OUT's Popnography: I Light Up My Life – The Mark Sam Celebrity Biography

A tall man sporting a Burt Reynolds mustache steps from behind a black curtain. The audience responds by sending a tsunami of applause back to the stage. Mark Sam Rosenthal, the creative force behind the off-Broadway hit Blanche Survives Katrina in a FEMA Trailer Named Desire, is debuting a new work-in-progress during one of the final nights of the 19th Annual Dixon Place HOT! Festival. 

Out followed up with the actor/writer this week to gauge his thoughts about porn, fame and the world premiere of I Light Up My Life -- The Mark Sam Celebrity Biography.

Out: How would you describe your new show?
Mark Sam Rosenthal: It’s like you’re going to Barnes & Noble to hear a famous person read from their book -- except you’ve never heard of me.

You call it the “world’s first-ever preemptive celebrity autobiography.”
You might as well get it out there. I won’t have time to write it later on down the line.

If it’s preemptive, then you aren’t a celebrity now, right?
I’m on the verge! That’s the definite idea. You know, I’ve been Off Broadway. [Giggles]

Do you have the foresight to know how the celebrity will come to you?
Unfortunately, that is in the hands of God, although I think we’ve already tried the porn route. That’s not going to be it.

For the rest of the interview, click here.

Out's Popnography: The Dog and Pony Show (Bring Your Own Pony) at Dixon Place

"I come from a time and place when vaginas roamed the earth!" Holly Hughes proclaims at the start of The Dog & Pony Show (Bring Your Own Pony), her new one-woman tribute to man’s best friend—and feminism—featured this week during the 19th Annual Dixon Place HOT! Festival. 

Clunking across the stage in lemon-yellow wedge shoes, a simple dark dress, and a shock of tri-colored hair, the internationally acclaimed performance artist points out that “in this country, we hear how women look.” She then teases the crowd that "this show is not about the human condition." A spontaneous "Yeah!" erupts and the crowd laughs. The evening promises to be much more than yet another lame, been-there-done-that-wake-me-up-when-it's-time-to-leave monologue. 

An associate professor at the University of Michigan and a 2010 Guggenheim Fellow, the unapologetically smart Hughes punctuates the evening with razor-sharp humor, poignant insights, and occasional moments of lesbian rage. Veering off at times on organic tangents from the show's main premise—dogs and the people who love them—Hughes wonders at the unexpected world she finds herself in. Of the current state of the LGBTQQ movement, she shrugs and says, "There's a battered, tattered, pink canopy that's mostly decoration."

For more of the review, click here.

Out's Popnography: smithsoniansmith at Dixon Place

A bound man, his pants pulled down to his knees, lies exposed on a metal table while a stern-faced woman spritzes his genitals with mist. Upstage, a nude woman slithers out of a mound of dirty blue jeans and slowly marches away.

The first few minutes of smithsoniansmith set the evening’s tone -- bizarre, maybe even baffling, but highly entertaining. Three years in the making, the dance performance opened last week as part of the 19th annual Dixon Place HOT! Festival, and continues through this Saturday. The work is a collaborative effort between openly gay dancer Scott Heron and the choreographic duo known as HIJACK (Kristin Van Loon and out lesbian Arwen Wilder.)

From chocolate drippings to glue-gun dance sequences to clothesline conversations, the 75-minute show kept the opening night’s full house gasping and laughing. After three curtain calls, Out pulled Scott Heron away from his fans for a quick post-show interview.

Out: How would you describe smithsoniansmith?

Scott Heron: (Sighing) Rollicking, high-energy, full of surprises, wild-changes and mood swings. We’re willing to accept anything as dance -- from arts and crafts to flinging each other violently across the stage to building and destroying things out of junk. It’s all dance.

For more of the interview, click here.

OUT's Popnography: Dan Fishback's The Material World

After submitting the Frank DeCaro piece, Eddie and I were asked by Out Magazine's Popnography blog to talk with artists performing in the 19th annual Dixon Place HOT! Festival. This is the first article in a series of four.

Madonna, a twelve-year old labor activist, Britney Spears, Russian refugees, an amateur gay pornographer, a neurotic Jew, and an intermission dance party make up writer/composer/performer Dan Fishback’s new musical, The Material World, which premieres July 22 at New York’s Dixon Place as part of the venue’s 19th Annual HOT! Festival NYC. Out was able to lure Fishback away from one of the production’s final rehearsals to find out more about his inspirations for the show and the challenges in bringing it to the stage.

Out: When I saw that The Material World was a musical about a family of Jewish refugees from Tsarist Russia, of course I wondered if it’s your homage to Fiddler on the Roof.
Dan Fishback: In a strange way it is -- but not quite. The legacy of the Russian pogroms is definitely felt in the piece, but so is the legacy of homophobia. 

For the rest of our interview, click here.

OUT's Popnography: Homo-schooled

Not only were many of us gay boys bullied in school, but we were also forced to suffer through courses with no relevance to our soon-to-be fabulous lives: algebra, auto mechanics, and (the mind-numbingly dull straight version of) sex ed. Luckily, Gay 101: A Primer, written and performed by Sirius OutQ’s Frank DeCaro, gives those of us who weren’t homo-schooled a chance to earn our G.E.D. (Gay Equivalency Diploma).

Earlier this week, as part of the 19th Annual Dixon Place Hot! Festival NYC, the flamboyant former film critic for The Daily Show shed some lavender light on seminal moments in queer TV, film and pop music from the past century.

For more of my review, go to Out Mag's Popnography by clicking here.