Topher Payne Acts Up

by Matt Burkhalter, ATLANTAboy.com

ATLANTAboy recently sat down with playwright and actor Topher Payne over coffee and a blueberry muffin to talk about his Southern childhood, boarding school years, and boys.
Atlanta has become home to this writer from Mississippi for the past five years. His plays are provoking as are the characters he plays. There's no fear when it comes to the art of being Topher and getting his point across, be it intimately or on stage.

You're from Kosciusko, Mississippi, which is smack in the middle of the state. What's it like?
Kosciusko (Kosk-y-OS-ko) is half an hour from any major interstate, and that is really the only way out, other than a train station 20 miles away. It's like the town was set up so that you have to deliberately work to get outta there.

What was it like growing up there? It's also where Oprah Winfrey was born and raised, right?
The city itself is very isolated and self-sufficient, and probably is what you'd think a stereotypical small town is like with its prejudices. But it's gotten better over the years. I mean Oprah is from Kosciusko, and she's a single black woman. She's the only true success to leave, and they had to get over all of that to actually embrace her, which they really do... now. I actually grew up two miles from Oprah Winfrey Road.

Your playwriting started from childhood experiences, right?
It started like this: I got my first real tape recorder, not a little FisherPrice one, but a real one. My mom would invite her sisters over for coffee and they would have family talks. They would dish and bitch about family drama, and the whole time, my tape recorder was under the table catching their every word. Later, I would play the tapes back and transcribe all the conversations down on paper and act them out with my stuffed animals. My mom wondered where I was getting grown-up words like "hysterectomy," until she found all of my transcripts! It was really the basis for my first full-length play "Beached Wails", about four sisters on vacation dishing and bitching the whole time.

What brought you to Atlanta?
I got a job with Kaiser Permanente in Atlanta. I was part of their outreach program, where I performed and acted with "Professor Bodywise and his Traveling Menagerie." We taught kids about brushing their teeth, how to eat healthy, etc. At one point I played "Nikki Teen," the giant blue cat who taught about not smoking.

What is your favorite part of living and working here?
I have achieved a degree of identity as a writer. There is now a very small and select group of people who know who I am and give a shit about my work. It has afforded me the opportunity to collaborate with some incredible people. On the flip side, I've begun to be able to help people step up, much like I needed in the beginning. I don't think I'll be here in Atlanta forever, but I can see myself coming back.

You had cancer a few years ago, and you won that battle.
When I was 21. I had no guarantees that I was going to live. I had to accept death as a possibility. I started writing "Relations Unknown" about a character named Chris who died from cancer. It was such a release for me. It was the turning point in my life that made me realize that I was going to beat it, no matter what. It dealt with a lot of events that were in the headlines recently with Terry Schaivo--who knows best? Is it your family--or your friends, who are sometimes more of a family than your blood relatives.

"Beached Wails," "Bad Mama," and "Relations Unknown" are all so different. Which one is your favorite?
I love that all of them are different. I have to say that my favorite at the moment is "Relations Unkown." It was just so close to me and it was so important to me. My family came to the premiere at Dad's Garage, and I was going to sit with them but the actor who was to play Chris was injured the night before, so I had to stand in and perform the part. My mother was a mess, everyone was crying.
I'm so excited because Process Theatre Company at Whole World is going to premiere a re-write of "Relations Unknown" in mid to late October. A lot of the original cast is coming back, and we get to work together again. As a writer I've matured a bit since the original premiere, and I get to rework the things I don't like anymore. It's kind of like Tennessee Williams and how he kept reworking "A Streetcar Named Desire" until he died.

Was "Entertaining Lesbians" inspired by some of your experiences with kids in boarding school and their overachieving parents?
No, not really. I was a nanny and ran a daycare center. That was more the inspiration. It was based on those parents. They would shove their kids into doing things because it what the parents wanted, not the kids.

