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Laughing with Lily

Tomlin on getting married, Ernestine and Edith, Lucy, Carol and more

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Lily Tomlin, gay news, Washington Blade
Lily Tomlin, gay news, Washington Blade

Lily Tomlin’s live show updates her classic characters with modern situations. (Photo by Greg Gorman)

Lily Tomlin

Music Center at Strathmore

5301 Tuckerman Lane

Mar. 28 at 8 p.m.

Strathmore.org

Lilytomlin.com

Comedic legend Lily Tomlin plays the Strathmore Friday night. Last week she spent a delightful hour with us by phone from her Los Angeles home in — as is typical for the actress — a leisurely, rambling-in the-best-way conversation that few stars of her caliber make time for. Her comments have been slightly edited for length.

 

WASHINGTON BLADE: How has comedy changed since you began? This show revives some classic characters and bits, but do you find some elements might have been a scream in the ‘60s but fall flat today?

LILY TOMLIN: I imagine you wouldn’t find a whole lot that would still be relevant. I couldn’t say that in a totally general way but overall, I would say the humor then would have been relative to something that was going on then. We didn’t deal so much with universal truths in the sense of the human condition. We did a lot of snappy stuff that was going on at the time. When we were doing “Laugh-In,” Ronald Reagan was the governor and later he was the president so a lot of stuff we said was just Reagan and you’d be watching “Laugh-In” on some cable show or something and they wouldn’t say governor or president, they just said Ronald Reagan or Reagan, so much of what we said still applied when he was president. But in general, the values and taboos of society have changed a lot in 40 years.

 

BLADE: Is it hard, then, to take your classic characters and make them work now on stage in a way that doesn’t feel frozen in time?

TOMLIN: Well, it’s just what you choose to put in their mouths. The last job Ernestine had was working for Health Care Insurance Corporation denying health care to everyone and prior to that she had a reality webcast chat show all during the Bush administration so she could call the president and presumably she had a webcam so she could see what he was doing. She could call Cheney or anybody and talk about something that was going on at the time.

 

BLADE: You don’t think Ernestine would still be funny at the switchboard?

TOMLIN: No because we hardly even have switchboards anymore and people barely know what an operator is. But that overbearing bureaucratic dominance still serves in other places. She left the phone company because they were no longer, you know, powerful or omnipotent. She would have had to compete for business.

 

BLADE: What would Ernestine think of the revelations last year that Big Brother is listening in on everything?

TOMLIN: I’ve been trying to come up with a really great NSA sketch. The secret of it would be (slipping into Ernestine’s voice): “A gracious hello — this is the NSA, the only government agency that actually listens (snorts).”

 

BLADE: I’ve seen you use her in unscripted formats, too. I remember Ernestine being interviewed once by Joan Rivers. I have no idea if she gave you the questions ahead of time or not, but that would seem quite nerve-wracking to me — the pressure to be funny outside of the sketch format. Was it?

TOMLIN: Well, I know her attitude. It’s not like Ernestine doesn’t live somewhere in my body, she does. Certain characters are especially good for that if they’re really opinionated and fairly short sighted or self interested and don’t care about other people’s feelings. Then they probably improvise fairly well.

 

BLADE: There was an op-ed shortly after you got married in which a lesbian wrote “we came of age in a time when her one-woman shows changed how we understood ourselves as lesbians and feminists.” To what degree in the ‘70s were you aware or were you aware that your work was not just being enjoyed by lesbians but sort of exalted and claimed in a sense?

TOMLIN: Maybe claimed a little. My mother and dad are from Kentucky and even though I was born in Detroit, because I’m well known and presumably semi-liked in Kentucky, I don’t know for sure, but Kentucky sort of claims me in a way. Very often I read that I was “Kentucky’s own” or “born in Kentucky.” In fact, I put my hands in cement there in some Kentucky hall of fame or something. I told them, “But I’m not really from Kentucky,” and they said, “No one will care. They’ll be glad and they’ll hope you are from Kentucky.” So I’m sure lesbians and other feminists, if I was good and doing good stuff and strong and intelligent, I’d think they’d want to claim me in a sense that, well, you know, “She’s one of us” or whatever people might say in that kind of reference. I’m sure even Mrs. Duggar, if she had one kid that became president of the United States, she might single him out. In any other case, she might not. “These are my kids. Oh, this is Robert, my son, the president.” I don’t know how that stuff goes but even if it did, I’m grateful for it in a sense because, you know, I want to communicate with people. Very often I really want to validate people, validate humanity to some extent. We’re so invalidated in so many other ways and disregarded. Dismissed or thought of as just some lump mass of humanity that’s disposable and exploitable. Rotten to the core.

