#george c wolfe

[audramcdonald]

Audra McDonald stars as Rose in the Broadway revival of Gypsy (Majestic Theatre, 2024)

[glimeres]

2000 Tony Awards - Toni Collette, Mandy Patinkin, Eartha Kitt and Company perform a medley (Queenie Was a Blonde / Wild Party / Welcome to My Party / When It Ends / Wild) from the musical The Wild Party

[doyouknowthismusical]

[chinchillasorchildren]

Films of 2023: Rustin (dir. George C. Wolfe)

Grade: C-

[xtrablak674]

BIG MOMMA SAVED MY LIFE

[Originally published in Fashion Fag Magazine Volume 3, Issue 3, Number 8, September 1996]

"How you doin today Mr. Brown?"

"I am blessed, anyhow. And yourself?"

I said, as I cashed my last unemployment check of $166. Something, I called myself living off of for the last six months.

"That's good to hear Mr. Brown it just brightens my day to hear you say that. You have a nice day."

I started sayin' it as sort of a private joke, but soon it became a source of strength. 'I am blessed... anyhow', no other words could have been truer after this past year. I'm surprised to still be alive; daily habits like this, and tryin to remember that, 'I am not my circumstance' (which has become a personal philosophy); givin' me the strength to get up out of the bed, take in breath and begin the day.

Once in a while people ask me:

"Where did you get that from?"

I proudly volunteer, Ms. Phyllis Yvonne Stickney!

Whenever you greeted her and ask how she's was doin she would say,

"I am blessed, anyhow".

If they were not enlightened enough to know who she was, I would quickly run down her resume, looking at them as if they were from another planet, letting them know,

"You know, shit like that can get your Black Card revoked"

All my friends, know that Big Momma 'N 'Em effected me greatly, It was my first experience workin at the Public, which was congruent with workin with people of African descent in prominent artistic positions. In short it blew my mind! Then to find that I would be workin with Phyllis Yvonne Stickney, that fly momma with the big booty, who was in everything, from the classic Women of Brewster Place to The Inkwell and New Jack City, damn that's the shit!

I always wear the little bronze charm that Shelby [Jiggets] gave me that commemorates the experience. Which was an EXPERIENCE. The cast of characters still live with me to this day all my friends know them well and are never phased when I launch into one of the many dialects of the Big Momma crew.

A favorite is the women from Black River, Carol Reed the braider. And you know they all love Benefa who was very close to a character I already did called Kiki Rodriguez. The matriarch Miss Alma other wise known as Big Momma was a spirit which I called on many a time to give advice to my friends.

Being the twelfth anniversary of my mother's death and the second of my father, these women were very important to me. Their creator Ms.

Stickney reminded me a little of my momma with her big rump and rollin eyes. I may be gay, but I am my father's child and so, I, like him am partial to big-bootied women.

Her confident spirituality, enigma and selfless wisdom intrigued me.

She was obviously a goddess, a messenger my mother had sent to see if I was OK.

Off the grapevine, I had heard the show was possible goin to be touring and I was like hey cool. I have touring experience, sign me up, for real though. But that buzz died down, and next I heard

"Hey Trev, you know Phyllis is in town doin' somethin' uptown, she call you?"

"No, you know Phyllis she always got her hand in something, if she need me for anything she got my number, she'll call,"

Wouldn't she?

Back at the Public, Big Momma 'N 'Em, had left a bad taste in the mouths of some of those in upper management. They were lookin for a scape goat to point a finger at and they pinned it on me, as always the stage manager gets the bad rap.

I heard rumors that George [C. Wolfe] had said that I was incompetent, excuse the fuck outta me, a man that had never given me as much as a good morning, less acknowledgement of my existence. WHATEVER!

I had looked at it as a wonderful magical experience, basically a week before the show there was no script and no one had seen a real run thru. And then as if willed by the Gods, and a lot of long days & nights and many bags of $5 potato chips, Big Momma 'N 'Em was born a bastard child in the world with a purpose.

