Copyright West End Word Vol. 33, No. 20, May 19-25, 2004

By Kara Beightel

Defining the newest project by That Uppity Theatre Company proves difficult to do. It’s not a play in the traditional sense, nor is it a collection of monologues. Even those involved with the production hesitate to label it.

“It’s going to be an experience unlike a typical play. I mean, how often do you get apple pie with a play?” says Joan Lipkin, artistic director for Uppity. She says she considers it as more of an event than a play, “a gathering of communities,” as she puts it.

But the full name for the event comes the closest to describing it — As American as Apple Pie: GLBT Youth and PFLAG Parents Act Out: A Happening Featuring Performance, Conversation and Apple Pie. The production, running May 22 and 23 at the Contemporary Art Museum, consists of a combination of pieces put together and performed by the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual members of Growing American Youth and the Metro St. Louis Chapter of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.

The happening is unprecedented in St. Louis. As far as Lipkin can recall, it is the first original theater project involving gay youth and it is definitely the first to combine the perspectives of parents and gay teenagers — the age span of the dozen members is 50 years, the youngest being a 14-year-old lesbian who came out last year.

The piece is executive produced by Lipkin, but she says it has been developed through an unusual process of collaboration. The material was created by the participants based on topics of their own choosing. Lipkin and Sarah Shimchick, a graduate student from Washington University’s George Warren Brown School of Social Work, then worked with one or more of the teenagers to dramaturge individual pieces. Andrew Schneider, a GAY participant and sophomore at the Webster University Theatre Conservatory, co-directed some of the pieces.

The pieces cover a wide variety of subjects, spanning from various forms of harassment experienced by the teens to the pride and respect the PFLAG parents have in their children.

All of the GLBT youth involved have been harassed in one way or another, Lipkin says. The common experience ended up being a section of the event, while others are more lighthearted, such as a look at gay media icons.
“One kid thought that if he was gay, he had to act like Jack from Will & Grace,” Lipkin says. “He acted like that until one day he just stopped and said, ‘Wait a minute, I’m a computer nerd. I like sports. This isn’t me.’”

Audience members, she says, will be both familiar and surprised with what they see and hear. “We played with the format of how it’s presented. You can expect the unexpected, but not feel uncomfortable,” she adds cryptically.

The production was not an easy one to put together, combining the experiences of two very different perspectives. But it was something Lipkin felt was crucial to the production and to the GLBT community.

“Both groups do extremely important work from different angles,” Lipkin says. Lipkin contacted PFLAG and GAY in September 2003 after creating “The Louie Project,” an ensemble for gay men in the St. Louis area. Earlier this year, the groups began working on Apple Pie.

“I happen to believe that virtually anyone can make interesting art by asking interesting questions and then finding an aesthetic framework for that expression,” Lipkin says.

Using that idea as a foundation for Apple Pie, Lipkin enlisted all of the 12 participants to help write the script based on their own experiences.
“One of the gifts we’re offering is the gift of vulnerability,” says PFLAG parent and Apple Pie participant Anne Kelsey. “These are our stories.”

Lipkin used a wide variety of techniques to draw the stories out of both groups.
“A lot of times, I’d ask, ‘What’s on your mind?’ and we’d go from there,” Lipkin says. Other sessions, particularly with the GLBT kids, involved story circles and timed writing sessions, which Lipkin says helped avoid the “English paper syndrome.” “The language for the stage is different than language for the page. I wanted to make sure they sounded like themselves.”

Although the participants wrote their own experiences into the script, they don’t necessarily play themselves — or even caricatures of themselves — in the performance. Several of the events proved difficult to portray as oneself, so other members of GAY or PFLAG stepped in to “play the part.”

“Some of the issues the kids raised were important enough to be in the show, but they weren’t comfortable doing themselves because they were too autobiographical, so we massaged the material to fit another person,” Lipkin says, citing pieces about HIV and self-mutilation as examples. “What’s important is that all the stories are true and all the feelings are real. It doesn’t matter whose story is whose.”

GAY member and Apple Pie participant Dan Rea says that stepping in was natural for the GLBT youth.

“There were many stories that are very personal, but we’re all friends here and we all share in the experience,” Rea says.

Even though he and many other GAY members are bogged down with finishing school (Rea is a senior at Parkway South High School and planning on attending the University of Kansas in the fall), the production is something they needed to see through, despite the heavy workload.

“It hasn’t been easy, especially with keeping up with my senior year at school,” Rea says. “It’s been exciting, a little nerve-wracking, but generally it’s been a positive, good experience.”

But the workload didn’t just fall on the kids; the PFLAG parents had their own share of work and both groups were at the mercy of Lipkin, who ran separate creative sessions for both groups. Keeping the groups separate was important to Lipkin, who theorized that the presence of parents would inhibit the teens’ creativity and vice versa. At press time, the two groups had not yet rehearsed together, although all parties have read the entire script.

According to PFLAG Chapter President and Apple Pie participant Dean Rosen, Lipkin was very demanding in her role as producer for the event, although he insists that she was demanding in a nice way.

“She was very adept at getting us to write about moments in our lives. She made us dig deep,” he says, offering as an example the painstaking moment when she asked the parents to write about their own prom experiences and sexual awakenings, a subject the parents had difficulty with simply because “we didn’t want to go there.”

It was perhaps moments like these that made finding PFLAG volunteers difficult — Rosen was only able to scrounge up three mothers and himself to participate in Apple Pie — although Rosen feels it might have to do with the difficulties each parent has faced with having a GLBT child, including facing the fact that staying out of the spotlight isn’t the right way to bring about change for the GLBT community.

While Rosen tried to convince his now 25-year-old son to lay low and not draw attention to himself in high school, Rosen’s son tried to make himself as visibly gay to the public as possible, even taking a same-sex date to the prom, an event that appears in Apple Pie.

“He wanted to change the world by being visible,” Rosen says. “After a while, it made sense to me that you needed to be visible. He got more respect for being himself.”

Gaining respect for the GLBT community is a key mission for GAY, PFLAG and the Apple Pie project. All three groups hope the production will result in heightened understanding of and support for GLBT youths.

As the PFLAG St. Louis Chapter president since 1999, Rosen says he feels that Lipkin’s work with “The Louie Project,” in which his son sang a song about a PFLAG mom, and Apple Pie wholly embraces one of the missions of PFLAG — to educate the public about GLBT youth, in this case through the telling of experiences.

“Telling stories is transforming for the teller and the listener,” Rosen says. “I’m thrilled to be a part of such a phenomenal process.”

“The whole reason we’re doing As American as Apple Pie is because there are a lot of dangerous and unfortunate sentiments circulating right now that are trivializing the rights of GLBT people,” Lipkin says. “This piece is made to reframe that these youths and families of youths are as American as apple pie and to help people see the humanity of the other.

“They’re kids. They’re gay kids, but they’re kids.”

Lipkin also hopes that Apple Pie will inspire other groups to create other theatrical opportunities for the GLBT youth community. Because, despite the fact that the labor-intensive production received funding from the Regional Arts Commission, the event will never happen again, at least not in its current inception.

“Sometimes in St. Louis, people wait to see a show or play to see what a friend says about it. This will never be back in this configuration because some of these kids are graduating and going away to college,” Lipkin says.

That Uppity Theatre Company has set up an information hotline for As American as Apple Pie at 995-4600. Show times are at 7:30 p.m. May 22 and 3:30 p.m. May 23. Both performances are at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, 3750 Washington Blvd.