the other fingers move simultaneously, “as though waving goodbye.” I asked Steve if he would tell the story again the following day so I could tape it.  He did, and his story appears almost verbatim in Woeman.  The other story was told by another young man, at another evening gathering.  His name was David Moses.  He was very drunk, so I have no idea if the story he told was in veritas or not, about what his father did to him when he was still a child, when his parents were undergoing a particularly nasty divorce.  I did not ask David to repeat his story on tape, and I have taken some liberties with the details as the story is told in Woeman. Through the years, I hear occasionally from Steven Johnson, and he fills me in on various female celebrities he claims he has been sleeping with in New York and Los Angeles.  As for David Moses, he went to Boston after he graduated from K.U.  Last I heard, he had died of A.I.D.S….More inventively, Woeman also has built-in echoes of the tragic story of Dryas from Greek mythology. As for the the title of the play, again it is a made-up word.  Most obviously, it implies that the play is about a man who is full of woe.  More subliminally, I wanted to suggest a variation, perhaps a more ancient spelling, of the plural form of “woman.”  And finally, although I wrote the lyrics for the song “Trees” which is sung by the character Geraldine in the play, the haunting music was composed by Craig Swanson.  Craig also posed for the figure of the man in the poster. The painting is by Lawrence painter Dennis Helm, who subsequently also died of A.I.D.S.

History:  The play was first produced in the William Inge Theatre at the University of Kansas, Sept. 28-Oct. 3, 1978.  Jack Wright was the director, and Del Unruh designed the set. Rusty Laushman played Charlie Womack.  The women were played by Joan Oberndorf, Deborah Moke, Heather Laird, Kathleen Warfel and Diana Sinclair.  The production was entered for competition in the original scripts division of the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival.  During the feedback session, the KCACTF respondent (I forget her name) said that she “hates plays with flashbacks,” so we knew immediately that, unlike Conpersonas, neither the play nor the production was going to advance to the next stage of the competition.  Woeman was subsequently produced Off-Broadway in New York at the Marquee Second Story Theatre by Judith Joseph’s Shelter West Company in March of 1981.  It was directed by Eduardo Ivan Lopez.  Anthony Di Novi played Charlie Womack.  The women were played by Mary Charalambakis, Kevin Madden, Sandra Soehngen, Christy Brotherton, and Judith Joseph herself played Charlie’s mother.

Sampling of reviews:
“Lim’s play is rich in resonances, allusions and symbols.  His sensitivity and imagination show a literary intelligence.” — Glen Loney, After Dark
“A psychological who-dun-it….The playwright cleverly and successfully weaves the informative flashbacks…into the present.” –Joanne Pottlitzer, Other Stages
“Lim has written characters of substance, depth and complexity….An emotionally exhausting study of the impact of divorce and the inevitable failure of human relationships….Riveting….A human drama that aims for the gut.” — John Bush Jones, The Kansas City Star
“Lim has a gift for both urbane and cruel dialogue….His new play…ends with an impact that leaves the audience gasping.” — Mary Davidson, Lawrence Journal-World

Availability:  From Aran Press, and also from the author.

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Homerica: A Trilogy on Sexual Liberation

Homerica

Requirements: 33 Characters can be played 6F. 11M or (if absolutely necessary) 5F, 9M.

Setting: A basement space in the Village in New York City, used three different ways for the corresponding time periods depicted in the play.  In Act 1, “Bull’s Books,” it is an old apartment-cum-antiquarian bookstore, early evening on Veterans’ Day, sometime in the late 1960s.  In Act 2, “Sammy’s Swingles,” the space has been converted into a swinging singles’ bar, late afternoon of Veterans’ Day, sometime in the late 1970s or early 1980s.  And in Act 3, “Mothers Superior,” the same space is now seen as a multi-purpose office-cum-priory, early afternoon of Veterans’ Day, sometime in the near future.

