Blocked By The Boys In The Band - Now Planning Peaceful Opening Night Protest- Page 2

[Impeach2017]

Posted: 1/30/18 at 10:21pm

While all of the progress that has been made is being attacked daily along with outright threats being made against the community daily, we have now the spectacle of self-appointed members of the LGBT community wishing to apply a purity standard to everyone in said community.  Please excuse me if I don't share your enthusiasm for circular firing squads at this particular time-- we've got much worse demons out there that are real and scary as hell!

[JSquared2]

Posted: 1/30/18 at 10:32pm

Matthew I looked for you on social media JUST so I could block you! You really have no clue what you’re talking about. (or “protesting".  Sad.

Updated On: 1/31/18 at 10:32 PM

[BroadwayNYC2]

Posted: 1/30/18 at 11:14pm

You're trying to score woke points and it is backfiring. 

[CallMeAl2]

Posted: 1/30/18 at 11:20pm

Look, Matthew, with all due respect - this isn't about you. Writing a play is about you. Attending a play is about you sharing in someone else's experience and applying it to your own. Ryan Murphy, David Stone, and Mart Crowley are putting their story and point of view up there and they really don't owe you anything other than a good show.

Your goals are still worthwhile - I think you should find a way to get your point of view out there. Internet outrage is cheap. I think you are capable of more than that.

Updated On: 1/30/18 at 11:20 PM

[BroadwayRox3588]

Posted: 1/30/18 at 11:53pm

BroadwayNYC2 said: "You're trying to score woke points and it is backfiring."

Well put.

[TotallyEffed]

Posted: 1/31/18 at 12:21am

That was very lovely, Charlie.

[BroadwayRox3588]

Posted: 1/31/18 at 1:25am

CharlieM3 said: "I usually just lurk about on the message board, reading all the interesting posts, but I feel I have something to share about The Boys In The Band. I too felt like an outcast in high school so many years ago. I was growing up dirt poor in a very rich town in Ct., a short train ride from NYC. I didn't fit in at all with the kids at school, I had a bit of a skin problem, and I was very shy, and the other thing...I happened to be gay and was ashamed of that. I was in the town library one afternoon, I remember reaching for the volume of the best plays of that particular year...1968? I stood there between the book shelves combing through the volume, and there was The Boys In The Band. I was so excited to find something in writing about other homosexuals out there~and there was a play, on the stage in New York City about it, and people were paying to see it. What I was ashamed of was now the subject of a very famous play, soon to be made into a movie. I stood there taking in every word of the dialogue, ready to snap the book shut if anyone come into the shelves and tried to see what I was reading. I remember the joy of reading this wonderful play, and staring at the photo of the cast. Even though I was kind of an outcast, there were others like me, and they were being celebrated on the stage. I didn't look for my physical type, or someone from my background...just the one thing we all had in common, that I was ashamed of, and they were celebrating on the stage. It was wonderful to me that I found the play that afternoon in the library. And when I finally saw the movie, wonderful! Even though I was different from these men, the play made me feel like I was part of a tribe. They didn't have to look like me, or have my background. I understood their feelings and it made a poor, shy kid from the suburbs feel wonderful. This play will always have a special place in my heart. Maybe I'll finally take the train to the city and see it this time. Don't protest the play, embrace it!"

If I hadn't already been convinced to see this production, this would've convinced me! Thank you for sharing your story with this play!

[uncageg]

Posted: 1/31/18 at 2:48am

Matthew C Paessler said: "Last week, when the new Broadway production ofThe Boys In The Bandposted their first promotional video, I (as a biracial gay man living in Trump's America) was disappointed to see my heroes and men I admired claiming "inclusion" and "diversity," speaking out for the gay community in dangerous times when everyone is under attack. I immediately called it out on social media and was almost instantly blocked by the Boys in the Band social media account - I assume for want of avoiding negative press.

I took the time to educate myself about the play. I've read the play and watched the movie a few times now. Despite the time period and despite the one plot point in the play where a specific race is required, I see absolutely no reason for an almost identicallooking cast. In this day and age, I think it's a dangerous message to show young gay men that there is only way to look when you are gay.

