I think it’s fair for me to say, as a guy my age dealing with my socioeconomic level, that I’ve seen a lot of theater. While most boys save their pennies for the latest videogame system or computer game, I was busy reading something, not working, and trying to scam a door guy at some low level performance art house. That said, you won’t catch me at too many Broadway Productions, but I’ve seen enough to understand what they’re about. I know experimental theater best. You know, the weird stuff. The stuff so off the wall an audience member might be paid to see so the creative team doesn’t feel their work was in vain.
I can’t help myself. I love theater. I’d go to more Broadway shows if I could afford them, but I can’t, so I stick to shows at PS122 or wherever I can get a reasonably priced ticket. When I first heard of The Lily’s Revenge, I was excited that for $20 I’d get five hours of theater. It’s like a junky suddenly getting thirty bags for the price of ten! But then there was the fear of overdosing and I felt that fear creeping in as a probability as I waited in the rush ticket line from 9am-7pm the first time I saw the show, feeling ever so terrible from my escapade the evening before involving no sleep, lots of drugs/booze and casual sex.
It’s been about a year and a half, and I remember thinking as I waited in line, “This is it. I’m gonna walk outta here a full blown junkhead or I’m going to overdose and be really pissed off.” Even as the play began and the actress playing Time warned the audience that we’d all die or be stuck inside the play forever, I knew it must be fate. I’d waited this long though so there was no way of turning back, a junky never turns back…
Now zoom forward a year and a half and my life has radically changed! I’m living in NYC and I’m a full-fledged Lily lovin’ zombie! Oh what a difference five hours (and a year and a half) can make when not planted in front of the television munching on popcorn and slurping fingers for tidbits of greasy chicken. Living in NYC afforded me the lovely opportunity to meet Taylor Mac (whose theatrical outer exterior suggests he’s a club kid that got smart and done good!) last winter and after listening to him gush about the re-staging of The Lily’s Revenge in San Francisco, I knew I needed to return to that city to mainline my favorite drug, and so that’s exactly what JT and I did. We contacted the Magic Theater, found a way to get tickets without having to pay for them (THANK YOU PATTIE!) and headed west…
It was weird for me because the first time I saw The Lily’s Revenge I had traveled in opposite directions: I’d come from my old homestead in San Francisco to NYC to dose myself on ten days of theater. For ten days JT and I saw one to two plays a day, and The Lily’s Revenge was just another name of a play I was supposed to try and see before I saw it. Now, The Lily’s Revenge means so much more to me. It’s the one show that I know will “take me there.” Nothing I have ever seen is as unique and thoughtfully put together as The Lily’s Revenge. Future play writes beware: your works have major competition in my heart…
minor progression 