Plot:  In “Bull’s Books,” the aging proprietor of the antiquarian bookstore is going out of business and leaving for his home England.  The only books he is bringing with him are The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, The Lulu Plays by Frank Wedekind, Death in Venice by Thomas Mann, Querelle de Brest by Jean Genet, Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, and Forbidden Colors by Yukio Mishima. In his solitude, the old man begins to “interact” with the sexually-charged characters from the six books, who all make fun of his old-fashioned ways and his repressed sexuality.  In “Sammy’s Swingles,” the once-popular singles bar is going out of business, but there will be one final sleazy celebration in the space.  Patrick the bartender is getting married to Brigida the bouncer, and Rev. Billy Crackers is performing the ceremony.  Among the guests are Bob and Carol and Fu and Alice, a black drag queen named Midnight, a white hustler named Cowboy, cocktail waitresses named Linda and Georgina, and a deaf mute named Jack.  Things come to a frenzied climax when the bride gets gangbanged in the restroom offstage.   In “Mothers Superior,” a once-profitable operation being managed by a group of enterprising Irish nuns is going out of business because women in Third World countries (including the nuns in Ireland) are now so “liberated” that they too no longer wish to serve as surrogate wombs for wealthy women in North America who have neither the time nor the inclination to bear their own children. The business is saved when Dr. Shimbun, a brilliant Japanese obstetrician, discovers how the fertilized eggs of humans can be implanted and carried to term in the wombs of female baboons.  This scientific breakthrough has the blessings of the Primate of Rome, Pope Olazzo the First, who drops in to visit the nuns and the baboons, accompanied by his own special acolyte, a pubescent 14-year-old boy.

Theme:  The excesses and also the possible consequences of sexual “liberation.”

Notes:  “Homerica” is a word I made up, hoping to invoke the spirit of the blind Homer, and to evoke a different sort of odyssey in America.

History:  “Homerica” was produced in Lawrence, KS by Kansas University Student Union Activities, March 1-6, 1977.  It was directed by Paul Hough, with actors not only from Lawrence but also from the Kansas City area.  The complicated set was designed and constructed in Kansas City, then trucked into Lawrence and reassembled in the Kansas Union Ballroom.  Audiences were outraged by the play and, at a couple of performances, some people left angrily during the Second Act, after the preacher joins the gangbang offstage and we hear him shouting, “In God we thrust!”  Six years later, in June of 1983, I directed another production of the play at Leicester University in England.  There, the audience laughed more heartily and seemed to have a better time than their American cousins in Lawrence, KS.

Sampling of Reviews:
“A dazzling, virtuoso kind of theater! Homerica ultimately shows the destructive, regressive, dehumanizing effects of so-called sexual freedom with dire consequences for the entire human race.  The play comes to this bleak vision through three acts, each more crazily comic than the last….Pervading the whole, however, is Lim’s verbal wizardry and an electrifying theatricality.”
–John Bush Jones, Kansas City Star Magazine
“A freaked-out farce–a kind of You Can’t Take It With You as revisualized by Heironymous Bosch.” — The Kansas City Times
“Lim takes his shots at marriage, family heritage, older ways of life, the Catholic church and motherhood.  Despite all the horror…the audience laughs as all these nostalgic institutions are shamelessly degraded….One of the most effective social dissertations of today.” — University Daily Kansan
“Outrageous satire…wickedly funny.” — Leicester Mercury

Availability:  From Aran Press, and also from the author.


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Chambers: A Recreation in Four Parts

Chambers

Requirements:  2F, 3M, and 4 Ushers (preferably M)

Setting:  Four bedrooms in the ancestral home of a Kansas City playwright. The pattern of exits and entrances from each chamber to the next should follow the way blood enters the human heart and the way it exits out of the human heart to the rest of the body.

Plot:  An elderly and ailing Kansas City playwright has returned to his ancestral home and, with the help of the man who directed all of his earlier plays on Broadway, he is now staging scenes from his latest play, a work-in-progress which will be completed in the course of the evening’s presentation in front of a small invited audience.  The man’s play is autobiographical in nature, giving us his own personal history–from the peculiar circumstances of his birth, to his seduction as a young man by his mother’s sister, to his unhappy marriage with a younger woman who is now cheating on him with one of his students, and finally to a scene which has yet to be written, even as it is being played out in real time.

Theme:  The conceit of the play is that each man in the course of a lifetime has room in his heart for only four major heartaches; also, that we tend to play out the same script many times in the course of our lives, but with different actors.

Notes:  On another level, the plot and narrative is a retelling of the Arthurian legend.

History:  In order of composition, Chambers was the second play that I wrote, but it was produced out of sequence because Broadway producer Richard Barr optioned the play for nearly two years for a New York production, and then dropped the option.  The full story behind this will appear in a forthcoming book about Richard Barr by David Crespy.  Chambers was given a staged reading in 1979 by Midwest Playwrights Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin, under the supervision of Dale Wasserman.  And I subsequently directed a full production for the Lawrence Community Theatre in 1985.  The third scene in the play is called “Password” and can be performed independently.  In 1975, it was awarded second-prize in the one-act play competition of the Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature in the Philippines.

Availability:  From the author.

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Conpersonas: A Recreation in Two Acts

Conpersonas

Requirements: 2M, 2F

Setting: Upper East Side New York apartment.  Thanksgiving weekend.

