Blog PostsThis Is Not a Post About “Fifty Shades of Grey”

Posted on September 8, 2012 by Theresa Basile

Fifty Shades of Grey is a book that has become obscenely popular in the last few months. It’s inspired a (terrible, disgusting) phrase called “mommy porn”. It’s given women new masturbation material, only with more BDSM. It’s provoked a huge backlash of criticism among feminist writers and others who just think it’s terrible writing.

As a feminist, I guess I’m supposed to have an opinion on Fifty Shades of Grey. But I’m not going to talk about Fifty Shades of Grey.

I’m not going to talk about it because I haven’t read very much of it. I’ve only read a few passages detailed at 50 Shades of Suck, and it was enough to indicate that the book is, indeed, terribly written, so poorly written that it makes Stephenie Meyer look like Jane Austen, but you’ve all read snark about the writing before. I don’t need to say anything else.

I’m not going to talk about the books from a feminist angle because again, you’ve read enough of that. I think Christian Grey sounds like a grade-A abusive asshole but I don’t think these books are going to inspire a sudden wave of abusive relationships because women enjoy masturbating to him. I don’t get the appeal, but I’m  not judging others for their choice of fantasies.

I’m not going to talk about what kinds of fans like Fifty Shades of Grey and HOW COULD ANYONE LIKE Fifty Shades of Grey because, guess what? Every single one of us has enjoyed a piece of writing or film or art that was badly written or just plain bad. The literary world is not going to completely fall apart because a lot of people want to buy these books.

I’m not going to talk about Fifty Shades of Grey because it’s not really Fifty Shades of Grey at all, it’s a piece of Twilight alternate universe FANFICTION that the so-called “author” ran through Microsoft Word and replaced the names Edward Cullen and Bella Swan with Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele. She got a book deal and is making a financial killing because she ripped off Twilight. HOW IS THIS EVEN A BOOK?! HOW DOES SHE GET AWAY WITH PLAGIARISM?! This is scandalous, this is plagiarism, this is just plain wrong, and why didn’t I think of it first?

Anyway. That’s why I’m not going to write about Fifty Shades of Grey. This post isn’t even about Fifty Shades of Grey. You didn’t see anything here.

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ArticlesXander Harris Has Masculinity Issues

Posted on September 6, 2012 by Theresa Basile

[This post originally appeared at Bitch Flicks.]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer has a great cast of characters that includes many flawed, admirable, psychologically complex (white) women. Two of them (Buffy and Cordelia) are some of my most beloved television characters ever. Another (Willow) fascinates me and infuriates me in equal measure. The rest of the female cast resonate more with other people than they do with me, giving a variety of watchers (as in television watchers, not the Council of Watchers, hey-o!) a large selection of women to relate to and find inspiring.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer also has Xander Harris, a character who is, perhaps, not as inspiring for a feminist viewer of the show. After all, he’s a bit of a Nice Guy. He’s slut-shamed his romantic partners and female friends. He’s been a judgmental jerk about his friends’ lives. He’s my favorite character on the show.
*record scratch* Wait, what?
Yes, it’s true. Despite Xander’s many flaws, despite the fact that he’s said and done a few things that have made me want to reach into the television screen and shake him a little, I still count him as my favorite of the many characters on Buffy that I love.
Some of the reasons I love Xander are obvious to anyone who knows me or has read my writing: he’s funny and a loyal friend, and I tend to be attracted to that particular character archetype (see Weasley, Ron and Gamgee, Samwise). I also love him for his bravery and the fact that he always fights the good fight despite not having any superpowers. Other reasons are less obvious, because I’m a feminist and Xander has, let’s say, issues with women – but if anything, my feminism has made me appreciate him as a character even more than when I first started watching the show.
When I look at Xander through a feminist lens, I find him fascinating because he’s a mass of contradictions. He’s a would-be “man’s man” – obsessed with being manly – whose only close friends are women. He’s both a perpetrator and victim of sexual assault and/or violation of consent. He’s both attracted to and intimidated by strong women. He jokes about objectifying women and viewing sex as some sort of game, but in more intimate moments, seems to value romance and real connection. He’s a willing participant in the patriarchy and also a victim of it.
The last point is the main one I’m going to address in this post. I hesitate to wring my hands and go “what about teh menz?!” but I think deconstructing traditional masculinity is an important part of feminism, and while Buffy has excellent commentary on the way gender roles have negatively affected women, it also shows us, through Xander, how these gender roles are no picnic for men, either.
Xander is a boy who struggles with his relationship with masculinity, and the source of much of this struggle can be traced back to his childhood. In the first few seasons, we’re given brief glimpses into Xander’s home life, and even though we never see his parents onscreen, what we do see isn’t pretty. His mother doesn’t recognize his voice when he calls her at home. During the holidays, he spends his nights on the lawn in a sleeping bag to avoid his family’s drunken Christmas fights. He watches movies with Anya, Buffy, and Riley in his family’s basement as his parents fight loudly above them. When Buffy expresses shock that a villain of the week turned out to be a cruel children’s baseball coach, Xander replies, “Well, you obviously haven’t played Kiddie League. I’m surprised it wasn’t one of the parents,” showing a disturbing familiarity with the way adults can be harmful to children.
The show leaves little hints about Xander’s upbringing throughout the first four seasons, but the first time we see one of his family members is in “Restless.” During Xander’s dream sequence, he constantly finds himself returning to his parents’ basement, and we’re left with the impression that his biggest fear is to be stuck aimless, drifting from job to job, and being a loser.
Then the basement door opens, and we see the shrouded, partially obscured vision of Xander’s father. A physically imposing man, he walks down the stairs and berates Xander for being ashamed of his family. And Xander, who has fought vampires, who stared down a vicious bully with a quiet smile on his face, who has saved the lives of each one of his friends at one point or another, can’t look his father in the eye. He’s at a loss for words, offering only a weak “You don’t understand” before hearing the rest of his father’s tirade: “The line ends here with us, and you’re not gonna change that. You don’t have the heart.”
And his father reaches into Xander’s chest and pulls out his heart.
Xander and his father (Michael Harney)

