#mennonite gays

[qbdatabase]

A Second Harvest by Eli Easton: David Fisher has lived by the rules all his life. Born to a Mennonite family, he obeyed his father and took over the family farm, married, and had two children. But now they're both in college, and his wife has passed on. Christie Landon, graphic designer, Manhattanite, and fierce gay party boy, needs a change ... ..... View the full summary and rep info on wordpress!

[shamebats]

I'm listening to an episode of the Cults to Conciousness podcast about gay erasure in Amish & Mennonite communities and one interesting thing one of the guests (a bi woman) brought up is that sometimes conversion therapy doesn't look like overt violence and attempts of sexuality conversion (although it does happen), because especially queer people in the social role of girl/woman in such communities will often simply not have their queerness acknowledged at all. The conversion therapy for this guest was when her father walked behind her and corrected her so she'd walk like a "proper lady", it was corrective rape and it was forced marriage, something she just barely escaped. Sometimes the conversion therapy is covert, like your community pushing you into marriage and having children so you'll be too busy to think about your sexuality, gender, freedom and self-actualization. It's not what we think of when we hear the term conversion therapy, but it's still violent, oppressive and has the same end goal.

One of the things that deeply hurt her was when a sociologist, an outsider, wrote about her community and declared that there were "no gay people" because there were not allowed to be any. It made her feel so unseen and even more like she shouldn't exist.

I can definitely see the parallels between that and how trans people have been treated historically and how trans stories are still often erased.

To believe that there are/were no LGBTQIA+ people in certain communities and time periods is to believe that conversion therapy, in any of its forms, works (which it does not).

[buga-lugs]

watts is THE character ever. he arrested a man with a pretzel immediately after being shot in the arm. he uses other people's backs as a surface for writing notes. a little girl tried to kill him via hot dog. he once decided to become a mennonite. he asked for a raise while his coworkers were standing in a room flooding with acid. he knows a billion languages. he has the best suits on the show. he discovered he's jewish after recognising a song. he became a detective to find his missing sister only to find her and get rejected by her. he's a philosophy nerd. he sat down when the newsomes were playing the national anthem of new south mimico. he has the worst organization system in the world. he has abandonment issues. he's gay. he's a wine connoisseur. he is murdoch's polar opposite in every way shape and form possible. he refused to break into someone's house but gave henry detailed instructions on how to do it. he faked falling off a ladder to be caught by a handsome man. his hobo name was curly. he hosted a pumpkin carving contest but he's shit at pumpkin carving. he can't focus on two things at once. he's been kidnapped twice. he got turned into a zombie and violet had to shoot him. it's llewellyn with two L's, well, four altogether. with a y.

[jgroffdaily]

A few things we learned about Jonathan during the promotion of ‘Merrily We Roll Along’:

1. He’s in therapy. He told Daniel Radcliffe and Lindsay Mendez during a Tonys Instagram takeover that he had therapy that morning, and was feeling “very processed”. Video below.

2. In the ‘Out’ Magazine interview Jonathan said he wants to buy the first bar where Barbra Streisand reportedly first sang publicly, which is now an occupied restaurant.

The actor wants to one day buy a Village restaurant called & Son Steakeasy, which used to be the site of the Lion, a gay bar where Streisand first sang publicly during a singing contest (according to a plaque there, at least). His goal is “turning it back into a gay bar and calling it BARbra.” A neon “BARbra” sign even hangs in his Merrily dressing room as a reminder of this dream.

3. In the same interview, he says he's happy to remain single or be in a relationship:

“I’ve been single now for a couple of years and I’m feeling…ready and open for anything. If that’s continuing with that, if that’s a relationship, I’m cool with that.”

4. At the Out Magazine Pride Cover Party he said:

“I’m single. I’m feeling full of pride. And PrEP.”

Bonus quote from the Buzzfeed puppies interview:

"I’m clearly the single one of the three of because the puppies know. I need love.”

5. In the New Yorker interview, he discussed moving to New York at 19:

The first month that I was here, feeling so lost and confused, I pulled the Bible that my Mennonite grandmother gave me off the bookshelf. She gave me that Bible before I left town. I was alone in the apartment thinking, What the fuck am I doing in New York? Or not even “what the fuck”—I didn’t swear until “Spring Awakening,” and when I would sing “Totally Fucked” I would get beet red. And I remember putting the Bible down and thinking, This is not the answer. This is not making me feel good. And then running to Central Park and standing in front of the Bethesda Fountain. I was nineteen, and I was, like, This feels better—but, like, What? Who am I? What am I doing here? I know I want to act, but I’m so scared. And gay. But it was something—some voice, some passion, some inspiration. Some something brought me here.

