From TOKENS OF AFFECTION. Claire, a chef in Connecticut, is on the phone with her beleaguered brother Charlie, who lives in New York. Their parents, having decided to separate, unexpectedly arrived on their children’s respective doorsteps, as they apparently have nowhere else to go. Claire is not pleased.

CLAIRE

She’s had sixty years to find happiness, Charlie.  What if she doesn’t find it?  I think happiness just eludes some people, that’s why they take up hobbies.  You should see the women in my cooking classes.  Those broads are miserable, but their hands are busy, and that’s enough.

What if Mom lets every widower in Branford take her out to five ‘o clock dinners and she’s still not happy?  She’ll be an old woman living alone, and if her mind starts to go or she breaks a hip, there’s gonna be nobody to look after her. What’s she gonna do, move in with you, sleep on your futon?  No, she’s gonna want to move in with me. And there’s no freaking way that is happening, so I’m gonna have to put her in a home! 

See? Suddenly I’m the bad guy here. Mom leaves Dad and I’m the villain because I don’t wanna drop everything and feed her applesauce while she hangs on for another thirty years! I am so sorry Dad wouldn’t buy her flowers, but that is not reason enough to ruin my life. You tell Dad to pick a peck of posies, haul his useless butt to Connecticut, and get her out of my house!

From BAD MAMA: SCENES OF THE DOMESTICALLY DISTURBED. Shelly, a young Florida woman, details her plans for the future in a letter to her unborn child. Her newly-minted maternal instincts have revealed to her that the baby will be a boy. And he’s gonna be gay.

What Are You Expecting?

Dear Baby. I was watching Chelsea Lately, and they had Jessica Alba on, is she even famous anymore? Anyhoo she said when she was pregnant, she wrote letters to her baby so it would know what life was like before it was born. I thought that was so sweet, it made me cry, but my hormones are just like, insane right now, so everything makes me cry.  Especially that couple in the Country Crock commercial, because they are just so in love, you can tell even though all you see is their hands, and he always butters her dinner rolls and I think that says a lot about a person.

Now I’m all emotional. Okay. So, what to tell you, baby? Um. I hate my hair. Judy told me I can’t dye it ’til you’re born, cause all the blonding stuff would soak into my head and then get down to you and you’d eat it and you’d get like Down Syndrome and I don’t want that so I have to deal with roots from hell. I asked if I could just dye it all brown, but Judy said that she didn’t think so, cause you’d eat the brown dye too. When I was 16, I dyed it with Kool-Aid, I might try that.  I figure you can eat Kool-Aid. Cuz you’re gonna be practically livin’ on that shit after you’re born.

Don’t know if you’re a boy or a girl yet, officially. We’ve decided to wait and see, and I think that’s best because with all the other things science can tell you these days, it’s good to let something be a surprise. We know you got all your fingers and toes, no brain damage or anything like that, I mean, I would love you regardless but what a bonus that you’re okay, ya know? Everybody says they’d love their baby no matter what, but I think it’s still okay to really hope you don’t have to deal with anything weird. That’s why I don’t mind the roots, if that’s what I gotta do for you to be, ya know, normal.  Cuz I saw this chick on Ripley’s Believe it or Not one time? She didn’t have a lower half. Of her body. She was just head and arms and like here up and that’s it. She walked on her hands and she looked like a hermit crab.

Please, Jesus, let my baby have a lower half. I mean, there were so many questions I had looking at that woman. Like, how does she poo?

Eddie says I’m a worrywart, and that I watch too much TV, but I don’t think so. You’re going to be absolutely perfect, just like those babies when they’re born on soaps and they’re all clean and pink and big-eyed and they weigh 14 pounds. You won’t be all red and wrinkly and little. Looking at you will be like staring at the sun, people’ll just be blinded by the perfection before them.

I know we’re not supposed to know, and our doctor’s been very good about not telling us, but a mother just senses these things. You’re a boy. And your name is going to be Lorenzo. And I know something else. 

You’re gonna be gay!

I haven’t told your father yet, because, well, you’ll see how men are. Straight men, at least.  Eddie would get all puffed up because you won’t be good at sports, and you’ll probably play clarinet in the high school band, and all the other fathers will make fun of Eddie, but I don’t care. I’m going to love my gay baby Lorenzo, and we’re going to have such fun together!

I’ve been cutting out pictures of outfits from the International Male catalog, and me and Judy have been making little miniature versions over at her house while Eddie’s at work. We’ve got little silk shirts, and Capri pants, and we’re just bedazzling the shit out of anything we can get our hands on. We’ve got this bib that says “Diva” on it- you’re gonna be so fucking fabulous.

I watch movies and TV shows, and there’s all these straight girls with their gay best friends, ya know? And they go shopping, and they get pedicures, and work out. I want some of that. I’m long overdue for a new look, I mean, this hair!  But I don’t have the slightest idea what to do with it, what works with the shape of my face or if I should do highlights or what. And Judy doesn’t know.  She has a perm, for fuck’s sake. That she did herself. At home. I know, right? But you, my gay baby Lorenzo, you’ll totally understand it. You’ll take my hair in your tiny little nugget hands, and just work magic.

If Eddie doesn’t like it, we won’t need him. Small town life in Florida isn’t meant for us anyway, Lorenzo. You and me, and maybe Judy, too, we’ll move to the big city. Jacksonville. And you’ll open a salon, or a spa, and Judy and me will help all the clients, and answer the phones, and we’ll wear black miniskirts and those shirts with the ruffles on them, and you can show me how to do that thing with black liner around my eyes that makes ‘em look dramatic, like you’re all surprised, but sexy, ya know?

You’ll be so famous, Lorenzo, and not just for doing hair, but also for your work in design and charities and musical theater, and maybe you’ll have like a magazine, and it’ll be like Oprah’s, where you’re on the cover every month?  With me?

Lorenzo and Shelley model the fashions for spring! Only I won’t be Shelley anymore. Cause I’m gonna change my name to Regina. Or Marlena! And then I’ll write a book.  “Accepting and Raising Your Gay Baby.” And I’ll be friends with Ellen’s mom. And Nate Berkus, I’ll be friends with his mom too if he has one. Eddie’ll be so sorry then. He’ll wish he’d accepted our gay baby, just as you are. Damn Eddie. Damn him to hell. Why can’t he accept and love our gay baby? Why can’t we be like the Country Crock couple?

We’ll be okay, though, Lorenzo. As soon as you get here, we’ll get our plan up and going, and start our new life. Right after we do something about my hair.

A young man explains how an impromptu tribute to the cast of Mama’s Family led to meeting the love of his life at a hospital soda machine. Everything would be bliss, were it not for an ill-tempered ancient parrot who screams just like Jamie Lee Curtis.