Yes, the person who really ripped out Xander’s heart was the spirit of the First Slayer, but the point is clear: his father is the scariest, most threatening figure in Xander’s life. He is literally the source of Xander’s nightmares, and his speech speaks to Xander’s biggest fear: that he will never escape the cycle of abuse from his family, and that he might someday become just like his father.
Presented with an unhealthy example of abusive, aggressive male behavior throughout his life, Xander struggles with his masculinity as a teen and a young man. He doesn’t have a healthy relationship with his father, the only male authority figure he admires (Giles) mostly views him as an annoyance, and after Jesse dies in the second episode, he has no male friends.
Xander is essentially left to his own devices to construct his version of masculinity, and seems to have pieced lessons about “what it means to be a man” from his father, the media, and pornography. However, Xander’s ideas about how to be manly often run counter to Xander’s actual desires and needs, and he’s in constant conflict between what he, as a young man, is supposed to want, and what he actually wants.
Real men get into fights. One of Xander’s many admirable traits is his willingness to fight the good fight no matter what. He’ll pull Cordelia out of a raging fire. He’ll shove Willow to safety as he takes on a vampire without the aid of any weapons. This is a good quality of his, but sometimes he gets into physical altercations when he doesn’t have to and has a negative opinion of himself when he fails to be macho “enough.”
Case in point: the episode “Halloween.” Xander stands up for Buffy when Larry calls her “fast,” and then grabs him by the shirt with a vow to do something “manly.” Larry is quickly about to get the upper hand in the fight, but Buffy twists Larry’s arm behind his back and sends him limping away. Xander is furious – at Buffy, for humiliating him in front of their classmates. He’s convinced that everyone will make fun of him for being rescued by a girl, even though the person made to look most ridiculous in that situation is Larry. He’s terrified of being seen as weak and cowardly and would rather lose in a fight than be rescued by a girl.
And this is hardly the only incident where Xander shows insecurity over his lack of physical strength and fighting power. He hero-worships Riley for possessing the fighting skills he lacks, even though Xander has probably fought and killed more vampires and demons while fighting next to Buffy than Riley did during his time in the Initiative. He comes down hard on himself for not having superpowers and not being able to “contribute” to the group the way Giles, Buffy, and Willow can, even though he’s saved all of their lives on several different occasions. He doesn’t fit his own ideal image of a macho man.
Real men want swooning, submissive ladies. The audience has been witness to some of Xander’s sexist fantasies regarding women. We’ve seen him fantasize about rescuing a trembling, victimized Buffy from a vampire and then leaping onstage for a guitar solo that makes her eyes flutter and her panties wet. We’ve seen him fantasize about two younger, submissive potential Slayers coming into his room to have a threesome with him while other potential Slayers have a Sapphic pillow fight in the background. We’ve seen him wax rhapsodic about the idea of a submissive sexbot, and when his girlfriend and friends look at him with disgust, he says, “No guys, huh? I miss Oz. He would’ve gotten it. He wouldn’t have said anything, but he would have gotten it.”
Xander is wrong, of course – Oz never took the bait when another man invited him to sexually objectify a girl. But he’s also wrong about himself. Xander may talk a good game about wanting a submissive woman to serve him, but his dating history points to an opposite trend of being attracted to assertive – sometimes even aggressive – women. His first girlfriend is Cordelia, the former queen bee of the high school, a girl who defeated a vampire simply by threatening him. His second girlfriend is Anya, a former vengeance demon who spent one thousand years eviscerating men, a woman who never shied away from expressing an opinion even if others found it rude. He’s attracted to both Buffy and Faith, Slayers with physical strength who also know how to fight with their words, but any attraction he had to Kendra died when she couldn’t look him in the eye while speaking to him.
There’s a part of Xander that wants the stereotypical male fantasy of a girl who will serve at his whim, but the larger part of him seems to crave a woman who will speak her mind and banter with him. If he ever did find a girlfriend who only wanted to serve and please, he’d be bored within a few hours, though I’m not sure he has the self-awareness to realize that yet.
Real men always want sex. Xander can be gross when it comes to women. He makes sexually objectifying comments about his female friends. He thinks about sex all the time, as confirmed when Buffy gains the ability to read minds and gets wind of his inner monologue. He sees nothing wrong with making comments about women’s bodies in front of his female friends, and fantasizing about Willow and Tara’s sex life in front of Buffy and Dawn.
Yet there’s another side of Xander when it comes to sex, one that doesn’t come out as often: he values and craves intimacy. When he dreams about Joyce Summers in “Restless,” he confirms that he’s more interested in comfort than in conquest: “I’m a comfortador.” After he has sex with Faith, he doesn’t brag to his friends the way we’d expect him to, but tries to prevent Buffy from finding out and only spills the beans when he thinks the information might help – and he’s crushed when Faith dismisses their one-night stand as meaningless to her: “I thought we had a connection.”
It’s clear that intimacy is more important to Xander than merely getting his rocks off, but the side of him he chooses to show with his friends is the side that’s gross and reducing women to sex objects – even though his friends like the sweet side of Xander a lot more than the pig he often lets out.
Real men get into fights. Real men want submissive women. Real men want sex. These are the lessons that Xander internalizes, and where does that leave him? It leaves him feeling inadequate. It leaves him feeling unloved. It leaves him angry, and when he’s angry, he uses his words as weapons and cruelly lashes out at the people he loves the most – in short, repeating some of the behavior he learned from his father.
The worst part is that Xander often isn’t self-aware enough to see what he’s doing, even as he can recognize this detrimental behavior in other men. He criticizes his friend Riley for acting too macho and blowing up a crypt without waiting for backup. He’s disgusted with Spike for creating the Buffybot. He thinks Warren, Jonathan, and Andrew are creepy and gross. He’s right about all of these things, but if someone were to point out the similarities between his behavior and theirs, he’d be in deep denial to hear it – because as much as Xander wants to be like other men, he wants even more to not be like those men, those jerks who take advantage of women and try too hard to wow people with their macho behavior.
Xander has many wonderful qualities. He can be very brave, loyal, selfless, and loving, and the boy knows how to turn a phrase. He can also be insecure, angry, sexist, cruel, and judgmental. Close to the end of the series, he becomes more at peace with himself and lets go of much of his anger and judgment, but if we didn’t live in a culture that fetishizes and celebrates the most aggressive and disgustingly macho versions of masculine behavior, maybe he would have reached that point much earlier in his life.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Xander becomes more at peace with himself – and becomes a better friend – when he gets over the need to be our culture’s definition of a man and instead does what he does best: take on the more traditionally feminine role of comforter and emotional support for the people he loves.
(Bless you if you read this far. I know the formatting is effed up but if I spend ONE MORE MINUTE trying to fix it I will punch my computer.)
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ReviewsBtVS and Consent Issues: Episode 6.02 – “Bargaining, Part 2”

Posted on September 4, 2012 by Theresa Basile

[Note: I’m writing a series about consent issues in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I will post a new entry in this series every other Tuesday. In this series, I will look at an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that deals with rape, sexual assault, or consent issues as a main plot point or as a featured event of the episode. I will examine these episodes in chronological order. If, in my writing of this series, you feel that I have skipped an episode that should be a part of this series, feel free to submit a guest post, and I will consider publishing it.]