Every night it packed the house, so I was very confused, why there was so much unspoken bad vibe, that led to this energy between the powers that be and me. We was makin' up shit as we went along. I felt I had did exemplary in a not so great situation. I had went from Production Assistant to Assistant Stage Manager to Production Stage Manager in less time then it takes for a roach to scratch its balls. Not to say that my age is relevant but I feel for my age doin such a feat at a very high-end Off-Broadway theatre like the Public, was damn amazing. Nuff said.

[Afterwords: Let's get some important details out of the way Big Momma 'N 'Em ran for fourteen performances at The Public Theatre in the Susan Stein Shiva Theatre Space from May 20, 1994 to June 5, 1994. Produced by George C. Wolfe, Directed by Loni Berry, Written by Phyllis Yvonne Stickney, but really authored by Loni Berry, and Production Stage Manager your's truly.

This piece I believe was written two years after the experience because it was clearly published in ninety-six. This is important to know because for a second I was confused as to where I was living. During the production I clearly remember working from my first apartment in Williamsburg on my old Mac SE, diligently transcribing the tapes we had from 'rehearsal'.

I personally wrote every word that Ms. Stickney said compiling them into a massive Word document, that Mr. Berry shaped into a functioning script. But at the time I published this essay I was staying with my Aunt Mary in the Bronx for the year, I wouldn't move to my forever apartment until April of ninety-seven, five months from when this missive was published.

There's something else to note and I think you all know Constant Reader that I am not one to name drop or disparage anyone's character, but we have an instance of a well-established Black creative dumping on an early twenty-something who should have been praised for keeping his first Off Broadway production on the rails, even while the very eccentric lead performer was attempting to self-sabotage the entire production with her aloof and precarious behavior.

George C. Wolfe may be a brilliant director and producer, but is a horrible creative director, which I believe is the role he held at The Public Theatre during his tenure there. As opposed to addressing those I guess he saw as beneath him directly, he would passive aggressively send minions to share his dissatisfaction with you. #🤷🏿‍♂️

I was literally just starting out in theatre, and beginning this production in a role that was appropriate to my inexperience, production assistant. A PA is usually the most junior role in any stage-management team, usually regulated to making, copies, brewing coffee, setting up the rehearsal space, managing props and being a go-for for the rest of the cast and staff.

Seriously I was barely out of college, albeit I had done several off off Broadway productions at this point, I was figuratively still learning. The person who kept promoting me and also acknowledging that I was in fact more competent than the original production stage manager, was Loni Berry, the director.

Unlike Monique, I think that was her name, I was reliable. If I recall correctly, we first started 'rehearsals' in Connecticut. Explanatory comma, I keep putting rehearsal in quotes because, they weren't truly rehearsals in a traditional sense. Ms. Stickey didn't even have a scrap of paper when she came to work, so Mr. Berry started bringing a tape recorder to rehearsal to record her stories. She would come do the different character voices she had in her head, and we captured them on tape. I would then take the tapes, go home and usually in the evening transcribe the tapes from that days rehearsal. Wash and repeat.

I can't recall exactly how long our rehearsal was I think a production usually has about six weeks of rehearsal time before going into tech week. Trevor Brown was present and accounted for at all of the Connecticut rehearsals, I had to get up very early in the morning to get the Metro North to make it in time for our eight o'clock start time. There were two people who were consistently either tardy or sometimes totally absent. Our Production Stage Manager, and curiously even our lead talent who was actually being accommodated by the Public Theatre with this allowance of having the creative team come to her, because she was doing a production at the local theatre in Connecticut.

Through my hard work and dedication I was first promoted to Assistant Stage Manager and got a bump in my paycheck. #👍🏿 As rehearsals moved back to New York, we still had an inconsistency problem with Monique, and Mr. Berry promoted me Production Stage Manager and demoted her to Production Assistant. This was awkward to say the least, usually the PSM on a show is the boss to all of the production crew. Even though this was a one-woman show, and a relatively small crew, it was odd for me as a twenty-something in essence to become my bosses boss. #👀

Once again I rose to the occasion doing my best to navigate our jewel of a show to the small stage. I remember I had a little crush on our lighting designer Kevin Adams the only white person in our all Black creative team. It was the way his jeans fit certainly not the mullet he wore in his blond hair, and when I learned he had done the lights for Janet Jackson's "If" video I was even more enamored. Nothing came from any of my innocuous flirtations though.