I've continued to speak out on social media and have since been blockedfrom following Zachary Quinto, Andrew Rannels, and Jim Parsons on Instagram. I've decided to not give up and I'd like to share my story. Here's a little bit about me, my history and why I have a problem with this revival.

Last year I did what I now lovingly refer to as a "Reverse Wizard of Oz." After 8 years of living in New York City, I decided to go back to my small hometown of Johnson City, TN to do some digging. I had lost my way in New York. I moved here to perform in 2009 and found my love of songwriting while touring but after a ****ty breakup and Trump, I found my drive to create completely gone.

Meanwhile back on the ranch in Tennessee, I took the much-needed time to go back home and review my childhood but this time, through an adult lens. I lived in the room I grew up in. I worked down the street from my high school. I reminded myself what it was like to be 16 in the conservative south but this time,in Trump’s America - grappling with my race and my sexuality. I realized just how hard it actually was and how strong I actually am.

I first knew I was gay when I opened a letter from my Grandma who had sent me her Playbill from The Lion King on Broadway. She had just taken a trip to New York City and since I'm adopted and the only person of color in my family, she was always looking for ways to show me successful people who looked like me. She loved the musical and couldn't believe how diverse the cast was and I couldn’t believe that I was holding a real life program from Broadway. I had begun acting in local theater when I was eight and quickly became enamored with life on the stage.

I excitedly flipped through the magazine and came to the page with the pictures of the ensemble cast and a certain gazelle or bird or something caught my eye. “Wow, he’s cute,” I thought. Followed quickly by, “Oh my gosh - what did I just think?” I was ten years old.

I came out to my parents four years later after getting a computer in my room for the first time. That night I was googling (or Asking Jeeves more likely) “How to tell your mom that you’re gay.” I quickly shut the screen when she walked in the room but she insisted I reopen the screen and show her what I had been looking at. Fearing, no doubt, that I had discovered car washing and boobs - what I assume my straight counterparts were asking the butler to deliver.

That night, we sat on my bedroom floor and reflected on all the red flags. The worn out Annie soundtrack, my lack of interest in a pop gun she had gotten me when I was two, my obsession with Baby Spice, singing show tunes in the driveway while twirling an umbrella - maybe it did actually all add up.

I felt validated and secure in myself for a few years then. I had a boyfriend at fourteen and my parents would drive us to the movies and we would make out in the seats and write each other notes in class. Everything was normal. I had conquered being gay. I didn’t understand older characters like Will Truman who struggled with their sexuality. I knew friends who were kicked out of their homes but I was safe. My parents loved me - they even loved my boyfriends!

It was Junior year when I realized that I hadn’t learned everything about being Different in America yet. I had just won my high school student government Vice Presidential race (third year in a row) and my opponent was not pleased. One afternoon on the computer in my room, I found a Xanga entry she had written online calling me a sissy faggot n*. I didn’t tell anyone. I kept it to myself and spent the summer thinking about what that meant. How was I supposed to suddenly be a **** faggot n* when all my life I thought I had just been Matthew? I drove my new car and smoked weed for the first time. I went to a college party and drank for the first time. I broke up and fell in love and had a crush on a douchey straight guy. I tried doing everything my peers were doing but suddenly I felt deeply alone in my experiences. I didn’t have any black friends. The black kids I knew said I wasn’t black enough and the white kids that didn’t like me thought I was too black. No matter what I did - I wasn’t pleasing anybody.

A week into my junior year I decided that I couldn’t take the stress and I asked my mom if I could homeschool for my last two years of high school and I let the bullies win. I got to go to four days of my junior year. I never went to prom. I didn't get to walk the stage at graduation. This spring, I probably won’t go to my ten year reunion. There’s Facebook now, so I’m sure I’ll be aware of it - but I remember at the time thinking, “I won’t graduate - they won’t have my contact information. I’ll never see my friends again.”

Moving to New York in 2009 was truly like stepping into a Technicolor world for the first time. I went to theatre school and cried about my exes in front of the class. I got drunk and lost downtown. I made out with an old cast member from Cats. I was living my wildest dreams. I watched the landscape of the gay community change. I watched shows like Noah’s Arc, Looking, Glee, and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt show a diverse group of gay men that weren’t defined by their sexuality, color, or body type.

