Topher Payne | Press Clippings

Topher Payne Gets Inside Joan Crawford's Head (and Pumps)

2010-04-19T11:41:00.000-07:00

by Curt Holman

Creative Loafing

Atlanta actor and playwright Topher Payne considers himself lucky that Steven Spielberg, not Faye Dunaway, introduced him to Joan Crawford.

Most young people of his generation discover the silver screen icon – if they ever do – through Mommie Dearest, the unintentionally hilarious adaptation of Christina Crawford's tell-all memoir. Payne, 30, discovered the real actress instead of Dunaway's campy caricature.

As an 11-year-old boy in Kosciusko, Miss., Payne stumbled upon a rerun of "Night Gallery," which featured a segment called "Eyes," directed by a young Spielberg and starring Crawford. "She absolutely knocked my socks off. I couldn't help but hang on her every word, and watch every single move she made," he says. "Afterward, my mom tried, as best she could, to explain who Joan Crawford was. She was a goddamn movie star, and they don't make them like that any more."

The movie star's unmaking came through the one-two punch of her adopted daughter's angry 1978 exposé and the 1981 film version, which made hysterical dialogue like "NO WIRE HANGERS!" into punch lines in perpetuity. Now Payne's attempting to reveal another side of the dysfunctional mother-daughter relationship with the world premiere of his play Christina Darling, in which he plays the silver screen icon.

Payne began thinking critically about Mommie Dearest after yet another viewing in the early 2000s. The film ends with Crawford's death in 1977 and Christina's discovery that she'd been written out of her adopted mother's will. Payne recalls, "Her brother says, 'I guess Mommy got the last word,' and Christina replies, 'Did she?'"

"It's a wonderful grace note for the film, but after that, I heard that Christina Crawford had successfully sued Joan Crawford's estate and gotten a nice chunk of change," says Payne. "Getting the money, however, didn't fit in the image of Christina Crawford as the world's most famous victim. That was the first time I thought that Mommie Dearest might not have been the whole truth."

Payne decided to research Crawford's life with the idea of writing a play that offered a different perspective. "After I started delving into the events of Mommie Dearest, I delved into what was going on in the life of Joan at the same time, and it was almost beautifully contradictory. For instance, Christina talks about being sent to private school and not seeing her mother for months. But at that time, Joan had lost her contract with the movie studio and had to take shit roles in movies to pay for her daughter's education. And to maintain the image of Joan Crawford, which was expensive. If you're going to be an icon of glamour, you're going to have to pay the bills."

Playing through May 8 at the Process Theatre, Christina Darling largely takes place inside the mind of Christina Crawford (Barbara Cole Uterhardt) during her stroke in 1981. The near-death experience causes her to reassess her mother's career and their relationship. Christina Darling is Payne's 12th play to premiere in Atlanta. He describes it as the biggest play he's ever attempted, with the largest cast (eight actors) and the most complicated elements, including dance choreography, fight choreography, and recreations of Crawford's work and screen tests projected on video.

And, technically, two Joans. Kristin Kalabi plays the performer at the dawn of her career as a dancer from Oklahoma named Lucille LeSueur. "She became the quintessential jazz-age flapper, gangly and wild, everything that 'Joan' wasn't," says Payne. "Lucille becomes aware that she's part of a dying breed, so she creates Joan Crawford as this image of perfection to shield herself from the poverty of her upbringing and the gossip about her."

Payne appears as Joan halfway through the play, but never thought he'd be the one donning her costumes. "I initially wrote the role for Rachel Sorsa as Joan, but I took so damn long writing it, Rachel got married and moved to Los Angeles. Once I had the idea that Lucille and Joan would be separate characters, I had the idea of Joan being a man. The audience would always be aware of the artifice if we had a flesh-and-blood actor in the role, no matter how good hewas." Payne hopes the drag in Christina Darling has a similar effect as Charles Busch plays such as Die! Mommie! Die!, which acknowledge the artifice but still try to engage the audience's sympathies.

Christina Darling director DeWayne Morgan suggested that the playwright himself take on Joan, since Payne had performed drag roles as an actor (including the Process Theatre's Babylon, also opposite Uterhardt). Payne realized he'd have some big pumps to fill. "I initially resisted the idea a lot. An actor would have to live up to Joan. For a performer, that's an enormous hurdle."

Payne hopes audiences won't approach the show or the performance as a campy spoof on Crawford. "All I can do is play with all the sincerity I have," he says. "There are moments in the show when the comedy comes from the absurdity of who she is, and the body she's inhabiting [in Christina Darling]. It's important to play a person like Joan in line with the standards she had. So we do an extra hour of choreography rehearsal, and spend an extra half-hour to get the makeup right. Because that's who she was, that level of attention to detail."

During a 2005 interview with Creative Loafing, Payne alluded to legal red flags raised regarding Christina Darling by the title role's inspiration. "Here's what I can say," Payne laughed when asked about the legal challenge. "There's no one that's going to watch this show, that supposedly takes place as a psychotic episode during a stroke, with a 6-foot-3, 30-year-old man playing Joan, and mistake it for reality. It's clearly a product of the author's imagination."

Despite presenting an alternate point of view of the events in Mommie Dearest, Payne would welcome Christina Crawford to see Christina Darling. "The play isn't about vindicating Joan, it's about the fact that she and Christina deserved better than the public perception of them. There's no sunshine and rainbows at the end of the play, but a level of acceptance that feels much more respectful of everyone involved."

And maybe people will ease up on the wire hanger jokes.

What Happens After "Mommie Dearest?"

2010-04-15T20:50:00.000-07:00

by Jim Farmer
Project Q Atlanta

As if researching the legendary Joan Crawford for several years wasn’t challenge enough, Atlanta playwright Topher Payne also stars as the Hollywood icon in his play “Christina Darling,” opening Friday.

Payne’s first draft of the play was back in 2004, but he quickly learned that he didn’t want to make this a simple story—or one with the histrionics of the campy Faye Dunaway movie “Mommie Dearest.”

“I wanted to flesh out the notion of what ‘Mommie Dearest’ would look like to Joan,” he says. “I learned more about her and realized this was really a family show.”

In the play, daughter Christina (Barbara Cole Uterhardt) has a stroke after watching the film version of her book “Mommie Dearest.” She is visited by her grandmother Ana (Betty Mitchell), who takes her through Joan’s life—from the time she was Lucille to the time she changed her name to Joan Crawford and the actress’ subsequent life—to give Christina an idea of who the woman really was.

Besides the often-volatile relationship Joan (Payne, photo) had with Christina, Joan had a strained relationship with her own mother.

“Ana saw affection as a weakness; she taught Joan the value of hard work,” Payne says. “Joan was on her own, and she attempted to instill that in Christina.”

Christina’s side of the relationship story was documented in the book, later made into the film. No one thought their relationship was ordinary, but some questioned whether it was as bad as Christina suggested.

DeWayne Morgan, who is directing the production for Process Theatre Co. at Onstage Atlanta, feels that some of what Christina says might have been exaggerated.

“I think a lot happened, but a lot was her anger,” he says. “Maybe she embellished it, like all daughters do!”

Morgan thinks the relationship completely fell into the sewer after Joan took over for her daughter on the soap opera “The Secret Storm.”

Payne does feel that Christina believes what she wrote, but he’s a little leery about Christina’s assertion that she wrote “Mommie Dearest” as a diary while Joan was alive, then took it to publishers after her death.

The grandmother character serves to wake up Christina and let her know that she can be an eternal victim, known only as Joan’s daughter, or move on.

“In a moment of decision, she has to prove she is more than that,” Payne says.

The playwright says the image-obsessed Joan would have been floored by the film version of “Mommie Dearest.”

“I don’t think we’ve had an entertainer who reached for perfection the way she did,” he says. “She only left the house as Joan. She would have been mortified by the movie. Image was so crucial to her. Her most important relationship was with her fans and the audience.”

Morgan feels there are a few moments in the script where this Joan has her Faye Dunaway moments, but for the most part, he feels Payne creates a three dimensional character.

“He has researched her from A to Z and knows everything about the character,” Morgan says.

Daughter Dearest

2010-04-15T11:47:00.000-07:00

by Jim Farmer
Georgia Voice

The world premiere of Process Theatre’s “Christina Darling” this weekend marks another chapter in the saga of legendary Hollywood star Joan Crawford and her adopted daughter, Christina.

Christina’s rocky relationship with Joan was covered in Christina’s book “Mommie Dearest” and later made into a campy film with Faye Dunaway.

Now gay playwright Topher Payne explores Christina’s competing personal histories and the difficult relationship between mother and daughter.

The play opens after Christina (played by Barbara Cole Uterhardt) watches the film version of “Mommie Dearest” and has a heart attack. She is visited by her grandmother, who takes her on a journey to understand the life of Joan (played by Payne).

The Georgia Voice caught up with the inimitable Joan Crawford (Payne, of course) to discuss the play.

Hello Ms. Crawford. Can you tell us a little about your new show?
May I call you Jimmy?

Yes, ma’am.
Well, Jimmy, are you familiar with “Mildred Pierce?” [the film that won Ms. Crawford a Best Actress Oscar]. I think this surpasses that; it’s the “Mildred Pierce” for a new generation.

My adopted daughter Christina in the piece is played by actress Barbara Cole Uterhardt, who brings more to the role than Christina does herself. The great Betty Mitchell plays [grandmother] Anna and Kristin Kalbi is the young Joan.

I’m happy to be able to bring this show to my fans. It’s been a long time since I was able to greet them. I will stay all night until every single photograph is signed.

