I attended a production of “Standing on Ceremony, The Gay Marriage Plays” on Saturday, June 9, 2012 with my partner, Paul, and two good friends of ours, Jim and Diane. The play is a series of eleven one act shorts, by eleven different, talented writers. The set was very simple, but effectively used. Because of the simple set, the play relied heavily on the actor’s ability to create character, emotion, time and place with the written words. All of them did this well, and several did it extremely well. The director, Wendy Knox of Frank Theatre, did a marvelous job with this collection, creating an evening of various forms of discussion between actors, bringing important points around gay marriage arguments home with humor, wit and poignancy.
There were three male actors and three female actors playing various roles in the eleven scenes. There was only one scene, called “On Facebook” by Doug Wright–he won a Tony for Best Play for his 2004, “I Am My Own Wife”, find the link to my review for this show here–that used all five actors at once. This scene was one of my favorites because I am such a social media addict! Who hasn’t seen that uncomfortable conversation thread that makes you want to jump in and state your hard developed philosophy in short snippets and emoji faces?
“The Marriage is Saved” by Joe Keenan, was another favorite with an especially strong performance by Aimee K. Bryant. “The Gay Agenda” by Paul Rudnick was full of spunk, rhetoric and emotion. “London Mosquitoes” by Moises Kaufman brought tears to the eyes of many, and the final scene, “Pablo & Andrew at the Altar of Words” by Jose Rivera had some of the most beautifully written, vision producing, poetry of love I have heard in quite a while.
If you are a supporter of Gay Marriage, or maybe if you are on the fence and would like a lively evening of fun with thought thrown in, please try to catch one of the final performances of this play on June 14, 15 and 16.