EPISODE: “Bargaining, Part 2″
INCIDENT: Threat of rape
PERPETRATOR: Razor and the demon bikers
INTENDED VICTIMS: Willow Rosenberg, Tara Maclay, Anya Jenkins, Buffy Summers

The specifics: The Scooby gang brings Buffy back to life right as a gang of demon bikers comes rolling into town, wreaking havoc on Sunnydale. They corner Willow, Tara, Anya, Xander, and a recently-resurrected Buffy. The head demon biker, Razor, threatens to rape the women and wants to start with Buffy. He punches her in the face, but then Buffy’s Slayer instincts kick in and she successfully fights him off. She and the Scoobs eventually fight off and kill and/or scare away the demon bikers.

The mind of the perpetrator: Razor, as he says, is only interested in one thing – destruction. “Of course we want trouble. We’re demons. We’re really all about trouble.” Only a few scenes ago, he and his demon buddies chained up the Buffybot to the ends of their motorcycles and tore her apart. Wanting to rape the women is part of his general love for destruction, but it’s also about specifically punishing strong women. (He doesn’t threaten Xander with rape.) After all, when he asks who wants to go first and Buffy moves forward in her still half-dead state, he says, “I was really hoping it would be you.”

The victims’ perspective: Obviously none of them want to be raped (or in Xander’s case, watch his friends be raped), but they take different approaches to dealing with Razor. Xander and Tara threaten him, Anya tries to reason with him, and Willow does both. Buffy is still half-catatonic and doesn’t say or do anything until Razor punches her in the face.

What does this episode say about misogyny and rape culture?

This episode shows us how certain groups of violent men are particularly violent and hostile towards women, especially strong women. Many demons, vampires, and evil humans have wanted to kill the Slayer, but not all of them attacked Buffy out of misogyny. (Ethan Rayne, for example, set up Buffy to die purely out of self-preservation, and I think the Mayor half-admired Buffy for being a strong woman and thought it was a shame she didn’t turn out like Faith.) These demons, however, are of a different breed. They take joy out of ripping the Buffybot into pieces, even though she was already injured and not much of a threat to them at that point.

Now let’s look at the language he uses when he threatens them with rape:

“RAZOR: Now let me tell you something, children. We’re not gonna fight you. We’re just gonna hold you down and enjoy ourselves for a few hours. You might even live through it. Except that certain of my boys got some…anatomical incompatibilities that, uh, tend to tear up little girls. So, who wants to go first?”

There’s no grey area in this threat of rape. Like in most instances, this threat is much more about power and control than sexual desire. Rape is a weapon to harm and humiliate and even kill.

On one hand, this rape threat is a responsible portrayal of sexual violence in the media, showing that rape is a violent crime and that rapists are not overwhelmed with passion or desire. They just want to hurt their victims.

On the other hand, I find the inclusion of this threat completely gratuitous and gross in what is already a depressing, bleak episode.

Now, I happen to be a fan of the controversial sixth season of Buffy. I wouldn’t be a fan of the show if every season was as depressing and dark as season six, but I liked seeing the show explore the darkest, least pleasant aspects of its heroes and shining a giant spotlight on their flaws. I like a lot about the “Bargaining” episodes, as it combines truly scary imagery (Willow vomiting up a snake wtf?!, Buffy coming out of her grave), scenes that are both strange and oddly touching (Dawn crawling into bed next to the Buffybot) and weird humor (the Buffybot’s marzipan line and the vampire in the Hanson T-shirt), but I thought Razor’s line about “anatomical incompatibilities tearing up little girls” was gratuitous and unnecessarily brutal. It felt like the writers were using a rape threat as a cheap way to show how edgy and dark the sixth season was going to be – and, dudes, you had Buffy crawl out of her grave and Willow vomit up a snake. You wanted to show us edginess and darkness? WE GOT IT.

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Blog PostsLady T Recommends “Class Dismissed: The Movie!”

Posted on September 2, 2012 by Theresa Basile

My hectic month of August is over, and I can now relax back into a more regular routine. I’d like to start with talking about a project I heard about called Class Dismissed: The Movie! Here is a link to the description of the project: Class Dismissed.

From the description at the website:

” ‘Class Dismissed’ is an upcoming film about the college experience by Sara Koffi. Sara is a Memphis born, California raised (okay, she just went to college there) aspiring filmmaker and screenwriter. She’s been knocking on Hollywood’s door for two years, before realizing that her brand of creativity wasn’t going to be too warmly welcomed. So, she decided to make a movie. The movie will focus on the lives of Christy and Aubrey, two college roommates who are on the brink of almost adulthood. ‘Class Dismissed’ is aiming to be one of the first, consciously created, problematic free forms of entertainment! Which means, if you contribute to the funds, you’ll be contributing to the beginning of the types of entertainment that refuse to rely on stereotypes to make a statement. We want to avoid furthering negative thoughts about certain groups for the sake of ‘entertainment’. It’s gross.

Aren’t you ready for something you can show to your friends without having to ‘apologize’ for a scene?”

Why I’m recommending this project: I’m intrigued by the idea of a piece of entertainment that doesn’t rely on any kind of problematic stereotypes. Most forms of entertainment I enjoy rely on stereotype-based humor from time to time, and I’d like to see a film that consciously avoids doing that.

I’m also interested in the plot description. ” ‘Class Dismissed’ is the story of Christy Taylor, a plus sized ‘escort’ and Aubrey, a chronic overachiever with some coming out to do.” I’ve seen comedies about college roommates before. I haven’t seen any about a college-aged woman who’s a plus-sized ‘escort’ (I’m not sure why that’s in quotation marks, but I’m interested in learning). Simply put, if there’s a story I haven’t seen before, I want to see it made.