6. He's very competitive: asked how ambitious he was on a scale from 1 to 10 he says a 10 (to Broadwaycom at the Tonys junket).

7. He says he's “not really a dog person” in the Buzzfeed interview.

8. He talked more about his relationship with Gavin Creel in interviews with Out and Interview than he has previously, including this quote to Interview:

GROFF: I froze. I hadn’t even thought about coming out as a public person. She [interviewer] was like, “Oh my god, never mind. I’m so sorry.” And then she moved along. And I really remember this moment of looking over to the right and seeing Gavin. He had also just recently come out a year or two before, and seeing him with a bullhorn corralling the people, god, I was so in love with him. I was like, “Oh my god, I am coming out. I’m coming out. I’m coming out.” So I went back over to her and I was like, “Hi, please excuse my hesitation, I’m gay.” And that was how I came out publicly at the March on Washington for Marriage Equality.

9. His 30th birthday alone was a happy birthday (in the New Yorker):

I remember it vividly. We were at the Public Theatre. There was a fire in the East Village, and the show was cancelled that night. I got a cupcake at the deli around the corner from my apartment, on Sixteenth Street, and ate it by myself. I can be a bit of a loner, so that was a happy birthday for me.

10. He said in the Buzzfeed interview the best present he has received from a fan was a signature of King George III, and he hung it in his apartment.

[m-urdoch]

gay jewish detective to mennonite baker is a wild pipeline

[transbookoftheday]

A Safe Girl to Love by Casey Plett

A new edition of the acclaimed debut story collection by two-time Lambda Literary Award winner Casey Plett.

By the author of Little Fish and A Dream of a Woman: eleven unique short stories featuring young trans women stumbling through loss, sex, harassment, and love in settings ranging from a rural Mennonite town to a hipster gay bar in Brooklyn. These stories, shiny with whiskey and prairie sunsets, rattling subways and neglected cats, show that growing up as a trans girl can be charming, funny, frustrating, or sad, but will never be predictable. 

A Safe Girl to Love, winner of the Lambda Literary Award for transgender fiction, was first published in 2014. Now back in print after a long absence, this new edition includes an afterword by the author.

[baberoe-archive]

dick winters truly one of the characters of all time. he’s a mennonite. no he’s not. he’s a teetotaler. only time he curses in the whole series is when he says “to hell with that” on d day. his best friend is an alcoholic who curses and fornicates. his best friend keeps contraband whiskey in his footlocker for over a year. he is gay. he is really good at being a military officer. he really hates being a military officer. he doesn’t know how not to be a not gay not mennonite military officer. his best friend doesn’t know how to be a person. he doesn’t know how to live without his best friend. he never says this. he’s only ever known his best friend in war. the war ends. he is not gay.

[sayhowdycountrycritters]

Was being a gay man in the Amish community a problem?

Are there alot of gay Amish men?

Will you share your coming out story?

The answer to these questions could be rather lengthy and involved, but I’ll try to be concise.

Firstly, I was not raised in a conservative Old Order Amish community. My faith background is Mennonite (Swiss Brethren) & Pentecostal. I do have Amish ancestry as well. But in any of those churches, being homosexual would be an issue. It is taboo, and I have seen in the Amish community, you either leave or stay “ in the closet “ in a kind of “don’t ask , don’t tell” situation.

I have never met any openly gay Amish folk, but do know several gay ex-Amish men and a couple of gay Mennonites. It is my understanding that only the most modern/less conservative Mennonite Church is “gay affirming”. I worked with and still do business with Old Order Amish businesses and as a heteronormative gay man, have never had an issue. Only when asked about my wife or children, does it get a bit awkward for a moment, but Amish bachelors or unmarried women are not unheard of.

My “coming out” was rather tumultuous and traumatic. My life was my family, my church, and school. I do know that I had an attraction to men from an early age of about 5 yrs. of age. I always thought that one day I would meet the girl I was supposed to marry, it would be like getting hit with a lightning bolt, and I would finally feel the way I was supposed to feel sexually toward women.