Walter

So my friend Alana has these fits of creative inspiration where she decorates for random holidays, like Arbor Day and Secretary’s Day, stuff like that, because she figures why should Halloween and Christmas have all the fun, right?  And if the inspiration hits on a day that isn’t a National Holiday, she just goes online, looks up this date and history, and goes from there.  It’s fun, and we get all these weird traditions out of it, like we all donate coats to the homeless shelter on the anniversary of William Henry Harrison’s death, because he was the president who didn’t wear a coat at his inauguration, got pneumonia and died a month later.  It may seem strange, but I’m sure carving a pumpkin would seem bizarre to someone not familiar with Halloween.  Or just try to explain the crap we do on Easter to a Muslim.

Anyhow, it was Vicki Lawrence’s birthday, which I didn’t know, but Alana did, and she was painting the cast of “Mama’s Family” on her front windows.  The later seasons with Bubba, not the earlier ones withBettyWhite.  She saidBettyWhite was too hard to paint, and who am I to disagree?  I’ve never tried.

Just as Alana was finishing the floral pattern on Naomi’s off-the-shoulder blouse, she fell off the ladder.  Called me in agony thinking her leg was broken, asked me to take her to the E.R., which I agreed to on the condition that I got to tell the nurses how she’d broken her leg.

So while we were waiting to get her leg set, she asks me to find her a grape soda- nothing else would do, maybe that’s the traditional beverage on Vicki Lawrence’s birthday, and I finally found a machine that had ‘em after like a half hour of looking.  It wouldn’t take my dollar.  I kept smoothing it on the front of the Coke machine, it kept spitting it out.  I knew Alana well enough to know that if I didn’t return with the grape soda, that, not the broken leg, would be the worst thing that happened to her all day.  Trust me.

So this guy behind me says, “Need some change?”  He bummed me fifty cents, I got the soda, he and I started chatting.  His name was Harry, which was kinda classic and old-school, you don’t see that one much anymore.  Harry was visiting his boss, who’d just had triplets.  She was forty-seven.  Gross, right?  She’d had in vitro, of course, which I think is getting a little out of hand lately.  Like that lady out inCaliforniawho had eight?  Humans are not meant to do birth by the litter.  If they were, women would have six breasts. 

I’m digressing. 

So after Harry went downstairs with me to deliver Alana’s grape soda, he asked me out.  And that’s how I met my boyfriend.  Yes, all that setup was to tell you how we met, but if I just said we met when he bummed me change at the vending machine, you wouldn’t appreciate the richness of that moment.  And that is why, to this day, Valentine’s Day means very little to me, but Vicki Lawrence’s birthday is filled with romantic possibility.

The next year on Vicki Lawrence’s birthday, Harry gave me a card with two quarters taped inside.  He’d meticulously painted George Washington on both of them to look like Mama from Mama’s Family, so that the next time Alana injured herself I’d have change to buy her a grape soda.  Clever, I know.  I gave him the complete set of Nightmare on Elm Street movies, including Freddy Versus Jason, which is not considered part of the true canon, but it’s got Kelly Rowland from Destiny’s Child in it, which is fun.

See, I found out very quickly that Harry had a thing for horror flicks, and he had no standards whatsoever in viewing them.  It could be the goriest piece of crap ever filmed, and he still would’ve seen it eight times.  He told me he liked to see if they could still scare him, and when they did, which was rare, it was really gratifying. 

They all scared me. Dark Crystal still scares the hell out of me, I don’t stand a chance with horror movies.  But he didn’t drink much or smoke, he always smelled good, so if this was his vice I could totally handle that. 

The horror movies were not a problem.  Walter was a problem.

Walter was Harry’s parrot.  He got Walter for Christmas when he was twelve, after begging for it for years, but he wasn’t properly warned about the dangers of parrot ownership.  Namely, that they live forever, and get progressively more antisocial with every passing year.  So now Walter was nineteen, and the embodiment of evil. 

Harry had the sort of weary affection mixed with obligation toward Walter I’d only seen in people forced to care for their aging parents.  He’d endure the attacks, and we’d all try to tread lightly whenever we walked into the back bedroom where he sat seething all day.  As soon as you walked in the room, he’d attack the sides of his cage with these manic fits of rage.  I always felt like Clarice Starling heading down the corridor to see Hannibal Lecter, you know when the guys are all screaming at her and saying they can smell… well, if you don’t know, I won’t repeat it.  Walter didn’t talk anymore, not because he’d lost the ability, just because he was pissy and didn’t feel like communicating.  But after nineteen years of Harry’s horror movie addiction, Walter could, pitch-perfect, replicate the screams of a teenage girl.  You’d swear a scantily-clad cheerleader was being set on fire in the apartment.  The neighbors would hear this.  The police stopped by more than once.  It was really, really awkward.  People told him the bird should be put down, which I don’t even know if you can do.  Cats, you put down.  Arthritic golden retrievers.  But a dead bird is technically food, so I don’t know if anyone goes to the trouble of euthanizing them.

But Harry loved the bird, and for the people and things we love, we deal with the baggage, you know?  Even when they go crazy, even when they make your landlord think you’re torturing Jamie Lee Curtis in your house.  Walter was his to care for, and we fully expected that little nightmare to outlive us both. 

We were almost right.  He came very close to outliving Harry.

There was an accident on the Interstate.  Harry and two other cars.  I wish I had more of a setup for that one, but I don’t.  It was awful and I don’t like to think about what it looked like.  But nobody knew to call me.  Neither of us had ever been in the hospital, so there was no emergency contact for me or anything.  His mother didn’t have my number, because why would she?  So I didn’t know for two hours. His boss, the one with the triplets, she was the one who called me, after hearing from his sister.  And I was at the vet with the damn bird, because he’d been screaming more than usual and we wanted to see if there was a way to sedate him.  There wasn’t.

So I’m flying down the road with the bird in the back of my car, trying to get to the hospital, not the same one we met at, although next time I tell this story I think I’ll say it was, and I get to the toll booth.  I have no money.  There’s a line of cars behind me, and cops just up ahead, and time is wasting, I think Harry’s dying, and I didn’t know if we were meant to be together forever, but I sure as heck thought we’d have longer than this!  And why didn’t anyone who mattered know that I mattered enough to call? 

Then Walter started to scream. 

So I started to scream.  And the two of us sat in that car, screaming at the top of our lungs, competing at first, but then finding perfect harmony.  People were honking, and staring, and I could not have cared less.  Walter was freakin’ right, this was a moment to scream.  And it calmed me down.  Enough to remember… the card with Vicki Lawrence’s portrait on two quarters was still in my glove compartment.  So I tossed ‘em in, and for the second time in my life, I thanked God for Vicki Lawrence.

