BLOG: Straight Talk for Straight Guys

The Last Hurrah Soon a long-lived reign over the largest kingdom of theater in the Twin Cities will end. My fellow peasants, the King is abdicating the throne. Joe Dowling, the longest-serving Artistic Director of the Guthrie, just announced the final season under his watch. After steering the grand ship of state for two decades and presiding over the construction of its immense fortifications on the river, Dowling is leaving a long legacy I'll let the peasantry decide if that legacy is good or bad; but one thing is for sure: Dowling helped build the Guthrie into an even bigger, more powerful kingdom than it had been before him. Who will ascend to the throne in his absence? Not a word has leaked out of the front office yet. In the mean time, Joe has put together a send-off season of plays just for Joe, three of which will be directed by Mr. Dowling himself. After that, who knows where our adopted Irishman will land next? I would like to imagine him wandering the streets of Minneapolis in disguise at night, like Pope Francis, dispensing alms to the less fortunate theaters in town. However, he'll probably go back to Ireland. Hey, Buddy? Wanna Buy a Theater? Recently, a mysterious real estate listing was making the rounds among the Facebook pages of Twin Cities theater folk. For only $440,000, you can live the dream of producing your own plays in a bucolic small town setting. Wait a minute… I recognize that building. It's the Old Gem Theater in New Richmond, Wisconsin. This space has been operating on the periphery of the Twin Cities Metro since 1990, when the local community fixed up an old movie house to make room for a community theater. Rick Coleman and Kathy Welch took over the space in 2002 and gave it the current name. Even though the building is apparently up for sale, the Old Gem website doesn't say anything about the theater shutting down. Neither does The New Richmond News make any mention of it. Tax Breaks for Everyone! Last week on News and Notes we talked about New York state's new tax breaks for major theater productions. Now, New York is taking its tax show on the road, with a brassy, sassy, star-studded production headed by Chuck Schumer. The New York senator managed to get a proposal through a US Senate finance committee that would allow for-profit theater ventures to deduct up to $15 million per production. Schumer's proposal is being touted by the likes of Neil Patrick Harris and Bryan Cranston. All it needs to do now is pass the Senate and go on to the House, where I'm sure the Republican majority will embrace it wholeheartedly, as they always do with the arts! In the meantime, New York is busy preparing itself for the halcyon days to come where their new tax break will solve all of the problems of the theater industry there. This means that there will be so much more room for borderline illegal unpaid interns and incredibly dangerous special effects. Just the Men, Now I want to take a minute to talk to all the straight men in my audience. All ten of you. I know you're busy with your football and your beer and and your big trucks and your getting paid more money than women for the same work, but please put down your bratwurst and your lug wrench and let's just talk. According to a recent New York Times article, you guys are just not that into Broadway musicals anymore. This article (which didn't cite a source for its statistics) says only 32% of Broadway tickets sold last season went to you heterosexual males. So, what's the deal? Hell, the theater world even turned Rocky into a musical with live boxing, just for you, and you're still not showing up. You see, guys, everyone's talking about you now. You remember that time you forgot your wife's birthday and instead of just yelling at you for being such an idiot, she didn't speak to you and started talking to her sister, her mother, your sister, your neighbors, the cat and a her friends a the yoga studio, and they all agreed that you were a big, selfish jerk, but you didn't know any of this was happening, because you didn't think it was a big deal, because you do remember her saying a few months before that she hated her birthday and never wanted to have another one again? Remember that? This is kind of what's going on in the theater world right now. There's people out there talking about how it's really our fault that you don't want to see Mamma Mia!, because nobody's marketing to you. But other people are saying that we shouldn't start pandering to you, eitherr, because it's the male equivalent of painting regular things pink and pretending they're just for women. Still others are saying that it's just impossible for you and your maleness to enjoy live theater. And others are even suggesting that we shouldn't even care. It's kind of like that time that you went out for beer and chicken wings at Hooters with your work buddies on Friday, like you always do, and you came home a little late, and your wife was crying, because she just finished watching Eat, Pray, Love and realized that you're never going to be like Javier Bardem, and now you're having a serious discussion about your relationship. Anyway, I wanted to give my bros a head's up about the conversation you may get roped into. You can turn the game back on now. What's So Funny? And speaking of things that straight men don't understand: lesbian comedies. Last week, the University of South Carolina Upstate announced that it was canceling the comedy show "How to Be a Lesbian in 10 Days or Less". This being South Carolina, the reason is going to be hilarious, ignorant and sad. A group of South Carolina legislators heard about the show and decided that the tongue-in-cheek comedy was actually a literal recruitment drive for the gay agenda. Pressure from these conservative elected officials caused the school to cancel the production. The show was to be performed as the brief bit of humor in an otherwise dry academic conference on gay and lesbian studies. Now, thanks to the South Carolina legislature, it has instead become an ironic lesson in why schools need to have gay and lesbian studies in the first place. Also, it's another lesson in why you don't ever need to go to South Carolina. Meanwhile, Finland is rolling out gay bondage postage stamps.