Gays Find Voice on Stage : Arts: The theater is providing a positive forum and a sense of community for many gays and lesbians who feel they are facing increased hostility from the straight world.

For most theaters today, it’s a recessionary time--a time for pulling back.

Gay and lesbian theaters in San Diego are just beginning to blossom and grow, however. And, for the city’s three such theaters--Diversionary Theatre, Fresh Dish Productions and Labrys Productions--their determination to speak out has been fed by the renewed adversity that the gay and lesbian community perceives from the straight world.

For many, these theaters are symbols of affirmation, of pride and hope in threatening times. Theater directors at all three companies describe their mission as more than just artistic expression--the shows provide a community gathering place and their subject matter provides validation for gays and lesbians, something for which many in the community hunger in a decade marked by the AIDS crisis, increased gay bashing as a result of the rising fear of AIDS and, most recently, Gov. Pete Wilson’s veto last month of a gay rights legislation bill that would have outlawed job discrimination against homosexuals.

Diversionary Theatre, which regularly plays to a 90% capacity with often-extended runs, opened its four-play 1991-92 season Thursday with the San Diego premiere of Jim Pfanner’s “Small Town Confidential” at the Fritz Theatre (a new theater at 3387 7th Ave.). The play is based on an actual homosexual witch hunt in the 1950s in Boise, Idaho.

Fresh Dish, which made its sellout debut this summer, Sunday will open its new four-show series, Homo Genius, with New York-based solo artist Lisa Kron, who has been dubbed the “Lesbian Lola Falana,” at Sushi Performance Gallery.

Amy Shock, a graduate student in set design at UC San Diego, and one of the co-producers of the Fresh Dish series, spoke animatedly on the phone about the “hunger” for the work she and her co-producer, Brenda Schumacher, have seen.

“I think that people are looking for art that serves as a clear reflection of who they are,” Shock said. “When the lesbian and gay community sees lesbian and gay performers speaking about lesbian and gay issues, it’s a very validating experience. It says, ‘I am not alone and there actually is a culture here to celebrate,’ and this kind of celebration plugs us into a greater awareness of ourselves.”

“We’re not relegated to this underground kind of existence when there are performers on the national level who are telling our stories,” she said.

As she spoke, Shock suddenly brought home some of the pain that motivates the art, as her voice suddenly drained of emotion. Asked what had happened, she said she’d just looked out her window to see a man yelling “Fag! Fag!” outside a new support facility for people with AIDS near her home.

“It makes me feel kind of sad and angry,” she said in a hushed tone.

Producers and directors at Fresh Dish, Diversionary and Labrys all say they cooperate with one another. Each has a different niche and reaches out for a different audience.

The 4-year-old Diversionary Theatre, the granddaddy of the group, has always produced plays geared primarily for both gay and lesbian audiences. As part of the upcoming season, executive director Reuel Olin plans a yet-to-be-named show with a lesbian theme opening in February, 1992, and a musical revue, also still to be named, that will involve lesbian and gay themes, as well as a summer festival featuring original work by local and national gay and lesbian artists.

Fresh Dish, which presents work from around the country, will bring in talent from New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego for its lesbian and gay Homo Genius series. Lisa Kron will be followed by San Francisco entertainer Marga Gomez in her one-woman show, “Pretty, Witty and Gay,” Jan. 3-4; the Los Angeles-based group “Queer Rites,” a collaboration between two gay men and two lesbians, Feb. 1-2, and the “Homegrown Revue,” featuring original material by local women performers, March 28-29, all at Sushi.

Labrys Productions, formed in 1987 under the name BLT (Beautiful Lesbian Thespians), has already presented its two shows for the year, beginning with a revisionist Cinderella--at the Theatre in Old Town--in which a princess Charming falls in love with a young man at the ball who turns out to be a young woman in disguise. Andrea Villa, one of the three members of Labrys’ administrative board, describes her theater as a community lesbian repertory theater company that, for its run last month of “8 x 10 Glossy” at the Lyceum Space, pulled a crowd of more than 800 people for a two-weekend run.

Despite the success of the show, Villa said she experienced some modest backlash--chiefly as a result of using a mailing list provided by the San Diego Repertory Theatre, which manages the space.

“I was surprised and not surprised by the response. A lot of lesbians and gays here are starved for some kind of representation of their lives on the stage. So things like lesbian theater as performed by Labrys or Diversionary or the Fresh Dish series brings them out. But I also had some phone calls asking us to take them off the mailing lists.”

