Badpuppy Gay Today
April 28, 1997

QUILT: A MUSICAL CELEBRATION
Interview with the Director, Dann Peterson
Commentary by Leo Skir

DANN PETERSON TALKS ABOUT "QUILT"

The Minneapolis Theater in the Round Players production of "Quilt" opened April 25 at the Theatre in the Round.

Since the Quilt Project began, started in 1987 by volunteers in San Francisco, 41,000 panels have been sewn.

Badpuppy: Didn't this musical originate in New York City?

Dann Peterson: No, it was originally produced by the University of Maryland in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institute's Museum of Natural History, the project being Stories For From and Around the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt.

Badpuppy: Does it center on the gay issue?

Peterson: It centers on the AIDS issue as it touches children, mothers, IV users, everyone who has been touched.

Badpuppy: Does it touch the double tragedy of people of color, not being given adequate care and rejected by their own communities?

Peterson: Very much so. We have 30-odd stories, one being of an African-American woman facing just this rejection, we noting in a church service for one of the fallen, the word AIDS not uttered once.

Badpuppy: Does it touch the world issue, the fact that the disease has taken hold of entire nations in Africa?

Peterson: It is mentioned, not dramatized. This drama is laid in, centered in, the United States.

Badpuppy: Is the message of the play political or spiritual (i.e. ACT UP or "Pray?)

Peterson: It has many messages, in some ways, as there are "characters." These are separate stories of separate people, but there is a sum message and the play, using two central characters, a gay man and a straight woman, tells us to HOPE, to reach out, to share. And the play is that: the quilts you will see on stage were made by four women interned in the Shakopee Correctional Facility. They, these "fictional" quilts are part of the message. And its very real.

Badpuppy: And you think there's an audience for it? In these cities, now? In a

largely straight, mostly white population?

Peterson: We've sent out information to the spiritual communities. We're relying on a response. We're asking their support. I think we'll get it.

NOTE: A portion of all royalties from this production will be donated to various AIDS organizations. During the run of the show there will be, in the lobby, an exhibit of Artists with AIDS.

COMMENTARY BY LEO SKIR

The production of "QUILT: A Musical Celebration" at the Theatre in the Round in Minneapolis, is now one of the "shining points of light" which began as simply a number of panels, each 3' x 6', made by volunteers in San Francisco.

The quilts have now traveled, not simply "from sea to shining sea," covering the Mall in Washington, D.C., our nation's heart, but here with this musical play turned into sound, sight and story.

The dramatization is simple. The play opens as some 30 panels, a small quilt, is spread out on the stage while the chorus tells us something beautiful has come from something terrible.

We are given a central locale at the Gay and Lesbian Center in New York City and two principal characters who will remain with us, one being a very naive, very straight Jewish girl, Karen, who loved a gay doctor who has died of AIDS. Karen represents Normal America. The second character is a slightly weary, slightly worn queen-man, HIV-positive who's gotten a brown dot on his chin and has spent a lot of time making panels and helping others make panels. Now he plans to off himself. He,"Lemon" wants to join his gone-ahead lover,"Gumdrop."

Before the evening's end, as panel after panel, singly mostly, sometimes in pairs, is placed isolate at the arena's center, those who have made the quilt sing out (and the one unable to sing speaks out) their stories.

And sometimes the wraiths the Quilt commemorates sing their stories too.

They are the rich, the poor, the simple, and the cynical, each either bitter, calm, white or black and each with a song, each with a story.

This review is too short to give enough credit to this exceptional play/musical (the lyrics are as good as Sondheim at his best, the music is Bernsteinian). The direction results in a seamless production; the cast of over 30 players a perfectly-integrated team.

Praise is due the five authors: lyrics by Jim Morgan, music by Michael Stockler, book by Jim Morgan, Merle Hubbard and John Schak.

The Director is Dann Peterson, and the Music Director is Kyle Nelson. The quilts were made by five women in the Minnesota Correctional Facility at Shakopee.

Applause prolonged is due the wonderful cast unpaid, too many to mention by name. The two principals were, however, Jonothan Peterson as Wes Cronk, the mad, sad bittersweet Lemon Drop kid-queen, and Suzy Wagner as Karen, the naive but nice Jewish girl.

Quilt's musicians must not remain nameless. They are Kyle Nelson (piano); Michael Zimmerman (keyboard) and Kevin Crawford (percussion).

The entire production is superb, no other word possible.

And for every spectator, an experience.

The play ends with the actors/singers in ACT UP Tee-shirts, confronting the audience (easy to do in an arena theatre) to Act Up.

Out on the street afterwards, one could still hear echoes of the Nice Jewish Girl, the Lemon Drop Queen. The production opened during the Jewish Passover week and still in the air was an echo of a song sung from the Siddur, the book read during the Passover meal. "One Only Kid", noting the kid's death, and the death of those who slew the kid, and finally, the death of Death who slew the slaughterers.

"And G-d came, blessed be He and He slew the Angel of Death."

Each of us, in every generation who remembers and with the aid of pieces like this "Quilt", fills the void that the Plague has brought, finds an insignia of a Hope that is Eternal.