 

BLADE: How does comedy validate?

TOMLIN: Just showing what you love and human situations and human attitudes and you show the bad parts, but you show them in a way that we all possess them. We’re all really in the same spaceship together. Politicians, to me, are a separate entity because they’re in a place where they’re actually affecting our lives in profound ways and attempting to do so and not always with the absolute soul of integrity.

 

BLADE: I found (partner) Jane’s (Wagner) blog a few years ago quite funny when she wrote the blow-by-blow of trying to find the right hot dogs and sunscreen on the Fourth of July. If that was any indication of the interplay between the two of you on something as trivial as finding hot dogs, how on earth did you discuss and settle on when, how or if to get married? (Tomlin and Wagner were married on New Year’s Eve after 42 years together.)

TOMLIN: We didn’t talk about it for a long time because we lived together so long where that wasn’t even a glimmer of a hope or a possibility. … She and I would have liked to have been married and last fall, maybe October or November or something, I said, “You know, maybe we should.” We were both of the same mind … so we just decided to get married. I don’t know if you’ve been on our Facebook, but we made a little thing about it and showed where we went to the license bureau and we just wanted a nice, simple, sweet, quiet little ceremony so we went to Van Nuys, we went out of the way because we didn’t want to be usurped, our control of the situation, you know, “Oh, Jane and Lily were at the license bureau.” But there was so much there, that we made this little vignette of it and it shows us in front of the building. It’s just this old, one-story kind of flat motor vehicle kind-of place. There’s nothing grand or majestic about it, like some old courthouse from another era or anything. And then you stand in line with a bunch of other people and there were young people in tuxedos and bridal dresses. Then you go in another room and this woman who looks like Ruth Bader she has on a black cloak, and she takes them in there and marries them right on the spot. Families were there and they’re so dear. These couples getting married, and you think, “Oh God, help us, all these young kids getting married and you don’t even —,” you know, I worry about them like a mother. Do they have a place to live, any kind of a decent job, are they gonna have kids, and they don’t have any idea what it takes to raise those kids, the money it costs. So we get up to the window and we get our license and then we go outside and there was a hot dog stand with a little cart and a multi-colored umbrella, so we used that as our backdrop. It’s just like four little photos. Now you’re gonna go and expect like a feature film or something, but it was just our little way to acknowledge it. We didn’t post it till after we got married, which we did on New Year’s Eve.

 

BLADE: Does it feel any different? Was there any psychological shift or anything you weren’t expecting?

TOMLIN: I haven’t perceived it. Maybe there is, kind of. The nice part about it is that it’s out in the public. Not that that many people would have known we were together anyway, but when it’s reported that you’re married, it’s so kind of official. The best part is that Jane is from Tennessee and my parents are from Kentucky so we have southern families and my family more than hers were more fundamentalist …

 

BLADE: You were raised Southern Baptist, right?

TOMLIN: Well, my dad wasn’t really. He was a drinker and a gambler and I went to the bookie joints with him and every Sunday when I was a kid, because of all the fire and brimstone that goes on in the fundamentalist church, I would sit up in the kitchen with my dad. We had an old Formica table and I was maybe 5 or 6 or 7 and I was worried about my father not going to heaven. My dad would be having a beer and some sardines and crackers like on a Sunday morning and my mother is getting ready for church and I’d be up there in the middle of the table trying to get daddy to go to church with us. Argh. Anyway, my mother and dad are both totally individual and funny … so I would go to the bookie joints with my dad on Saturdays and to church with my mom on Sundays. Let’s see, where was I going with this — the best part of the marriage thing, aside from us being together, was that we heard from a lot of relatives, not my mother’s generation really, ‘cause they’re mostly gone, they would have been a little taken aback, but the next generation, we got lots of cards and messages from relatives that you never would have gotten even 10 years ago, congratulating us. Very loving, very sweet. So I thought that was the most miraculous part of it.

 

BLADE: You were on the “Merv Griffin Show” several times early in your career. Did you have any awareness at the time that he was gay?

TOMLIN: No, I don’t think so. Well, by the time I was in my 20s, I suppose I did. There were these rumors that young men were always kind of in his sphere somewhere so yes, I heard all that kind of gossip, especially being gay, other gay people fostered that kind of gossip. They were glad to hear about something like that. So yes, it was probably fairly well considered and I’m sure I was privy to that conversation at some point.

 

BLADE: I know the story about the Time magazine offer (in 1975, they offered her the cover if she’d come out) but then years later, like maybe in the late ‘80s or ‘90s you were doing stuff like “Celluloid Closet,” “The Band Played On” and “Will & Grace.” Was there a point where you decided to start saying yes to those kinds of projects that you might not have done, say, a decade before?