Class Dismissed has received $1,060 of its $5,000 goal and has 9 days to earn the rest of the money. The good news is that the film will receive all the money donated from this campaign. Still, I think Sara Koffi, the creator of the project, would really appreciate getting full funding because it looks like they need it to make the film. Please consider donating money, and/or passing along the project to others who might be interested.

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Reviews“I <3 Revolution” (because the angry ladies said I had to)

Posted on August 28, 2012 by Theresa Basile

[The following review is an exclusive first-hand account of a hostage situation that broke out at 12 PM at The Living Theatre on August 26, 2012.]

I thought I was going to see a play. I was wrong.

The setting was deceiving enough. People were lined up outside a theater. A person from the Fringe Festival was wearing a vest and passing out tickets. I received my two press/industry tickets and gave one to my friend. We were led into what looked like the stage and took seats in the front row.

Then the actresses wandered through the crowd and asked the audience members to sign in on different clipboards.

I should have known then that something was wrong. Yes, theaters will often ask people to sign up on mailing lists. I myself have signed up for mailing lists for about five different theaters in Manhattan, because one of my hobbies is pretending to have more time and money to see plays than I actually do. But this was different. Alice Winslow was standing in front of me with a big smile on her face, asking me to sign in with my name and the last four digits of my Social Security number.

I was confused. I was a little worried. But I brushed off those feelings and signed anyway. After all, I knew Alice. I interviewed her only a few weeks ago in a very nice roundtable discussion. She couldn’t possibly mean me any harm, could she?

If only I had learned not to be so trusting. The “show” wasn’t ten minutes in before Alice, Tara Schuster, and Alexandra Panzer informed us, the audience, that we were, in fact, not going to see a play, but were being held hostage in the theater as participants in some kind of revolution.

Then they came out and wrapped police tape all around our chairs and told us that we would have to sit for the next seven hours as they lectured us about the upcoming revolution – and demanded our thanks for trapping us into this new world order. They assured us that if we didn’t feel naturally inclined to follow their lead and feel grateful, the Stockholm Syndrome would kick in soon enough and make us happy that they imprisoned us.

At first, I was scared, especially of Tara. She’s the most aggressive one of the group, yelling at all of us and calling us lazy fat slobs, and several times I thought she would leap into the audience and grab one of us by force, if not held back by Alexandra and Alice. Though, actually, the thought of one of them holding her back wasn’t too comforting – Alexandra was the nicest one of the hostage-takers and really kind of sweet, but she was way too flighty and distracted, not even showing up to the revolution on time because it “felt like a Monday.” And Alice, well…she smiles a lot and dresses very neatly, and she seems more together than Tara, but I have a feeling she’d cut me in my sleep if I got on her bad side. That smile was hiding something sinister, I can tell – a Type A personality dialed up to 11 and possibly wielding sharp knives if crossed.

As you can see, the situation was pretty intense. I was even more anxious when they started offering their prayers and salutations to their goddess Mother, accompanied by an aggrandizing hand gesture. I thought I was going to be indoctrinated against my will into some sort of creepy cult. Fortunately, as the women continued to talk, I could quickly tell that they’d never be able to pull off this indoctrination, because they were too busy contradicting each other to make anything work. Whether Alice and Alexandra were trying to talk Tara down from screaming at all of us, or Alice and Tara were sniping at Alexandra for being too flaky, or Tara and Alexandra were avoiding Alice’s wrath for disagreeing with her about Beyonce, they were constantly arguing and trying to prove which one of them was the biggest revolutionary of all.

I’m not quite sure what to make of Alexandra, Alice, and Tara’s beleaguered assistant, Michael. He seemed to be there by choice, but they were always yelling at him to go back to his cubby at the back of the stage and be quiet. They didn’t trust him very much, addressing him always as “Michael – if that is your real name.” After checking the program, I could see that the women were right not to trust him, as he seems to go by both “Michael” and some actor named “Chris Lowell.” He seemed put-upon and pushed around by the three women leading the revolution, but also had Alexandra’s lines memorized in case she didn’t show up and seemed disappointed when he couldn’t perform as her understudy. Whenever Alexandra, Alice, and Tara failed to find common ground, they could always find a common enemy – or at least target for their disgust – in Michael-if-that­-is­-your-real-name. I felt sorry for him, but he seemed to take everything in stride, surreptitiously warning the hostages not to take the pills that the revolutionaries provided.

All in all, I would say that the revolution was a success, at least from the point of view of the revolutionaries. Yes, they were scatterbrained and prone to in-fighting, and yes, they left the stage after seventy-five minutes even though they had originally promised seven to nine hours of revolutionary indoctrination. But many hostages (including my plus one) were uproariously laughing during the lockdown. After they were freed, said hostages lined up by the ballot box to vote for I <3 Revolution as their favorite show of the Fringe Festival.

I, fortunately, remain immune to the charms of Alexandra, Alice, Tara, and Michael-if-that-is-your-real-name. The Stockholm Syndrome they wished upon their hostages never affected me. As I was saying the other day to the Mother *claps hands, makes aggrandizing gesture*…oh. Never mind.

I <3 Revolution played at The Living Theatre at 21 Clinton St from August 10 to August 26.

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Reviews“June and Nancy” Offers a Sweet, Moving Love Story at the Fringe Festival

Posted on August 27, 2012 by Theresa Basile

The New York International Fringe Festival is known for producing shows that push boundaries and test audience expectations. Sometimes the plays in question test our expectations with in-your-face titles like Mother Eve’s Secret Garden of Sensual Sisterhood, I Married a Nun, or The Underdeveloped and Overexposed Life and Death of Deena Domino. Other plays challenge us in more subtle ways, inviting us in with open arms and slowly making us reconsider our perceptions of love. June and Nancy is one of those plays, a love story between two women that is much more likely to touch us in the heart than get in our face.

The plot of June and Nancy is one we’ve seen before: an idle 1950s housewife is unhappy in her marriage to a well-meaning but clueless husband. She falls in love with someone else, and through this affair, she discovers new things about herself, finds her joie de vivre, and feels re-inspired to pursue her artistic desires. What makes June and Nancy different is that the housewife in question falls in love with another woman, and that the time discussing sexual orientation and sexual identity is very little. June (Michelle Ramoni) and Nancy (Gabrielle Maisels) are less conflicted about What It Means to Be Gay than they are about how to navigate the world as women – one who can’t pursue art without facing discouragement from her husband, and another who is established in her career but can’t command the respect she’s earned.

