Out: stepping off the sidewalk and joining the parade
28 Apr 2019

by Drew Rowsome - Photos by Michael Cooper, Reenie Pekovic and Tanja Tiziana

It is fabulously fitting for Buddies' 40th anniversary season that they present Out, a trip back to the times before safe havens and activist organizations like Buddies helped turn gay into a gayer state of being. A sweet and very funny stroll back to 1977 when discovering one's sexual identity was a crisis. From Mary Poppins through Mary Hartman to the iconic Judy Garland, Greg Campbell takes his audience through his personal coming out process and the birth of the gay world as we know it now. The days when Pride hadn't been invented but was instead a march for basic rights and recognition, and The Boys in the Band was a rare example, and a polarizing one, of representation.

Greg Campbell (Heart of Steel, Firebrand) is a magnetic performer who easily takes the audience into his confidence. He also portrays dozens of characters, all identified by a physical posture or quirk, or a vocal inflection, without ever losing the thread of who is who in a conversation. More importantly, this feat is accomplished without drawing any attention to the daunting technical requirements: Campbell has a story to tell. He just also happens to be a highly skilled actor. 

The switches between characters happen at lightning speed and have been tightly choreographed for clarity and speed. How much is organic Campbell, and how much has been assisted by director/dramaturge Clinton Walker (The Love Crimes of Frances Lark, Gash!) is impossible to tell, but the final result is seamless except for the initial switch from first person - Out begins with a portrait of Campbell's dysfunctional family portrayed totally without narration - to third person. But once the rhythm settles in, Campbell skips past any qualms and is more than capable of being the omniscient narrator or himself, as well as the cast of dozens which includes his younger self.

The plot, culled from Campbell's journals, follows Campbell in his 17th and 18th years as he accepts his sexuality, expresses it and decides to stop hiding it. There are so many details that ring true and create a solid framework. The smell of "popcorn and Aramis" in a theatre full of gay, mostly closeted, gay men. The wisdom of The Village People and how the fantasies they stirred, particularly Felipe Rose in Campbell's case, rallied the gays before conquering the mainstream. The awkward acceptance that a family eventually had to extend or deny. An evocation of the time when a coming out story was seized on as a radical and daring admission, and was all the treasured for its rarity.

Of course coming out stories are no longer rare. Over the decades I've seen dozens of them, many of them at Buddies, particularly in the early  years. They were the dominant narrative of gay theatre, literature, music and film. It was the central dilemma of gay life, when and how to leave the closet. Or as Campbell frames it, learning to accept and love oneself and one's sexuality. Of course since 1977, gays and gay art went through the plague and the realization that white cisgender middle class males are not the only form or the superior form of gay. We went from gay to LGBTQ. And most of the men who told those coming out stories, fighting for the future, are no longer with us. Many of those stories are lost.

So the discussion became - it must be noted only after, during the performance we were too absorbed and laughing - how relevant Out would be to a younger audience. My coming out and venturing into the gay world is only a decade removed from Campbell's so Out resonated. I remember mocking Anita Bryant and dancing to disco and braving (and cruising) New York's Adonis Theatre and falling in love with every man I had sex with, even anonymously. Would it be different for someone three decades removed? I don't know but I hope it gets put to the test. After all there is one thing that all LGBTQs have in common, that moment when one decides to step off the sidewalk and join the parade. 

Campbell's version of that moment is spectacularly rendered (possibly embellished . . .) and he recreates it with such awe and wonder that it is theatrical magic not a historical moment. That surge of feeling related through the personal and unique to become universal. While Out is not high gay sturm und drang drama, it is a crucial reminder of how far we've come and how far we haven't come. Buddies is, against all the odds, presenting its 40th season and it is unimaginably different than the first season, but somewhere, someone is struggling to step off the sidewalk and into the big gay parade. And I hope it is as memorable and powerful and entertaining as Out.