Several years ago, I had what started out as one of the thrills of my life to have a show I created land at the Public Theater. After 10 years of work and sweat and love and arduous roller coaster rides, lawyers, more lawyers, agreements, rights, underlying rights, more agreements, some more lawyers, more money money money, tryouts, workshops, more tryouts, more readings, our show was actually on a marquis at the Public Theater.
The sole reason we were able to get there was due to my friend and co-producer…who I partnered with to raise a hefty enhancement to get the show in their season.
The musical was a love story…a true story based on a documentary that happened to center on mostly trans people.
I was so proud of the show, and the message, and telling that story on a world stage. My dream come true.
Anyway, there were lunches at the Friars Club, Sardis, meetings with pretty much every major producer on Broadway, and black tie fundraisers all there in the palm of my hand on my little Apple calendar.
While I’m riding high at one of those schmancy, crazypricedaplate fundraisers, 3 really lovely trans women came up to the table..
“Are you Robert DuSold?”
“Ummm, yes.“
Like how the fuck did they even know who I was?
“You’re producing “Southern Comfort?”
“You’re a straight, white Republican aren’t you?”
I mean, please, I’m wearing a flowery suit and Fleuvogs.
“You can’t be here”
“How fucking dare you do this show“ .. I’m paraphrasing now because I blocked a lot of this out to this day.
Then I stood up and the screaming match started.
“Your show has to be terrible! You can’t tell this story!”
Getting them to the door with all of their hands in my face is a blur.. it was a long fucking way in that ballroom, but I do remember pleading with them to calm down. I tried desperately to be reasonable, rational, to engage… none of it stopped the screaming. It just made it worse.
It was a full on ambush.
“But have you seen it? It hasn’t opened yet!”
For fucks sake Chuck Schumer was at the next table and I’ve arrived. And Lady Gaga’s mom!
Complete strangers were schooling me on who I was as a person…what my art was.
But, they didn’t know me. And they hadn’t seen the show.
They were giving me a soul lobotomy wielding a scalpel of their perceived injustice… sharpened by the headwinds of a movement they felt empowered by.
They were untouchable in that environment.
They went in for the kill.
And boy were they were gonna give this straight, white Republican a fucking lesson.
Then, a few days later, the “open letter” hit the interwebs!
It was basically a hostage sitch signed by “trans activists” who wanted the show cancelled.
My dream was turning into a nightmare.
There was a lot of scrambling… crisis mode… all during the Christmas Holidays.. the Public was thinking of pulling my little dream show.
Tony Kushner weighed in, and a lot of other people including the head of the Hetrick Martin Institute… I think that’s the name of some famous LGBTQ organization. I’ve blocked that out too.
He said the show should be cancelled…. it can’t be any good because it’s not written by trans people.
That was fun to hear.
Even in my despair I was like who the fuck are you? You’re a gay dude who’s now speaking for the trans community? You’re a theater critic too?!
Finally, after days of phone calls while I just wanted to crawl into a hole and die, Oskar Eustis.. the renowned artistic director of the Public said:
“I think it’s a great show and we’re gonna do it”.
Jesus Christ we got through the fire!
Well, unfortunately I was still about to have more kindling shoved up my boo boo.
In order to appease the trans community .. well, the group who called themselves that… a Town Hall was replacing the opening night so their grievance(s) could be heard.
I was called into the Line Producers office at the Public and told I would not be allowed to speak at it. I would not be allowed to answer any questions. I was forbidden to address anyone.
That crushed me.
“This is my idea! My art!”
“I created a show that featured a trans love story with trans actors in a mainstream musical. My dream was to create a dialogue and lift up! This show is gonna change the world.”
I knew it could.
It’s gonna change the world. It’s gonna change theater.
Didn’t matter. We will not allow you to speak.
As it turned out, the trans activists were really people who wanted to push their shows in front of Oskar for the most part.
Like speed dating, only with shows.
I’ve had my share of surgeries, and I’ve got some decent scars.
That experience is one of them.
I wear it with the others.
AUNT SALLY
My partner’s aunt loves us. She is a devout Catholic and avid Fox News devotee who voted for tRump. She doesn’t want to talk about politics, but a couple of weeks ago she sorta had to in a discussion with Tom’s sister.
“He’s my president and I would vote for him again!”
She may get her wish.
Anyway, she also recently asked one of Tom’s cousins if gay people go to heaven.
I don’t doubt the sincerity of her dilemma.
She actually thinks that way… fortified by the Catholic Church and 24/7 “news”.
That gives me great pause… and I just don’t know if we were in Anne Frank’s position, as every day passes that becomes more of reality, she wouldn’t say…
“They’re in the attic”.
PATTI
Well, before we get to why Patti is in a pickle, let’s go down memory lane.
Five years ago, after the murder of George Floyd and while theater was hibernating due to Covid, “We See You White American Theater” was born. A very angry screed with a lot of demands hit the interwebs. I’ve written many blogs about this, you can find them on this site.