Written by Michelle Ramoni, June and Nancy is a play about people who are afraid of change. June wants to be with Nancy but doesn’t want to hurt her husband Marty (Jeffrey Coyne), and probably doesn’t want to break from her comfortable, if unsatisfying, status quo. Marty is focused on his career and doesn’t want his wife’s artistic pursuits to disrupt their life – both because he doesn’t like the inconvenience and because he doesn’t want his wife’s feelings to be hurt if she should fail. Jerry, June’s old friend who works at the MOMA with her (played by Peter Daniel Straus), can encourage June to pursue a path that he lacks courage and ability to pursue himself. Only Nancy has the strength to forge a new life for herself when her old job falls through, but she’s left spinning her wheels and frustrated when the competing desires of the other characters prevent her from achieving every part of her dream.

One aspect of the play that’s not afraid of change is the red plush futon in the middle of the stage, a malleable set piece that is folded and unfolded to serve multiple functions: the seat in the middle of the MOMA exhibit, the couch in Marty and June’s apartment, and the bed in Nancy’s room, among others. Director Kate Holland and stage manager Justin Cornell use the piece to great effect, as the shape-shifting futon serves as places where June has relationships at different levels of intimacy – and only when in bed with Nancy is the set piece pushed to the side of the stage, as though to give the lovers a sense of privacy.

The love story is by far the best aspect of this play. The actresses play their parts with such tenderness and affection for each other that my breath caught several times when watching them. Michelle Ramoni is warm, gentle, and passionate as June, and Gabrielle Maisels combines a sense of maturity and hopeful idealism in Nancy. Whenever Nancy looks at June, she seems like she can’t believe her incredible luck at finding such a woman, and the sentiment is returned when June draws Nancy and says through tears, “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.” The expression of love between them is mesmerizing and I couldn’t look away any time they gazed at each other.

June and Nancy has other character moments that don’t work quite as well. June’s argument with Marty about her drinking problem brings up a character trait that is intriguing but underdeveloped, and while Peter Daniel Straus is charming and likable as Jerry, I didn’t quite buy him and June as friends who had known each other since college. Despite those minor flaws, the play is still a moving production about people who struggle to find happiness even while resisting change. After the curtain call, I needed a moment to collect myself before exiting the theater, something that I haven’t had to do in a long time.

June and Nancy played at the Kraine Theater on 85 East 4th St between August 17 and August 26.

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Reviews“FriendAndy.com,” and then tell everyone about my blog.

Posted on August 24, 2012 by Theresa Basile

Last night, a friend and I saw a great show at the Fringe Festival called FriendAndy.com. I’ll tell you about it in a few minutes, but first I have to check my Twitter feed – I really want to see if one of the people I follow said something I can reply to and retweet. I had this nice forward momentum where I was getting ten new followers a week, and I’d like to keep that up. And while I’m at it, I need to check out the blog of one of my followers who reblogged me that one time, because if she was kind enough to comment on my work, it’s only fair to return the favor. That reminds me – I really ought to set up a Facebook page just for my blog so I can get more people to “like” it. It’s better to hit all those fronts because not everyone wants an email subscription every time I write a new post, and more people are on Facebook anyway. My Gravatar really should change, too – this picture’s getting out of date, and everyone always wants new, new, new things!

That, dear readers, is the inner monologue that ran through my mind after watching FriendAndy.com, an innovative, challenging, uncomfortably accurate show in the Fringe Festival about a comic blogger named Andy (Hayes Dunlap). Andy’s main goal in life is to make people laugh and make money off of doing so (yeah, good luck with that), and he creates over a dozen different blogs to help him accomplish that goal. Each blog centers on a different character he created (usually some kind of stereotype) and a pun on his name (Handy Andy, Andyquette, to name a few). Andy is a blogger for a company called Boman that makes various products, including Beef in a Can and a cyber sex suit (among other things). FriendAndy.com chronicles Andy’s rise and fall in the blogosphere – how he achieves fame, loses it, and becomes slowly unhinged and isolated along the way.

Technology is used to great effect in the staging of FriendAndy.com. Director and writer Wesley Fruge uses the back of the stage throughout the play, projecting screenshots of Andy’s blogs, Skype conversations between Andy and the other characters in the show, clips of Andy’s different characters, and popular YouTube videos. As a result, the audience feels overwhelmed, bombarded, and sometimes seduced by the bright shiny screen at the back of the stage. The constant projection creates an alienating effect, forcefully reminding us of the way we replace human contact with Internet “friends.”

Yet there are also times where the projection at the back of the stage enhances human emotions. Andy has several Skype conversations with his girlfriend Abby (Laura Kaldis) where her hopeful, anxious face is magnified and projected to the audience. In those scenes, the stereotypical role of the patient, long-suffering girlfriend is given a new dimension. We can’t help but feel her pain as she tentatively encourages her boyfriend in his hopeless endeavors, trying to put on a brave face when he gives another excuse for not visiting her. The large projector screen also helps us feel more sympathy for Andy. Trolls leave nasty comments on his blog, comments that might normally make us chuckle if simply read aloud by an actor – but when those comments projected onto the screen, we feel the same sting that Andy does, even if we partially agree with his detractors.

The technology in the show is excellent, but the play would be lost without its excellent cast. Sean Hefferon, Laura Kaldis, and Natasha Strang slip easily in and out of different characters that fill Andy’s life, whether they’re playing Andy’s bosses, co-workers, friends, or the living embodiments of Internet pop-up ads. Hayes Dunlap, meanwhile, portrays Andy with enough charm to make us care about him and enough obliviousness to expect his downfall. Andy isn’t as clever as he thinks he is, and we cringe when he tries to create another walking stereotype of a character, but we still feel for him when he looks at his much less clever, much more popular competitors and sucks up to them through gritted teeth.

FriendAndy.com is a clever, innovative show, but not simply because it uses a lot of technology and fancy gadgets. It’s an innovative show because of the way it challenges us to think about our own relationships with technology. At the end of the play, I felt a pressing desire to check my phone, look at my blog stats, and devise a witty tweet about my night at the theater – and at the same time, I wanted to throw my phone into the gutter and never look at it again.Most people who have any sort of Internet presence will see themselves in Andy, finding a great opportunity for self-reflection that they might not have otherwise had – but they probably won’t feel comfortable with what they see.