TOMLIN: I never would have said no to them but I might not have called a press conference to declare my sexuality. At that time, first of all, it gets to be a little bit grandstandy for someone like me. … I called Vito Russo and told him about the Time offer and said, “I just don’t know if I can handle it, I’m a little bit insulted, I’m a little bit everything,” because it was more like they just needed a gay person. It was like with the actor Cliff Gorman who was in “Boys in the Band,” he was straight but he was very worried about his career so whenever he gave an interview, he’s always make sure you knew he wasn’t gay. So we just flipped it around, you know, and when I did end up giving an interview to Time, we made sure they understood I wasn’t straight and we put a little bit about that on the album we were working on at the time, “Modern Scream.” And of course nothing was ever said about it, written about it, anything. The album wasn’t a big hit. It wasn’t like I was some big recording artist who sold a lot, but my early albums had been fairly successful because of “Laugh-In,” Ernestine and Edith. … I didn’t want to decline it, but I didn’t want to accept it, so I decided, “I’m not going down without throwing a punch.”

 

BLADE: Now at times, some up-and-comers use it in reverse — being out as part of their marketing campaign. For people who are genuinely talented, do you think that’s harmful?

TOMLIN: It depends on what kind of work they’ve done or they’re doing. Look at Neil Patrick Harris. He’s hugely popular and sought after, but of course, we knew him as a kid. But he’s a very good singer, actor, dancer and he’s got a lot of charm. Things have turned around so profoundly but the thing that terrifies you is if some right wing evangelist kind of person gets in, or we lose the Senate or we get a Republican president, you don’t know how far they will go to repeal something. There’s such a sense of celebration now and it’s kind of taken for granted but if some crazy person gets in there and there’s that limitation and philosophy where they spiritualize everything, they just nail down on these issues and they want to repeal any kind of progressive advance. It’s pretty scary when you see what’s going on in other parts of the world.

 

Lily Tomlin, gay news, Washington Blade

Lily Tomlin won the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at the Kennedy Center in 2003. She’s in the region this weekend for a show at the Strathmore. (Photo by B. Patterson)

BLADE: Yeah, like what we saw in Russia during the Olympics.

TOMLIN: Right. We did a little thing — actually I wish we could have been in D.C. when we did it, but I say I was thrown in jail but thank God, I knew Ernestine and she got us out. So we make fun of it. We made a graphic where we show Putin bare-chested on a horse and Ernestine is riding bareback behind him.

 

BLADE: So your show isn’t just Lily’s greatest hits then.

TOMLIN: No.

 

BLADE: Do you enjoy working on the material?

TOMLIN: I do. We have some pieces that we still do that work well because I love them so much and I think they’re terribly funny. So it’s kind of a mix. We’re trying to do something worthwhile but that is also fun and hopefully thoughtful, hopefully even moving in some way at some point. How old are you?

 

BLADE: 39, but you know gay men often know pop culture before their time way more than straight men.

TOMLIN: Oh my God, yes. Paul, this photographer and musician who works with me, he kills me because there’s nothing that happens on a daily basis at our house, office or anything, that he can’t relate it to a Lucy episode.

 

BLADE: That’s a great quality to have.

TOMLIN: Oh, it’s so dear. I just scream laughing.

 

BLADE: What’s your favorite?

TOMLIN: Well, when I was a kid, “slowly I turn,” because it looked like the kind of performance piece I could do. The ballet class, too.

 

BLADE: You guested on “The Carol Burnett Show” right?

TOMLIN: Oh yeah.

 

BLADE: Lots of people are on sitcoms but you and Carol and a few others are known for certain characters. Did you feel comedic camaraderie with her?

TOMLIN: Well, I’d known her a long time. One very hot moment for me, one very happy moment, I was at CBS maybe I was doing my first special or maybe I was just guesting on some show like Glen Campbell or something. When I got “Laugh-In,” Glen Campbell was the first show I guested on and Carol, of course, shot at CBS. I was in the ladies’ room and she came in and threw her arms around me and called my name. That just made me very happy that she knew who I was and was so demonstrative with me. She’s an extremely dear person anyway.

 

BLADE: Did you know Lucille Ball?

TOMLIN: I read an article with her once and they were asking her about new young comedians, mostly girls, and when they got to me, she said, “I don’t get her.” My heart broke but later I met her and she told a very funny story, and acted it out for about 20 minutes, about how she had had to get a root canal the day of the Tonys. … To hear her tell it in person was just sublime.