I got to the hospital, and it was a hot day so I just brought the bird in with me. Harry was all beat up, he looked like the surviving virgin at the end of a horror movie.  I stood there, cage in hand, and said, “We were so worried.”

That day was the last time Walter screamed.  It turns out that mean old bird just needed to find a sympathetic ear.  And in the moment that a sympathetic ear was exactly what I needed, Walter was there, giving me permission to let it all out.

So that’s my love story.  How I came to love my boyfriend’s parrot.  Not to mention Vicki Lawrence.  I’m grateful for both of them.  And Harry’s not too bad either.

The lovely Jayne O’Connor is filling up the piggybank to finance her upcoming chapbook, “When You Meet the Devil Tip Your Hat.” She asked a bunch of us writerly types to commit our dirty minds to the theme “Desperate Encounters,” taking to the Star Bar stage for a benefit on March 30, 2013. That happened to be the sixth anniversary of the night I met my husband. This was my contribution. (Slightly NSFW)

SMUT VHS AND DIRTY DIRTY DIAL-UP

By Topher Payne

Your porn used to mean something, damn it. I’m talkin’ about your own personal stash- the copy of a skin mag that the bravest of your friends swiped from a Conoco Station, and then the pictures were torn out and distributed amongst the group for private rumination later. I’m talking about the unexpectedly revealing underwear ad from the JC Penney catalog that you can still remember the page number for. I’m talking about the VHS tape of some cheesy skankfest with a title like “New Wave Hookers” that you got from your cousin, a 3^rd generation copy that’d been passed around more than the cassette Naomi Watts and her freak kid were chasing down in The Ring- only instead of dying, the only thing you’ll be left with at the end of seven days is a noticeable abundance of dirty socks.

This is the tape you relocated to a new hiding place in the house at least five times, and would surreptitiously pop into the living room VCR in those rare, precious moments 13 year-old you had the place to yourself, committing to memory each and every frame of these real live grown people having the only sex you’d ever seen in motion, so that later you could make a proper withdrawal from the spank bank. The tape you never played at a normal volume so you could hear an unexpected car in the driveway. The bodies and thrusting and moans and alarming close-ups and shit heap synthesized music, all of which would burn itself onto the surface of your brain like a livestock brand, and for the rest of your life, every single sight and sound of that goddamn movie would be foundation of your understanding of how mind-blowing a really great fuck can be. That, my friends, is what your porn used to mean.

Mine was discovered at the top of my Dad’s closet. It was a Marilyn Chambers movie, featuring a special appearance by Johnny Wadd Holmes. So the first people I ever saw having sex were two legendary masters of their craft. The film was entitled In-Sa-Ti-Able. Because I was the product of Mississippi public schools, and I had no idea the word “insatiable” even existed. And no one in that damn movie ever actually said the word “insatiable,” (their mouths being otherwise occupied), so I had no context clues from which to build.

When I was writing this, I asked my husband Tommy what his teenage porn was, and after a moment’s thought he determined his porn was the spasmodic mawkish prose and graphic banging found in the youth novellas of Christopher Pike. Whatever gets ya off, baby.

So when I was nineteen, I managed to land a job in Atlanta, and I moved here from Mississippi without even visiting first. I just found a place online that I could afford, got approved, packed up my shit and came for the keys. Had I visited the city beforehand, I would have realized why apartments were so cheap by Gwinnett Place Mall.

Don’t judge. Once you learn from a mistake, it becomes a lesson.

And even in Duluth, I was still totally connected to the hot and happening Atlanta gay scene, thanks to the 1990s uniter of the masses, America Online.

For the Millennials in the audience, let me explain the process of trolling for strange online during the Clinton administration. Disable your call waiting, dial into America Online, if it’s peak hours you might have to try a couple different numbers, then sign in as one of your six optional usernames, which America Online specifically offers for purposes of anonymous cyber sex.

Then you go to AOL Communities, select the category: Gay and Lesbian, scroll through the chat rooms until you find Atlanta M4M. But if there’s 36 people in that room, you have to go to Atlanta M4M 2 or 3, while still monitoring the other more populated rooms so you can jump in there the moment someone leaves, because everybody wants to be in the flagship location of this bizarre bifurcated boy bonanza.

Once you’re in chat, all you have to do is give age/sex/location, have a conversation with thirty-six people simultaneously in full view of everyone else in the room, while you quickly review all of their text profiles, invite the ones you like to a private chat, add them to your buddy list, and then you can send each other pictures and possibly arrange to have some sort of sex at a location of your choosing.

Makes you really appreciate the iPhone app for Grindr, don’t it?

Now, this was years before I met Tommy, my now-husband. He was living with his two best girlfriends in Jackson, Mississippi. They’d all go out drinkin’, he’d come back all liquored up with lovin’ on his mind, and hop on AOL. The Mississippi M4M room covered the entire damn state, and even casting that wide net, the room still rarely hit 36 people. He would invite some random dude over, but by the time the poor sap got to the house, Tommy would have sobered up and lost interest in having sex with a stranger. So he and his roommates would turn off all the lights and hide until the random dude went away, and then they’d smoke a boll and watch Ally McBeal.

Which is funny, because I would do the same thing, only instead of hiding from the guy, I would have sex with him.

I was a nineteen year-old Mississippi boy living alone in a big city. A seemingly endless buffet of Atlanta gays divided into groups of thirty-six for my perusal, and everything I knew about sex I learned from masters of the craft. I was in-sa-ti-able, y’all.

Atlanta M4M introduced me to this one super-tall guy who looked just like Ben Affleck if he’d made bad life choices. He worked at the Waffle House at 85 and Pleasant Hill. This was back when The Waffle was still cash only, and he had discovered his manager wasn’t tracking the tea and coffee, you know, cause you can make like fifty gallons for a nickel. So if someone ordered coffee or tea, a buck apiece, he wouldn’t write it on the ticket, and he’d pocket the cash. On an overnight shift, high turnover, that’s an extra hundred bucks, easy. He always had this giant wad of singles- it was like dating a stripper, if there was a club in town with really lenient standards.

What’s really noteworthy is that while trying to hook up with a random dude was as complicated as making travel arrangements to North Korea, porn had never been easier to acquire. One could see new footage of people fucking every single time you turned on the computer. And then it became searchable. Say, twentysomething preppy white guys doing the dirty airplane in a collegiate setting. If that’s what you were into. All provided in single-serving morsels designed to be forgotten as quickly as they were viewed. So during this period, I was getting increasingly picky about my porn, while being pathetically indiscriminate about who I’d actually have sex with.