FriendAndy.com played at the Dorothy B. Williams Theatre on 145 6th Avenue from August 11 to August 22.

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ReviewsBeauty Pageant Parody in “The Underdeveloped and Overexposed Life and Death of Deena Domino”

Posted on August 22, 2012 by Theresa Basile

Writing and performing a show that satirizes beauty pageants and Toddlers and Tiaras is almost like shooting sexy baby fish in a barrel. Many comedians and actors, including Tom Hanks, have jumped on the satirical bandwagon and mocked these horrifying beauty queens and their even more horrifying stage parents. There’s not much more ground a person can cover on the subject of these living dolls.

So if you’re part of a comedy troupe that wants to do a show about the life and death of a beauty queen, what do you do? How do you satirize a subject that’s been done so many times before?

Well, if you’re Leah Rudick and Katie Hartman of the New York City-based comedy duo Skinny Bitch Jesus Meeting, you do just one thing: you go balls out. Except they’re women, so maybe…boobs out? Vaginas out? Whatever piece of female anatomy you want to use in that metaphor, these performers expose said ladybits (again, metaphorically), in their Fringe Festival show, The Underdeveloped and Overexposed Life and Death of Deena Domino.

The show chronicles the life of Deena Domino, a failed child star who grows up in the spotlight and spends all of her time clinging to fame, or trying to recapture it when she loses it. When she’s very young, she transforms from a sweet little girl into a monster almost immediately, after her mother throws pixie stix laced with Adderall into her face and then bites her arm. And that tells you almost everything you need to know about the type of comedy to expect from the women at Skinny Bitch Jesus Meeting.

But why stop there? The pixie stix/biting incident only happens in the first five minutes of the show, and that moment is probably the high point of Deena Domino’s life. Everything is downhill from there, as we get a glimpse into Deena’s origins with her grandmother and much younger boyfriend who seem to enjoy adult diaper play as part of their sex life, or as we watch her become a contestant on reality shows like Bitches in a House. We see what happens when Deena crawls back to the “top” (if you can call it that) after having an inspiring dream in which Joan of Arc and Snooki make appearances.

The show is both supremely silly and vulgar, filled with sequences (both filmed and staged) that make scenes from The Book of Mormon look tame by comparison. The duo of Skinny Bitch Jesus Meeting are committed (with two capital Ts) as both writers and performers, pushing the envelope with the multiple characters they play. Leah Rudick uses her elastic face and large eyes to her advantage, switching from the overeager “nice” judge on America’s Best and Brightest to a manic cellmate of Deena’s with one quick costume change. Katie Hartman plays Deena with a lunatic energy that makes you horrified to watch this girl, but not horrified enough to hate her. I wouldn’t say that the show extends much empathy to Deena or people like her, but there’s also no malice in the writing or portrayal of her, and that’s a very difficult balance to maintain.

Even among all of the satire and sequences of ten-year-olds demanding breast milk from their mothers wearing neckbraces, the show manages to raise a very important question about Deena Domino and other child stars: is Deena a nightmare because of her choices, or because society made her that way? By the end of the show, we see that the answer to that question is “yes.”

The Underdeveloped and Overexposed Life and Death of Deena Domino is one of the most inappropriate, off-the-wall shows I’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing. I’m pretty sure I’m going to Hell after watching it, and I mean that in the best possible way.

The Underdeveloped and Overexposed Life and Death of Deena Domino played at the Kraine Theater at the New York International Fringe Festival at 85 East 4th Street from August 11 to August 21st.

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ReviewsLife, Love, and Excavation Sites in “Hadrian’s Wall”

Posted on August 11, 2012 by Theresa Basile

A writer who chooses to tell a story about academics has a fine line to walk, especially when the academic subject is a key element to the story. When the characters speak about the subject, they have to sound knowledgeable and well-informed, but still have an organic, believable conversation without dumping a load of information onto the shoulders of the unsuspecting audience. Finding this delicate balance between accuracy and emotional resonance is a difficult task, and one that is accomplished with flair and intelligence in Hadrian’s Wall, a new play at the New York International Fringe Festival.

Written by Dani Vetere, Hadrian’s Wall tells us the story of a brilliant archaeologist named Ramona (Laura Siner), a recluse who has shut herself up in her apartment after looting from an excavation site ten years earlier. Her life consists of completing crossword puzzles, checking books out of the library (and not paying the fines when they’re several years late), and eating takeout Chinese food with her lawyer, David (Eric Rolland). David is Ramona’s constant and only companion, as well as her married former boyfriend. Refusing to acknowledge the severity of the accusations against her, Ramona lives in solitude and denial until Amy (Rebecca White), a graduate student from the university, comes into her life. The two women soon develop a relationship where Amy reignites Ramona’s passion for work and life. Of course, for Ramona, work and life are essentially the same, and as she and Amy know each other better, the play teases us with a question: is Ramona guilty of cheating, in both the academic field and in her relationships?

Archaeology is the subject of Hadrian’s Wall, and the dialogue is peppered with references to many details that the casual audience member won’t understand – and it doesn’t matter one bit. It didn’t matter to me that my knowledge of archaeology doesn’t extend far beyond the Archaeology Today clip from an episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. The joy in Hadrian’s Wall is not in counting the number of references and scientific facts that one might understand. The joy in Hadrian’s Wall is watching the relationship develop between Ramona and Amy, in seeing the look of stunned admiration cross Amy’s face when she watches Ramona discuss her work, in seeing the way a depressed, aimless Ramona come to life when she shows Amy the research on her unfinished project, and in hearing the way the two women talk about their favorite subject as though they’ll never run out of things to say.

Archaeology is also revealed to be the subject that helped undo the relationship between Ramona and David so many years ago. In flashback scenes that felt a little rushed (probably due to Fringe Festival guidelines about play length), we see a Ramona and David in a striking role reversal, where she is the active one with a burgeoning career while he watches television, still not having finished his law degree. When her career flounders, his begins to rise, and the seemingly perfect ex-boyfriend with the good intentions takes just a little too much pleasure in needing Ramona to be dependent on him.

This intelligent, moving play is brought to life by the actors and direction. As Ramona, Laura Siner shows a gradual, profound change in her character. While falling in love with Amy, she seems to grow in maturity while also dropping years from her life, finding her youthful spirit again. Rebecca White gives Amy an appealing mix of eagerness, energy, and dry wit, and Eric Rolland is believable and subtle as a person who might be more interested in defining himself as a “nice guy” than in doing what’s best for Ramona. Stephen Cedars’ direction shows an intimate understanding of Dani Vatere’s characters, showing warmth and energy in the scenes between Ramona and Amy, while using harsher lighting and a colder tone in the flashback scenes between Ramona and David.

