LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
IN THE LIFE: MAY 2001 |
Reviewed by Mark J. Huisman |
Ever since going monthly the PBS show In The Life (ITL) has been re-using previously broadcast stories (I call them repertory segments) as a way of maximizing an already-stretched production budget. On occasion, I have suggested ITL abandon that strategy and simply give newer stories more screen time. But May's episode, "Cultural Legacies: From Preservation to Performance," demonstrates ITL's past work can indeed be used successfully when the aim is thematic unity.
Making Herstory (1999) examines New York's Lesbian Herstory Archives, a grassroots organization founded when activists realized their collective history was unfolding without documentation and lesbians alone should bear responsibility for writing their history. "We didn't want our story told by a patriarchal history-keeper," recalls author and historian Joan Nestle, who founded the Archive with Deb Edel. "I didn't want our story to be told by people who called us freaks to begin with." The poignancy here is indescribable, especially Nestle's memories about the late Mabel Hampton, a lesbian active in the Harlem Renaissance who became a domestic worker (and later an activist) and whose employers included Nestle's mother. For a time, Hampton worked in the very apartment that first housed the Archive. Comic Strip Heroes (1995) features the winsomely spry Jennifer Camper, whose strips began appearing in the early 1980s and an interview with Wendell creator Howard Cruse, while Same Sex Shakespeare (1998) spotlights the recently new tradition of same-sex productions sprouting up in theaters around the country. (Think of an all-male Romeo and Juliet or all-female Hamlet.) Set your VCR for the segment about the historic lesbian opera Patience and Sarah (1998) created by librettist Wende Persons' and composer Paul Kimper. New segments include Speak Out clips with actor Alec Mapa, writer/director Mark Christopher and author Jeannie Cunningham; a glimpse of a benefit staged reading of the infamous film Caged, and a chat with author Thomas Glave, whose short story collection Whose Song and Other Stories, has become a queer lit hit. Dancing for Life, focuses on contemporary queer choreographers David Rousseve and Chris Ramos, whose work is inescapably informed by AIDS, which has decimated the ranks of queer dance without mercy. Los Angeles-based Rousseve has been making critically acclaimed mixed media opera/ dances for nearly a decade. ITL wisely used film clips from Urban Scenes/Creole Dreams, Rousseve's first large-scale full-length work, alongside footage of performances of his recent Love Songs. "It seems like a lot of our social ills result from the fact that we are seemingly losing our ability to be compassionate with one another," says Rousseve. "I really didn't want to shy away from the fact that, for me, life and love are very complicated." Taking cues from slave legend and the tragedy of Tristan and Isolde, Rousseve is creating among the most richly informed queer dance being made today. Make a note to look for his company, Reality, if it should appear in your community. Ramos, based in New York, is seen rehearsing his company, Ramos Dance, which he calls "lyrical with an edge." His athletic dances involve the depiction of dancers as a moving community which tell stories dependent on explosive emotions, informed by his status as an HIV-positive artist and the loss of his lover to AIDS. There's a wonderful codicil about Dancers Responding to AIDS, which raises funds to supplement rent, health insurance and other economic needs for dance professionals affected by AIDS, which often saps the very canvas on which dancers dependtheir physical bodies. This episode's best new segment is Maverick Musician, the story of transgender jazz musician Billy Tipton, born Dorothy Lucille Tipton in Oklahoma City in 1914. But because men dominated the jazz community to which Tipton longed to belong, she suited up for an audition and never looked back. She played professionally for over forty years, no small feat in the 1940s and 1950s jazz world, which even today is not known as the most queer-friendly artistic community. "Maybe he put it on in the beginning just to get a job," says Jameson Green, a founder of the female to male trans support group FTM International, of Tipton's drag choice. "But ultimately, there's a place where this becomes who you are, and to take that identity off means not being yourself any more. So in that way, Billy Tipton's experience much more closely relates to the kind of experience that trans people have. As he was living as a man, he was able to express himself as a man and able to actualize that." Check local PBS schedule for broadcast dates. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 11, No. 5, May 18, 2001. |