First Nighter: Samuel D. Hunter Puts <i>Pocatello</i> on the Theater Map
Throughout MacArthur Fellowship recipient Samuel D. Hunter’s outstanding play The Whale, at Playwrights Horizons in 2012, the main character is a gay man isolating himself by virtue of his obesity. Now back at PH with Pocatello, Hunter watches — in a series of highly animated scenes — another gay man who’s isolating himself and has been isolated. Which condition came first is, like the chicken or egg, unclear.

Whereas the protagonist in The Whale can barely move, Pocatello‘s Eddie (T. R. Knight) is constantly on the go, as if trying to run away from himself. His personal racetrack is a financially troubled Italian restaurant that’s part of a chain and might be an Olive Garden. Although it’s on the brink of shuttering, Eddie is hoping he can revive it. His strategy is establishing family week, which is ballyhooed in a banner declaring “Famiglia Week” that Lauren Helpern includes on her amusingly generic eatery set.

Not only do the bright letters say it’s Family Week inside, but they tell the audience that Pocatello is a play about families. Oh, yes, this is a play that gives a real workout to Leo Tolstoy’s comment about unhappy families being unalike.

While restaurant staffers Troy (Danny Wolohan), Max (Cameron Scoggins) and Isabelle (Elvy Yost) — all three of whom Eddie is keeping in the dark about business prospects — attend to their duties, two families regularly invade the premises. They’re Eddie’s estranged mother (Brenda Wehle); older brother Nick (Brian Hutchison) and Nick’s wife Kelly (Crystal Finn); and Troy’s father Cole (Jonathan Hogan), wife Tammy (Jessica Dickey) and daughter Beth (Leah Karpel).

To the exclusion of other customers ever darkening the restaurant’s doorstep, they air their woes ceaselessly. What’s eating at Eddy’s clan as they eat — or don’t — is that his father shot himself a few decades earlier, and his demise splintered the immediate survivors seemingly beyond repair. Indeed, as much as Eddie’s motivation is saving the Olive Garden branch (is there a pun somewhere about olive branches and peace?), he’s even more fixated on reuniting the family.

Troy and Tammy find their 19-year-old marriage ossifying while they figure out how to handle daughter Beth’s eccentricities. These involve her repeatedly throwing up not from bulimia, as she explains, but from disgust with pesticides and food insults of that sort. They’re also dealing with dad Cole’s senility. Though they make little headway with Beth, Cole or themselves, Eddie does get through to Beth by offering her a waitress stint she reluctantly takes.

Family reconciliation, then, is on Moscow, Idaho-born Hunter’s agenda, as it is in The Whale, where father-daughter rapprochement surfaces. Whether the nonstop nagging, insulting, bickering and alienation — in addition to waiter Max’s meth addiction flaring — remains consistently engaging is questionable.

Credulity is further strained by Hunter’s allowing all the confrontations to be aired in the midst of a public place. If this is an Olive Garden or something along those lines, why aren’t there ever any other diners? There are multitudes in commercials for Olive Garden et al.. I know there’s such a thing as dramatic license, but there’s also such a thing as taking too many liberties with it.

Hunter calls his play Pocatello because he’s also examining small-town mentality — or mentalities. (FYI, Moscow is separated from Pocatello by 348.15 miles.) Implying that Pocatello is a synecdoche for small towns everywhere, Hunter presents Eddie, who refuses to look anyplace else for a better life, in contrast to brother Nick, who left Pocatello for just that reason and is attending the family get-together against his wishes.