Hadrian’s Wall is a smart play, but not because the characters are academics talking about smart people topics. Hadrian’s Wall is a smart play because it shows an intelligent understanding of the dynamics of human relationships. One line about relationships, repeated in the play by two different characters, particularly resonates: “There are always better reasons to leave than to stay.” The line hits a profound truth, but has two different subtexts in two different contexts – because much like ancient stones at excavation sites, love and relationships change over time.

Hadrian’s Wall is playing at the Connelly Theater on August 11th at noon, August 13th at 7 PM, August 16 at 5:15, and August 19 at 8:30.

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InterviewsFemale Empowerment at the Fringe Festival: Roundtable Interview with Playwrights Michelle Ramoni, Dani Vetere, and Alice Winslow (Part 3)

Posted on August 10, 2012 by Theresa Basile

[On Tuesday, August 7, I had the privilege of speaking with three female playwrights who have shows premiering at the New York International Fringe Festival. Michelle Ramoni is the writer of June and Nancy and also plays June in the show. Dani Vetere is the playwright of Hadrian’s Wall. Alice Winslow is a writer and actor of I <3 Revolution. This interview will be presented in three parts.]

I was asked to do this interview because these three shows focus on the theme of female empowerment, so I’d like to know – to you, what is female empowerment? How are you addressing this theme throughout your play?

DANI: Well, for one thing my story is essentially a love story where the white knight is a girl. There’s a guy there from the beginning and he’s not able to solve the problem, well-meaning as he is. That was sort of fun for me. The main character is supposed to be in her mid-40s and she’s kind of getting a new start. I’ve known a lot of people in my life where once they got to a certain age, they seemed to think, “Well, this is who I am now” – well, not people, but women specifically. “This is who I am now in terms of love or in terms of looks or in terms of career.” And I really wanted it to be about in any point in your life – I can try new things, I want to be better, I want to move forward, because I think a lot of women think, “Oh I’ve reached a certain point and I’m not going past it, or I’m not allowed to go past it.”

MICHELLE: It’s interesting because Nancy is really the trailblazer in the story and she’s constantly challenging herself and the time by moving forward in her career and you really see that she has freedom with that. She gives herself permission to keep searching even when she’s rejected, even when she’s told that the secretary position has been filled when she goes for a lithography/graphic designer position. There’s a scene where they come back from a party and it’s all of Nancy’s lesbian friends, and at the time, they were hiding, of course, because they couldn’t be visible, and she realizes this for the first time that that is where she is holding herself back. She doesn’t allow herself to of course be affectionate with June even in this situation where she can be, and I think for her it’s the first time where she realizes, “I’m bound by my own internal fears and obstacles.” So, we see a change in her after that. With June, it’s more obvious – limitations that are imposed on her of the time, and of these roles that men and women sort of fulfill at the time, and she sees through Nancy that she doesn’t have to live this way, and then it becomes a question of, “Does she break free and follow?” W really see to start her assert her own desires and wants and needs with her relationship with Marty in the play, and she changes even in the way she holds herself, even in the way she speaks, and it’s very subtle, but she’s definitely influenced by watching Nancy. They give each other something totally different. June, she’s not comfortable calling herself a lesbian – that’s not even an idea for her yet – but she is comfortable with being affectionate, so she’s able to give that gift to Nancy.

ALICE: I think for us, the creation of the play itself was an act of self-empowerment because it came from a place of feeling so frustrated and without the tools to deal with that frustration. Before we even knew we were writing a play, we all sat down at this coffee shop in Providence and for whatever reason, we made a list of everything we wanted to do or see onstage. That was the genesis of the play – we came out with this six-page list of everything we could possibly want, and then out of that, wrote this play including as many of these things as possible. I think at the time, it felt like the only thing we could do. This moment of taking our art and our lives and powers of creation into our own hands, in a way that that’s, empowerment. Making something is empowering.

You mentioned the list – I was looking at your web series beforehand, and I noticed that on the list of enemies, you had both George W. Bush AND Whole Foods, so I was really amused by the variety there.

ALICE: That’s part of the running joke of the show, that there’s complete hypocrisy within the tenants of whatever this revolution is. For example, we could hate Bush because of the Iraq war, and we can hate Whole Foods because they charge too much for Parmesan.

[Everyone laughs.]

Dani,  why did you make archaeology a subject of your play? Since you said you weren’t a big science person before this, how did this idea come to you?

DANI: Well, I don’t know a lot about science, but I love science, and always thought it was really sexy. [laughs] Come see the play! So I started with a list of things I wanted to see and wanted the play to be about, thematically. I eventually realized that the play had a lot to do with time – the passage of time. I was trying to find the science that most closely aligned with that thematically, so that’s why I picked archaeology. I think I also thought about paleontology because I really love dinosaurs, but then I just thought…I wanted to have a dinosaur in the play, but I thought, “There’s not going to be a way to write an elegant play about that.”

[Laughter all around.]

Although my director and I just found out the other night that Jurassic Park is BOTH of our favorite movie. I got to the point where I read every book I could find on archaeology. I was even reading Agatha Christie books only because she was married to an archaeologist.

Michelle, since you mentioned that in some ways we’ve come so far and there are other ways we haven’t, so I’m interested in knowing your choice to set your play in the 1950s instead of in the present day. What made you want to set the play in the past?

MICHELLE: I don’t even know if it was a conscious choice – I think I said this before, we’ve progressed in a lot of ways but we’re still very much the same. When I was writing part of the play that was set in the current, present time, I was really struggling and I felt like I was writing myself and my girlfriend’s relationship, and I think it was partly fueled by my frustration of the time, of what was happening, of our inability to get married, and it sort of started to become a public service announcement for same-sex marriage. It was no longer this interesting piece of art that people would want to go see – it was just “Michelle’s rant about what was happening in the world.” So I was creating this big albatross for myself where I was not able to get the story finished. Somebody suggested, “These characters in the 50s, they’re becoming very interesting. Why don’t you focus on them?” I thought, “I can’t do that, the piece is everything!” and I think that was part of the problem – I wanted to place all of my opinions about the world into this play, have it be the end all and be all instead. A lot of stuff didn’t get in the final draft. In terms of the idea of being a mother – does that define us as being women? I think that still – I mean, I know for myself that I’m at the age where most of my friends have had children or they’re pregnant now, and I get asked a lot, “So do you want to have kids?” And this guilt and shame wells within me – “Well, it’s not a driving motivation in my life, and does that mean I’m less of a woman because I don’t really know?” Maybe I don’t want to have kids. All of this other stuff that didn’t even accidentally come to that part of the play. So, in my decision to not place everything into this play and have it be this huge story of the past and the present, it – I don’t want to say accidentally, but it found its way in there. I didn’t have to work it in, it found its way into the story.