I was shocked at the intentional targeting of white women and gay white men. The tone, as you can see, is threatening.
I knew, I knew 5 years ago this manifesto.. signed by many high profile theater artists.. would result in a hamster wheel of oppression. I knew it would lead to nowhere good.
The “open letter” was vague, somewhat preposterous, hateful and the antithesis of what theater is.
But it was out there.
All roads lead back to it.
It’s still here. But it’s here. It’s still here…
Patti’s gherkin started last November when she was asked by her producers, I believe, to approach the theater next door to request that they adjust the sound as it was literally seeping into the 2 hander she was performing in… the theaters shared a wall.
I think that was her first mistake.. the producers should have tried to handle it without her being involved.
The show next door was “Hell’s Kitchen”.
The sound was adjusted, Patti sent flowers and all was well..
Until an actress in “Hell’s Kitchen” went on the old sosh a week later and accused Patti of a racist act by her asking to turn the sound down.
Then this interview in the New Yorker was published many months later.. Click on the link to read it.
I do believe Patti thought at the time she was having a nice Kiki with this reporter.. she was unguarded, but pretty much her twitchy, bitchy and manic self.
Her publicist should have known better.
Anyway, she called the actress who deemed her request to turn the sound down “racism”a “bitch”.
She called Glenn Close a “bitch”
She said Kevin Kline was ugly.
And so, the latest “open letter” was born.
Believe it or not, this is a revision.. the first salvo, which I saw, wanted her to be banned from Broadway.
So, a coupla things:
There is no such thing as the “Broadway Theater Community”. It doesn’t exist. The closest organization that would represent actors is Actors Equity… don’t get me started.
“White American Theater” does not exist. It’s also not a thing.
They are boogeymen, they are toy soldiers and are used as cudgels to convince people to take sides.
They are pretend groups.
If the “Broadway Theater Community” actually represented the totality of actors on Broadway, or any other real group, with all the talk of inclusion and equity and courage and clarity and “needing each other”.. they would have done this:
First of all, they would have realized that grown women have agency to speak for themselves.
They also would have called for “justice” for Glenn Close.. she’s evidently a bitch too.
I guess not the same kind of bitch.
Things just blew up after Patti’s interview. She was not smart to be so unguarded, petty and reckless.
But, after five years of searching, maybe the “White American Theater” peeps have finally found their white woman who has exploited and shamed them.
So…
Patti issued an apology .. which a dear friend thinks was just fed into Chat GPT while Patti may have been sipping a sherry.
The more I read this, the more I think that’s true.
I think the old ChatGPT got some of it wrong.. especially the part about theater being about lifting each other up, and a refuge for people who don’t belong.
I guess computers can hope.
JOE
That’s a really nice AI version of Joseph McCarthy. If you don’t know who he was ask ChatGPT. If you do know who he was, bless you.
PEE WEE
This is Paul Ruebens.. Pee Wee Herman. He was in the midst of filming a documentary about his life when he died.
The day before he passed away from this earth, he made an audio recording. Here’s what he said:
“More than anything, the reason I wanted to make a documentary was to let people see who I really am and how painful and difficult it was to be labeled something that I wasn’t,” he says in HBO Documentary Films’ “Pee-wee as Himself,” which premiered Thursday at the Sundance Film Festival. “The moment I heard someone label me as — I’m just going to say it — a pedophile, I knew it was going to change everything moving forward and backwards.”
“I wanted to talk about and have some understanding of what it’s like to be labeled a pariah, to have people scared of you, or unsure of you, or untrusting, or to look at what your intentions are through some kind of filter that’s not true,” Reubens says in the recording. “I wanted people to understand that occasionally, where there is smoke, there isn’t always fire.”
He died hours later.
What I’ve learned, so far, in my life is this:
I think the people who think I’m going to hell or a transphobe, that Paul Ruebens was a pedophile and that Patti LuPone is a racist sincerely believe it.
At the same time, I believe they know the damage that can be inflicted by labeling people with words that can haunt them for the rest of their lives, especially in their anonymity.
Or ruin their lives and careers.
They do know it.
Two things can be true at once.
What I’ve also learned is it doesn’t matter why they believe what they believe.
Weaponization is a choice.
I also believe that pretty much no one in the “Broadway Theater Community” realizes that they are speaking from a place of such astounding privilege.
Or, maybe they do.
That privilege is keeping them stunted.
In a privileged bubble.
Because, in the real world, I also believe that now just a majority of people in and out of the theater are alternately bored with this “controversy”, this literal “violence”and all the other bullshit, and look at it as absurd.
Unfortunately, the labels are not absurd. They can destroy your life.
The ones who are really invested in being fed up vote for tRump.
Hence where we are now.
Jews in this country are being burned alive, gay men are getting murdered in the heartland, trans people are losing what little rights they had and the arts are literally in the midst of a fascist takeover.
Censorship is the new game.
It’s time for the “Broadway Theater Community” to play that one.
Robert DuSold 
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