When I was either 21 or 22 , I was working myself through college, but living at home. A guy I worked with had just gotten out of the Navy, and he invited me to go out. I thought ‘Oh boy, I bet he wants to go out and pick up girls’! But he came out to me , I told him I had thoughts about sex with men , and he pretty much showed me about gay life and sex.

I lived at home closeted for a couple of years, ( I was the baby in the family and last one to leave home), and had lots of guilt. One day my snooping stepmother found a novel in my room about “coming out”. ( my mother had died when I was 15) . She and my dad confronted me , I admitted that I thought I was gay, there was lots of yelling and crying , and I was basically kicked out, and physically kicked by my stepmother.

Anyway, I was away from my family for about a year, but my sister called and said they wanted me home for the holidays. So I went home and we reconciled with that “don’t ask, don’t tell” situation.

My husband thinks I have some PTSD from my coming out situation and I suppose that’s true as it is for many gay youth from my generation.

I would like to say that I have never lost my faith in Jesus Christ, and consider myself His follower. I had a most wonderful mother for fifteen years and she taught me about Him. About love, patience, empathy, forgiveness, and non-violence.

Sorry, once again I am not brief!

[doberbutts]

Person who lived on the fringes of a Mennonite community for two years: well I for one have never been treated poorly by Mennonites ever so you're just stereotyping and broad-brushing them

Me: not only is it interesting that two years as an outsider somehow trumps twenty being raised directly inside the community, but also it's interesting that we still haven't grasped that abusers don't show their true face to everyone and that just because someone is polite to your face doesn't mean they don't think you'll burn in hell for being gay

[haveyoureadthistransbook]

A Safe Girl to Love by Casey Plett

goodreads

Eleven unique short stories that stretch from a rural Canadian Mennonite town to a hipster gay bar in Brooklyn, featuring young trans women stumbling through loss, sex, harassment, and love. These stories, shiny with whiskey and prairie sunsets, rattling subways and neglected cats, show growing up as a trans girl can be charming, funny, frustrating, or sad, but never will it be predictable. Other women Twenty hot tips to shopping success How old are you anyway? How to stay friends Lizzy & Annie Real equality (a manifesto) Portland, Oregon Not bleak A carried ocean breeze Winning Youth

Mod opinion: I've read this short story collection and I really enjoyed it <3

[amishmennoman]

I like your blog so much I hope you come back to post more soon. I’m curious to know how open most Amish and Mennonite men are to having sexual experiences with other men especially men who are not Amish or Mennonite.

Well there is no “openess” within Anabaptist churches regarding homosexuality. As with most Christian fundamentalist groups who follow Old Testament Hebrew law and post Gospel teachings, same sex activity is viewed as sinful. Members either leave their communities or remained closeted. I personally know of no Amish or Mennonite men who are “gay”. I have been told that an Amish or Mennonite person is more likely to engage in activity outside of their community and not within. But there are no studies or stats about this that I am aware of.

I would like to post more photos , but have just about exhausted what is available and I rarely take photos as it is not looked upon positively to have one’s photo taken.

[mornyavie]

https://www.tumblr.com/unsolids-your-snake/731620210662047744

I just saw this post yesterday, are the Amish actually considered a cult?? From what I’ve seen and read about, they’re a pretty chill group, do they actually punish people who seek to leave?

I'll be real, I am deeply unqualified to talk about this; I encourage you to do your own research. I only commented on that post because it seemed like people didn't realize that "shunning" has a particular meaning in those spaces - like, yes at the surface I can see why people thought it was funny, but in context "shunning" isn't just your friends being a bit mad at you. It's an institutional punishment.

Questions like "what is a cult" are probably above my paygrade, but I feel comfortable answering "are they chill" with "no."

Many public-facing aspects would love for you to think that they're chill, and the chillness definitively also depends on the specific group you're talking about.

(Many people just say "Amish" and call it done, but the Amish are only one of a number of "avoid modern tech" groups, and they all have splinter subgroups with various differences; Mennonites are the other major branch of Anabaptists that do this.)

Ok I really. Don't want to try to get into this whole thing. there's probably a book you can read or something. But I don't want to leave you with absolutely nothing, so here's an Amish-authored explanation of shunning that I found:

link here

This is from a website used to sell Amish-made goods, so I think we can be pretty confident that this is attempting to present Amish culture in the best light possible. Here's some quotes:

"Because of this, being shunned can take a massive toll on a person. It’s difficult for someone to survive without the support they’ve grown accustomed to, and shunning can also make it nearly impossible for a person to earn a living." "This is what makes shunning so effective in keeping the community together and ensuring everyone sticks to the agreed-upon community rules." "The Amish practice shunning out of concern for a person. By shunning someone, they hope to get someone to see errors in their behavior, change it and return to the community." "Sins like fornication, adultery, stealing, and lying are all offenses worthy of shunning. This is to discourage other members of the community from committing the same sin."