And the wardrobe, Jimmy! I can’t wait for my fans to see the wardrobe!

You and Christina both worked on the soap opera “The Secret Storm,” correct?
Anyone who saw Christina on “The Secret Storm” saw her specific limitations as an actress. Christina and I were able to work on the show. I stepped in for her. We never had the opportunity to share scenes but we did share a character. I was 62 and she was 28. I understand Christina did read for the part of herself in “Christina Darling” but I'm afraid even acting her own life is beyond her abilities.

Have you seen “Mommie Dearest?”
I have. After a few stiff drinks, I was able to make it through. Faye Dunaway is a committed and intense actress. She didn’t disappoint, but the script did not live up to the strength of the character.

How do you describe the relationship with Christina?
Christina has always had a casual relationship with the truth. She loves the value of stories. I’ve been dead for 30 years and to manufacture material, you have to be creative.

What do you make of Christina’s statements about your parenting skills?
It’s certainly not the first time I have heard that from her. Now that she is an adult, I wonder how clean her house is. What standards does she have? If people did not have standards, the whole world would go the hell. If she had been adopted by a hard-scrabble family in Oklahoma, I’d be interested to see how she turned out.
As for using wire hangers, if you could see what they can do to a good dress, you can understand why I never use them!

Ms. Crawford, have you always had a strong relationship with gay men?
I love all my gay fans. In Hollywood Billy Haines was a true and loyal friend, and loyalty is a precious thing. His partner Jimmy, they had the best of what a marriage can be. I did not experience that until later in my life.

Is it true that you dance in this show?
Yes. Anyone who had read my autobiography, "A Portrait of Joan," knows I started as a dancer. I am delighted to introduce or reintroduce dance to my fans. It’s been so long since I danced. But it’s work hard, Jimmy. Hard work!

Is Bette Davis attending opening night?
I have not heard that. It would be so kind of her! Encountering Bette is always such a memorable experience!

MORE WIRE HANGERS: Revisiting the Joan Crawford Mystique

2010-04-12T20:57:00.000-07:00

by Robert Nesti
Edge Atlanta

For many, mention Joan Crawford and an image of a frightening, white-faced harridan brandishing a wire hanger comes immediately to mind. That image - and the classic line "No wire hangers" - comes courtesy of Mommie Dearest, the 1981 film biography of the great Hollywood star that featured Faye Dunaway in an impeccable, but near career-ending impersonation.

The source of the famous scene was taken from the tell-all biography of the same title written by Crawford’s adapted daughter Christina in 1978. It was the first and most famous of a series of biographies written by embittered progeny of famous stars who exposed their parents’ darker sides. But the question raised by both film and book is just how true was it? Was Crawford the monster her adopted daughter claimed she was or did Christina exaggerate things? At the time of the book’s publication some of Crawford’s friends came to her defense, while others acknowledged there was likely truth to Christina’s accusations.

Now Christina Darling, a new play having its premiere in Atlanta this week at the award-winning Process Theatre Company, explores the Crawford myth: what made Crawford the complicated individual she was and what led her to a disastrous attempt at motherhood? It is the brainchild of Atlanta-based actor/playwright Topher Payne, whose previous work includes Entertaining Lesbians and Beached Walls (2002); Relations Unknown (2003); Bad Mama (2005); and Above the Fold (2008), which won Payne a Metropolitan Atlanta Theatre Award for Best Play. This play marks his tenth to premiere in Atlanta. He also authored a column, Necessary Luxuries, that appeared weekly in David Magazine for five years. A compilation was released in 2008 and is available in hardcover and paperback.

With the production, which continues through May 8, 2010, Payne is reunited with director DeWayne Morgan, with whom he most recently worked on Above the Fold. Morgan took over as Artistic Director of the Process Theatre Company in 2001.

EDGE recently spoke with both Morgan and Payne about how the play came about, whether Joan got a bad rap from Christina, the nature of camp and their favorite Joan Crawford movies.

De Wayne Morgan :: Is it high camp?

EDGE: How did the play come your way?

DeWayne Morgan: Actually Topher and I discussed the concept back in 2003/2004. At first I wanted him to write a parody of the movie, which is actually what the first draft was more like We workshopped it in 2004/2005, then never produced it. Then last year I approached Topher about bringing it back out of the closest, so to speak, and we ended up with the draft we have now.

EDGE: What did you like about it that made you want to produce it?

DeWayne Morgan: I always loved Mommie Dearest, I am gay what can I say! However the movie is so one-sided and makes Joan the villain. It only gives one side of the story. Christina Darling of course if fictionalized version of what might have happened; but it explores Joan and where she came from, her as Lucille Fay LeSueur, which was her named before it was changed to Joan. Here Joan’s mother is introduced. So, we get to the history of what helped shaped Joan and, eventually, Christina.

EDGE: How would you describe it? Considering it has both Christina and Joan Crawford in it, is it high camp?

DeWayne Morgan: Not at all. It has its moments of camp, but the play tries to show who these women really are and tries to help you understand what created them.

EDGE: What is the key to directing parodies, such as the ones by Charles Busch that this show appears to be in the style of?

DeWayne Morgan: I think finding the blend of when to have those real true moments and when to give the audience what they want. For example Topher and I struggled the ’No wire hangers’ scene. At first it was just going to be Christina telling the story to her headmistress Ms. Chadwick when she woke up from a nightmare. But in the end we decided to go with Joan recreating the movie version as Christina tells the story.

EDGE: Why is there still such a fascination with Joan Crawford?

DeWayne Morgan: She is everything all of us secretly want to be, strong, beautiful and she didn’t take crap from anyone! ("Don’t fuck with me, fellas!") She was fabulous. She had a drink in one hand and cigarette in the other and she always looked flawless.

EDGE: Do you have a favorite Crawford film?

DeWayne Morgan: Mildred Pierce

EDGE: Did Joan Crawford get a bad rap from Christina?

DeWayne Morgan: I really don’t know. I think some of what she said was true. Then I think maybe she embellished some things. I know for a fact that the movie did. Christina Crawford hated the movie because it was over the top and took a lot of things to extreme.

EDGE: You’ve worked with Topher Payne before - how would you describe your working relationship?

DeWayne Morgan: I would say "It’s one hell of a match," to quote Joan herself. We work very well together and have learned to trust each other over the years. I think this is our fifth play together and they only keep getting better and better. Last year Above the Fold that Topher wrote and I directed for The Process Theatre won best all around show for 2009 at the Metropolitan Atlanta Theatre Award. So, we have a lot to live up to.

Topher Payne :: High camp? Nobody told me

EDGE: How did you come up with the idea of the play?

Topher Payne: I have a little recipe box I keep on my desk, and any time I have an idea I don’t quite know what to do with, I just jot it down and toss it in there. At some point after seeing Mommie Dearest for the umpteenth time, I wrote down a line for Joan Crawford: "Hello, Christina Darling. I read your book." I became enamored with the idea of Joan having a chance to give her perspective on things. The resulting research introduced me to Joan’s relationship with her mother, Anna, and I realized this is truly the whole family’s story.

EDGE: Is the play high camp? If so, how do you keep it real?

Topher Payne: If it is high camp, nobody’s told me, which is probably best. It’s definitely larger than life, by nature of the lives we’re experiencing. Nobody in this story feels anything small - everything is enormous to them. But the art of camp, I’m thinking Joan’s films from the 60s, or the works of Charles Busch, lies in its sincerity. If you play it broad, it rings false. You have to accept entirely that this is the world they inhabit. I guess camp is in the eye of the beholder.

EDGE: Who have been your influences as a playwright?

Topher Payne: Beth Henley, for sure. Paul Rudnick can write a one-liner better than anyone. I love Charles Busch’s range as an artist. Steve Yockey makes me want to take more risks. And Tyler Perry reminds me that the measure of success lies in the audiences you do manage to reach, not the ones you don’t.

EDGE: What do you like about Joan Crawford?

Topher Payne: I like her focus. I like her willingness and ability to adapt. I think she was a damn fine actress. And she looked great in hats. But she shouldn’t have raised children. Just dogs. Dogs were better suited to her expectations.

EDGE: Did she get a bad rap from Christina?

Topher Payne: I wish Christina had waited a few more years to write the book. She was still so close to the event of her relationship with her mother that I don’t think she was capable of approaching it with any degree of perspective. I don’t think Christina’s a bad person- I think she sought validation from the public because that’s what she was taught matters.

EDGE: What do you think of ’Mommie Dearest?’

Topher Payne: The book? It has its moments. Her follow-up, "Survivor," is significantly better. The film? Jesus, that script is a piece of shit. It’s a random series of events without cause or motive. The filmmakers never once question why anything happens, it’s just a horrible fact, like a tsunami. Which is a real shame, because Dunaway and Scarwid were capable of infinitely more, given half the chance.

EDGE: You play Joan in your play. How did you arrive at your characterization? Did you watch a lot of her movies?

Topher Payne: Oh, you’re asking me that on a bad day. I’ve been knitting and dancing all afternoon, trying to master both. It’s absolutely the hardest work I’ve ever done, finding her poise, her stillness, because I’m a big loud goofball in daily life. I look, sound, and move nothing like Joan. But I studied her, both in interviews and in films, to find the difference between the woman and the performer. Then I worked with Kristin Kalbli, who plays young Joan, to find our common body language. She’s so graceful and lovely, I stole a bunch of good stuff from her.

EDGE: Do you have a favorite Crawford film?