 

BLADE: She seemed like she could be a bit of a tough customer. Crusty, maybe.

TOMLIN: Everybody says that, yeah.

 

BLADE: Maybe she felt more liberated as she got older. More candid. Do you ever feel that way?

TOMLIN: Not really. I have a hard time realizing I’m as old as I am. I don’t feel that old. I still feel innocent in some ways.

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Television

How this Texas drag king reclaimed their identity

Chicano performance art serves as inspiration

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Three out of ten drag kings who were cast for this first season of King of Drag self-identified as Latinx and after episode two, only one Latinx king remains in the running for the competition. 

Buck Wylde, a king from Dallas, Texas delivered a performance that took inspiration from their Catholic upbringing and Catholic school days to put together this persona. During the episode, they shared that they like to “play with religion.” 

Murray Hill responded by adding, “sometimes we can’t afford to go to therapy for the Catholic guilt, so we do drag.” Buck Wylde says their therapy and their church is drag. 

Buck Wylde, cancer sign, goes by Trigger Mortis when they are outside of drag and present more on the femme side. Along with Big D—another drag king on the series—they are the only two who are more femme outside of their drag persona. 

During this episode, Buck Wylde also spoke about the difficulty of performing drag in a red state. They live in conservative Dallas, so they still struggle to find large-scale acceptance and support in the midst of statewide legislation targeting the LGBTQ community in Texas. 

“Sometimes it doesn’t feel [as] safe as [I] would like it to be. There’s protesters all the time and we don’t have as many spaces to perform as kings there,” they said in the interview. 

Buck Wylde says that for them, the most important thing about drag, is that it is and always has been a protest. 

Living in a conservative state is a challenge to them as a drag king, but they say that it’s important for them to stand their ground and not only bring that representation to these areas, but also intentionally keep it there. 

“So many people leave Texas for their safety and mental health to go to Portland, LA, or Colorado Springs or you know, anywhere but here.” 

During the episode, Buck Wylde also opened up about how their religious background and cultural heritage added an extra layer to their identity issues growing up where they did. Their family wanted them to assimilate and even prevented them from speaking Spanish and they say that through Buck, they are able to re-examine what it means to be a part of that culture. 

Buck Wylde is a third generation Mexican-American and they say that though their Spanish is not fluent, they say they do prefer their horchata without (ICE). 

“I kind of straddled different worlds there, because I was sort of assimilated but I still had my Mexican culture. I always felt like I wasn’t connected enough because of the assimilation and it was through drag that I was able to reclaim my culture.” 

In the first round of competitions for the second episode, the kings broke up into three teams of three for an improv skit where they would have to mansplain a topic and whichever team did it the best—won the group Weenie Challenge.

The winning team included Buck Wylde, Alexander the Great and Henlo Bullfrog. Together they improvised a skit where they mansplained the Amelia Earhart story.  

For the solo show, they dressed up as ‘The Devil’ for the improv solo challenge, cracking a joke about how they are dressed like the person currently living in The White House. 

Dressed as the Devil, sporting a Zoot Suit for the final competition, Buck Wylde improvised a skit with food. 

Buck Wylde says they felt the pressure to perform because along with the other nine kings who were cast, they are the first ten kings to make it to the mainstream and represent king culture. 

“We call ourselves the first ten because whatever happens, we’re responsible for how the kings are viewed and how we move forward together, being the blueprint for what’s to come,” said Buck Wylde in an exclusive interview with Los Angeles Blade. 

Back stage before the solo improv competition, Buck Wylde says they felt their drag persona “crumbling” away. 

They felt like Buck had abandoned them prior to their big moments to prove to the judges that they should stay in the running for the competition. They went up against Perka $exxx, who gave a king-based Dave Chappell performance. 

In the end, it was Perka $exxx who received a 4-1 vote from the judges. 

Buck Wylde left the show with some advice for the kings and the audience: “No matter what life throws at you, always remember who the Buck you are.”

King of Drag is now available to stream on RevryTV, an LGBTQ streaming platform for queer movies, TV shows, music and more — all for free. New King of Drag episodes will premiere weekly on Sundays. 

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Out & About

Help preserve Black LGBTQ history

Preservation Committee to hold public meeting

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A scene from D.C. Black Gay Pride in 1994. (Washington Blade archive photo by Kristi Gasaway)

The Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs will host “Black LGBTQ+ History Preservation Committee Public Meeting” on Wednesday, July 16 at 6 p.m. at 899 North Capitol St., N.E.

Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs and the Black LGBTQ+ History Preservation Committee will discuss their upcoming grant project. Attendees will have the opportunity to ask questions and network with committee members. Attendance is free and more details are available on Eventbrite

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Theater

Exciting lineup on tap for theater festival in Shepherdstown, W.Va.

