The L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center's Lily Tomlin/Jane Wagner Cultural Arts Center will present a special, encore performance of the smash hit Standing on Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays. The Center's Renberg Theatre will join theaters across the nation on the same evening to showcase this outstanding collection of short plays in support of the ongoing movement for the freedom to marry for same-sex couples. The one-night-only engagement will take place Monday, Nov. 7 at 8 p.m.
Celebrated playwrights Jordan Harrison, Jeffrey Hatcher, Moisés Kaufman, Joe Keenan, Neil LaBute, Wendy McLeod, José Rivera, Paul Rudnick and Doug Wright take on the red-hot subject of marriage equality, creating short plays for a theatrical event as magically entertaining and personally transforming as it is politically potent.
Cast members include three-time Emmy winner Jean Smart (Designing Women, Frasier, Harry's Law), Mo Gaffney (Absolutely Fabulous, That ‘70s Show), Richard Gilliland (Designing Women, Desperate Housewives), Justina Machada (ER), Peter Paige (Queer As Folk) and James Patrick Stuart (It's Complicated).
The nine plays that make up Standing On Ceremony include:
- The Revision by Jordan Harrison - an amusing look at how two men might rewrite their vows to more accurately reflect the limited options available to a gay couple
- White Marriage by Jeffery Hatcher, in which a wife and husband discuss his "gay" sense of humor
- London Mosquitoes by Moisés Kaufmann - a widower tries to make sense of the loss of his long-time lover
- This Marriage Is Saved by Joe Keenan, a satiric vignette in which a disgraced evangelist and his wife insist that his fling with a male prostitute has strengthened their marriage.
- Strange Fruit by Neil LaBute - the story of two men in love whose plans to get married "the old-fashioned way" are stymied when reality rears its ugly head
- This Flight Tonight by Wendy MacLeod - Is there any hope for happiness when a lesbian marriage begins in IOWA?
- Pablo and Andrew at the Altar of Words by José Rivera - two men use their marriage vows to "say the things we never really say"
- The Gay Agenda by Paul Rudnick - a sadly hilarious plea for understanding by an Ohio homemaker and member of Focus on the Family
- On Facebook by Doug Wright, adapted from an actual Facebook thread that chronicles one long fight among friends on the issue of gay marriage.
Director Brian Shnipper, who conceived the show, has also directed the world premieres of Wendy MacLeod's Undescended, Say You Love Satan and All the Rage (Attic Theatre); world premieres of Joyce Carol Oates's Separated and Nagle Jackson's Barney Downsized; and Bluff, Private Eyes, All the Rage, Three Viewings, The Notebook of Trigorin, A Hotel on Marvin Gardens, The Water Children, The Misanthrope, The Complete History of America (abridged) and Brutality of Fact (12 Miles West Theatre); and Voice of Good Hope (Luna Stage).
For tickets or more information, visit http://www.lagaycenter.org/site/PageNavigator/TE_Box_Office.