Topher Payne: Sudden Fear. Great flick, and quintessential Crawford. On the other hand, Strange Cargo, with Gable, is the least affected performance she gave in a talkie. It holds up with the best contemporary performances.

EDGE: Christina Crawford did have a stroke, but it was sometime after her book was published. Why did you incorporate it in your play?

Topher Payne: The stroke happens in the play as it did in life, in the summer of 1981. Those synapses start firing off in unexpected ways, and Christina’s life flashes before her eyes, but it’s all a little... off. Between the MGM press releases, the book, the movie, the magazine stories, she realizes she can’t trust her own memory. So her late grandmother comes in as a tour guide to help her clear things up a bit.

EDGE: Have you been in touch with Christina Crawford?

Topher Payne: I didn’t feel the need - I’m not presenting any of this as fact, just a fascinating "What if?" scenario. Christina’s told her version of events plenty of times over the years. But she’s doing very well these days. She’s a county commissioner in Idaho, and she hosts a public access show that’s, well... how to put this? Remember what I said about what makes good camp?

EDGE: This is the first time you are acting in a play you have written - what has that been like?

Topher Payne: Stupid hard. When I wrote it, I wasn’t picturing me, I was picturing Joan. As an actor, I want to honor that as much as I possibly can. I can’t say unequivocally I was the absolute perfect person for the role- that would be Charles Busch, I suppose - but I know no one would ever work harder than me to get it right. Whether I succeed, we’ll find out soon enough.

EDGE: How would you describe your relationship with DeWayne?

Topher Payne: You know how you work with someone for so long, you start thinking alike? Yeah, we don’t do that at all. Instead, we are able to anticipate what the other is going to think, and why we vehemently disagree with it. I argue with that man better than anyone I know, and it’s that level of commitment we both bring to the table, finding a way to reconcile our individual perspectives, which results in a beautiful collaboration. We respect each other a whole heck of a lot, and he loves new plays.

EDGE: If you could meet Joan Crawford, what would you ask her?

Topher Payne: I would ask her nothing. I’d just pour her a vodka and Pepsi, hand her the script, and wait for her notes.

"Designing Women LIVE" Play Relives Classic TV Fave

2010-02-23T11:33:00.000-08:00

by Jim Farmer
Project Q Atlanta

Gay men longing for a return of Julia, Suzanne, Mary Jo and Charlene get a chance to see a live version of “Designing Women” on Wednesday and Thursday, with one great twist—the major performers are all male.

DeWayne Morgan, Topher Payne and their gang with Process Theatre Company are back in drag for “Designing Women LIVE”—which features actual scripts from the TV show—after last year’s successful “The Golden Girls LIVE” fundraiser, which raised money for AID Atlanta.

The success of the 2009 event encouraged the cast to stay in dresses, only as a different set of popular characters. The “Designing Women” fundraiser benefits Process Theatre, and the group is reserving future “Golden Girls” shows to be specifically associated with AID Atlanta fundraising.

“The response to the ‘Golden Girls LIVE’ fundraiser for AID Atlanta exceeded everything we expected,” Payne says. “We didn’t want to confuse the audience base and the charity program by doing ‘Golden Girls’ this time, so we’ll reserve that for AID Atlanta, and ‘Designing Women’ will directly benefit Process Theatre.”

The shows are a great way to introduce the theater experience to a new audience that doesn’t regularly attend stage plays, he says.

“People who aren’t as willing to come to a play might come to see what we do with this fun show, and some of those may come back to see a legitimate world premiere,” Payne says. “It gets people in the habit of and comfortable with the idea of enjoying a night at the theater.”

Process will debut playwright Payne’s latest work this spring.

Morgan, the artistic director of Process Theatre, says that the “Designing Women LIVE” cast is full of gay men. He stars as Suzanne Sugarbaker, and Payne stars as the older and wiser sister Julia Sugarbaker.

The rest of the cast includes Greg Morris as Mary Jo Shively; Joey Ellington as Charlene Stillfield; and Spencer Stephens as Anthony Bouvier. Actress Jill Hames—who played Little Edie in the recent “Grey Gardens” production at Actor’s Express—plays the kooky Bernice Clifton.

Morgan feels that the ensemble works well together, but he says Hames might steal the show as Bernice.

“She is the most dead-on of all of us,” Morgan says. “At our first rehearsal, we could not stop laughing.”

Payne agrees: “She’s eerily accurate.”

The two episodes that the group is adapting for the stage are “Suzanne Goes Looking for a Friend,” in which Suzanne deals with a beauty queen friend who has come out of the closet, and “Bernice’s Sanity Hearing,” in which Bernice’s mental stability is called into question.

Neither episode is available on DVD, so it should be fun to revisit shows that haven’t been available for years. The cast also decided to weave some classic moments from other episodes into the stage script, so the patched-in “Best Of” monologues and one-liners make the material extra fresh. Payne incorporates Julia’s famous “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia” monologue into one skit, for example.

“[‘Designing Women’] is so loved and well known, especially in Atlanta,” Payne says. “I have never felt such an obligation to get every word and inflection perfect.”

Morgan says that, like “The Golden Girls,” “Designing Women” attracted a lot of gay viewers, and that he himself was a huge fan of the show.

“What’s not to love,” he says. “You have an ex beauty queen that all gay men can relate to, as well as a Joan Crawford like character in Julia. These four women are just the greatest combination. And the fashions are great.”

Morgan remembers that “Designing Women” and “The Golden Girls” had a lot in common. “Both had four women, some larger than life, and each had a gay episode and an episode dealing with AIDS,” he says. “But despite similarities, each was its own show.”

To prepare, Morgan has been watching the “Suzanne Goes Looking for a Friend” episode over and over to get Suzanne’s mannerisms and movement.

“It’s a lot of fun (playing her),” he says. “I loved her as a kid. She tells it like it is and spares no one.”

What’s next for this lively crew of performers? Payne hints that “Bewitched” is on the table for a benefit show, but in the expect-the-unexpected world these guys live in, anything is possible.

The Process Theatre Company’s “Designing Women LIVE” runs at Onstage Atlanta Wednesday, Feb. 24 and Thursday, Feb. 25. Online tickets are available, or call 404-245-4205. And hurry, Wednesday’s performance was almost sold out as of Tuesday afternoon.

The Life Aquatic

2009-09-30T12:38:00.000-07:00

A Craigslist ad for a no-strings hookup leads to an apocalyptic dilemma in boom

by Curt Holman
Creative Loafing

Aurora Theatre’s comedy boom gives new meaning to the expression “I wouldn’t go out with you if you were the last person Earth.” Directed by Joe Gfaller, boom begins with an unimaginably lousy date that somehow manages only to get worse.

Jo (Eve Krueger), a young journalism student, responds to a Craigslist ad promising a no-strings-attached hookup. Meek marine biologist Jules (Topher Payne), who placed the ad, shies away from Jo’s sexual aggressiveness, and eventually reveals that he’s both gay and a virgin. When Jo asks how he knows he’s gay if he’s never been with anyone, Jules replies, “The non-randomness of the erections.”

Nodding to the aquarium in his underground lab, Jules explains that his examination of fish behavior patterns has convinced him that a cataclysmic event is nigh. He and Jo could end up as the last two people on Earth, although Jo accuses him of engineering a “Cormac McCarthy meets Road Warrior meets 'Survivor'” fantasy. Krueger and Payne prove well-cast as the mismatched couple, but the comedic action doesn’t quite crackle in the play’s initial section, which unfolds like a “Kids in the Hall” sketch.

Meanwhile, in a corner of the performance space, a woman with the name tag “Barbara” (Shelly McCook) plays a massive drum and operates peculiar controls during key moments. A cheerful tour-guide type, Barbara addresses the audience with increasing frequency, until her personal subplot rivals Jo and Jules' relationship. McCook may have been born to play quirky, chipper roles that call for physical humor, and she winningly captures Barbara’s habit of miming words that she can’t speak aloud.

I won’t spoil whether Barbara is really “there” or not, but as her minidrama interweaves with Jo and Jules’ increasingly outlandish predicament, boom touches on much deeper emotions than you’d expect from the play's beginning. Peter Sinn Nachtrieb’s play inaugurates both Aurora’s smaller performing space and Georgia Gwinnett College Lab Series and promises to bring intriguing, adventurous new plays to Lawrenceville. By the end, boom approaches the good-natured satire of the late, beloved Douglas Adams, and offers a new spin on Adams’ catchphrase, “So long, and thanks for all the fish.”

"Greater Tuna" Spoofs Small-Town America

2009-05-18T09:32:00.000-07:00

By L. Pierce Carson

The Napa Valley Register

A simple party skit nearly three decades ago blossomed into a critically acclaimed comedy that’s been staged in theaters all over the world — even a command performance at the White House.“Greater Tuna” is a delightfully devilish satire on life in rural America created by Oklahoma natives Joe Sears, Jaston Williams and Ed Howard, who also served as its original director.

Two actors play more than two dozen characters — including men, women, children and animals — who inhabit Tuna, “the third smallest town in Texas,” where the Lions Club is far too liberal and Patsy Cline hits are heard nonstop on radio station OKKK. The two-act, two-hour comedy begins with a radio report on the death of Judge Roscoe Buckner from an apparent stroke while wearing a 1950 turquoise Dale Evans one-piece swimsuit with “lots of cowgirl fringe,” and draws audiences in as it provides a fascinating look at outrageous small-town inhabitants, along with non-stop laughs.
The show began in the early ’80s as a party skit the trio created based on a political cartoon. Early tour dates found an instant audience coast to coast, as the show played to packed houses in San Francisco, Atlanta, Houston and Hartford before Sears and Williams found themselves performing “Greater Tuna” for more than a year Off-Broadway at Circle in the Square Theatre.That led to an HBO special produced by Norman Lear, which took the “Greater Tuna” phenomenon to every city in America.