I remember we did have a grueling tech, and even technical issues during the production one night the headsets went out, and I had to run backstage to call the show. But I did something on this production I would do on all of my productions, I would mind my own business and do my job. I was never privy to all the drama that Ms. Stickney was creating from eccentric request, and over-promising free tickets to the show, to flat out diva-ness. I think Loni took the brunt of this, which as the director I guess is appropriate, that and he was much more experienced, read older than me.

For my part as I said I did my job, making sure the stage was properly safety-marked with glow tape, and that the scenes had different colored spike marks for the different characters, the curtains were paged for entrances and exits, the times called till house open, and filling in my production reports every night. I didn't even consider getting involved in whatever Phyllis was up to this night or the other, as long as she was in her dressing room by half-hour I was good money.

As I was saying I sort of resented George C. Wolfe's immaturity, of making comments about me, but not directly to me. This was clearly a trait of his because it would follow me to my next and last production at The Public, Dancing on Moonlight, where I would get reports that George didn't like what I was wearing, goddess save me, why was that man so petty? I recall at the time thinking it was one of two things the fact that I was young and gorgeous, but I think the thing that incensed his lightly melanated-self was the fact I was dark-skinned, openly gay, and beautiful and unapologetic for it all. Things his semi-closeted ass couldn't tolerate.

But I wasn't studying George, I was taking in the experience of this being my first time practicing the theatrical arts in an institution that during my stay was primarily all-Black driven, it really made me feel seen in a way I hadn't before working in the primarily lily-whiteness of the New York theatre world.

Phyllis never called me, and Loni and me would reconnect decades later and become good friends for a few years before he sort of ghosted me and disappeared back to Thailand where he was living full time. I have no regrets of the time we spent together back in the mid-nineties or briefly in the late tens, I always found something enriching from my fellowship with him, and just like he was then he was also such a positive, and creative energy, giving his best to not only those around him but the work he had dedicated himself to.]

[Photos by Brown Estate]

[a-kinda-nerdy-girl]

I didn't know much abouy george c wolfe which is a shame because his lifetime achievement award seems very well deserved

[kevrocksicehouse]

Rustin.

D: George C. Wolfe.

As Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln proved, one of the best ways to structure a biopic is to center it around a short but important period of time in its subjects life, but in Rustin, the story of a vital, though relatively obscure figure in the Civil Rights movement that approach becomes problematic. Bayard Rustin (Colman Domingo) was a central organizer in the movement who was a top adviser to Martin Luther King Jr (he introduced King to Ghandian non-violence tactics) but whose five-year membership in the Young Communist League (he left when the party abandoned non-violence) and open, though discreet, homosexuality made him vulnerable to attacks not only from racist politicians but also from moderate black leaders like Roger Wilkins (Chris Rock) and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. (Jeffrey Wright) who saw him as an increasing liability. The film finds him rudderless, estranged from King (Domingo’s face when King accepts what Rustin thought was a pro forma resignation is as good as acting gets) when he is asked by A. Philip Randolph to help organize a march for civil and economic rights that became the landmark March on Washington and the high point of Rustin’s life.

Wolfe, working from a script by Dustin Lance Black (who as he demonstrated in Milk, knows how to portray the minutiae of politics as both explicable and exciting) more than makes history come alive – aided by Tobias A. Schliesser’s vibrant cinematography, he gives it color – and Domingo gives a titanic performance as the Dynamo at the center of it all, but his story and that of the event take turns eclipsing each other (and Rustin’s affairs with a younger activist (Gus Halper) organizer and a married NAACP pastor (Johnny Ramey) are a melodramatic distraction from the main story). Rustin almost works as a depiction of history that rescues one of it’s heroes from obscurity. But finally, it can’t meld the man with the movement.