I would venture to guess that the production working on the Broadway revival of The Boys in the Band will say that I’m missing the point. That my argument is the reason why they’re mounting the production and the reason for their casting decisions. To them, I would quote a line said to Michael, the protagonist of the play:

I am a sad, pathetic gay man. I am a homosexual and there’s nothing I can do about it.

When I was fourteen I begged my mother to let me go to conversion therapy. When I was sixteen I tried to bleach my hair to play Rolf in community theatre production of The Sound of Music and then was completely humiliated when I realized that my half whiteness had a limit. I spent so much of my life begging to be something I'm just not. I lived mostly in their world - but there was a point where the line had to be drawn. And like yeah, I get it, I probably wouldn’t cast me as a Nazi youth either - but The Boys in the Band has no race limitations. It has no size limitations.

We have set the race limitations by continuing to have a narrow view. We have to get woke. I am a modern day Michael. I am the hostile fag.I’ve struggled with self acceptance. Just last year, I exiled myself to my hometown - calling myself a failure, a loser, a nobody. I had to finally click my heels together three times and realize that the answer was there along.

My name is Matthew. I am who I am. The gay community is diverse. I don't understand how this group of men could honestly stand around and congratulate themselves on a job well done when I feel as if this production is sending a very dangerous message to all the ten-year-old gay boys growing up in small towns that are brown or Asian or overweight or maybe not the perfect model image of a tall, athletic, white man. It just holds us back.

The play's history is undeniably historic and I am so inspired and in awe of the work that Marty Crowley was able to accomplish at the time. However, I think the play has not aged well and is almost a minstrel show of the gay community. A show that should be remembered for his legacy but treated cautiously when trying to execute.

I normally am not a vocal person about things like this- but I have really taken this matter to heart and will be organizing a peaceful protest on opening night. Check this post for updates."

 

Lord have mercy! Just stop!!

 

This show depicts a certain time and place and how it was at that time. And here is a newsflash...theatre does this! It is not all about what you or a ten year old, who should not be  attending this play anyway, is feeling now. It is like you have no interest or even respect for the past. Get off the bandwagon. Open your mind.  Embrace the history. Do you have ANY clue what we went through so that you could live your life as a gay man today? Your comments are almost like a slap in the face to all of us that fought to obtain  the rights you enjoy now while back then we lived in fear.  But we fought. This Isn't HAMILTON. It is part of your gay history and should be true to the source. I am pretty happy with this casting and hopefully this will be a good production of a play that i wish i could have seen but own the movie and have watched several times.

And they probably blocked you because they realized you are clueless.


Just my random thoughts..

Updated On: 1/31/18 at 02:48 AM

[Dancingthrulife2]

Posted: 1/31/18 at 3:50am

This thread is filled with purely sickening vitriol and snideness. Just stop. While I do not totally agree with the OP's opinion and his way of conduct, you can state your opinion without sounding like a 17-year-old trying to sound smart but ending up failing miserably. 

[dramamama611]

Posted: 1/31/18 at 6:59am

Lol...this has been one of the kindest threads when the op has been so misguided

[kaykordeath]

Posted: 1/31/18 at 7:32am

And I thought there was an uproar over the question of whether or not Michael Urie was too good looking for Torch Song...

[adrnyc]

Posted: 1/31/18 at 9:15am

To the OP - this play and this production is not about you. Please stop trying to enforce your will upon it. Save your money. Put together your own cast. Direct it. Light it. Costume it. Spend thousands of money on advertising. Rent a space. 

Spend your energy creating your own work rather than protesting someone else's. THAT might just be something worthwhile and something that makes an impact. Protesting this production will do nothing. It's a much easier road and will involve far less work on your part to protest rather than create though.

[Wick3]

Posted: 1/31/18 at 9:29am

adrnyc said: "To the OP - this play and this production is not about you. Please stop trying to enforce your will upon it. Save your money. Put together your own cast. Direct it. Light it. Costume it. Spend thousands of money on advertising. Rent a space.

Spend your energy creating your own work rather thanprotesting someone else's. THAT might just be something worthwhile and something that makes an impact. Protesting this production will do nothing. It's a much easier road and will involve far less work on your part to protest rather than create though."

