April 14, 2020: My New Book & Interview Thursday

APRIL 14, 2020: My New Book & Interview Thursday TO READ PREVIOUS BLOGS: TERRYBAUM.BLOGSPOT.COM. PLEASE FORWARD THIS TO ANYONE WHO MIGHT BE INTERESTED. THE BOOK: I'm very proud and excited to announce that Exit Press has published an anthology of my plays, One Dyke's Theater, Selected Plays 1975-2014. It's the perfect thing to read during the pandemic! For one thing, every play is funny, at least part of the time. And talk about timely! There are not one, but TWO plays about the decision to take someone off a ventilator! Amazing, no? One of the ventilator plays, Immediate Family, is a realistic, deeply moving drama. That one might make you cry. But, you know, we NEED a good cry these days. The other play, Waiting for the Podiatrist, is a wacky farce with puppets and songs. It will definitely make you laugh. Can you guess which ventilator play is based on my actual experience? You're right. The wacky farce! Carolyn Myers, my crony and editor, and I worked for two years on this anthology of ten plays. Besides the actual scripts, there's a lot by both of us about the writing of the plays, the production histories and the lesbian and feminist culture of the times. We wanted to record the zeitgeist, the conflicts, the ideas of women that we experienced from 1975 to 2014. What kind of zeitgeist, you may well ask. How about a confrontation between bare-breasted dykes and macho bikers? Or the Pope trying to stop World Pride in Rome? You want zeitgeist? We got zeitgeist! There's a lot of alternative history in One Dyke's Theater. Even if you don't like to read plays, I think you'd like to buy this book just for the stories that Carolyn and I tell. The ten selected plays in the collection range from absurdist farce like the aforementioned Podiatrist and Bride of Lesbostein (photo right) to the gripping historical drama of HICK: A Love Story – The Romance of Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok (photo below).  Dos Lesbos - A Play For And About Perverts (1981) inspired the first anthology of lesbian plays in the history of the universe—Places, Please!, published in1985. Dos Lesbos has been translated into Flemish, Swedish, and Italian and produced around the world. A film of Immediate Family has been shown at gay film festivals in Berlin, Milan and San Francisco.  Waiting for the Podiatrist won "Best of Fringe" at the 2016 San Francisco Fringe Festival. HICK: A Love Story has earned rave reviews across the country and was "Fringe Fave" at the 2015 New York International Fringe Festival and won "Best of Fringe" at 2019 San Francisco Fringe.  For more on the anthology:  https://www.liliththeater.com/anthology In other words, you're not getting your standard blah blah in this anthology. This is exciting stuff! And none of it is avant-garde! You can understand every word! Won't it be fun to read the plays for two aloud with your companion in isolation? Or, if you're solo isolating like me, how about readings on Zoom with friends who have also bought the book (hint hint)? And you can perform the one-woman shows to your cat or poodle! Any way you look at it, there's nothing like an anthology of plays by a Slightly World-Renowned Lesbian Playwright to get you and your loved ones through this unimaginable crisis. Oh! And I forgot the wonderful collages of posters and production photos that begin each play. The one for Dos Lesbos is at right. It's got everything from the original poster with a duck and a Great Dane to Lea Delaria (lower left), who made a living touring Dos Lesbos before she got famous, to the Italian production with two soldier girls on motorbikes! (What that had to do with the show, I don't know. But it was a great poster.) You can purchase One Dyke’s Theater at SMALL PRESS DISTRIBUTION or at major online stores. THE INTERVIEW: I’m going to be interviewed about One Dyke's Theater on The Author’s Show this Thursday, April 16. The interview, which was pre-recorded, will be available for 24 hours. We'll send you a link on that day. Well, my dear Bloggelinis, please consider buying ONE DYKE'S THEATER if you haven't already done so. And if you HAVE already done so, how about giving a little treat to some downtrodden lesbian of your acquaintance? Of even an UPTRODDEN lesbian! Or a down-or-uptrodden heterosexual?! And let me not leave out gay men, trodden and otherwise. There is simply NO ONE who will not benefit from owning a copy of ONE DYKE'S THEATER!