Queer artists play prominent roles in various productions

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Christopher Vergara (Photo by Shai Yammanee)

Contemporary American Theater Festival
Through Aug. 3
Shepherdstown, W.Va.
Catf.org

As a queer Latino freelance costume designer, Christopher Vergara’s work has taken him from Broadway to a multitude of regional outposts and companies worldwide. Over the last decade, he’s lent his prodigious talents to theater, opera, TV, and film, and beyond. 

Currently the native New Yorker is costuming playwright Mark St. Germain’s new two-hander “Magdalene,” now making its world premiere at the annual Contemporary American Theater Festival (CATF) at Shepherd University in historic, queer-friendly Shepherdstown, W.Va. (just a 90-minute drive from D.C.). 

“Magdalene”is the story of Peter reconnecting with the banished Mary Magdalene and discussing their widely divergent memories of Christ. At 90 minutes without costume changes, it may not sound like a big job, but Vergara applies his usual meticulous consideration.  

“It’s not the Bible pageant you might see at church,” he says. As a costume designer, Vergara approaches all new works by delving deep into the script with collaborators. 

“I like to do what I call a visual dramaturgy, to read the script and take it in aiming to arrive at a sort of truth, not necessarily historically accurate. 

“Without being period, I get to what their world was like in some way. And because the play’s conversation is contemporary, I’m inspired by both old and new lines and fabrics. It’s speaking to us now but set in a different time.” 

Born and raised in New York, Vergara learned to sew at the side of his Panamanian grandmother. “Growing up I was enthralled. She had an amazing Singer machine that could sew through steel. But it was always a covert thing. Boys shouldn’t be sewing.”

He put his skills to use at Valparaiso University in Indiana where while majoring in music he found a well-paying and flexible job in the costume shop. After graduation he returned to New York and entered a Juilliard apprentice program concentrating on a costume track and a busy career has ensued. His vast résumé includes Broadway shows like “Here Lies Love” and the revival of “The Color Purple”among numerous others; he was associate designer for a production of “Ben-Hur” in Rome that featured a cast of more than 200 with 1,000 costumes.

Vergara is enjoying his introduction to CATF. “Initially I was feeling a little apprehensive. I’d never been to West Virginia before, but when I saw all the Pride flags lining the main street in Shepherdstown, any misgivings were dispelled,” he says. 

Lisa Sanaye Dring (Photo by Stephanie Girard Photography)

CATF also presents “Happy Fall: A Queer Stunt Spectacular” by Lisa Sanaye Dring with Rogue Artists Ensemble. Based on true life events, it’s the story of queer Hollywood stuntmen navigating the dangers of exposing their love. Living up to the “spectacular” bit in the title, the guys’ story is told through video, puppetry, illusions, and live stunts.

The playwright says “I’m queer so I’m interested in queerness, and I’ve also been interested in masculinity for some time. I lived in LA for 10 years so the play is a love letter to Hollywood and the weirdness of the industry.”

Also, of interest to Sanaye Dring is the interracial and intergenerational relationship at the play’s center: Clay is a white man in his late 40s and Felix is mid-20s and Asian (played Aubrey Deeker and Glenn Morizio, respectively). 

Her transition from actor (including commercials and some TV) to playwright can be traced back to her one-woman show titled “Death Play,” a work spurred by the passing of her parents and grandmother. “It wasn’t easy. I hadn’t anticipated just how emotionally difficult that five-week run would be. It was after that when people started asking me to write plays and direct.”

CATF Artistic Director Peggy McKowen describes this year’s festival as being “about understanding the things that make us unique, but also the things that make us similar,” adding that it also explores “questioning who are as people and how we fit into our community.” 

Here are the other new works in the festival’s exciting lineup. 

West Virginia-born playwright Cody LeRoy Wilson’sDid My Grandfather Kill My Grandfather?”It recounts the unlikely journey of his blended family from Vietnam to Plum Run, W. Va. 

In “Kevin Kling: Unraveled NPR commentator Kevin Kling tells the story of finding his way as a disabled artist. With humor, he reflects the life challenges he has surmounted, including a congenital birth disorder and partial paralysis from a near-fatal motorcycle accident. 

And finally, playwright Lisa Loomer’sSide Effects May Include…,” a work that takes audiences on a frightening and complex trip into the world of psychiatry as a mother tries to help her son on his journey to wellness. 

CATF runs through Aug. 3 in three varied venues on the Shepherd University campus: Frank Center, Marinoff Theater, and Studio 112. 

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