After Waffle House Ben Affleck had stayed over four or five times, I suggested the possibility of, you know, going to a movie or something, and suddenly he’s all, “Whoa, man, slow down. I’m not lookin’ for a boyfriend, okay?” And the rejection of such a simple request threw everything into sharp relief.

I was the guy who’d picked my apartment based entirely upon pictures I saw on a website, which led to me living off Pleasant Hill Road between a Chick-fil-A and a K-Mart. This served as conclusive evidence that I had no semblance of standards when shopping online. But I was drunk with the heady possibilities offered by the internet, this magical place where strangers offered you approval via a series of momentary, pre-packaged encounters, so it took me a while to notice the long-term effects, like a yearlong lease on an apartment I hated, or this fast-food version of porn which failed to live up to Johnny Wadd Holmes and Marilyn Chambers’ comparatively nuanced artistic endeavors. Or the fact that not only had I elected to have multiple sexual encounters with a sweet tea-scamming Waffle House employee, I had wanted to take the relationship to the next level. And he’d turned me down.

Once you learn from a mistake, it becomes a lesson.

A life of feverish, hurried, desperate encounters- grabbing wildly at anything offered- makes sense if you’ve been given two days to live, but otherwise, there is a great deal to be gained from slowing the hell down and letting some of the crap float by untouched.  When you’re willing to settle for less, it turns out that’s exactly what life gives you. I had an in-sa-ti-able need for something greater. That’s why I switched back to old school porn, maybe not with a plot but at least with an identifiable scenario and some body hair.

And it’s why I eventually met my husband the classy, old-fashioned way: in a bar. Wasted. Exactly six years ago tonight. Johnny Wadd Holmes and Marilyn Chambers taught me the value of the longer story, the one with obvious attention to detail. It holds up better on repeated viewings.

by Tray Butler, Out Magazine

Are hate crimes a type of terrorism?

Both are frequently associated with religious fanaticism and rooted in bigotry. Even the late Ted Kennedy called hate crimes “a form of domestic terrorism,” bemoaning that America’s endless War on Terror doesn’t apply to violence at home. 

But if hate crimes do equal terrorism, why haven’t the gays gone ballistic with calculated counterstrikes? This oxymoronic “war on hate” conceit gets mined (and nearly manhandled) in Topher Payne’s Angry Fags, a button-pushing black comedy built to rankle Republicans and Democrats alike, in a current production at Atlanta’s 7 Stages theater. Payne aims rhetorical shotgun blasts at multiple targets—from fundamentalist preachers to compromising gay activists—and can’t help but maim several of them in a play that’s at once witty, dark and disconcerting.

Handsome political speechwriter Bennett (the affable Jacob York) reboots his life after a breakup, moving in with his razor-tongued BFF Cooper (Johnny Drago) and flirting up a sly co-worker, Adam (John Benzinger). When Bennett’s ex-boyfriend is brutally assaulted outside an Atlanta gay bar, the quip-happy roomies quickly shift from Will & Grace to Leopold and Loeb, plotting an increasingly complicated and bloody crusade against the city’s most outspoken anti-gay figureheads. 

Payne peppers the dialogue with sharp ruminations on Southern favorites Steel Magnolias and Designing Women; he even manages to make an ongoing Alf joke work. Directed by Justin Anderson, the show’s first half functions in sitcom mode, with perfectly timed laugh lines delivered by Must-See-TV-ready characters (Drago’s swishy Cooper is the evening’s bitchy superstar). 

The second act, though, rapidly detours into Dexter territory as its anti-heroes spread their anger from two-faced televangelists to well-intentioned gay politicians and other friends of the movement. The show skewers Dan Savage’s It Gets Better campaign, suggesting that the promise of the project is false. As one character says, “It gets better—unless you get fat.” 

The answer, therefore, is to “make it better,” which Bennett and Cooper take to mean killing hypocrites and bombing buildings. “I’m so sick of trying to be likeable,” Cooper spits. “Change doesn’t come from reason. It comes from fear.” A chilling hostage scenario makes for an unsettling dessert so soon after an appetizer of Julia Sugarbaker.

The trope of the homicidal same-sex duo is hardly a new one and has been deployed in everything from Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope to Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures, but Payne gives us two likeable killer queens whose road to domestic terrorism is paved with Paula Deen jokes. The zingers make for comedy gold, even if Angry Fags gets bogged down with didactic dialogue and wholly unnecessary video interstitials that only add to the three-hour runtime. Payne’s writing especially sparkles during Bennett’s flirtation with Adam, including perhaps the most titillating seduction sequence I’ve seen in years. 

Such sprinkles of tenderness bring nuance to the play’s thought-provoking discourse about the role of violence in civilized society. As one character says, “It’s only called terrorism when it doesn’t work. When it does work, it’s a revolution.”

Who doesn’t love a good mystery? With the world premiere of Topher Payne’s Swell Party, Georgia Ensemble Theatre presents a hilarious fresh take of a “who done it” story that is filled with eccentric characters, witty dialogue and talented cast.

Based on true events, Swell Party offers an intriguing look at Southern aristocratic royalty where tradition, duty and honor abound. After Smith Reynolds (Weston Manders), the heir to the family fortune, arrives at the estate with his new fiancée, he mysteriously turns up dead. Uncovering the truth turns into a wildly hilarious romp through the events leading up to the fateful morning. What makes the play so enjoyable are the quirky characters and the strong, brilliant dialogue that most of them speak.

Told in a series of flashback testimonials, the story unfolds at a quick pace. Each of the characters take on the characteristics and perceptions of the person telling the story. The one that becomes most memorable is acting coach Blanche Yurka’s story. Played wonderfully by Tess Malis Kincaid, the character’s scenes become some of the show’s most memorable. When Kincaid takes the stage, an immediate eruption rolls through the theater.

In the role of Babe Collier Vaught, Kate Donadio creates a compelling characterization of the estate’s social secretary. Her closely guarded secrets are subtly revealed throughout the show, and she is  perfect alongside Jo Howarth’s strong performance as Kate Reynolds, Smith’s aunt. While Kate is open about her manipulation, Babe is more passive and ultimately more deceptive.

As Libby Holman Reynolds, Suehyla El-Attar is funny without going over the top. Disliked by most onstage, she manages to keep her character sympathetic despite the accusations that she murdered her husband. Her “Eliza Doolittle” moments add to the character’s charm, but it is her fiery showdown at the end that capstones the actresses versatility.

The play’s strong writing and sharp quips could easily hide the fact that the investigator, Erle McMichael (Scott Depoy), is a stock character, but the ending where he pulls the conclusion together makes it ever more glaring. Plus, Depoy had one of opening night’s weaker performances with too many flubbed lines to ignore. Rounding out the cast is Tony Larkin’s commendable performance as Smith’s friend Ab.