Sears and Williams eventually took the show to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., and a pair of command performances at the White House for President and Mrs. George H. W. Bush in 1990 and ’91.The popularity crossed the Atlantic Ocean in 1988 as the highlight of Scotland’s famed Edinburgh Festival, while San Francisco’s Marines Memorial Theatre saw a record-breaking seven-year run.Audiences liked “Greater Tuna” so much that Sears and Williams have written three sequels, which are all playing somewhere in the country at present.

“Greater Tuna” finally showed up in wine country last weekend, in the capable hands of a pair of talented southerners, Jef Holbrook (Georgia) and Topher Payne (Mississippi). Sunday afternoon’s performance at Yountville’s Lincoln Theater was the final stop on a seven-month-long coast-to-coast tour. Seeing someone other than Sears and Williams inhabit the characters they created was indeed enlightening — to see that they’d drawn such larger-than-life caricatures that others could build on.

Although I’d seen the savvy Oklahomans send audiences into fits of laughter on numerous occasions, there were moments when I actually thought the weekend visitors were able to breathe added life into their respective roles. This is not an easy show to do as both men are often required to walk off stage and reappear in a matter of seconds as someone new, wearing a completely different set of clothes.

The two-member cast launches its small-town tale with radio announcers Thurston Wheelis (Holbrook) and Arlis Streuve (Payne), roles to which they return throughout the show.But they also introduce us to the Bumiller family — Holbrook as the well-intentioned mother, Bertha, and Payne playing the roles of the three children — twins Stanley (a reform school alum) and Charlene (a cheerleader reject) and Jody, who willingly takes home all the stray dogs offered to him by the director of the humane society.

Holbrook also does a star turn as Aunt Pearl Burriss, who runs a one-woman campaign against chicken-killing dogs with her “bitter pills” (read poison) until she accidentally kills her husband’s prize bird dog.The list of characters includes a klansman, staunch weatherman, UFO spotter, and the vice president of the Smut Snatchers of the New Order, a fashionista named Vera Carp. I feel Payne made this character even more bizarre than the actor who created the role.

A moderately sized crowd, offered a cool auditorium on a hot afternoon, seemed to really enjoy this marvelous satire of small town Americana. Holbrook and Payne did the show’s authors proud.

Men in Dresses

2009-05-14T18:51:00.000-07:00

Small-town humor provokes big laughter with two-man tour de farce 'Greater Tuna'

by Lily Dayton

Monterey County Herald

Y'all are invited to the small town in the big state where people owe more money on their tractors than on their cars and where the four seasons are known as almost summer, summer, still summer and hunting season.
The comedy show "Greater Tuna" will be featured at the Golden State Theatre in downtown Monterey tonight (Thursday) at 7:30 p.m.
This production, presented by Artbeat, features the two actors and quick-change artists Jef Holbrook and Topher Payne portraying 22 different characters through a series of rapid-fire costume changes. All of these changes will take place in less than 10 seconds.
Ed Howard, one of the three original writers of this comedy as well as the director of its Broadway production, is directing the show that will appear tonight in Monterey.
Howard and his friends Jaston Williams and Joe Sears wrote this comedy in 1981. It quickly became a cult favorite in Austin, then moved on to the Alley Theatre in Houston, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and an extended run at Circle in the Square on Broadway in New York.
Described as "deliriously funny" by Alan Ulrich from the San Francisco Examiner, the story takes place in the (fictional) third-smallest town in West Texas.
It's a typical day in town until the local judge is found dead in a woman's one-piece swimsuit. This starts a chain of events that interrupts all of the characters' lives, creating havoc, mishaps and loads of laughter.
When asked what makes this show so tremendously funny, actor Holbrook's immediate response was "Men in dresses."
Fellow actor Payne followed this up with, "What makes this show funny is that small towns are small towns wherever you go. Every town has its own local busybody, the woman older than Egypt who everyone's terrified of and the local delinquent often discussed at the dinner table. The humor comes from the identification. And then of course there are the men in dresses."
These two actors have a playful camaraderie between them, so it comes as a surprise that they didn't know each other before they started their first "Tuna" tour last February.
"We met at the first rehearsal," said Holbrook. "We had two weeks to put the show on and we just took off like old friends. Now it's hard to imagine doing this show with anyone else."
Holbrook commented that the rehearsal process was a challenge for the two of them with roughly a dozen characters a piece — two hours of material for only two actors; but he said that the quick character changes have become second nature to them both during the show.
To help with the quick-change process psychologically, they each have their own tricks.
"Jeff has his whole dressing room routine, but my biggest trick is looking at what shoes I'm wearing," said Payne.
Holbrook described his dressing room routine. "I sit in the dressing room and listen to music that makes me happy. Tom Petty or the Wallflowers or basically any good, twangy acoustic music that makes me think of Texas. The music relaxes me — it's Pavlovian. If you go on stage all tense, you're dead."
"Almost all the costume changes happen off-stage," said Payne. "We have two amazing dressers back stage that work twice as hard as we do. It's an absolutely full change — for example, going from a reverend in a full suit with a wig and a moustache, then walking on stage as a sheriff with a gun, holster, sunglasses and hat."
Though Holbrook considers himself an actor before a comedian, he's very comfortable in a comedic role because he's previously acted in many comedy shows (including the film "Morris the Cat").
"I think stand-up would be fun, but I've never done it," he said. "I love acting — and comedies are fun."
Payne considers himself a writer who acts. "I primarily work as a playwright and I just finished my first book — a memoir of my mid-20s, "Necessary Luxuries." During this time, I was diagnosed with cancer and went through treatment three times. Then, after the last treatment, I took off with just a suitcase and traveled to Scotland. The book takes off when I return to America with nothing but my suitcase."
He credits the life-changing experience of cancer diagnosis and the subsequent roller coaster of treatment as giving him a new lease on life. "This gave me a new appreciation for taking risks and seizing opportunities that are out there, being aware of what you can live without. This tour is an extension of that experience. (Before cancer treatment) I never would have set everything aside and jumped into a 16-passenger van."
Payne said that the humor in "Greater Tuna" is appropriate for adults and older children.
"Not that there is any material that would be inappropriate for young kids, but the comedy is geared toward 12 and up. Still, we have had 8 or 10-year-olds in the audience that were cracking up."

"Tuna" Just As Funny As a Jerk In the Knee

2009-05-03T13:13:00.000-07:00

by Scott Whited

The Pueblo Chieftain

Is it more enlightened to laugh at people, or to laugh with people? The audience at "Greater Tuna," the season finale for the Center Stage Performing Arts Series on Saturday night, didn't have to concern themselves too much with that question. They got to laugh both with people - their fellow seat-sitters at the Sangre de Cristo Arts and Conference Center, and at people - the hapless inhabitants of Greater Tuna, the setting of the play described in the program as the "third smallest town in Texas."

It's late summer 1981, and the folks of Tuna are small- and narrow-minded, perfect fodder for laugh-inducing jabs by playwrights Jaston Williams, Joe Sears, and Ed Howard (who also directed). A record-burning is in the offing, but listeners of omnipresent radio station OKKK are told not to worry: pompadoured Little Richard is going to hell, but hip-swiveling Elvis up in heaven because he's a good ol' country boy at heart.

This play is a favorite for both touring and ambitious local companies, mainly because of its primary theatrical device: Its 20-character cast is played by two virtuoso actors. This attracts actors because of the challenge and producers because of the reduced cost. Pueblo has, in fact, seen a number of versions over the last decade or two. People love to laugh (just ask Ed Wynn in "Mary Poppins") and "Greater Tuna" provides plenty of laughs.

The two-man cast in this production featured two Georgians, Columbus-bred Jef Holbrook and Atlanta-based Topher Payne. Both were talented clowns, milking their characters for all the broad comedy they could. Heck, with so many yokel Texas twangs on display, they were halfway home. We all know that hicks and rubes are funny by definition, right?

A fine example was Holbrook's R.R. Snavely, a besotted local who played an imaginary violin while trying to figure out whether he had or had not seen a UFO (short for "Unidentified Flying Object," OKKK repeatedly clarifies for its audience), shaped like a chalupa. Payne depicted many a goofy laugh-inducer, especially the holier-than-thou Vera Carp, whose sleep-excused show-stopper was splaying her beskirted legs indelicately in the crowd's collective face. Happily shocked chortles filled the auditorium.

There were occasional nods in the direction of empathy for the hicks. Holbrook's big-hair housewife Bertha Bumiller does her best with her oddball brood, but betraying husband Hank (also played by Holbrook) leaves her soothing her pain with the country Dr. Phil: Patsy Cline singing her ode to eternal love, "Always." Animal-lover Petey Fisk (Payne) beseeches a Lord he's not sure is out there, "If you did create all this, we could sure use some help taking care of it."

"Greater Tuna" takes sure aim at our funnybones. But the comedic response is similar to that of a knee's jerk in response to a tap by a physician. We know these situations, accents, and characters are supposed to be funny, so we laugh as a reflex, almost without thinking.

Upon reflection, however, there is a mean-spirited quality to the humor. These people are provincial, not terribly well-educated, and biased in favor of their own experiences and habits. They deserve to be laughed at, right?As Vera Carp says to a fellow viewer visiting the town's funeral home to pay respects to a male "hanging judge" who's been found dead of a seeming stroke while wearing a Dale Evans swimsuit, "Glass houses."

