Diversity on the Gay Stage

“Welcome to the Purple Circuit Hotline,” says the voice on the line.

The taped message proceeds to list a selected group of forthcoming stage productions (among them a period farce, “A Gentleman’s Gentleman” at Celebration Theatre, the return of Michael Kearns this spring in “Intimacies,” and upcoming events at Highways in Santa Monica).

Following other newsy items about audition information and theatrical flotsam, the tape ends with its only revealing comment: “Thanks for calling, and remember to see a gay or lesbian play tonight.”

The Purple Circuit Hotline (213 250-1413) is the brainchild of Artists Confronting AIDS and the legacy of Los Angeles’ now-defunct Gay and Lesbian Theatre Alliance. The city may not have a strong focal point for gay and lesbian theater (like Theatre Rhinoceros in San Francisco), but there’s almost always a diverse local playbill here and in the San Diego area.

A sample of the next several weeks includes two wacky, gay themed productions: In “Forbidden Planet,” performance artist John Goss will unfurl “men lovers from West Horrowood who plant their sticky spores of radical desire.” (promises a flyer trumpeting the show, at Highways Performance Space Jan. 25-27 and Feb. 3 and 4)

And literature’s endearing Jeeves character falls in love with his mischievous young master, who doesn’t realize he’s gay himself until the end of the play, in “Gentleman’s Gentleman,” opening Feb. 9 at the Celebration Theatre on Hoover Street.

A dance performance group called High Risk, from San Francisco, will be at Highways in Santa Monica for one night, Jan. 15. In March, L.A.’s Hispanic gay and lesbian ensemble, Teatro Viva!, will stage a bilingual drama about AIDS, “We Are Humans,” by Oscar Reconco, at a site yet to be determined in Silver Lake.

Kearns will bring back his one-man piece, “Intimacies,” in the spring (theater unknown). And Kearns, as director, will also revive a show focusing on persons with AIDS telling their own stories, “AIDS/Us II” (produced with a city of Los Angeles cultural grant). Staged originally in 1986 at the Skylight Theatre, the work will be produced by James Carroll Pickett.

In San Diego, Diversionary Theatre Productions is getting ready to stage the Southern California premiere of Robert Patrick’s “Untold Decades” (nine short plays).

This activity follows on the heels of several gay and lesbian-themed works that closed after long runs last month: the co-sexual gender bender “Cloud Nine” at the West Coast Theatre Ensemble, and, the most popular show ever at the Celebration Theatre, the all female “This Child’s Family.”