[dclblog]

Rustin (O-Ton)...

...erzählt die Geschichte eines der größten Helden der Civil Rights-Bewegung in den USA, Bayard Rustin, der gegen alle Widerstände, denen er als schwuler Schwarzer in einem zutiefst rassistischen und homophoben Amerika ausgesetzt war, den March on Washington 1963 organisierte.

Regisseur George C. Wolfe inszeniert seinen Film mit großem Gespür für das Flair der Zeit und seine schillernde Hauptfigur, lässt aber am Ende genau jenen Biss vermissen, der seinen "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" zu einem so erschütternd guten Zeitdokument werden ließ. Ich würde lügen, wenn ich sagte, dass mir die flotte, sehr humorvolle Umsetzung nicht ausgesprochen gut gefallen hätte, aber gerade die Momente, in denen "Rustin" innehält und die tiefen Narben, die der ewige Scheißdreck Rassismus und Homophobie in Menschen auslöst, zeigen will, machen überdeutlich bewusst, dass hier diesmal nicht Denzel Washington, sondern das Ex-Präsidentenpaar Obama auf dem Produzentenstuhl sitzt, weswegen wir immer da, wo es wirklich anklagend und tief gehend werden dürfte, mit einer grenzwertig melodramatischen, nie zu tief in die Materie eindringenden und gerade für die Nachkommen der Täter nie zu schmerzhaften Soße abgespeist werden, die gerade deshalb so fahl schmeckt, weil Wolfes Vorgängerfilm sich da so gar nichts schiss.

Dass mich das alles am Ende trotzdem komplett umhaute, liegt einzig und allein an der unglaublich fantastischen Performance von Colman Domingo. Allen Konventionen, die ihm ein urtypisches Biopic-Drehbuch auferlegt hat zum Trotz erschafft er mit seinem unglaublich nuancierten Spiel einen Menschen, dessen Träume, Ängste, Kämpfe, sein Optimismus und seine Verzweiflung gerade da noch durchscheinen, wo der eigentliche Film schon im versönlich-didaktischen Einerlei zu versinken droht.

Fazit: Informative, süffige Geschichtsstunde, deren wahrscheinlich produktionsbedingte Zahnlosigkeit durch einen grandiosen Hauptdarsteller, der durchgehend bannt und tief berührt, allergrößtenteils wettgemacht wird.

D.C.L.

[bob-the-movie-man-film-reviews]

Rustin (15): Battling Against Racism AND Homophobia.

#onemannsmovies #filmreview of "Rustin". #RustinMovie. Good biopic of the organiser of the 1963 Washington rally. 3.5/5.

A One Mann’s Movies review of “Rustin” (2023). Normally you find that the Best Actor Oscar and the Best Supporting Actor nominations go with “big” films. But occasionally, the Academy will recognise a performance that stands-out in an otherwise un-garlanded film. An example from last year would be Brian Tyree Henry for “Causeway“. Although it’s a very crowded field this year, I think it’s just…

[floorman3]

Rustin Review- A Transformative and Transcending Performance From Coman Domingo

Over the years we’ve seen a lot of films about the Civil Rights movement in our country. Films like Selma, Till, and Mississippi Burning have reminded us what a dangerous time the 60s were for Black Americans in the United States. It’s been a few years in the making but the latest movie about the Civil Rights Movement, specifically about one of its most flamboyant advocates and leaders, Bayard…

[cosmonautroger]

Nights In Rodanthe, George C. Wolfe, 2008

[quotethatfilm]

Rustin / 2023

[glimeres]

2000, Rosie O'Donnell Show - Eartha Kitt (feat. Adam Grupper and Stuart Zagnit) performs Moving Uptown from LaChiusa's The Wild Party

[courseyoulovemeyoudontknowme]

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020, George C. Wolfe)

15/04/2024

[lockwoodshitposting]

Uhhh...nuhh *sweating* early One Piece style Lucy and co- oh no.. the transformation ! *turns into a werewolf and howls in anguish*

[xtrablak674]

Glamorous Life

One of my most favorite compliments as an adult was being called glamorous! I was attending a house party being given by Dominic Vine, an artist, sex worker and writer who I had totally wanted to have relations with, but was okay just being in his very curious and fascinating presence. When I think of glamour I think of Lena Horne, Earth Kitt or Dorothy Daindridge, so it felt like such a blessing to be included amongst these classic goddesses.