Glass houses, indeed.

A Bookless Signing

2009-02-06T20:15:00.000-08:00

by Richard Eldredge

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Leave it to inimitable Atlanta columnist and playwright Topher Payne to stage a first during Thursday night’s book signing at Wordsmith’s in Decatur.

“What’s that saying about when life gives you lemons?” Payne explained to Buzz. “I’m considering it the ultimate going green book signing.”

Payne’s in-store event for “Necessary Luxuries,” a new collection of his popular David magazine columns, had to soldier on without the actual books Thursday, because of an error in shipping from his publisher.

Instead, Payne read selections and took advance orders for future books. Local act the Wayne Fishell Experiment banged out some original tunes for attendees.

Thankfully, Payne is having better luck with the infinite supplies of the audio version of the tome, which is raking in some nice coin for the author via customer downloads on iTunes.

3x Cancer Survivor Soars

2009-01-23T10:00:00.001-08:00

The fabulous Daryn Kagan has a conversation with me about life and stuff.

Peach Buzz: Best of 2008

2008-12-31T12:59:00.000-08:00

by Richard Eldredge, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Kookiest fund-raiser: In August, Atlanta playwright Topher Payne convinced actor pals Greg Morris, DeWayne Morgan and Joey Ellington to work for free and don drag for “Golden Girls Live!” at Onstage Atlanta benefiting AID Atlanta. Said Payne: “The frightening thing is that in drag as Bea Arthur I’m more mannish than I am dressed as myself.”

Something Fishy at the Dixie

2008-11-27T20:53:00.000-08:00

by Laura Bond, The Ruston Daily Reader

Elaborate costumes and scenery can be breathtaking accessories for a theatrical production. They are not, however, essential to creating an interesting, funny or believable show. Neither is having props or casting actors who look the parts. This was evident as national touring group Springer Theatricals presented the comedic play A Tuna Christmas on Tuesday evening at the Dixie Center for the Arts.

On a virtually unchanging set and holding make-believe cameras and pretending to gobble down snacks, two actors brought the story of a small, colorful, fictitious Texas town to life. Each actor played 11 characters, several of them female, which involved lightning-fast costume changes and drastic alterations to their posture, voices and personal gestures.

The production, co-written and directed by University of Alabama graduate Ed Howard, is one of several plays revolving around the eccentric characters in Texas’ third smallest city, including Greater Tuna, Red, White and Tuna and Tuna Does Vegas.

Among the characters of A Tuna Christmas is Bertha Bumiller, whose attempts to hold her family together as she copes with a rebellious son and unfaithful husband prompt audience members’ concern. Wearing a dark wig fixed in a bun, Georgia’s Jef Holbrook is convincing as a small-town housewife who refuses to dance because she’s Baptist.

Didi Snavely, a cigarette-smoking, raspy-voiced used-weapons shop owner played by author and actor Topher Payne, appeared to be an audience favorite. Talking about the importance of toting weapons during the holidays, this outspoken woman remarks, “Wouldn’t you rather shoot somebody than watch them run off with your new toaster? I would.” Vera Carp, a domineering, culturally insensitive snob also played by Payne, produced a lot of laughs as she created a holiday yard display with live sheep and pulled “dirty” words from the town’s production of A Christmas Carol, in her role as a member of the Smut Snatchers organization.

The show maintained the attention of an audience of hundreds that included commuters from Monroe. Barely five minutes passed without eruptions of laughter at the twisted depictions of southern living. At the close, the sea of onlookers got out of their seats for a standing ovation to recognize the hard work put into the two-man show.

"Tuna Christmas" Kicks Off Season of Holiday Plays

2008-11-21T08:29:00.000-08:00

Topher Payne Plays 13 Roles in Single Performance

by Jim Farmer, Southern Voice

A trio of holiday-themed plays open within the next week, all written by gay men and all featuring gay actors in leading roles. Just before Atlanta sees long runs of “The Santaland Diaries” and “A Queer Carol,” the one-week run of “A Tuna Christmas,” the perennial favorite starring two actors who play a whole town of characters, stops in as part of a national tour.

Local playwright, actor and columnist Topher Payne is one of the two stars of “Tuna,” which opened locally on Nov. 19 and plays through Nov. 23 at ART Station in Stone Mountain. The show is the popular follow-up to “Greater Tuna,” taking place in the third smallest town in Texas. In this show, hell breaks loose as a community theater’s production of “A Christmas Carol” and the annual yard-decorating contest go awry.

Payne and his co-star Jef Holbrook play all 24 characters, and Payne portrays 13 of them — from a 10-year-old boy to a 90-year-old grandmother. Approximately half of the characters are women. Although “Tuna” is considered a widely recognized as a two-man piece, Payne gives extra credit to two crew members.

“It’s really a four person show,” he says. “We have two dressers, and they deserve credit for dressing us, sometimes within seconds.”

Payne says the play’s humor hits a nerve with a wide audience.

“It’s not just about life in Texas or the South,” he says. “People know and recognize these people. Small towns are small towns.”

The Springer Opera House in Columbus is producing the tour.

"Notes" on Atlanta Scandal

2008-10-23T15:57:00.000-07:00

by Dyana Bagby, Southern Voice

Atlanta playwright, actor, activist and David Atlanta Magazine columnist Topher Payne stops in at Outwrite Bookstore & Coffeehouse today to sign copies of his first book of collected essays, “Necessary Luxuries: Notes on a Semi-fabulous Life.”
Compiled from his “Maybe It’s Just Me” David columns as well as plenty of new material, Payne’s book is sure to be a hit with fans of the man willing to share every detail of his life — and the details of the lives of his friends, including George, Slutty Mandy and soon-to-be-husband, Preppy.
Payne’s reading and signing is at 7:30 p.m. Outwrite is located at 991 Piedmont Ave. Call 404-607-0082 or visit www.outwritebooks.com for more information.

Grotesquiana

2008-09-25T20:33:00.000-07:00

By Brad Rudy, Atlanta Theatre Buzz

REVIEW: DON'T LOOK AT THE FAT LADY and ABOVE THE FOLD **** ½

Topher Payne's Two One-Acts, "Don't Look at the Fat Lady" and "Above the Fold" share a fascination with the Grotesqueries found in news headlines and the real people (with all the appropriate hopes and fears and obsessions) just out of sight beneath the screaming headlines. In Process Theatre's capable hands (as directed by DeWayne Morgan), both plays are funny, intriguing, well-acted, and even a bit suggestive of the "Talking Heads" paradigm of TV News and Panel Shows. Together, they make a unified and unique trip to the theatre. But, in its infinite wisdom, the M.A.T. Powers-That-Be have separated them into different productions, so, I'll talk about them as such. After all, I am second to none in my submission to "Powers-That-Be" (Be they Awards Panels or Exploitative News Headline Writers).

Don't Look at the Fat Lady Why not? I can't help it. Imprisoned on her couch, Gloria is grotesque, filthy, obscene in her obesity. She's a Car Wreck on the Side of the Road, a CSI Episode, a live Execution. And, as her story unfolds, she's an immensely ingratiating heroine, a kind hearted soul trapped in a fat suit built more by circumstance than by her own weaknesses (not that she doesn't have any weaknesses). Gloria was always a "plus-sized" girl, living in the shadow (so to speak) of her beautiful sister, obsessively self-deprecating to survive in an obsessively thin-cultured world. But she had the kindness of an angel, living only for the moments when she can care for the children at her church's nursery. A combination of a freak accident, an incompetent doctor, and a neglectful "Might-as-well-be Husband" has led to her current distress-confined to her living room couch for an extended convalescence, she has grown so large she has literally become part of the furniture. Before too long, she (and we) are shocked to discover just how long she has been there and how abandoned she has become. If Topher Payne's script has plot loopholes large enough for Gloria to slip through (If her electricity has been off that long, how does she know about Katie Couric? If she's been alone that long, where did she get the drink she sips at - or is it really an empty glass she sips at by habit and delusion? If she's been alone that long, how large was she when she first had nothing to eat, and, presumably, her body started consuming itself?), his dialog is compelling and funny and ultimately moving. And, in Jo Howarth's hands, Gloria is an eminently likeable woman, so likeable we end up sharing her delusions and accepting the plot holes that accompany her story.
Let's contemplate Ms. Howarth's achievement for a moment here. Here is an actress trapped in a fat suit, unable to move an inch, who must grab our attention and hold it for what is essentially a 60-minute monologue.
She must make us not only understand this woman, but to finally like her and actually care about her fate. That she succeeds so well is not only commendable, but remarkable. This will be the performance to beat come award time next summer. On the production side, this is a small black-box venue (OnStage Atlanta's Mini-Theatre) and a repertory situation, so set design is minimal. On the other hand, the set dressing (stacks and piles of garbage and detritus that seem to be an organic part of the couch) is perfectly realized (I do not envy the crew that has to clear that for the second act of the evening). Nina Gooch's Lighting Design shows a good sense of color and mood (not to mention TV flickers and sudden sunlight), and Jane Koesig's fat-suit costume (which ultimately gives way to an angelic white nightgown) is almost perfect. At the end of the play, Gloria looks at us and says "What? You think fat people only dream about being thin?" Oddly enough, I never thought this. That the people in Gloria's life lead her to this conclusion is a subtle indicator of the circumstances that have brought her to this couch, a condemnation of those who build the "fat-suit" of neglect that becomes her prison. She's better off now that she's left them behind.