So, even when presented in an article specifically designed to make this sound like a nice and reasonable thing, "shunning" is explicitly endangering a person by isolating them and cutting off their income, in order to (1) force them to admit fault and return to following the rules (2) make an example of them to scare other people into sticking to the rules.

This is high-control behavior, to put it mildly.

And that's even without getting into the actual specifics of what the rules are. Remember that these are, fundamentally, traditional Christian organizations. Most of them didn't suddenly become cool about women's rights and gay people. Divorce is one of the reasons that article lists for shunning.

Ok I'm sure I already put my foot in it somewhere and I'm really not an expert here. If you have specific research questions that you stumble on you can come back and ask and I'll see if I can help.

[jgroffdaily]

The New Yorker Interview

Jonathan Groff Rolls Merrily Back

The actor reflects on his journey in reverse: from his latest Tony nomination to his arrival in New York, waiting tables and dreaming of Broadway.

By Michael Schulman, Photograph by Thea Traff

June 2, 2024

Excerpts:

One of the problems with “Merrily” is its protagonist, Franklin Shepard, whom we first meet as a slick, philandering forty-year-old Hollywood producer. It takes two acts to arrive at the charismatic musician he once was, with a lot of mistakes in between. Putting effect before cause gives each scene a painful irony—but how do you get an audience to care about a guy who’s off-putting for so long? “Merrily” is back on Broadway, in a production directed by Maria Friedman, and it’s finally a hit. One big reason is its Frank, played by Jonathan Groff, whose natural warmth shines through even in the character’s older, sleazier incarnation. When this revival opened Off Broadway, in 2022, The New Yorker’s Helen Shaw wrote, “Groff’s silky tenor and angelic face elevate a part that can sometimes be contemptible—for the first time, I could see Frank as both the dreamer who believes in greatness and the glib charmer who believes every lie he tells.”

Groff, thirty-nine, is now nominated for a Tony Award, alongside Friedman and his co-stars Daniel Radcliffe and Lindsay Mendez. He was previously nominated in 2016, for “Hamilton,” in the scene-stealing part of King George III, and in 2007, for the indie-rock musical “Spring Awakening,” as the rebellious schoolboy Melchior Gabor—his breakout role, opposite Lea Michele. Groff had come to New York three years earlier, as a stagestruck, closeted nineteen-year-old from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he grew up among Mennonites and was obsessed with the original cast recording of “Annie Get Your Gun.” “Merrily,” with its themes of aging, idealism, and the vicissitudes of show business, has had Groff thinking about his own path toward stardom. “Doing this show on Broadway at this time, moving to New York twenty years ago, I’ve now lived the time frame of the show,” he told me recently.

We were talking at a bakery north of Washington Square Park. Groff had glided in on a bicycle. As we spoke, he frequently welled up with tears—he’s a crier—but regained his composure by focussing on a pair of googly eyes affixed to the wall behind me. For our conversation, which has been edited and condensed, I had an experiment in mind.

Let’s start with the extremely recent past. Three days ago, you went to the Met Gala. How was your night?

The big headline for me was Lea Michele was pregnant, and I sat next to her at the table, holding her giant train thing while she peed. She took it off, and I was holding that and her purse. I saw Zac Posen, who was at our table, help Kim Kardashian up the little tiny stairs, and I said to him, “Wow, that was such a sweet moment of the gay helping the diva.” I was relating to him, like with me and Lea. It’s a zoo of famous people. I was going to go to the after-parties, but my body was just, like, “No.” I hit a wall from the shows and the epicness of the week, with the Tony nominations. So I was home by eleven-forty-five, and in bed by midnight.

The Broadway production of “Merrily” opened last fall. You told Jimmy Fallon that Meryl Streep came to your dressing room, where you have a bar named BARbra, and she took a video of you and sent it to Barbra Streisand. Who else has been there?