Obviously, Hunter is in Nick’s corner but also concerned about the Eddies of this world. He’s memorialized both in a good-but-not-surpassing work that does benefit greatly by a more-than-able cast — Knight, especially — and by regular Hunter collaborator, director Davis McCallum.

www.huffingtonpost.com/david-finkle/first-nighter-samuel-d-hu_b_6331068.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices

India plans subsidies for parents of trans kids

Government also proposes scholarships and pensions for transgender people

read more

darrenw

www.gaystarnews.com/article/india-plans-subsidies-parents-trans-kids161214

Out US Senator Tammy Baldwin leads effort to end ban on gay men donating blood

She is among the 80 lawmakers demanding ban be replaced with a policy based on individual risk factors

read more

gregh

www.gaystarnews.com/article/out-us-senator-tammy-baldwin-leads-effort-end-ban-gay-men-donating-blood161214

Nine-Year-Old Girl Writes Letter To Her Gay Teacher, Totally Nails It

File this under d’awww: A 9-year-old girl handwrote her teacher this letter after he came out during a class lesson on homophobia, and it’s safe to say she aced this one.

Unfortunately there are millions of people in the world who aren’t quite as emotionally intelligent as a little girl. Come on, world, keep up.

Here’s what she wrote:

It reads:

Dear Mr R,

Even though you’re gay, I will always treat you the same way as I do now. I still think about you the same way as I used to. You’re a great teacher and these are just some of the word’s (sic) that I would describe you as: great, amazing, fantastic, brilliant, awesome and brave.

The reason why I say brave is because you shared a personal secret which was very brave.

You don’t have to feel scared because I know that everone in the class feels the same way as I do.

From A x x

PS. We are all proud of you

The teacher told PinkNews:

“As a primary school teacher I’d always worried about mentioning my sexuality, despite the fact that my colleagues talked about their husbands, wives and significant others all the time.

Then, as part of anti-bullying week, I’d asked who’d heard ‘gay’ being used as an insult. Almost every one of my class put their hands up. I was stunned.

Then I asked who thought that people who were gay or lesbian were bad or wrong in some way, again almost every hand went up.

After speaking to my Head, who was very supportive, we agreed I could tell the class that I’m gay so they at least knew one gay person and hopefully explain that when people use that word they’re talking about me.

The reaction was fantastic – there were a lot of gasps and shocked looks and some basic questions – do you have a boyfriend, etc – but after a couple of minutes they were over it and we moved on to the rest of the lesson.

The letter came a couple of days later. The little girl who wrote it gave it to me at the start of the day with all the other slips about dinner money, school trips and doctors appointments.

Reading it brought tears to my eyes and it took me a little while to compose myself. When I thanked her she just shrugged and repeated something one of the boys in the class had said during the lesson, ‘It’s just your life’. Then she went back to her maths.

For my class it was a surprise sure but, to them, it was just something simple and easy to file away as another piece of information. There was no judgement, no follow up, just acceptance.

Now, I can mention my fiance as easily as any other teacher and my class know me a little better. I’ve had a lot of letters and cards over the years, but this one I know I’ll keep forever.”

Related stories:

WATCH: Kids React To Gay Marriage Proposals

Dad Accidentally Discovers His Teenage Son Is Gay And Handles It Like A Real Man

This Kid’s Rap About Transgender Acceptance Is Just Plain Perfect

Dan Tracer

feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/O1m5uJJ2pyQ/nine-year-old-girl-writes-letter-to-her-gay-teacher-totally-nails-it-20141215

What To Watch This Week on TV: The End of 'Colbert,' 'White Collar'

Bobby Hankinson

www.towleroad.com/2014/12/what-to-watch-this-week-on-tv-the-end-of-colbert-white-collar.html

80 Democratic Senators Call Bull On One Year Gay Blood Deferral, Urge Obama Administration To Lift Ban

Anthony Costello

www.towleroad.com/2014/12/80-democratic-senators-call-bull-on-relaxed-gay-blood-donation-urging-obama-administration-to-lift-b.html

WATCH: Michael Sam Shares Story for #IAmUnbroken Campaign

Sam tells a story of resilience in the face of disappointment as part of a video campaign launched in conjunction with the new film Unbroken.

read more

Annie Hollenbeck

www.advocate.com/sports/2014/12/15/watch-michael-sam-shares-story-iamunbroken-campaign