Above the Fold If "Don't Look at the Fat Lady" is a "Behind the Headlines" look at a real-life Tabloid Story, "Above the Fold" takes that concept quite literally. Four vignettes offer pithy "outside-of-the-box" glimpses into stories that headline supermarket Tabloids (the stories "Above the Fold" of the front page). Each one could be developed into a full-length one-act (if that's not an oxymoron). As they stand now, writer Topher Payne finds a kernel of depth in each story, developing them just long enough to make his points.
In the first scene, an "ugly duckling" housewife, Darcy (a radiant Amanda Cucher) has had an extreme Make-Over in one of those Reality TV Plastic Surgery grotesqueries. She spends her time preening, checking out her re-done face in any reflective surface, and constantly seeking assurances from her distant husband Jim-Jack (Greg Morris). It doesn't take long for us to realize that Jim-Jack misses the woman he fell in love with, and was more attracted to her inner beauty than her new "perfect" look. In the second scene, we meet Shonda (Jo Howarth), a woman who has been in a "persistent vegetative state" for more than a decade, and who is in the middle of a media circus generated by her feuding husband and parents (sound familiar?). Godfrey (Greg Morris), a flamboyant make-up artist, has come to "fix her up" for the latest media bash. In what amounts to a 15-minute monologue, Godfrey expounds on the nature of beauty and fashion, and all the things she's "missed" over the past decade ("Can you believe Princess Di is actually dead?"). The fact that his conclusion is that she may be better off by missing all the tsuris of the past decade is one of the better ironies of this enjoyable piece. In the third scene (my personal favorite), we're in Michael Jackson's Neverland. Carolyn (Ms. Howarth) is interviewing a mother and son (Ms. Cucher and Mr. Morris) to "contain" any scandal associated with the un-named star's latest indiscretion. From the first, it's obvious that the mother initiated everything to make a quick buck. Of course, the twist here is who is the smartest of three. Finally, in a powerful conclusion, a lesbian couple (Ms. Howarth and Ms. Cucher) recount the events leading up to their quiet friend's violent rampage at the local high school. In an “interview" that reflects their own ostracism, they can't help but wonder, not "why he did it," but "why he waited so long." It is a stark condemnation not only of the societal pressures that lead to such acts of violence, but of the media fascination with the perpetrators of them.
It may be easy to accuse Mr. Payne of being a tad facile with these stories (and, indeed, he may be), but his point is not to develop our understanding of them (or the characters he creates to tell the stories), but to remind us of our own complicity in the "Tabloidization" of our media and news coverage. Has our love of grotesquiana overwhelmed our sense and our shame? Is this, in fact, a self-feeding monster? In a way, it must be. We, as an audience, are fascinated by these situations, by these extremes of human behavior. Yet it is a fascination with the grotesque that causes them. Isn't it? That these vignettes bring these questions to mind is indicative of the success of Mr. Payne's endeavor. The production, as a whole, is quite smoothly put together, with sets and costumes designed to facilitate quick changes, all of which are "covered" by video introductions of the latest scandal "ripped from the headlines."
The actors inhabit the characters with various degrees of success, but always with a skill and conviction that drive the stories forward. Stagingwise, most are static "interview" situations, yet compelling because of their lack of movement. They are, in effect, staged "Talking-Head Documentaries," and are reminiscent of that often mis-used paradigm. These plays, like "Don't Look at the Fat Lady," are funny, moving, and compelling reminders about the extremes that can result from the combination of the most seemingly innocuous events. That they are all based on real tabloid adventures is cause for reflection. Hopefully, what's reflected back isn't as grotesque as what's on stage.

"Golden Girls" Live!

2008-08-26T05:25:00.000-07:00

by Richard Eldredge

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

This could be the kookiest fund-raiser of the year. Tonight, Atlanta playwright and actor Topher Payne and his thespian friends will present “The Golden Girls Live!” at Onstage Atlanta at 2597 North Decatur Road in Decatur.

Did we mention that Payne, Greg Morris, DeWayne Morgan and Joey Ellington will all be in wigs, heels and painstakingly recreated frocks from the 1980s NBC sitcom, stitched by Atlanta costume designer Jane Kroessig? Payne has adapted two scripts for the stage originally penned by “Golden Girls” creator Susan Harris.

One hundred percent of the proceeds from tonight and Wednesday’s 8 p.m. performances will go to Atlanta Cotillion, an annual fund-raiser for AID Atlanta. Which means everyone involved is working for free.
“For years, I’ve been told that I’m the Bea Arthur in my group of friends,” Payne told us Monday. “I thought, ‘Let’s make some money off that!’ The frightening thing is that in drag as Bea Arthur I’m more mannish than I am dressed as myself.”

So how did Payne’s pal and Atlanta actor Morris land Rue McClannahan’s coveted signature role of Blanche Devereaux? Replied Payne: “How do you not cast Greg Morris as Blanche? The only major difference is now he’s acting trampy while wearing sling backs.”

All That Glitters

2008-07-16T07:00:00.000-07:00

Can't Buy Me Love... Or Can You?

by Curt Holman

Creative Loafing

Valhalla focuses on beauty as its own reward, whether in the form of an architectural wonder, an attractive body or a pink chenille bedspread. The relentlessly quippy playwright of such hits as I Hate Hamlet and Jeffrey, Rudnick reveals deeper ambitions in Valhalla. The play examines the fascination of many gay men with aesthetic beauty, a lifelong obsession for both Bavaria's Ludwig (Topher Payne) in the 19th century and Texas' James Avery (Matt Felten) in the 1930s and '40s. Both have consuming needs for beauty – in people and objects – even as children. In his first scene, James shoplifts a crystal swan as a kleptomaniacal 10-year-old, saying only, "I needed it."
Payne offers a droll and sympathetic portrait of Ludwig, a royal sissy who moons over Wagnerian opera, recoils at ugly servants and remains oblivious to political realities. The Ludwig track offers hilarious, Woody Allen-esque farce, and Jane Kroessing's costumes convey Ludwig's world on a shoestring budget. The James Avery storyline proves more difficult. As a young man, James pursues his desires so directly that he's almost sociopathic. He develops a romantic triangle with a handsome young jock (Greg Morris) and the high school beauty queen (Kate Graham). Graham's amusing role speaks of the responsibility and entitlement of the extremely good-looking: "Inner beauty is tricky because you can't prove it."
Valhalla commits to some weak jokes and peculiar detours under Peter Hardy's direction, including a World War II musical number, "Soldiers Need Seamen," that, despite Felten's musical chops, belongs in a farce about gays in the military. The more Ludwig and James seek transcendence, however, the more intriguing the play becomes. James pursues seemingly unattainable love while Ludwig all but bankrupts his country, putting his throne at risk to build such structures as Neuschwanstein Castle, the model for Sleeping Beauty's castle in Disneyland. In effect, both men want to live in castles in the air, but realities of their times bring them crashing to Earth to suffer fates as brutal as Shylock's.
Valhalla depicts conflicts with the materialistic world at a time when such definitions are becoming more ambiguous. In the 21st century, we live in an increasingly paperless economy, and goods such as music and other forms of entertainment exist in cyberspace, not on our shelves. I'm not sure if that makes prized ephemera more or less valuable, but shows as thought-provoking as Valhalla would be cheap at twice the price.

Swan Song

2008-07-09T09:33:00.000-07:00

by Brad Rudy

Atlanta Theatre Buzz

In 1848, Richard Wagner writes his opera Lohengrin, creating time-honored melodies that tell the Arthurian tale of the Knight of the Swans, and his rescue of the fair Elsa.

In 1869, King Ludwig II of Bavaria, a friend to Wagner and lover of all things Lohengrin, begins construction on the magnificent Neuschwanstein (“New Swan Stone”) Castle near Hohenschwangau in Southwest Bavaria.

In the early 1930’s a fictional boy named James Avery steals a glass Swan figurine from a small town Texas Department store because he “really wanted it.”

These seemingly unconnected events form the backbone of Paul Rudnick’s new comedy, “Valhalla,” an examination of love and beauty and music and swans. And it is the opening of this year’s Essential Theatre “Power Play” Festival, an annual gathering of plays freshly written by Georgia Playwrights, or works of established playwrights that are seeing their first Southeastern productions. Mr. Rudnick has built a reputation as a “gay Neil Simon,” writing very accessible plays with gay themes (or, as in “I Hate Hamlet,” gay subtexts) as well as popular movies (such as “In & Out”). With “Valhalla,” he has written a very funny, sometimes moving piece that follows the life and adventures of King Ludwig and the fictional romances of the 20th-century James Avery. All the other characters are played with bravura quick-change ease by a company four, who often switch genders, centuries, and costumes in the space of seconds.

Although I found much to admire and enjoy in this production, I’m not sure Mr. Rudnick completely succeeds at integrating the two stories, and I’m not sure this production takes full advantage of the opportunities that are there. This is really only a vague feeling, leaving me at a loss to articulate specific shortcomings of either playwright or production team. Still, this is a funny (VERY funny) and captivating show, which actually motivated me to find out more about poor Ludwig and his life.

Ludwig, while still a Prince, finds himself isolated from others and in full training for his eventual succession to the throne. He has no one who shares his likes and dislikes, no friends, no confidants, and no desire to make the further acquaintance of any of the ludicrously “wrong”’ Princesses who are paraded before him. But one day, while in the forest, he makes the acquaintance of Princess Sophie of Austria, an equally insecure lady who shares his love for Lohengrin and his dislike for arranged royal engagements. She is also a hunchback, and Ludwig is the first person to ever make her feel beautiful. They remain the best of friends, even after Sophie discovers he’s really the Prince, even after she discovers his preference for the tenors and baritones of the local opera company. And she inspires him to follow in the footsteps of the great kings of the past, and be remembered for his buildings, buildings that bankrupt his kingdom and send him into a presumed and comforting madness.