This dark comedy does have a dramatic undercurrent that rips through it. The idea of false appearances and the questioning of empty traditions are explored at various moments in the play, but Payne keeps these themes subtle, giving the production depth without detracting from the story. While it doesn’t rise to level of the past summer’s Evelyn in Purgatory, Swell Party is a forceful and brilliant take on a familiar genre. Not a lot of writers could make it look as easy as Payne does.

Thoroughly entertaining, Swell Party, directed by Shannon Eubanks, runs through January 27, 2013.

Having completed this life-altering experience, I have re-ordered the posts, now from the beginning of the event to the end, so that you may re-live the glory, the glamour, the occasional clusterfuck that was LIZ & DICK.

Five Women. Two Men. 

• COMMISSIONED BY THE STATE THEATRE OF GEORGIA, THE SPRINGER OPERA HOUSE
• PREMIERES MAY 2013!

It’s 1924, and the wedding of the year is being planned by the lake in Wildwood Park.  Nothing will stop Priscilla Tuttle from crafting the perfect ceremony, although no one had prepared her for the second-class status  reserved for the mother of the groom.

Meanwhile, the bride’s mother is proving to be the embodiment of evil, all the bridesmaids have come down with malaria, Priscilla’s bachelor brother-in-law has joined forces with the maid to usurp her authority, and the city is beginning to drain the lake.

But as the water level lowers, the anxiety rises: There’s a secret at the bottom of that lake, and the Tuttle family will do anything to keep it hidden.

Lakebottom Prime was commissioned by The State Theatre of Georgia, The Springer Opera House, premiering in May, 2013. The production is directed by Producing Artistic Director Paul Pierce.

READ THE PRESS

ABOUT THE PLAY

Bennett (Jacob York) is really trying to keep it together right now. He broke up with his boyfriend and moved in with his best friend Cooper (Johnny Drago.)

It’s election season, and he’s the speechwriter for Georgia’s only gay state senator, Allison Haines (Melissa Carter), who’s engaged in a bloody campaign against conservative darling Peggy Musgrove (Marcie Millard.)

His co-worker Kimberly (Suehyla El-Attar), wants to experience some vicarious thrills, pressuring Bennett to give into the flirtatious advances of their chief-of-staff, Adam (John Benzinger.)

Then Bennett’s ex is attacked in the parking lot of a gay bar. Bennett and Cooper are informed by a police detective (Michael Henry Harris) that the assault can’t be classified as a hate crime. Because in Georgia, hate crimes against homosexuals don’t legally exist.

Their frustration and fear eventually turns to rage, as they realize that “acceptance” simply isn’t enough- they’re still living in a society that relegates them to second-class status. They’re not respected. They’re not feared. It’s time for that to change.

An Oscar Wilde-meets-Fight Club fever dream about how good ideas go bad, with fascinating forays into American politics, bomb building, and pistachios.

THE CAST

Bennett Riggs:  Jacob York

Cooper Harlow: Johnny Drago

Senator Allison Haines: Melissa Carter

Adam Lowell: John Benzinger

Kimberly Phillips:  Suehyla El-Attar

Peggy Musgrove:  Marcie Millard

Detective Preston:  Michael Henry Harris

FROM THE PLAYWRIGHT, TOPHER PAYNE: Getting Angry

Angry Fags rose from my desire to write something about gay male friendships, and also something about terrorism. I did not expect both to be in the same play.

At my day job, we keep the TV on CNN all day long- you hear a lot about “protecting marriage” from evil gay people, and a lot about “protecting America” from evil extremists. I think at some point it struck me that very similar arguments were being presented. “Those people,” who hate “our” way of life, “our” God, “our” traditions… I became fascinated by the sense of other we apply to anyone who scares us. I suppose it’s in our nature to demonize anything we don’t understand, whether it’s suicide bombers or drag queens.

It’s easier to just say they hate us. Then we don’t have to recognize our own culpability in the enterprise. This goes for everybody on both sides of any conflict.

But if you’re consistently demonized in public- ridiculed, belittled, the subject of campaign speeches- how long before someone decides to fight back? And if that rage goes unchecked, then some really bad choices can happen.

I realized as I was writing it that this play was going to be a lot more violent than anything I’d ever written, which was an interesting experience. I’ve never been inclined to write violence before, but the urges in this story were more visceral. So in came nudity, and sex, and eating McDonald’s. All the vices. Is it gratuitous? Yeah, probably. That’s the point. This is a story about what happens when your most primal instincts are unchained. The title reflects that- calling the play Angry Fags is fair warning that I don’t intend to sugarcoat the experience.

But it’s really just about a friendship- a serious story about funny people- starting out on a common path with someone you trust, and then things go awry.

ABOUT THE PLAY

It’s 1932, and 20 year-old orphaned tobacco heir Smith Reynolds (Weston Manders) has returned to Winston-Salem from his New York vacation with a surprise souvenir: a wife.

The new Mrs. Reynolds is notorious Broadway star Libby Holman (Suehyla El-Attar). She’s a dozen years older than Smith, and arrives with a trunkload of gin and an acting coach, Blanche Yurka (Tess Malis Kincaid), who is quite possibly insane.

Smith’s guardian, Kate Reynolds (Jo Howarth) attempts to manage the scandal, aided by her secretary, Babe (Kate Donadio), and Smith’s best friend, Ab (Tony Larkin).

A party is thrown to introduce Libby to society, but it’s flat-out ruined when the groom turns up dead.

The guests are gathered to reconstruct the evening’s events for a beleaguered County Solicitor (Scott DePoy), but they fail spectacularly, which shouldn’t be a surprise. For Southerners, the truth isn’t nearly as important as a good story.

THE CAST

Libby Holman Reynolds: Suehyla El-Attar
Smith Reynolds: Weston Manders
Babe Collier Vaught: Kate Donadio
Erle McMichael: Scott DePoy
Kate Reynolds: Jo Howarth
Ab Walker: Tony Larkin
Blanche Yurka: Tess Malis Kincaid

CREATIVE TEAM
Playwright: Topher Payne
Director: Shannon Eubanks
Stage Manager: Gretchen Butler
Scenic Design: Jonathan Rollins
Lighting Design: Bryan Rosengrant
Costume Design: Linda Patterson
Wig Design: George Deavours
Sound Design: Dan Bauman
Properties Design: MC Park

FROM THE PLAYWRIGHT: PARTY PLANNING

In January of 2011, Georgia Ensemble Theatre produced the World Premiere of my play, “Tokens of Affection.” The production was a gamble- our artistic partnership was brand-new, and there was no track record to show how GET subscribers would respond to an untested script. And then a dang snowstorm hit right after we opened. But Bob and Anita Farley know and trust their audience, and believed in the play. The gamble paid off- “Tokens of Affection was a success both on the stage and at the box office.