And I wrote this before I ever saw Mad Men, and someone said I should watch it, so I started watching it, and I was like, “Oh my god.” I think I’ve always been fascinated by this era. My mother was just such an interesting character, a very fascinating woman. She was this feminine flower on the outside but had this butchness within her that came through at times.

Did New York’s legalization of same-sex marriage have any impact on you as you were writing the play?

MICHELLE: Yeah, it definitely did. In fact, the night that it happened, my relationship at the time was sort of fizzling out. This wonderful, beautiful thing had happened, and it was the same night my girlfriend and I got in the biggest fight, so the irony of that – but also, without giving too much details, just to protect people in my life – there are people that, not only does this not affect the rest of the country, it’s a statewide thing until DOMA is eradicated. But there are people that are in relationships with people that are not from this country, and they can’t marry that person even today because immigration is federal and same-sex marriage is still on a state level, so while that was a huge triumph in many of our lives, it was – “It’s nice, but that’s not my reality.” The whole immigration thing – yeah, it is very, very true for a lot of people, and I don’t think a lot of people in the gay community even know that still not everyone can get married in New York.

Alice, why is it important to make fun of revolution while also celebrating it?

ALICE: One of our biggest fears is that we’re concerned about coming off as though we’re making fun of Occupy Wall Street in particular, which we’re not. We embrace and celebrate the impulse to take a stand, to work as activists, to lobby for change. I think the thing we’re making fun of is not specific to Occupy Wall Street, but just to human nature in general – self-righteousness, the assumption that any one person or system could create a world that would work for everyone. So I guess it’s an attack on extremism of any kind, or of any world view that presumes to have all the answers.

I remember reading about Occupy Wall Street, about sexism within the movement – from dangerous things like sexual assaults, to women in general feeling like they weren’t being heard. Did that have any influence on your writing?

ALICE: That has influence on everything in my life. But definitely, that’s something we took away. A lot of the early stages of the play – feeling like – coming into this realization that we’ve come so far, and yet, here I am, unable to command attention in a room the way a man can, and I don’t quite know why.

Dani, I was looking as your bio, I know you’re been writing for television. How did you find playwriting to be a new challenge?

DANI: Well, writing plays is not new for me, I went to school at Tisch – I studied playwriting, screenwriting, and TV writing equally. I wrote a lot of plays there. But I think because I was doing all three, when I approached theater, I thought, “It has to be very theatrical,’ and I was trying to do all these avant-garde things that I saw and loved in other people’s work, and they never quite worked. And I think finally with this play, I accepted that this is the way I write – a lot of it sounds like television and it’s very structured. I wrote the play in a similar matter that I would write anything else, and that’s what made it a lot better than any of my other plays.

One final question. It seems that there’s another common theme in your plays – female collaboration, whether it’s through same-sex relationships or through friends and fellow revolutionaries. What are you saying about female collaboration in your plays?

DANI: I think women are amazing at collaborating with each other, which isn’t to say that men aren’t –

MICHELLE: They aren’t.

[Laughter.]

DANI: They’re not, really. There’s a lot of competition. The women that I met when I started writing are still my best friends and I met my producer on the first day of writing school. There’s a lot more women involved in this play then there are men, and I haven’t had a single – for lack of a better word – “cockfight.” There hasn’t been a single moment of, “Whose ego are we protecting here?” It’s been really nice, but it’s also in the play.

ALICE: It’s been wonderful writing and working with the team. We’re fruitful and have very different writing styles and personal styles which all comes through in the writing, which is fun. I actually went to this party – I was talking to a man about the show, and I was saying, “Oh, there are these three revolutionaries but they can’t get organized.” And he was really into it, and then was excited, and then said, “So basically, if three women tried to start a revolution!” And I was like, “No, that’s not it!” Anyway, the artistic collaboration among the three of us has been incredibly productive and wonderful. The onstage collaboration between the characters is…less so.

DANI: The director, him being a man – it’s nice to see the way he defers to us, especially with the love scene. He’s like, “I’m a straight guy, I’ve seen this probably not in an accurate way, so you need to tell me what’s going on.” And there were a lot of moments like that, of “You guys know more about this,” and that was nice – but it was also probably because he was outnumbered.

MICHELLE: Ditto, to everything. Yeah, I also collaborated with Gabrielle [Maisels] as an actor throughout the period of developing this play. We worked on it, did excerpts in different festivals for Cheryl [King], for Stage Left, and there was never anyone saying, “No, it’s my way!” There hasn’t been a battle of egos, you know, and my director, I can’t say enough about her. It’s been an amazing experience with the women AND men, even though the women definitely outnumber the men. I think there’s this idea that women can’t work together, and that has never ever been my experience in any situation.

DANI: And I think some of these men actually want to work with us. The atmosphere is much more collaborative, and when you work in television comedy rooms, it’s all just men screaming at each other – it must be exhausting!

ALICE: I haven’t mentioned yet our incredible director – I wanted to give a shout-out to her, because she’s in the incredibly difficult position of directing the writers of the piece.

Michelle Ramoni is the writer of June and Nancy and also stars as June. June and Nancy is playing at the Kraine Theater on 85 East 4th Street (between 2nd and Bowery) from August 17-August 26.

Dani Vetere is the writer of Hadrian’s Wall. Hadrian’s Wall is playing at the Connelly Theater on 220 East 4th Street (between Avenue A and Avenue B) from August 10-August 19.

Alice Winslow is one of the writers and stars of I <3 Revolution. I <3 Revolution is playing at the Living Theatre on 21 Clinton Street (between Houston and Stanton) from August 10-August 26.

Lady T is the author of this blog and will be seeing and reviewing all three of these shows, and sincerely can’t wait to do it.

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