Meanwhile, a hundred years later, James Avery is heading down the path to juvenile delinquency. He finishes High School in a reformatory and comes back home to seduce away Sally, the almost-bride (and prom queen) of his childhood conquest, Henry Lee. That she loves them both is evident, that James loves them both is equally evident. As they grow into adulthood, James and Henry Lee find themselves in the same army unit, behind German lines, hiding for their lives. Meanwhile, Sally finds herself pregnant with the child of, well, one of them.

The war takes a bitter toll, and the play ends with a bittersweet coda, which I won’t spoil for you. Let’s just say it involves a solid gold valentine-shaped reliquary that may (or may not) contain the heart of King Ludwig.

I cannot talk about this production without praising the cast. Topher Payne is Ludwig in a way I was not expecting. He has made a career of playing and writing about gay characters. Here, though, he concentrates more on making him a confused, lonely young man without the stereotypical campy mannerism we might expect. Yes, we see him preferring men to women, but we also believe his genuine affection for and friendship with Sophie. He is a fully a 19th-century aristocrat, not a 20th-century cliché. And I, for one, fully accepted his eventual embracement of madness, his obsession with Lohengrin, and his total infatuation with beauty of any kind.

Back in the 1930’s and 1940’s, Matt Felten gives James Avery a drive and burning intensity that transcends sexuality and expectation. He makes the seductions of Henry Lee and Sally equally believable and even desirable. This is a character who can only be happy indulging all his sides. Of the supporting cast, I found Kate Graham, the most impressive, and this is not intended to belittle the efforts of the others – Greg Morris (Henry Lee and others), Sunny Williams (the mother of both Ludwig and James, among others), and Alejandro Gutierrez (Ludwig's brother, his chief minister, and others). But Ms. Graham must play both the blonde Texan Sally and the Austrian brunette Sophie, sometimes in consecutive scenes. Yes, she owes a debt of gratitude to her dressers and wig-makers, but she gives both characters a sparkle and edge that are all her own -- delightful, appealing, and distinct. These (and the few other minor parts) show her to have a remarkable range that hopefully will soon be exploited by other theatres.

If the connection between the stories strains a bit, if the interactions between the characters of differing centuries sometimes seem more playwright contrivance that character-driven madness, if the energy (and humor) flag a bit in Act II, the final coda is beautiful, symbolic elegy to both stories, and a moving meditation on the nature of love and beauty.

The set is simple and stark, fully in tune with the constraints of a production in repertory, and seemingly in contrast with Ludwig's obsession with elaborate architecture and over -the-top construction. But, at the same time, it gives an elegant bridge between the centuries, and gives us the opportunity to imagine a grander castle than any set designer could conceive and build. And, on Ludwig'sascension to the throne, the lighting conspires with the simple set (and Mr. Payne’s performance) to give us a moment of transplendent glory.

King Ludwig was found dead under mysterious circumstances in 1886 in a lake outside his still not-quite-complete Neuschwanstein Castle. Following the custom of his time, his heart was not buried with his body, but kept in a gilded reliquary. This play succeeds as history never does in showing how the truth of his heart is the Swanlike beauty of Lohengrin, a Swan Song for a life striving for the eternal, a beauty capturing that timeless eternal.

Rather than the traditional “Swan Song” of eras’ ends, this is a fitting opening for what promises to be another successful Power Plays Festival.

Back and Forth

2008-07-04T19:02:00.000-07:00

Topher Payne and Sunny Williams shine in Valhalla

by Jim Farmer

Southern Voice

WRITER PAUL RUDNICK is a truly funny man, but his projects aren’t always fail proof. Everyone remembers his “In and Out” and “Addams Family Values,” but he’s also responsible for film duds such as “Marci X” and the “The Stepford Wives” remake.

As a playwright, he’s also had mixed success. Some of his work — especially “Jeffrey” and “The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told,” are beloved. Now Atlanta has a chance to see Rudnick’s latest work, “Valhalla,” currently part of Essential Theatre’s Power Plays Fest.

Rudnick shifts between two initially dissimilar worlds, that of King Ludwig II of Bavaria (Topher Payne) and that of James Avery (Matt Felten), a fictional young boy growing up in Texas just before World War II. Pressed to marry, Ludwig finally decides to wed a humpback (Kate Graham) he really doesn’t love. Meanwhile in Texas, the bisexual James has a crush on Henry Lee Stafford (Greg Morris) but also seems fond of Sally (Graham again). James turns into a troublemaker and winds up in jail, before interrupting the marriage between Henry Lee and Sally. The two men later wind up fighting in Germany together.

THE PLAY FOLLOWS BOTH LEAD CHARACTERS, who turn out to have a lot in common. Both are misunderstood and unconventional, and also have a domineering mother (Sunny Williams in both roles).Rudnick, who is openly gay himself, is one of only a few playwrights whose plays always seem to have an unabashed gay sensibility. “Valhalla” has much gay content, and both leads seem to like men, even if Ludwig’s taste is played more ambiguously. Rudnick deserves immense credit for not writing another cookie cutter gay romantic comedy. “Valhalla” has ambition to spare, but it can lose scope. It is that rare play that would be more effective if it were simpler.

“VALHALLA” CAN LURCH back and forth wildly, and just when things are getting nutty, Rudnick throws in a bizarre musical number featuring the two soldiers.The cast, fortunately, makes the production well worth seeing. Payne’s comedic touch is on sharp display, Morris shows considerable talent, and Graham has a charming presence. Yet all the performers pale next to the dynamic Williams, who chews scenery delectably. “Valhalla” is one of the goofiest plays you’ll see this summer.

Write to Life

2008-05-02T16:32:00.000-07:00

A young Atlanta playwright's introspective take on his bouts with cancer becomes the seed for his comedy

By Richard L. Eldredge, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

While undergoing chemotherapy in 2001, Atlanta playwright Topher Payne began writing the two-act comedy "Relations Unknown." The then-21-year-old writer and actor dealt with his health crisis by creating Chris Harrburn, an autobiographical character in "Relations" who, like Payne, had recently come out to his God-fearing Southern parents and was facing down a cancer diagnosis.
With one exception: Chris died in Act One.
"Killing myself was awesome!" says Payne, now 28, as he folds his 6-foot-2 frame into a chair in the upstairs bar at the Four Seasons hotel in Midtown.
"To write about what you're most afraid of was incredibly liberating. Killing myself taught me that you continue. To the people that matter, you continue."
Payne is now a three-time cancer survivor. The bouts with blood work, chemotherapy and hair loss have taught him not to waste time.
Through May 15, "Three by Topher," a world premiere of his latest plays —- "Above the Fold," "Don't Look at the Fat Lady" and "Perfect Arrangement" —- is being staged by the Process Theatre at Whole World Theatre in Midtown.
Later this month, "Necessary Luxuries: Notes on a Semi-Fabulous Life" (Xlibris/Random House, $19.95), a collection of his popular weekly David magazine "Maybe It's Just Me" columns, will hit stores as both an audiobook and paperback. Payne also works full time as general manager of MetroFresh restaurant in Midtown, where more than 3,800 e-mail menu subscribers eagerly await his amusing missives each morning.
Last year, Payne and his partner, Tommy Nixon, bought a house in Decatur.
While others in his peer group are still figuring out what they want to be when they grow up, Payne appears to be forever fingering the fast-forward button.
"But why isn't everyone?" he asks, taking a stab at the lime in his vodka and tonic. "I was given a gift by having my mortality presented to me at an early age. But nobody's guaranteed a long life."
Payne pauses and then adds sunnily, "I mean, people get hit by buses every day!"
To understand what experiences informed the writer as a kid it's helpful to hit the rewind button on the tape recorder he received for Christmas when he was a 6-year-old growing up in Kosciusko, Miss. Payne promptly installed the gizmo underneath the dining room table where his mother, Sheryl, and her sisters would gather to discuss current events. The pint-size playwright would transcribe the conversations and act out the scenes with his stuffed animals.
"Mama couldn't figure out how I learned words like 'hysterectomy,' " Payne says.
Adds Sheryl Payne, speaking from Kosciusko: "Even as a young boy, he could tell a story better than anyone I know. He never stopped talking. I remember telling him, 'Topher, now rest your mouth, son.' "
Kosciusko's other notable export is also a talker: Oprah Winfrey.
Cracks Payne: "If you were from Kosciusko, you would know how deliciously ironic it is to have a single black female billionaire and gay playwright as the two people to brag about. But unlike Oprah, I'm well-known for a radius of about eight blocks in Midtown."
The power of words
Technically, the reach of Payne's work extends a bit further. A production of his play "Entertaining Lesbians" was staged at the Clemente Soto-Valez Performing Arts Center in Manhattan in 2004, and his plays have graced stages in Columbus, Roswell and in Clinton, Miss.
At 10, Payne spent time with his grandmother Shirley Henderson when he visited after school to give the diabetic her insulin shot. He was all ears as neighbors would drop in for gossip sessions.
"I didn't have to watch 'Steel Magnolias,' " he says. "I was living it." (Perhaps not coincidentally, when callers ring his cellphone these days, they're greeted with the theme from "The Golden Girls.")
Later, at a self-imposed stint at a New England boarding school, Payne discovered writing at age 15. He composed an essay about his growing alienation at school and was selected to read it in front of his English class.
"I was not designed for the environment," he recalls. "Conformity has never been my strong suit. Plus, I was straight off the turnip truck. These kids [expletive] hated me. But when I finished, they applauded. I changed their minds about me. It was the first time I understood the power of my own words to change my life."
A few years later, Payne took a job in Atlanta with Kaiser Permanente's educational theater division as an actor in "Professor Bodywise and His Traveling Menagerie." The chain smoker played Nikki Teen, an enormous blue cat who instructed school kids on the perils of Pall Malls.
He also started writing plays.
A little less 'cute'
Eleven plays into his career, Payne has established himself by writing Southern-set comedies. He often arms his characters with withering one-liners but manages to retain a strong emotional core. Family dynamics fascinate him. But with "Three by Topher," he wanted to branch out a bit.
"I wanted to see if I could write something that ran the risk of not being liked," he explains. "Something that elicited a strong reaction. . . . Traditionally, people walk out of one of my plays and say, 'Darlin', that was cute.' I wanted to work a little less 'cute' with these plays. I really wanted to talk about what's going on out there."
One particularly edgy comic piece in Payne's "Above the Fold" has some audience members squirming. A catatonic, wheelchair-bound Shonda (inspired by the Terri Schiavo case and played by Atlanta actress Jo Howarth) is being prepared for a media-manipulated TV appearance by Godfrey, a flamboyant makeup artist (portrayed by actor Greg Morris).
The title of the piece: "Fruit and Vegetable."
He had workshopped "Beached Wails" (about four vacationing sisters from Kosciusko) and was planning a production of the comedy at the 14th Street Playhouse when he was first diagnosed with cancer shortly after his 21st birthday.
"I learned that cancer is a disease operating on a cellular level," Payne says. "The only thing you can control is how you react to it. Getting up every day and thinking about when you're going to die isn't much of a life."
When the Burkitt's lymphoma returned in late 2003 as a tumor in his inner ear, Payne pulled out the script for "Relations Unknown" and gave it an overhaul.
"The plays are my children," he says. "It's as close to a legacy as I have. It's important to get it right."
When "Relations Unknown" was eventually staged at Dad's Garage in 2003, the playwright's family drove in for opening night.
In a last-minute plot twist, the actor portraying Chris was in a car crash after the final dress rehearsal. The playwright had to step in and play the wise-cracking cancer patient.
"I just sat there and cried," Sheryl Payne recalls. "It was so autobiographical. Being separated from Topher when he went through treatment, I had no idea what he experienced."
Smoothing the catch in her throat, Sheryl quietly discusses the play's death scene: "I was almost hysterical. He's my baby. The 'what ifs' were right there, being acted out. My son has taught me a lot. ... When you think you couldn't love someone any more, God manages to open that door a little more. No one in the family ends a phone conversation now without telling the other person 'I love you.' "