Plot: A Jesuit priest investigates and relives, with devastating consequences, the relationships that his identical twin brother had had with three people who may or may not have contributed to the twin brother’s suicide.

Theme: What happens when we confide in friends, sharing with them our deepest secrets.  Do we end up expecting a great deal more of these people?  If so, can these unfortunate people ever live up to our expectations?  Are these friendships doomed once the confidences begin?

Notes:  The title “Conpersonas” is a word I made up, suggesting not only the pros and cons of our various personas, but also the people who trick or con us daily in strange and mysterious ways.  As for the sub-head, this is the first of many plays which I describe as “a recreation” because I seem to be drawn to material wherein the central characters are examining the present by re-living or re-creating various moments in the past.  And, obviously, it is also my hope that my plays will entertain and provide, however fleetingly, some moments of recreation.

History:  I wrote this play in a playwriting class taught by Ron Willis at the University of Kansas.  It was produced almost immediately by KU, with David Cook directing. In the cast were Paul Hough, Peter Miner, Nancy Flagg, and Sheri Schlozman.  The production won the 1976 American College Theatre Festival Award for Best New Play and was presented in the Eisenhower Theatre at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.  The three adjudicators were playwright Robert E. Lee, critic Henry Hewes of The Saturday Review, and critic Sylvie Drake of The Los Angeles Times.  The play was published by Samuel French, Inc. but, to my knowledge, it has never been performed anywhere else.  The reviewers in Washington, D.C. mostly agreed that the play was “too complex.”

Short scene from the play: Mark, a Jesuit priest, is talking to Shelagh, an older married woman who was the mistress of Mark’s identical twin brother.

SHELAGH:  I bet there are three kinds of people who seek you out in confession.

MARK: And who, pray tell, might these people be?  The first kind.

SHELAGH: (Spitting out the words.)  Fags!  God, how they must drool, kneeling inside those hot and sweaty boxes, knowing you are on the other side of the screen, knowing you will be listening to their heavy breathing, knowing you will have to forgive them their lust!

MARK: (Quietly.) And the second kind?

SHELAGH: (Rapidly, bitterly.)  Fag hags.  Older women.  More experienced women.  Women who are bored with their husbands because their husbands are bored with them. Women who allow other women’s husbands to speculate about them–“Does she, or doesn’t she?”–because they need to be reassured that they are still young, still attractive, still capable of doing wild things in bed!  Women who submit themselves to the ultimate test of their femininity, the seduction of that which is sacrosanct and verboten, the conversion of Sodom and Gomorrah.  Women who make the tragic mistake of falling in love with men who…simply are not interested in women.

MARK: (After a long silence.)  And the third kind?

SHELAGH: (Sadly.)  Teenyboppers.  Oversexed and precocious.  The daughters of fag hags.  Little girls who don’t know better than to…compete with their own mothers. (Short pause, then bitterly.)  When she was small, Rhoda and I used to do things together, tell each other our secrets, share all our likes and dislikes. Why, until very recently, I was even helping her to save up enough money to buy her own car!  A small Pinto, I suggested, but no, she wants a Mustang, just like I have.  (She looks at MARK suddenly, and laughs.)  Oh, we still do most things together, don’t get me wrong.  Still mount the same hobbyhorses, if you will.  But we no longer like each other enough to burden ourselves with one another’s…confidences.  For that we go to…other people.  Your brother, for instance.

 

 

 

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28 June 2009: Stonewall Riots

OUT ON A LIM

Forty years ago today, I was a fairly non-political student taking summer classes at the University of Kansas, and I did not pay much attention to news about the Stonewall Riots in New York City.  Now, of course, the whole world marks the occasion as the birth of the Gay Rights Movement. But the battle is far from over.  PLEASE ASK, PLEASE TELL.

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27 June 2009: Farrah Fawcett

OUT ON A LIM

I saw the late Farrah Fawcett in the 1983 Off-Broadway production of Extremities, but the thing I remember best about the show was that there were two men who were standing guard down front, on the orchestra level, one on each side of the stage, facing the audience.  I don’t know if they were there to protect FF because she was being stalked in real life; or whether they were there, as per some newspaper reports, to keep anyone in the audience from leaping up on the stage to protect FF when she was being brutalized, in one of the scenes, by a would-be rapist.  Of course, in the play by William Mastrosimone, FF turns the table against her would-be rapist, and ends up torturing him mercilessly. Perhaps the two guards were really there to protect FF from men in the audience who might have been outraged by the reverse brutality.

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Links

English Alternative Theatre Website (Archived)