The first thing that comes to me is sitting in BARbra in October or November, drinking whiskey with Sutton Foster. I came to New York as a teen-ager and saw her six times in “Thoroughly Modern Millie”—now she’s in BARbra, dropping in for, like, an hour and a half after the show, and it’s so full circle. Who else? Patti LuPone was there—another big one for me. Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Martin McDonagh. Glenn Close sent back a bottle of champagne to be chilled in BARbra, which we drank together.

This show, like every Sondheim show, is very dense. Over the course of three hundred-plus performances, are there certain moments that have suddenly hit you a different way, or that you realize have a double meaning?

Double, triple, quadruple, infinity. I’m still having revelations, which really makes me believe that it’s a true work of art. Maria [Friedman] talks about how, with Sondheim’s writing, he “leaves space,” which is why it’s always new. He always needed to work with a collaborator, and she talked about the actor being an essential collaborator. She said the lyric he wrote in “Sunday in the Park with George”—“Anything you do, / let it come from you, / then it will be new”—is Sondheim’s directive to the actor.

The Tuesday after the Tony nominations, I got to the theatre, screamed with Lindsay [Mendez], screamed with Dan [Radcliffe]. [He chokes up.] Then I was singing “Growing Up”—“So old friends, don’t you see we can have it all?”—which has meant so many different things to me in the run of the show. At yesterday’s matinée, Dan and I were sitting on the roof singing “Our Time”: “Up to us, pal, to show ’em.” We’ve done it a million times. We look at each other, and Dan just fucking loses it crying. He had to look away from me. We talked about it afterward, like, “What the fuck was that?” I don’t know. Something just happened.

When you started the show, in 2022, at New York Theatre Workshop, were there kinks in your performance that you’ve since figured out?

I remember feeling shocked at being disliked for so long in the first half of the first act. It was very clear from the energy of the audience that they loved Mary in the opening scene—immediately, they’re on her side. I’m out here as a gay guy, playing this straight, two-timing Hollywood producer who’s cheating on his wife. I’m already having to feel confident in a way that I don’t in my everyday life, this sort of swagger. And the audience hates me. I remember feeling scared and self-conscious. Maria, in that preview process, really helped with that, because she talked about the value of when it’s real, and you’re not playing ugly just to be ugly. The one line that I really struggled with was “I’m just acting like it all matters so people can’t see how much I hate my life and how much I wish the whole goddam thing was over.” That is a really confronting thing to say.

People might say that this is one of the fundamental flaws of “Merrily We Roll Along”—that you’re confronted with this cynical, smarmy Frank in the first act, and you don’t really understand him until the show’s over. I can imagine going into this not knowing if that’s a solvable problem, because it hadn’t been for decades.

Well, Maria wanted us to find the truth. She really believed that these characters weren’t archetypes, that there’s humanity in the writing from beginning to end. I found it after that first week or two of previews, not being so afraid. The line that made me want to do the show was “I’ve made only one mistake in my life, but I’ve made it over and over and over. That was saying yes when I meant no.” I’ve done that a lot in my life, and there was something that felt like the closeted version of myself. George Furth and Stephen Sondheim—I can only imagine being gay at the time that they were gay. Even though Frank is straight, there’s so much repression that feels very familiar to me.

Except that you felt it at the beginning of your life and not the middle, as Frank does.

Yes and no. I still feel it. I’m still trying every day not to go back. I’m obviously out of the closet, so that’s a huge relief, but I’m always going to be reckoning with the Republican upbringing that I had. I’m always negotiating whatever homophobia I’ve got. It’s all in there, still. What we see as ugliness in the top of the show, to stand and say, “I want to fucking kill myself, I hate my life,” and not overdramatize it but try to find it in the most pure, truthful place—it’s still, every night, a meditation to go there.

Let’s wind back. In 2021, you played Agent Smith in “The Matrix Resurrections.” Any good stories about Keanu Reeves?

Getting to play Agent Smith really unlocked rage inside of me that I didn’t know was there. That’s helped me so much with “Merrily,” particularly in the first act. Learning the kung fu was, like, months of fight training. They called me the Savage, because I was so into it. We were shooting a big fight sequence with Keanu, and, after the first few takes, I remember Lana [Wachowski] at the monitor, like, “Jonathan, come over here. Who is that?” I was, like, “I don’t know.” And she was, like, “And what is that?” I said, “Gay rage?”

