A Comedic Performance Piece by Alan Reade
"Go see this great show and support local artists and local theatre. We need more theatre like this."
-Merle Yost, EastBay Voice
"His goal is to illuminate the people behind sexual behavior that can perplex and disgust straight people and frustrate gay political leaders who see it as dirty linen. ... Reade creates a number of funny situations and clever lines in his various guises."
-Richard Dodds, Bay Area Reporter
"Gay sex ... does anyone really care anymore? Still, for the glamorous sexual outlaws among us who shudder at the thought of Will and Grace's Jack shedding his Banana Republic turtleneck and getting plugged doggy-style, it's a matter of real-life or mainstream death. Alan Reade, the queer cabaret underground's heftiest naysayer, favors the former – shining a hot-pink spotlight on tweeker whores, jaded hustlers, evil bottoms, Manhunt casualties, steam room queens, and other towel-clad boys in Bad Gays!,
his hilarious one-man romp through the raw, red underbelly of actual men-on-men encounters."
-Marke B., San Francisco Bay Guardian
Played FRIDAYS, SATURDAYS, and SUNDAYS, SEPTEMBER 9 through OCTOBER 1, 2005
Friday and Saturday shows at 8:00 p.m.; Sunday shows at 6:00 p.m.; no show on Sunday October 2
Jon Sims Center for the Arts
1519 Mission Street (between 11th Street and South Van Ness), South of Market, San Francisco, CA 94103
Admission Cost: $10-$15 (sliding scale; no one turned away for lack of funds)
Ticket Reservations: 415-554-0402
18 years old and over only. Explicit content.
Directed by Jon Wai-keung Lowe
Featuring James Meyer and Don Navarro
The Friday September 30 show was a benefit for Tweaker.org, an information and advocacy site for gay guys who use crystal meth.
Alan was the featured reader at the queer open-mic event Smack Dab, at Magnet, 4122 18th Street in San Francisco's Castro district, on Wednesday, October 19 at 8:00 p.m.
BAD GAYS! premiered July 20, 2005, at Club Eros, San Francisco; excerpted February 18, 2005 at PAWS Lit-bear-ary Festival (part of IBR); March 9, 2005 at Club Eros, and August 20, 2005 at the Jon Sims Center for the Arts, San Francisco
Photos by Julienne Givot, 2005.
Logo by DesignForDesign, 2005.
SYNOPSIS
"I have this fuck buddy who looks like Jimmy Kimmel...except with a really hot ass...."
And so begins BAD GAYS!, Alan's latest performance piece, with a crew of characters, all played by Alan, who discuss their lives while "doing time" in an urban bathhouse. In stark contrast to the so-called "good gays" of the gay-marriage issue that is front and center in the mainstream media of late, Alan's characters are not the marrying kind. From a hooker who works his tricks at one end of the room while he chats up his next customer to a Judy-Garland-obsessed
top who complains about how much work it is to have sex, Alan's characters go to the heart of what it means to be sexual and beyond society's reach, at least for the hours spent inside the baths. Is the only difference between "good gays" and "bad gays" the time of day?
CHARACTERS
Carlito the Happy Escort: "One night in his bedroom when his parents were away, we're in a beanbag, and he's telling me, 'You're so different.' And yeah, I'm thinking, 'Sure I'm different to you...because I swallow.'"
Harvey the Older Gentleman: "So here's something to write down in your notebook. Write this: The worst STD you can get at the baths is attitude! There, I said it. Yeah. These guys who when you walk by, fifty feet away, they have to shut their doors. Well, I have a theory: I think they are so self-absorbed they think they are still on the Internet! So when they shut their door, they're thinking of it as just blocking some popup ad. I AM NOT A POPUP AD!"
Chad the Tweaker: "And this hot guy with a beard who I met in the video room was on me. Cursing. Sweating a lot. And before he starts to, you know, he starts foaming at the mouth and his eyes get all wide. And he makes this sound like eck-eck-eck, and I'm thinking, 'German?'...and then his eyes go blank and he falls on me. Dead weight. Phoom. And I'm like, 'What number do I call for this?'"
BIOGRAPHY
Alan Reade is a performance artist whose comedic piece Bear-A-Go-Go!" took on body image and gay identity from 1999 through 2002. His work examines how body image, language, and mass
media are internalized. Alan's work has appeared all over the United States and Canada, and his spoken-word CD, "4 Seasons in a Day,"
was released in the spring of 2002. You can find a selected history of Alan's past
performances here.
And, P.S., only muppets had to die to make Alan's fake fur. He's not that bad!
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© Alan Reade, 2011