Shows with gay and lesbian themes have been produced with success by mainstream theater companies. The San Diego Repertory Theatre and Blackfriars Theatre (formerly the Bowery) have both presented works by gay playwright Joe Orton. The Blackfriars’ production of Martin Sherman’s “Bent,” a play about gay persecution by the Nazis during World War II, was staged nearly five years ago, but it is still talked about by members of the gay and lesbian community, and it also was a critical and popular hit among straight audiences.

The North Coast Repertory Theatre, too, has had much success with work with gay themes, such as “Torch Song Trilogy” and, most recently, “Breaking the Code.”

Sushi Performance Gallery is most often cited as a presenter of nationally celebrated gay and lesbian performance artists such as Holly Hughes and Tim Miller, both of whom will perform at the Sushi Performance Gala on Nov. 16 at the Lyceum Theatre. Last week Sushi also drew crowds for Pomo Afro Homos’ “Fierce Love: Stories From Black Gay Life,” Sushi executive director Lynn Schuette said.

But there are more gay and lesbian artists who want their work produced than mainstream theaters to accommodate them. And there are more would-be patrons than these occasional gay and lesbian productions seem to satisfy.

Playwright Pfanner’s “Small Town Confidential” had its premiere in September 1990 at Celebration Theatre, a Los Angeles-based gay and lesbian theater, and he said he appreciates the fact that Diversionary is producing the work and embracing its themes.

“The gay and lesbian theaters are more open to this material and it doesn’t scare them. I’ve submitted ‘Small Town’ all over the country and people say we really like the play, but our subscribers wouldn’t go for it,” Pfanner said.

“I have nothing against middle-of-the-road production companies, but they have to sell tickets and it’s tough times, and they just will not go for minority markets, and to have this arena open to us is wonderful. It gives us an opportunity to talk about our history, which no one else wants to talk about.”

Olin, the executive director of Diversionary and the director for Pfanner’s work, said the play’s historical lessons made him want to produce it for straight audiences, as well as gays and lesbians.

“ ‘Small Town Confidential’ details a period in American history when there was harassment and no way for homosexuals to say, ‘I have this group identity.’ We are seeing some visible parallels between now and eras of restraint in the liberty of men and women who happen to be gay. It’s very frightening.

Olin said he takes part of his mandate to serve the larger San Diego community from having been funded by both the California Arts Council and the San Diego Community Foundation.

“Since we have aspirations, since we believe in theater quality, we want to be noticed by the so-called mainstream as well. Diversionary is a little unique in that we truly want to be a non-separatist theater. We never close the doors to anyone who is open to the theater. Our concerns are human concerns.”

Olin, like Shock, Schumacher and Villa, said he expects their theaters to be around for a long time.

Bill Kaiser, coordinator of the Purple Circuit, a Los Angeles-based networking organization designed to promote and support gay and lesbian theater, agrees.

Kaiser describes San Diego as “an important, emerging space.”

San Diego’s gay and lesbian theater scene is fairly new compared to cities like San Francisco, where the Theatre Rhinoceros, founded in 1977, has two stages, paid staff and subscriber base. In New York, The Glines, founded in 1976, premiered “Last Summer at Bluefish Cove” in 1980 (which later played Off Broadway) and “Torch Song Trilogy” in 1981 (which went to Broadway).

But compared to most gay and lesbian theaters nationwide, many of which open and fold after one or two productions, Diversionary, in particular, is “certainly one of the more stable groups we have,” Kaiser said.

“Many people (who start gay and lesbian theater companies) haven’t been able to maintain the momentum,” Schumacher said. “People think of San Diego as a conservative military town, but it does have this huge gay and lesbian population.

“I think we already have the momentum, but I think it’s going to get stronger, especially with the AB 101 veto. We have a revolution happening, and the gay and lesbian community is larger, stronger and more bonded together than ever. There is a surge in pride, a sense that we deserve equal lives. Art is very political, and that is a major motivation of what we are doing.

“We’re bringing performers to town who have very strong messages about women’s rights, about sexuality, about AIDS. It’s more than entertainment. There are a lot of messages out on the stage. When we did our first show, it was real and funny and everyone felt so great leaving the theater, we carried it into the next project.

“We want to be around each other and we want these words expressed.”