THEATER
Butches and Femmes Ruling the Scene
TOSOS revives Merril Mushroom’s classic tale of ‘50s dyke life
BY HELEN EISENBACH
It takes a unique person to
fi nd the bright side in having
your house and all its
contents burn down. But
when her 6,000-square-foot backwoods
Tennessee home caught
fi re in 2016, “The ashes rose,” said
writer Merril Mushroom.
For 40 years she’d shared the
giant space with the “second gay
guy I married” and several adopted
children, orphans, plus a
revolving cast of visitors in need.
But overnight, “Everything turned
to gold.”
The tragedy prompted an outpouring
of support from a wide
network of feminists and friends,
offering not only money and supplies
but also copies of incinerated
writings from Mushroom’s
lost archive. One such work, “Bar
Dykes” — expanded from an essay
on 1950s butch courtship rituals
— was given new life by art press
Pegacorn.
Undervalued and overlooked
like so much female art, “Bar
Dykes” hadn’t seen the light of
day since Mushroom wrote it in
the early ’80s, even as iconic male
works like “Boys in the Band”
continued to be offered repeated
seats at the mainstream table.
Decades after producing “Dykes”
in Los Angeles, playwright Robert
Patrick sent the new art book to
Kathleen Warnock of TOSOS, the
queer theater company founded
by Stonewall veteran Doric Wilson.
Warnock found the play (and its
author) so compelling she became
obsessed with seeing it staged.
“Merril’s a national treasure,”
Warnock said, noting Mushroom’s
idea of retirement is continually
organizing for the communities
around her. “She makes people’s
lives better.” Three years after discovering
the long-lost work, Warnock’s
obsession has borne fruit:
Audiences can relive a time gone
by not from a distance but seated
among the 11 actors embodying a
historic slice of lesbian life in an
immersive production at the Flea
MIKIODO
Ure Egbuho and Kiebpoli Calnek in the TOSOS production of Merril Mushroom’s “Bar Dykes,” directed by Virginia Baeta and Mark Finley at the Flea through
August 3.
Theater.
It’s a bold move in our genderfl
uid age to drop us into a world
where women hew to rigid sex
roles. Now in her late 70s, Mushroom
admits to being surprised
by the attention.
“There’s so little identifi cation
as lesbians by the younger women,”
she said, adding that modern
identity politics confuses her. “I
came up in a binary society; that’s
where the butch/ femme stuff all
comes from. It’s yin or yang; you
have to be one thing or another.
But now the kids are like a little
bit of everything, or nothing.”
In her day, lesbians and gay
men often married each other:
for safety, cover, child-rearing,
even citizenship. Mushroom did
it twice, fl eeing Miami Beach and
moving with her fi rst gay husband
to New York.
“I always wanted to live in the
Village and be a starving writer,”
she said.
New York in the ’60s amazed
her.
“The fi rst time I went to a gay
➤ BAR DYKES, continued on p.25
MIKIODO
Kimberly Singh and Angie Tennant in “Bar Dykes.”
July 18 - July 31, 2 24 019 | GayCityNews.com
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