Tell me about "Wizzer Pizzer" and sliding on those ruby slippers.
"Wizzer Pizzer" is a very interesting play that explores the fluidity of sexuality. It tries to teach that you can just be who you are, without a label.

Do your life experiences feed into your character a lot?
Not too much in the way this is presented. There aren't too many similarities, really. I love my identity and the identity of being queer. This play is all about being. My experiences have shown me that even though I am queer, and I connect better with men, that I can have great experiences with women. My character Kevin is at the beginning of finding himself, where he belongs as a gay man. We all just want acceptance for who we are and a place in this world to fit.

I was reading some online blogs with entries about "Wizzer Pizzer." It seems you guys have a good time.
We do. The script is dirty and funny. It has kind of allowed all of us in the cast to let our guard down and just be open, funny, and dirty when we're around each other. It's been a blast. And hey, I get to make out and have a sex scene with a straight guy with great abs. In rehearsal we just kind of marked it. Opening night we decided we'd just go for it...and we totally did.

14 Steps to Oz

by Brian Suber, David Atlanta Magazine

In ‘Wizzer Pizzer,’ Dorothy, er, Kevin lands in a reparative therapy clinic
Drag kings, Christian conversion tactics, gender theory and a man-sized Judy Garland imitator: Toto, this definitely isn’t Kansas anymore.
It’s playwright Amy Wheeler’s bawdy comedy “Wizzer Pizzer,” currently running at 7 Stages Theater, which features local favorites Topher Payne and Scott Turner Schofield (the artist formerly known as Kt Kilborn).
Based curiously on “The Wizard of Oz,” “Pizzer” follows Kevin (Payne), a Judy Garland-performing drag queen who has just checked into a reparative therapy clinic, depressed after losing his latest amateur drag contest.
Kevin soon meets Jack (Schofield), a seeming straight guy who discovers love at the clinic with the poster girl for cured lesbians (Mary Claire Dunn). The show also stars Charlie Burnett, Brian Crawford and Allison Hastings, along with a unique guest star as Dr. Nora, proprietress of the reparative clinic.
“‘Wizzer Pizzer’ sprang out of a peculiar moment in my life, post-grad school in Iowa,” says Wheeler, “where I was teaching theatre appreciation at a small private college in Cedar Rapids to a sea of baseball caps majoring in business, then yelling back at radio personality Dr Laura on the drive home.”
That playwright says her writing was inspired by “being queer in a world where I felt like a fish out of water, who’s flipped out of the fishbowl and is flopping around on the table in front of a bevy of half-interested onlookers and who’s royally pissed off at being dubbed a biological error.”
Like “The Wizard of Oz” “Pizzer” treks down the yellow brick road into the nether regions of the human heart, says Wheeler, but there are a lot of laughs along the way and honesty about what it feels like to be gay in a mostly straight, heavily evangelical Christian culture.
The playwright recalls a reading in Seattle when a self-identified straight audience member said she hoped that her counterparts would see the play to fully understand the gay experience.
But it’s not simply a play about gay.
“I don’t feel I’m writing exclusively for a gay audience, as that’s like preaching to the choir,” Wheeler says. “I’m ready for gay-themed theater to come into the mainstream and for gay people to see our stories on stages that also produce Beckett and Mamet and Shepard.”
Wheeler said an important part of her process as a writer is listening to her characters and going where they take her. In the Atlanta debut, she has quite a collection of characters to run with, in a distinctive cast.
At a rehearsal for “Pizzer,” local playwright Topher Payne teetered across the stage on stiletto heels, minutes after a fervent kiss with a fellow thespian. In between grabbing a female co-star’s breasts and the hot lip-lock with his charming cohort, the actor took direction from director Melissa Foulger.
Payne says Kevin firmly believes that his life won’t come together because he’s gay, and that therapy can fix that. He notes audiences should take pleasure in the show’s cleverness, truthfulness and dirtiness.
“Kevin wants it all so badly that even when he realizes the cure is all an act, it only makes him that much more fervent in his efforts to support it,” Payne says.
To prepare for their roles in the play, the cast made a trip to My Sister’s Room in Decatur to watch a drag king show and read up on Exodus gay conversion programs. That would have been hilarious if not for the people who buy into such programs, Payne says.
The madcap actor, who praised Wheeler’s iconoclastic humanity in handling the subject matter, noted ironically that gay conversion therapy is a 14-step program, two steps above alcoholism.
“This script has really exploded the last remaining traditional concepts of gender,” says Payne. “The whole concept of male and female identity goes out the window and what remains is humanity.”
As for Kevin, Topher says the character has his own identity issues.
“Early in the show Kevin asks his best friend what people know about him besides the fact that he’s gay, and that’s the heart of this guy,” says Payne. “His whole identity is wrapped up in gay, gay, gay. He thinks the only way to find who lies underneath is by stripping away the gay identity.”
He says he found his motivation for the role in his own narrative, coming of age in Mississippi and wanting to be like his father when he was growing up.
“As I got older, I realized there was something different about me that would keep me from being what I had been taught was a man,” recalls Payne. “I learned to be proud of the man that I am and defend myself and — shit, that wasn’t easy — but the beautiful thing is now I can take Kevin and audiences on that path.”