That production marked the beginning of a new chapter in the life of Georgia Ensemble Theatre, as Bob and Anita Farley announced the development of original works would henceforth be part of their mission. That’s what I love about new plays- the excitement of creating something brand new quickly becomes an addictive experience.

Bob, Anita, and I had pancakes last December, and talked about their upcoming 20^th anniversary season. They were interested in taking another leap- the development of a commissioned work, starting from scratch. They asked if I had any ideas, and I told them a story that had been kicking around in my brain for the better part of a decade- the marriage of Smith Reynolds, youngest heir to the RJ Reynolds tobacco fortune, to Libby Holman, the Broadway star who served as an inspiration for the musical “Chicago.”

It was 1932. He was North Carolina royalty, an aspiring aviator. She was a New York Jewish flapper, a dozen years older. Their unlikely union came to a sudden end when Smith was shot to death following a party at his family estate. I knew there was a play there. I was pretty sure it was a comedy. They agreed. We shook on it, and then I had to keep quiet about it for four months until the season was announced. Which, incidentally, was physically painful for me.

I cannot begin to express the amount of faith and trust a producer is forced to muster when assigning a commission: when they announce the play as part of their season, THE PLAY DOES NOT ACTUALLY EXIST. Shannon Eubanks signed on to direct this idea of a play when it was barely even an outline, really just piles of research. And for my part, it also meant allowing an artistic team into the very earliest stages of my writing process, knowing that I tend to go through two or three drafts of a script before the god-forsaken thing even begins to make sense. Which means Bob, Anita, and Shannon’s faith and trust were rewarded with a first draft reading of a monumentally confounding menagerie of ideas, which I’m sure was just so reassuring. Then there was a second draft. Then a third. Then a fourth. We’re currently on number five.

After nearly a year of steady growth, backtracking, and reimagining, punctuated by terrified emails, we’re closing in on a rehearsal draft, the extraordinary production team has been assembled, and now we have confirmed an extraordinary cast. These artists are among the best in the city. I am honored, blessed, and so excited to share this story with audiences. The journey to “Swell Party” has been so fulfilling, and with the full creative team in place, the real work is about to begin.

And it’s all happening because a theatre decided to be bold and make new, living, evolving art. When it comes to the source of their stories, more and more theatres in the Southeast are buying local. And when they do, absolutely everybody wins.

by Andrew Alexander

The “purgatory” in “Evelyn in Purgatory,” at the Essential Theatre Play Festival at Actor’s Express through August 5, is a plain room in a New York City Department of Education building where five indefinitely suspended teachers, presided over by a no-nonsense proctor, await their hearings by school officials. Reed Higgins’ straightforward set nicely captures the familiarly airless cinder-block and industrial grey atmosphere of institutional buildings, and it makes an ironic setting for the action that unfolds. The characters slowly warm to one another, soften and reveal themselves in spite of the coldly anonymous surroundings.

“Evelyn” is a world premiere by Atlanta playwright Topher Payne, and it’s a smartly crafted work. In about six scenes, Payne skillfully covers an entire school year as the teachers’ waiting draws on and on. Bored inactivity for the characters could easily become irksome for the audience, but it never does. This is an ensemble piece where we’re kept constantly curious about each character, and we stay invested in the play as a whole.

Rial Ellsworth, as a coach accused of breaking a bully’s wrist, does a particularly nice job of limning the first inklings of truly significant character change, a transformation which, though it’s completed off stage, has sufficiently believable beginnings in front of the audience. There are moments of genuine humor throughout the play, but the best of them belong to Betty Mitchell’s tough and cynical Roberta, who intentionally commits classroom improprieties in order to while away the time in limbo rather than face the hell of the classroom. The hearings themselves are interspersed throughout as monologues, giving each character a searingly revealing moment in the spotlight.

Though “Evelyn” is set in New York, where such “rubber rooms” are a reality and teachers can wait months for a hearing, it hits home in Atlanta. The sorts of pressures, bureaucracies and moral dilemmas that teachers face would hit close to home anywhere, and power struggles — even over something as seemingly insignificant as a comfortable chair — are universal.

I’ll try not to give away too many spoilers here — the plot has some surprises — but a minor point sticks in the craw. Evelyn’s alleged transgression of kissing a high school athlete is certainly an impropriety, but one that seems unlikely to do much serious or lasting damage to the student involved. Her accuser seems more a vengeful snitch than a sympathetic victim of her machinations, and the final moral dilemma of whether or not art teacher Lila should speak up, though well depicted by Jo Haworth, carries a bit less dramatic weight because of it.

The ambiguous ending is problematic as well. Ambiguity and open-endedness are in no way part of this play’s world until the last few seconds; until then everything is writ large. The conclusion it wants is for one of the teachers — the coach seems the most interesting candidate — to unexpectedly interrupt Evelyn’s hearing at great personal cost, to take the principled stand that they’ve been discussing for months. There’s an inconclusiveness that hangs in the air that doesn’t suit an otherwise tidy play, and a previously very happy audience seemed to leave the first show dissatisfied, perhaps even feeling a bit slighted. It’s like a performance by the Rockettes that ends not with a kick line but with a recitation from Sylvia Plath. If clearly limned character transformations and a tidily ticking sense of moral purpose are the play’s currency up to the end, then it seems only fair to provide them there as well.

Nevertheless, “Evelyn” is a remarkably well-constructed and very funny dramatic comedy, in the vein of “Steel Magnolias” or “Sordid Lives.” The prolific Payne seems likely to have a giant hit along those lines very soon. It would be wise to watch his stuff while it’s still so close to home.

By Andrew Alexander

It’s fair to say that Atlanta playwright Topher Payne has a busy year ahead with no fewer than five plays making world premieres.

As part of Essential Theatre’s summer festival of new plays at Actor’s Express, his “Evelyn in Purgatory” will have its debut this week. The following week, his work appears as part of the group-written “The Local” and the week after that, he’ll take the lead role in the satirical mash-up “Bat Hamlet.”

A full summer will be followed by a busy season. Payne will take a leading role in Process Theatre’s production of Charles Busch’s “The Divine Sister.” His murder mystery “Swell Party” will premiere with Georgia Ensemble in January. He’s developing a new play, “Angry Fags,” with 7 Stages that will premiere in February. His new comedy, “Lakebottom Prime,” premieres at the Springer Opera House in Columbus in May. It’s a sequel to his play “Lakebottom Proper” that was a big hit at the Springer in 2011.

“Evelyn in Purgatory” opens Thursday, July 5, at Actor’s Express and runs through August 6. “The Local” begins Wednesday, July 11, at Actor’s Express and runs through August 3. “Bat Hamlet” opens Wednesday, July 18, and runs through August 4. For more information on these three shows in Essential Theatre’s summer 2012 season or to purchase tickets, visit Essential Theatre.