I’d never shot a gun before. I shot Keanu and thought I had peed my pants, because I had this hot feeling. You know when you pee yourself and it’s warm? It lasted about ten minutes and then it went away. I sat next to Keanu and said, “Keanu, I just had extreme heat from my groin for, like, ten minutes.” And he was, like, “You opened up your root chakra.”

You turned thirty that year [Hamilton]? How was that?

I remember it vividly. We were at the Public Theatre. There was a fire in the East Village, and the show was cancelled that night. I got a cupcake at the deli around the corner from my apartment, on Sixteenth Street, and ate it by myself. I can be a bit of a loner, so that was a happy birthday for me.

(On Looking being cancelled)

But, in 2015, Michael Lombardo was our executive at HBO, and I was crying into my salad at some restaurant in West Hollywood, trying to convince him to keep the show going, right before getting on the plane to come do “Hamilton” Off Broadway.

I loved Raúl Castillo, who played your love interest Richie on the show. I interviewed him around then, and he told me that, since he’s straight, you all had to teach him some of the mechanics of what gay people do.

Oh, yeah! God, I love him so much. I officiated his wedding in July.

Let’s go back to 2013, when “Frozen” came out. You voiced the iceman Kristoff and the reindeer Sven. How did that film change your life?

It’s funny—I remember recording some of “Frozen” in San Francisco. I would be teaching Raúl, like, how to lick my asshole while jerking me off—not teaching him, but sharing the ins and outs of gay intimacy—and then going into the recording studio on a Saturday and being Kristoff and Sven in a Disney movie.

When they showed me “Let It Go” for the first time, I was, like, Oh, my God, this will help millions of people come out of the closet. This is the gayest thing I’ve seen in my life! That was the thing about “Frozen”: I don’t think anyone who worked on it thought it was going to be a juggernaut. It’s so weird to think of this now, but when it came out it felt quite alternative, because there was no villain, really, and the love was between two women. Now there are, like, tissues with Elsa on it.

Now we’re moving backward to “Spring Awakening.” By the time it moved to Broadway, in 2006, you were the twenty-one-year-old lead of the coolest musical in town. What was your actual life like?

I was so not cool. The show was cool, and the music was cool. I had people dropping me off joints at the theatre. And I remember fully understanding the stark difference between who I was playing onstage and who I was in real life, which was an extreme theatre nerd who wanted to be in the ensemble of “Thoroughly Modern Millie” and never would have imagined playing Melchior. It’s his gravitas. And trying to tap into that side of myself, which was a side I’d never experienced before.

Tell me about your audition.

I went to the open call and knew who Michael Mayer was, because he had directed “Thoroughly Modern Millie.” But it was “Spring Awakening” and I was, like, There’s a beating scene? This is so intense! They called me in for Melchior, then had me sing “Hey Jude” in a falsetto, and Michael was, like, “That was your falsetto?” And I laughed at him sort of making fun of me. Tom Hulce, who was our producer, told me years later that he moved my head shot from the “No” pile into the “Yes” pile because I had laughed at Michael in the audition, and he thought, This kid has the ability to let Michael roll off his back. We should bring him back in the next month or two.

It was, like, ten people up for Melchior. They brought me in first, because they thought they would just see me and cut me. But I had worked so hard on the audition material. I remember calling my dad the night before the final callback and saying to him, “I know I can’t be this character all the way yet, but I—”[He tears up again.] I really got to get my shit together! Why does this keep happening to me?

Because we’ve gone on an emotional journey.

I guess so, in reverse! Fuck me. [Pauses.] I knew that I had it inside, if they would just give me the chance. That’s all I was trying to say, but I guess I can’t stop crying while I’m saying it.

In 2005, you made your Broadway début, as an understudy in “In My Life.” Now, this was the weirdest musical I’ve ever seen. As I recall, there were dancing skeletons in a song about how everyone has a skeleton in their closet, a giant lemon that came from the sky at the end, and a girl on a scooter who turns out to be a ghost. And it was written by the guy who wrote “You Light Up My Life,” who then came to a dark end.

And his son!

Yes, his son killed his girlfriend. What the hell was going on with that show? Did you ever go on?

I went on for the ensemble members. I was so excited! I was in my first Broadway show, at the Music Box Theatre, walking in where it says “Stage Door.” And you couldn’t give away tickets to see the show. People were coming to laugh at the show from the audience.

Like “Springtime for Hitler”?