Bad as She Wants to Be

Process Theatre’s ‘Bad Mama’ is a raucous affair

by BRIAN MOYLAN, David Atlanta Magazine

Conniving trailer park queens, passive-aggressive Pollyannas, homicidal mothers-in-law, Lifetime Television tearjerkers and power lesbians. The mamas of playwright Topher Payne’s world may mean well but they are anything but nurturing. In the local theater darling’s newest concoction with Process Theatre, “Bad Mama,” Payne cleverly and uproariously creates a patchwork yarn from seemingly unconnected swatches of short scenes.In three separate sections comprised of a triumvirate of shorts, the playwright and his zany cast of characters, tells a tale that is tickly, timely and riotous.
Two of the “playlets,” “A Lifetime Original Movie Starring Judith Light” and “Entertaining Lesbians” run the course of the play with each scene expanding on each story. The weakest of the pieces, “Judith Light” concerns a Lifetime original movie with the former sitcom star (Jane Bass) as a mother who faces every crisis — “incurable female disease,” serial killer husband, abusive son, cheerleader-turned-crack-whore daughter — with a fresh cup of coffee and ready smile. As Judith, Bass is an eerily close impersonation to the actress. Bass has definitely seen her share of Lifetime and knows every canned nuance and gesture. In a later scene, “Entertaining Lesbians,” playing trailer park mama Ethelene, the actress gets to really shine.
In “Lesbians,” one of Payne’s better scenes and a pitch-perfect satire on Inman Park culture, all hell breaks loose when social climbing couple Rowena “Ro-Ro” (Marcie Millard) and Tad “Taddy” (Larry Davis) plan a visit from power lesbians, hoping to exploit the couple’s pull to leverage a spot for their daughter in a prestigious school. The cunning couple goes so far as to solicit support from their African-American maid, Mrs. Kelley (Alexius Hale), to pose as their friend to earn some liberal cred. When the “boring Quaker white bread” couple ask her to call them by their “pet” names, she asks to be called “Lucretia” and scores one of the biggest laughs of the show. The couple says they never knew her first name was “Lucretia.” It’s not, she replies, she’s just always wanted to be a “Lucretia.” In Payne’s world, it seems, everyone has dirty little secrets lurking in the back of their closets. And that’s what makes this show so much fun.
The playwright takes a bleaker turn in the scene “Wish You Were Here,” in which a divorced couple, Geneva (Rachel Sorsa) and Tony (Paine Calabro) compete for the affections of their daughter via written correspondence. Geneva, queen of the passive-aggressives, and Tony, the overly indulgent, and now out and living in New York with his lover, vie for their daughter’s love while cutting one another to shreds. In “What Are You Expecting?” Shelley (Millard) plots the birth of her baby and the life they will have. Her son — she will name him Lorenzo — will be fabulous. And gay. “The Groom’s Cake” offers up a wedding with murderous results for sickly-sweet mama Ruth (Frankie L. Earle).
In the last scene, a reprise of “Entertaining Lesbians,” all the disparate characters are tied together in a completely implausible, but extremely entertaining, climax. Payne is certainly not afraid to go over the top and his actors obviously enjoy the wild ride he gives them. Not to be outdone, the playwright adds depth to what on its surface could be construed as a fun and frolicsome piffle. Notably, the absence of children makes the viewer wonder what the impact these bad mamas have on their babies. Even when bad things happen to the children (Tony and Geneva’s daughter, for one), they’re off-stage.
Nice too, is that the out Payne never overplays stale gay themes through his characters. In his tales, the gay characters are as wicked, vindictive — and as the title suggests — just plain bad as their straight counterparts. It’s nice not be to be pigeonholed as the supportive friend, the wacky sidekick or the life of the party. “Bad Mama” Director Lily Yancey-Miller has a riotous time with this show, giving the actors plenty of space to fully enjoy this outlandish tale. For in his latest work, Topher Payne shows us how perfectly, vulgarly fabulous being a “Bad Mama” can be.

