A show about dykes and faggots
CAPTION: Two queer friends discuss Fun Home the musical.
I play a very small (professional, but non-artistic) role in supporting the Broadway production of Fun Home. My friend comments, “I like what's been done with the new key art. It really captures the show. But the language used in all the marketing—now and when it was at The Public—sort of skirts around the actual subject. ‘Oh, it’s about a family and relationships…’ No. You know what? Let’s just say it—it’s a show about dykes and faggots.”
This musical is universal—it is about family and relationships. It’s about self-discovery and acceptance. It’s about the irrevocable damage of denial, and the liberation that truth can bring.
But this musical is also specific—it is about dykes and faggots.
We live in a country where marriage equality has been a hot topic in public discourse for the past decade. In our attempts to assuage the hetero, cis-gender population, our campaign slogan has always been, “We are the same as you.” People turn on the TV and watch Ellen DeGeneres nonchalantly talk about her wife, or the straight and gay kids on “Glee” tackle a Top 40s hit together in perfect harmony. We’ve come so far as a society (I don’t hear anyone calling her “Ellen DeGenerate” anymore); I am endlessly grateful to see such a shift within my lifetime.
But we’ve lost something along the way. We’ve been homogenized.
Of course we all share a common humanity and the universal experiences that come with it. But we’re not “all the same.” Straights ignoring the otherness of queers is similar to white people being confronted with the subject of race and asserting, “I don’t see race; I’m colorblind.” Though well-intentioned, a very real and very different experience is being negated.
Even more specifically, the experience of queer women is muted and lost in the noise. There was a time when “gay” referred specifically to homosexual men. But, as the national discussion of same-sex marriage gained momentum, “the gays” became a catch-all term for anyone who didn’t fit into a neat, hetero-normative box. The real conflict wasn’t about allowing lesbians to marry each other, after all—they are either butch or androgynous and consequently invisible to the male gaze, or they are femmes who are objectified by it. Much like everything else in our society, unless it’s a direct threat or appeal to heterosexual masculinity, it is of little importance.
But Fun Home shines an unrepentant spotlight on a strong, queer, female protagonist.
Based on Alison Bechdel’s heartbreakingly beautiful graphic memoir, Fun Home is the story of a lesbian cartoonist digging into the past, trying to discern the truth about her father’s life. Father and daughter seem to be traveling on inverse trajectories; while Alison blossoms into her newly realized lesbian identity, her father recedes deeper and deeper into the closet.
There’s an entire song devoted to Alison’s first sexual experience with her college girlfriend. In a video filmed for Broadway.com, book writer & lyricist Lisa Kron essentially says that “it’s not about love. It’s about sex. Lesbian sex has been invisible.” Queer relationships depicted in the arts are too frequently censored for the sake of appearing inoffensive to heterosexual viewers. When Alison sings rapturously about “changing [her] major to sex with Joan,” and “foreign studies to Joan’s inner thighs,” one can’t help but feel that there are barriers being demolished and new paths being paved.
Conversely, when a prepubescent Alison encounters an “old school butch” delivery woman entering the luncheonette where she and her father are dining, she sings (or tries to sing) about an indescribable sense of identification. Little Alison doesn’t have the vocabulary to express exactly how she feels, but she’s compelled to try. “It's probably conceited to say, but I think we're alike in a certain way. I...um... Your swagger and your bearing, and the just right clothes you're wearing, your short hair and your dungarees, and your lace up boots. And your keys—oh—your ring of keys.”
The incomparable, wildly talented, 11-year-old Sydney Lucas will be performing “Ring of Keys” for a national audience on the Tony Awards tonight. For a brief moment, people all over the country will be witnessing this exquisitely crafted song. Viewers will see and hear what it’s like for a queer kid to realize, for the first time, that they’re not completely alone in this world. Just thinking about it brings tears to my eyes.