Exactly. And the cast had to do the show, even though people were laughing at them, which is devastating for the actors. But we formed a little family. It’s the plight of the actor. You’re just out there, like Sally Bowles in “Cabaret.” I was twenty years old, so I was lit.

Had you been waiting tables?

Yeah. The whole year before that, I was at the Chelsea Grill, in Hell’s Kitchen. The day I got to New York—October 21, 2004—I moved to Fifty-first Street and Ninth Avenue, before it was super gay, and I walked down Ninth and got a job waiting tables. A week later, I waited on Tom Viola, who runs the charity Broadway Cares, and became a bucket collector. I’d watch the second act of shows and then collect the money at the end. I went to hundreds of auditions, trying to get my Equity card. That, to me, was “Opening Doors,” from “Merrily”—that moment of sheer will and ambition and ignorance.

We’ve now reached our finale, which is 2004. Can you tell me about the decision to move to New York?

My mom was a gym teacher and my dad is a horse trainer, and they didn’t really understand anything about the performing world. But my dad grew up on a dairy farm, and he was supposed to take over and become a Mennonite preacher, which is what my grandfather was. My dad didn’t like cows—he liked horse racing, so he sort of rebelled and did his own thing. My mom always says that nurse, secretary, or teacher were the options for women in a small town at that time, but her passion was sports, so she ended up being a coach.

So they understood the power of fanning the flame of passion. When I was a kid and into acting, they drove me to play practice. They drove me to community theatre. My senior year of high school, my mom drove me to New York to audition for this bus-and-truck tour of “The Sound of Music.” I got that tour, and deferred my admission to Carnegie Mellon. I made ten thousand dollars after a year on the road, and I learned so much from getting to act every day. I wanted to take my ten thousand and move to New York, and my parents were super supportive: “If you feel like you need to go to college, you can always go to college. But take a gamble and move to the city.” I’d worked at this theatre in Lancaster called the Fulton Opera House, where I’d met this girl who wanted to move to New York, so she became my roommate.

To me, “Merrily We Roll Along” is about how difficult it is to stay in touch with the person you were as adulthood knocks you sideways and forward. When you think about nineteen-year-old Jonathan coming to New York, do you feel like you’re the same person? What’s changed?

[He bursts into tears.] I can’t tell why I cry! When we were about to start rehearsal for “Merrily,” I would listen to “Our Time,” and I couldn’t sing it without crying. And, when I think about that version of myself—I think it’s because that person who brings you here does diminish. Maybe it’s the grief for that person. The whole reason that I’m here now is because of that person, but that person no longer exists.

But that person is still in there, somewhere. That voice is so quiet now, but it’s still driving my choices. You have to make choices. You get older, that pure inspiration dies, but it doesn’t have to go all the way away. I think that’s the whole point of the show, why it goes backward. Maria says that Sondheim put all of his regret into it, so that we could have less regret for ourselves. And perhaps the reason it ends with these people, with these versions of ourselves that we remember when we see it, is that it’s an invitation to remember and honor that person.

Why does that make me cry? Is it grief? Is it joy? I don’t know, but I’m so grateful for that purity and that optimism. The first month that I was here, feeling so lost and confused, I pulled the Bible that my Mennonite grandmother gave me off the bookshelf. She gave me that Bible before I left town. I was alone in the apartment thinking, What the fuck am I doing in New York? Or not even “what the fuck”—I didn’t swear until “Spring Awakening,” and when I would sing “Totally Fucked” I would get beet red. And I remember putting the Bible down and thinking, This is not the answer. This is not making me feel good. And then running to Central Park and standing in front of the Bethesda Fountain. I was nineteen, and I was, like, This feels better—but, like, What? Who am I? What am I doing here? I know I want to act, but I’m so scared. And gay. But it was something—some voice, some passion, some inspiration. Some something brought me here.

[girl-debord]

oh my god i'm a gay mennonite and ur kin dom post totally jumpscared me. i actually associate kindom more with queer episcopalians trying to degender the lords prayer but you're right anabaptists are out here pulling this

thank uuuuuu you understand. deleting the post and just mailing it to you b/c you're the intended audience

[theridgebeyond]

I’ve met progressive Catholics, progressive Orthodox, progressive mainline Protestants and heck, even a progressive Mennonite but where are the progressive charismatics??

I wanna hear people speaking in tongues at gay weddings — I wanna see rainbow flags smacking around in church — I wanna see old ladies laying hands one day and protesting for universal health care the next — where are you I want to meet you.