I agree. Though the OP has the right to have a peaceful protest, I think he's better off becoming a director or producing his own "Boys in the Band" play the way he envisions it to be. 

[dearalanaaaa]

Posted: 1/31/18 at 9:50am

Your protest even if you got 500 people wouldn't matter because at least triple the amount of protesters you'd have would have been sold in tickets. And Andrew Rannells new base will be seeing the show anyway, there is no reason to protest the show as it'll have no effect.

[Bettyboy72]

Posted: 1/31/18 at 10:39am

I'd forget the protest and work on something more productive. There's plenty of successful overweight men on Broadway, as a matter of fact some of them are the biggest names in theatre. I wouldn't worry about their representation.

[dramamama611]

Posted: 1/31/18 at 11:23am

dearalanaaaa said: "Your protest even if you got 500 people wouldn't matter because at least triple the amount of protesters you'd have would have been sold in tickets. And Andrew Rannells new base will be seeing the show anyway, there is no reason to protest the show as it'll have no effect."

 

Wait: so only protests that you KNOW will/can be effective should ever be mounted?  That's ridiculous.   The point here is that the OP is wrong to carry the flag on this issue at hand that only he sees.

 

[GeorgeandDot]

Posted: 1/31/18 at 11:40am

The gay community really is lacking in diversity. Not just racial diversity, but in terms of body shapes and also gender. Gay women are rare subjects. Their stories are rarely told, and often times, when they are told, they're through the eyes of a white woman. I've also met several gay men and even women, who have said incredibly transphobic things to me. The LGBTQ+ community has some serious diversity problems, yes, but I'm not sure that protesting this production will fix anything. It's a problem bigger than a play on Broadway, especially when the production includes and black actor and a latin actor. They seem to be trying to be inclusive.

Here's a little story. I have a friend who is a young plus sized black gay man. When he realized what his feelings were, he was so confused because he thought he couldn't be gay because the only gay men that he had ever seen were the ones on TV, who were all skinny and white. What it comes down to is that being gay has no shape or color and I would like to see the media recognize that and stop playing to the Will and Grace stereotypes.

[ArtMan]

Posted: 1/31/18 at 12:03pm

Tell your friend he needs to change the channel on his television set.  There have been male gay characters, all races and sizes on television for years.  Entourage, The Office, Unbreakable Kemmy Schmidt, Modern Family, How I Met Your Mother (Wayne Brady), Brooklyn Nine-Nine, True Blood, Dynasty (reboot), just to name a few.

[Kad]

Posted: 1/31/18 at 12:15pm

...I mean, it is ridiculous to hail this production of The Boys in the Band as a triumph of diversity and inclusion. And I have a lot of issues with Ryan Murphy and how works produced or created by him are superficial in their claims to progressiveness, often wanting to score the woke points while leaning on stereotypes.

But I think the play should be revived, be seen, and I will absolutely be attending this revival. But it's not a production that merits congratulation for diversity and inclusion. And that's fine. I don't think the play itself is a work that should be cast that way, given its intention and history.

Updated On: 1/31/18 at 12:15 PM

[SweetLips]

Posted: 1/31/18 at 3:54pm

Perhaps under our avatar pic., and made up name, there should be---gender[male], sexual preference[gay-now], age[73],race[white], build[slim[ish], work? penis size[joking] then the OP could see the diversity of all on here and maybe get a date.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 1/31/18 at 3:58pm

I NEED TO BE OUTRAGED!

[LxGstv]

Posted: 1/31/18 at 4:18pm

#MakeRoomForOak

[GeorgeandDot]

Posted: 1/31/18 at 4:38pm

ArtMan, he's about 26, so when he was growing up, those shows weren't even on. It's much better today, but there are still problems.

[220Basswood]

Posted: 1/31/18 at 5:01pm

Matthew, the original poster, is obviously a lonely person based on his desire to air all of his emotional issued on a public website where he hopes to draw attention to himself.  Maybe if everyone ignores him  (which is highly likely what everyone who sees him protesting on opening night will do) he will stop posting to strangers and find a live person that he share his thoughts with in real life.

[godlessondheimite]

Posted: 1/31/18 at 5:44pm

This is about as diverse as Ryan Murphy gets.