No one wakes up one morning to confidently discover their sexuality; there are no instantaneous “Eureka!” moments. It’s a slow realization; an excavation of what was always there. In my personal experience, it was an internal war between my true feelings and the dictatorial Catholic upbringing that implied those feelings were unnatural. Just as I entered puberty, I was subjected to my father’s heated, Fox News-fueled rants about “the depraved, disease-ridden homosexuals” who were ripping apart the very fabric of our society. I remember channel surfing one afternoon after school in the ‘90s and finding a Ricki Lake episode about the “bisexual myth”; guests were attempting to force their friends to “choose one or the other—you’re either straight, or you’re gay.” When my Catholic guilt convinced me to tell my mother that, at 11 years old, I had kissed a boy, she laughed and said, “Oh, honey, that’s fine—I don’t care. Just as long as you don’t come home someday and say, ‘Mom, I kissed little Susie’…”
Still, I was lucky to grow up in a post-Stonewall world, after the peak of the AIDS epidemic. Queer people could finally step out of the closet, even if they were met with confusion or hostility. They began to appear in the media (in a positive capacity.) As a pre-teen, I idolized the gender-bending Canadian comedy troupe, The Kids in the Hall (and still do!) Group member Scott Thompson, in particular, was a poster boy for the gay subculture of the ‘90s. There’s even a sketch he wrote and starred in that’s devoted to deconstructing the word “Faggot.” It was subversive. It wasn’t about pleading for acceptance—it was about demanding acknowledgement.
Fun Home operates in a similar way. The straight audience members aren’t afforded much hand-holding into this potentially uncomfortable territory. Alison and her father, Bruce, aren’t treated like sexless cartoon characters who pander to a more conservative audience, spouting vague throwaway lines about love and acceptance. These are real human beings. These are real life experiences. This is truth that has been masterfully crafted into a transformative and illuminating piece of art that will reverberate through history long after the jukebox and movie musicals lower their curtains.
This musical explores the dangers of stifling the truth. Alison longs to rewrite history and connect with her father over their shared queerness before his untimely death. In the most brilliant, soul-rending, passionate musical theatre song I’ve ever heard, “Telephone Wire,” Alison slips into the past and tries in vain to reach out to Bruce while they take a drive through their hometown. “This is where it has to happen! There must be some other chances. There's a moment I'm forgetting where you tell me you see me.”
“FUN HOME: A new musical about dykes and faggots” isn’t a particularly catchy tagline. It’s not going to persuade middle-aged Alabamans to buy a pair of $150 tickets and book their flight to New York. I understand that. My friend understands that. Focusing on the universal themes of this show, and its unanimous acclaim, has been (and will continue to be) the plan. And it’s all true—you don’t have to be a lesbian to fall deeply in love with this flawlessly written, directed, acted, and designed production. I could write an entire novel on the exquisite craft of this show simply as a piece of theatre, regardless of subject matter. Sam Gold’s handling of the in-the-round staging is a true masterclass for any aspiring directors in the audience. Broadway legends Michael Cerveris and Judy Kuhn pour their entire souls into this story. Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron’s score and book are intelligent, meticulously rendered, and truly rival any classic Sondheim work. It has clearly been a labor of love for everyone involved—advertisers included. If using vague, broad language is what’s needed to get tourists into the Circle in the Square Theatre, that is the language that must be used.
Tonight, a Tony Award win for Best Musical could give Fun Home the nationwide recognition it deserves, and enough steam to keep its doors open on Broadway for years to come (though they are already playing to sold-out houses every night.) Like all award shows, the Tonys are political—they’re ultimately more about financial interests than artistic integrity. (Because, let’s be honest, if it were really about artistic integrity, there would be an award for Best Sound Design.) Fun Home doesn’t have the mass market appeal that An American in Paris does (with its central heterosexual love story.) It’s certainly not as commercially viable as the uproariously funny and fun (if slightly less substantial) Something Rotten. I don’t think Fun Home is going to win. I bet my money on another show in the office Tony pool. But, good lord, I hope I’m wrong. I hope I never see that $5 again.
If Fun Home wins tonight, it could be truly revolutionary. It could herald a secure spot on Broadway for the intimate, socially important stories that are produced every day throughout this country’s regional theatres, college campuses, and in NYC’s own 20-seat downtown converted spaces. We are a nation growing thirsty for art of substance and honesty.
Everyone needs to see this show. Queer kids need to see themselves on a stage, completely unfiltered and unapologetic. But, more importantly, heterosexual mainstream audiences need to see this show. They need to see that dyke and that faggot.