Topher Payne’s “Swell Party” premieres in January 2013 with Georgia Ensemble; “Angry Fags” premieres February 2013 at 7 Stages; and “Lake Bottom Prime” starts in May 2013 with the Springer Opera House in Columbus.

Payne is also a regular columnist about his life, love and politics for the Georgia Voice, and when he’s not doing that, he’s executive producer of the Atlanta 24-Hour Plays and for the arts organization Working Title Playwrights. ArtsATL caught up with the playwright to ask about his up-coming plays and the challenge of taking on so many different roles.

ArtsATL: It’s a big year for you. Congratulations. Best and worst parts of being so busy?

Topher Payne: I’m very, very blessed. I love being a playwright. I hate writing the first draft. It’s the only thing you can’t assign any kind of process to. It either happens for you or it doesn’t. I have my dedicated amount of time I put into it every two days. Over the last few years, I had a lot of projects developing at my own pace. What happened in the last six months or so is that everything I had in development got picked up. By the end of the season, I’m not going to have anything in development anymore. That’s the first time that’s true since I was 18. I’m more excited about that than anything else. I feel like I’m cleaning out the pantry. I’ll have a clean slate.

ArtsATL: How did you get started in theater and playwriting?

Payne: I was a fat kid in a small town. I was terrible at sports and had no musical ability. The Methodist Church I grew up in in Kosciusko, Mississippi had a drama program. We presented shows once or twice a year. That was where I found something that I was good at.

ArtsATL: Like “Guys and Dolls” and that type of thing?

Payne: No. “Jesus Ain’t Just for the Birds.” That type of thing. Those stock scripts that will teach you about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in song. I knew I was a weird kid. I had supportive but flummoxed parents. I didn’t have close friendships because I didn’t have common interests. But there was this thing where I could communicate with audiences and find a way to make people attention. People listen when you make them laugh … I figured out what I wanted to be doing. I love performing, I’ll never give up that aspect of it, but it was the collaborative aspect of being the writer or director on a project and having the ability to assemble voices you admire. I never strayed from that. It’s all I really know how to do. As long as I’m in a position to assemble those artists then I’m happy.

ArtsATL: What brought you to Atlanta?

Payne: I auditioned for the educational theatre program with Kaiser-Permanente. I wanted to get to Atlanta specifically, but I wasn’t going to do a blind move.

ArtsATL: Big city, close to home?

Payne: Yeah. I intended to come to Atlanta and build a resume for a couple years, which a lot of people do. It’s a great place to grow some credits and then head for Chicago or New York or wherever your next step is. I got sick and had to spend most of my ‘20s dealing with cancer. It tied me here a little longer, but in the process of that, I realized I had absolutely no desire to be anywhere else. Opportunities presented themselves in the years that followed, but I don’t want to move on to the “next big thing.” I want to help this community become a bigger thing. There are so many amazing voices coming out of this community. At one point being a Southern writer was a world-wide envied community. There’s absolutely no reason we can’t recapture that with the voices of the 21st century. I have a strong suspicion the older I get, my most fervent desire will become building artistic community, above and beyond generating my own work. I love other people’s stories.

ArtsATL: What’s the hardest aspect for you in creating a new project?

Payne: My own work scares the hell out of me in the process of developing it. I second guess everything. It’s a cliche to say you’re your own worst critic, but I am. I know that there’s nobody that has more disdain for bad work by Topher Payne than Topher Payne. I’m unforgiving. I know I can do better.

ArtsATL: Tell me about your play “Evelyn in Purgatory” which has its world premiere at Essential this week.

Payne: I heard an NPR story about the “rubber rooms” in New York where public school teachers were sent. It’s the system they have in place if a teacher is accused of any kind of impropriety: immediately extract the teacher from the classroom, replace with a qualified substitute and then do an investigation followed by a disciplinary hearing. That is a pretty solid system. The problem is those hearings can take anywhere from three months to a year and a half. Meanwhile you have all these teachers sitting in the department of education building everyday, not allowed to work, collecting a check. All they do is sit there.

People were getting into fist fights over chairs. One of the teachers said, “We’re not allowed to work. We just play cards.” The first thing I thought of was that scene in the Breakfast Club where the teacher said, “No, no. You’re not allowed to study.” The whole thing was detention for teachers. I wanted to write a morality play. Those who seek redemption find it, find it; those who don’t, don’t. The question is who’s going to end up on which side of that line. Teachers have such a love for a subject that they’re willing to commit their lives to sharing it. And we mistreat them. They’re not consistently rewarded for that extraordinary passion. I wanted to find a way to convey that. “Evelyn in Purgatory” resulted from that. It covers one school year, from September to May, and we never leave that room.

ArtsATL: You’ve written a lot of shows that appeal to a pretty broad audience, but your up-coming play for 7 Stages actually has a very provocative title: “Angry Fags.”

Payne: “Angry Fags” is the story of two best friends: a mutual friend of theirs is attacked outside of a gay bar. They just feel powerless against the system; the turning point for both of them is when they realize that no one is afraid of gay men. They’re seen as harmless entities. They realize they’ll never have the rights they deserve if the populace believes they can just be stepped on. And they make a series of increasingly bad choices trying to take ownership of that power.

I wanted to write something about the friendships between gay men, and I also wanted to write something about terrorism. I did not expect the two to meet in the same play. Then when they did, it turned into something really interesting. It took it a while to find a home and then 7 Stages got on board. Being brought into that creative environment, it’s just exciting all the way around. It isn’t that I’m married to the title. I just can’t think of a title that has balls as big as that one. If you are turned off by the title then you would not survive the experience of seeing the play. In a way it’s the explicit lyrics sticker.

ArtsATL: Do you have ambitions beyond Atlanta stages?

Payne: Oh, I got big plans. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to match up with anyone else’s yet. I have an agent as an actor, but I don’t have one as a playwright because that doesn’t exist in Atlanta. There isn’t one. The only literary agencies that represent playwrights are based out of New York and Los Angeles. A New York agent isn’t going to be terribly interested in a playwright that’s not being produced in New York, which makes sense.

I’m perfectly content with being produced by regional theaters. I just want to get my work out. I’m doing the best I can, but it’s agonizing trying to be your own agent because that’s a full-time job. Every minute I spend trying to get someone to do my play in a market I’m not already a part of is a minute I’m spending not writing. I’ve been extraordinarily blessed to be produced at fine theaters with solid budgets and amazing creative teams. I have this level of recognition I didn’t have four or five years ago. But it will feel like success when I’m not doing everything myself.

by Bert Osborne

For 25 years now, under the leadership of producing artistic director Peter Hardy, Essential Theatre has specialized in giving Atlanta audiences an opportunity to experience offbeat or obscure plays that they might otherwise never see.