I can't even lie I am not even sure what I was wearing that particular night, or when exactly I crossed the threshold into having a more elegant bearing. I think the potential was always there it just took a moment for me to refine and polish it. Curiously I have never made an attempt at categorizing my personal style, I just wear what I wear. I understand that what you wear and how you wear it is an extension of an expression of your personality and values. But sometimes you haven't come across the language in which you have your 'aha' moment.

Partially I feel this regal-ness started in high school, albeit my wardrobe would take more time to align with my internal feelings for myself. I remember I had this brown knit v-neck sweater that had a very deep neckline. I wasn't sure exactly how to wear the sweater a buttoned down shirt didn't feel right and neither did tank-tops they ruined the natural lines of the piece. So I would be bare-chested with my cleavage fully exposed. #TheGirlsWereOut My great posture and beautiful collar bones actually allowed me to carry this look off flawlessly. This would lead me years later to buying deep v-neck t-shirts from American Apparel which were my go-to travel looks. I was so sad when they closed and my source of deep v-necks dried up.

I have mentioned to the children that personal style is a journey, and I can recall certain pieces I used to own and how significant they were in elevating my style at the time. I remember some outfits I experimented with like this look I wore to work at The Public Theatre where George C. Wolfe the artistic director at the time had issue with, but wasn't man enough to say something to me himself, but sent underlings to attempt to make me feel less than.

The outfit was built around this neon orange mini dress I was gifted by a Soho boutique owner, that I was wearing as a top, these vintage polyester black bell bottom pants, and a navy morning coat with long tails that I had thrifted at my local thrift store in Williamsburg. The outfit was finished off with a long orange scarf with tassels and these vintage black 70s platform shoes I had thrifted in Ann Arbor. As far as I was concerned I looked amazing, and even visualizing the look today I did look good, it was a great pairing of items and my work was never constrained by what I wore or didn't wear.

Shelby Jiggets the dramaturg at the time took me aside and said that George had a problem with what I was wearing for the day, saying it lent itself to something reminiscent of a minstrel show. There was so much that was problematic with this summons, and this conversation. I a young dark-skinned gender non-conforming openly queer person was being called to the carpet by an older light-skinned and semi-closeted cis gay man who seemed to be mad at my young Black joy and self-expression.

This outfit was elegant and I daresay glamorous and it wasn't degrading to the history of Black people in America. I was dark-skinned but in no way possible was I dark enough to be confused with wearing blackface. I wasn't bulging my eyes or reddening my lips or acting cartoonishly Negroid, I was going about the daily tasks of my job as I would any other day with just a more elaborate ensemble. It was doubly insulting to be inside of a cultural institution where creativity was allegedly cultivated and to be told that I needed to be less creative in my own self-expression. #wtf

Working at the Public Theatre in the mid-nineties was such an honor and privilege for me so early in my theatrical career, and it was bolstered by the fact that most of the staff and crew were Black or people of color, it felt very affirming just working there. But it was also a great lesson in learning that in developing your personal style you're going to take risks and sometimes you will offend others, but you shouldn't let this discourage you from the journey of how to let your inside reflect on your outside.

We carry who we are, where we've been and what is important to us in what we wear and how we wear it. It always saddens me when folks don't use this very obvious platform as a form of self-expression, clothing can have an entire conversation with the world at large without even saying a word. Choose your words carefully.

[Photo by Brown Estate, black and white photo by Tony Kushner]