Wizzer Pizzer Reviews

A FLAMING ROMP
It's Gay Gone Wild, but 'Wizzer Pizzer' is straight up with its tsk, tsk, tsk behaviors.
Wendell Brock, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

If you are upset by effigies of Dr. Laura and Jim and Tammy Faye, gay and Latin stereotypes or characters who imagine Christ as a sex partner, you may want to avoid Amy Wheeler's "Wizzer Pizzer." With its naughty language, explicit sexual situations and world-gone-gay mentality, it's an equal-opportunity offender that will probably make your Baptist Republican brethren cringe. Of course, that's probably the point. Kevin (Topher Payne) collapses while performing "Over the Rainbow" at a talent night, then gets roughed up a bit and eventually passes out drunk in front of his TV. He's then sucked into a kind of conscious-unconscious vortex, where he meets a couple who run a prisonlike rehabilitation center for homosexuals. Self-indulgent, messy and kind of great, this world premiere has the potential to win a youthful cult following.

...Payne's auburn-maned Kevin looks nothing like the character's alter ego, Judy Garland. He's more like a strange mutation of Scarlett Johansson and Olympia Dukakis....

UNDER THE RAINBOW
Curt Holman, Creative Loafing

In its world-premiere production at 7 Stages, Wizzer Pizzer revels in the comic possibilities of its timely subject, turns gender politics topsy-turvy and offers something sexy for every orientation.
Melissa Foulger directs Wizzer Pizzer's young actors to their strengths. An Atlanta playwright, Payne captures Kevin's esteem issues to find humor and occasional pathos, whether badly lip-synching to Judy Garland or attempting to impersonate a typically macho straight guy.

Interview with Jim Farmer, Southern Voice
The play stars Topher Payne as Kevin, gay man with problems. As the show opens, Kevin is tasting the defeat in another drag contest where he competes as iconic Judy Garland.
“He loses the competition and really loses his mind,” Payne says. “He has a spectacular nervous breakdown and decides to check himself into Dr. Nora’s ‘Getting Over the Rainbow’ Reparative Therapy Clinic.”
“He is sad and miserable, and he is not happy in the gay community. But he realizes at the clinic that the straight identity, the cure being offered, would be an artifice. These people who are at the clinic are being asked to suppress their gay identify by suppressing themselves,” Payne says.
Payne, himself a playwright who recently debuted his “Bad Mama” locally, associated with the character of Kevin.
“Kevin is at the beginning of a long and extended journey of accepting himself as a gay man,” Payne says. “I liked the script because it’s about getting over what your family or your own expectations are about who you should be as a gay man and getting back to yourself as a person. The script is very funny and dirty — I liked that."