The company’s primary claim to fame of late has been an annual summer repertory that alternates performances of three different shows, at least one of which has always been the work of a Georgia writer.

With its 14th-annual Essential Play Festival, however, the entire lineup is comprised of premiere productions written by locals. This year’s winner of the Essential Playwriting Award, which includes a $600 cash prize, is the prolific Atlanta-based writer Topher Payne (“Tokens of Affection”).

His comic drama “Evelyn in Purgatory” (previewing Thursday, opening Friday) is billed as a “Breakfast Club” for grown-ups. Based on actual circumstances, the play is set in a New York City “rubber room,” where a group of teachers is being held in detention while they await their various disciplinary hearings.

Directing the show, fittingly enough, is Betty Hart, who also mounted the productions of previous Essential award-winners Theroun Patterson (“A Thousand Circlets” in 2011) and Vynnie Meli (“Jim Crow and the Rhythm Darlings” in 2009).

“I’ve always had a real love for new work,” Hart says. “The greatest challenge with that, as a director, is that you have no idea how or if it will work, no frame of reference based on any other versions of the same material.”

After a pause, she adds, “But that’s the reward, too, being able to collaborate on something from the ground up, to be a creative part of its inception and infancy, helping that baby get on its feet and walk for the first time. That can be pretty exciting.”

Hart credits Payne for “his witty and wonderful dialogue (and) an uncanny ability to write strong women characters.” While her other Essential shows (also including 2010′s “The Darker Face of the Earth”) have been heavier dramas, “It’s a pleasure for me getting to work on something that’s a lot funnier,” she admits.

The ensemble of faculty members features Amanda Cucher as Evelyn, alongside Jo Howarth, Rial Ellsworth, Josie Burgin-Lawson, Jon Wierenga, Betty Mitchell and Megan Hayes.

Hayes — and Payne, for that matter — serve double duty on Essential’s “Bat-Hamlet” (previewing July 18, opening July 19), a parody by first-time playwright Jordan Pulliam, who lives in Decatur. The title speaks for itself: Pulliam takes the famous Shakespearean plot and gives it a campy twist by way of the old TV series “Batman.” Payne plays the lead role, with Hayes as his newly reimagined mother, Barbara (formerly Gertrude).

Elsewhere, Horatio is now Songbird Boy (not to be confused with Robin); Claudius becomes a comic-book villain named the Jester (as opposed to the Joker); Polonius is the Puffin (instead of the Penguin); and all of it unfolds neither in Elsinore nor in Gotham City, but in a place known as Gothic Castle. Also in the cast: Stuart McDaniel, Lake Roberts and Kate Graham.

“Believe it or not, it isn’t quite as far-fetched as it might sound,” notes Hardy, who is staging the show. “Whether you’re a fan of ‘Hamlet’ or a fan of ‘Batman,’ there are plenty of in-jokes running throughout the play on both sides.”

Hardy had participated in a reading of the play more than a year ago, under the auspices of Working Title Playwrights. “Later, when I looked at the script again, I became even more impressed with what Jordan had accomplished. It wasn’t just a high-concept idea. It was actually very smart and imaginative,” he says.

“There’s a lot of action in it, a few effects, and we’ve been having lots of fun working with the costumes and makeup and props.”

Arguably the most ambitious undertaking in this year’s festival is “The Local” (previewing July 11, opening July 12), a collection of some two dozen variations on a theme — including traditional scenes and monologues, but also incorporating poetry, music and dance to tell a myriad of stories by and about people who call Atlanta home.

Developed and directed by frequent Essential collaborator Ellen McQueen (“Sally and Glen at the Palace,” “Charm School”), the production has been nine months in the making. Back in November, she and Hardy put out a call for writing submissions and received more than 80 contributions from which to choose.

In addition to pieces by Hardy, Payne and Meli, there are others by the likes of Margaret Baldwin (who most recently penned Horizon’s “Night Blooms”). A few of them are based on recollections and impressions of the city by such local actors as Robin Bloodworth and Matt Myers.

Although McQueen’s large ensemble features a lot of new faces, regular theatergoers should recognize Spencer Stephens (as a symbolic train conductor who guides the action and connects the various vignettes), if not also Nancy Lowery Powell, a fixture of the late ’80s and early ’90s, who’s making a comeback of sorts after years away from the scene.

“This was a way of doing something special in honor of the company’s 25th anniversary,” explains McQueen. “The central themes are about belonging and renewal, about finding or remaking oneself in a city whose symbol is a phoenix reborn from its own ashes, and we’ve tried to represent voices from all sorts of different communities and walks of life.”

Even native Atlantans may learn something new about their hometown. “The show gives audiences a chance to hear from the inside about things that might be outside their own experiences, from life in the projects to stories about undocumented workers who seem to be invisible to a lot of people,” she says.

Using video projections to set the scenes, the action ranges from Piedmont Park to Georgia Tech to Cabbagetown, and between such iconic locations as the Fox Theatre, the Cyclorama and even Manuel’s Tavern.

Theoretically, at least, McQueen hopes the play will appeal to the widest possible audience. As she puts it, “We’ve tried to cover as many bases as we could, so that everyone ought to be able to relate to it on a personal level, either in parts or on the whole.”

Love a teacher? Hate a teacher? Know a teacher? Then you’re going to want to see the Essential Theatre’s world premiere of “Evelyn in Purgatory” this week.

And if you’re an educator, you can see it for free on Thursday, July 5 at West Midtown’s Actors Express, located at 887 W. Marietta St. Oh, and you can receive a complimentary glass of vino, too.

The play from Atlanta playwright Topher Payne is premiering this week and teachers with a valid ID will be admitted free (plus the glass of wine) to Thursday’s preview show at 8 p.m. Essential isn’t taking reservations, so interested teachers should come early.

Self-described as “The Breakfast Club for teachers,” the play follows a small group of teachers stuck in the “Reassignment Center” in New York City. Each of them faces claims of unbecoming conduct and none of them is allowed to leave until that claim has been processed and resolved. The process takes months. Sometimes years.

The show itself – or at least its script – has a comic rational irrationality, all absurd gray-walled bureaucracy. The phrase “very intricate hierarchy of chair ownership” occurs early on. The show is also something of a dissection of educational regulation. Late into it, the spineless Toby launches into an aria of indignation against the regulators.

“Who’s gonna fight to save these kids from idiots like you?” he says. “If you really cared about these kids’ futures, you’d send me back to my classroom and let me do my job.”

As the teacher-full audience might say at Thursday’s preview, “Bravo!”