The fat lady
Payne's writing in "Don't Look at the Fat Lady" is eliciting similar emotional responses. Written as a one-act monologue for Howarth, the play focuses on Gloria Dickey, a 600-pound Floridian who has melded with her living room couch. Payne was inspired to write the piece after reading about Gail Grinds, a 40-year-old Florida woman who died in 2004 after enduring a similar plight.
"Because of how she died, she became a Darwinism," Payne says. "But Gail Grinds was a person. I took the emotional truth of that and created Gloria. It's a way of honoring this woman's life without using her death as a punchline."
Adds Howarth: "Gloria is someone you want to know. Topher translated a sensational death into a really beautiful life."
Payne, director DeWayne Morgan and Howarth underscore the audience's initial discomfort by placing Howarth, already in her fat suit and sewn into the sofa and surrounded by snack-food wrappers, onstage when they enter the theater.
Back at the Four Seasons bar, a fresh round of drinks arrives, along with rapper Jay-Z and his bodyguards, who silently slip into place at the doorway.
The famous, the infamous and fame-seeking reality TV "stars" all serve as fodder for Payne's other new one-act, "Above the Fold."
It's a subject Payne has been thinking about ever since readers of his column in David magazine, a free Atlanta gay and lesbian weekly, began recognizing him from his photo.
"Most people who approach me are extremely nice and just want to extend a compliment," Payne says. "But I was fascinated by the ones who are a little Looney Tunes. Some people need that encounter with fame if they can't be famous themselves. It's a little alarming."
During its three-year run in David, Payne's comic and poignant columns often have taken on a confessional tone. He's dished on dating, getting dumped, dieting, even his personal lubricant preferences. But when his cancer returned for a second encore in October 2006, Payne never mentioned the "c" word in his copy.
That was intentional.
"I lived for it," Payne explains. "Every week, I had an opportunity to enter an alternate universe where I wasn't sick. I got to pretend my biggest problems were: 'I'm single! I'm fat!' The column actually got better during that period. It was the most healing thing I could have done for myself."
Adds Payne's MetroFresh boss Mitchell Anderson: "Topher has taught me how critically important a sense of humor is in life. He would come into work the day after a chemo treatment and be all smiles. He never let the cancer affect how he represented himself to the world."
'Take ownership'
In March 2007, a month after being given a clean bill of health once again, Payne met Tommy Nixon. On their third date, the columnist presented the Atlanta retail director with a notebook filled with his columns.
"I didn't want strangers to know more about me than he did," he explains. "Also, I write with humiliating candor, and I write about the people in my life. I had just gotten through cancer again. I was not about to waste my time dating someone who couldn't deal with that aspect of my life."
Nixon apparently doesn't mind his portrayal as the recurring "Preppy" character in "Maybe." He said yes when Payne proposed last Christmas. The two are planning a ceremony in May 2009.
As he has tackled drafts of his new plays and book galleys in his study over the past few months, Payne has quietly observed the circle of life taking place on his kudzu-draped window sill where birds built a nest and recently hatched babies.
A framed autographed photo of Faye Dunaway in full over-the-top, arched-eyebrow glory as Joan Crawford in "Mommie Dearest" looks on, silently judging. Payne bought the rarity off eBay for $60.
Dunaway stopped signing the photos after the 1981 film was released, and audiences turned the biopic into an unintended camp classic. Dunaway has famously disassociated herself from the role.
The autograph serves as a life lesson for Payne.
"Take ownership of every decision you make in life," he says. "What's wrong with owning your crap? You don't get to walk away from it. It becomes a part of you. Everything I've learned as a writer goes back to discovering that our humanity lies in our flaws. Own the good and the bad. We would all be a little better off if we lived under those terms."
Payne drains his second vodka and tonic and contemplates a Marlboro Light.
He laughs and adds: "Well, within reason."

IN TOPHER PAYNE'S OWN WORDS
From the upcoming book "Necessary Luxuries," a collection of his columns from David Magazine
I use fancy laundry stuff. The label says it's "Aromatherapeutic," which I'm not sure is even a real word. ... What I am sure of is that it smells like geraniums, and one teeny tiny bottle costs three times more than a box of Gain. It might not even work as well as regular laundry soap. I have no idea. I do not care. Buying it makes me feel deliciously overindulgent, like a pampered Morningside housewife.
Maybe it's just me, but there are certain things, regardless of financial circumstance, that I will not skimp on in life. If I can't afford real Oreos, I will go without, not make do with "Kroger Chocolate Sandwich Cookies." I'll eat peanut butter and jelly for a week before I buy the cheap cigarettes. There may be nothing to drink in my house but water and vodka, but you can rest assured that vodka will be delicious, incomparable 3 Soy Vodka.
When times are tough, it never even crosses my mind to drop my gym membership, or my brunches with Slutty Mandy, or God forbid, my hairdresser. That finance guru I see on TV all the time, Suze Orman, would have an aneurysm if she saw our bank statements.
We are the fabulous poor. ...
From the one-act play "Don't Look at the Fat Lady"
Gloria: "Syndicated programs are so wonderful, because when you see one you already saw, it's like hearing your best friend tell someone a story you already know. It's still funny, but now you're in on the joke. Sometimes I see 'Friends' on 36, and Monica and Chandler will be married wanting a baby, and then I'll see it on 17, and she'll still be dating Tom Selleck, and I'll think, 'Oh, honey, I know what's gonna happen!' I can see it all: Rachel and Ross are going to have a baby. ... Anna Nicole will die, and that makes me sad because even though she was crazy as a pig in heat, when she first came around they said she was pretty, even though she was the same size I was in high school. I was pretty, too, then. Not because I was thinner, just because I was young. I think it's so unfair that you don't know you were beautiful until later, and you think, what would I have been, if I'd known it when I needed to?"
From his Metrofresh menu e-mails
Friday, November 23, 2007
Hey y'all, it's Topher. So yesterday, I made Thanksgiving dinner. I had a 22-pound Butterball that would not defrost, despite my best efforts. I cooked it for ages, and it was still stone cold in the middle. ... So, three hours before people were scheduled to arrive, while Sweet Tommy was raking the back yard, I told him I had to go to the grocery for butter. Then I pulled that dang bird out of the oven, threw it in a trash bag, and tossed it in the passenger seat of the car. The two of us went to Kroger, I bought a pre-cooked turkey, then hurled the half-frozen bird into a nearby dumpster, made the switch at the house, and no one was any the wiser. Everyone was very complimentary. So next year, I'm skipping that first part and going straight to step two, which involves a lot less work. I'm not very domestic, I'm discovering. But I am creative in a pinch.

Playwright Imagines Life Beyond the Headlines

2008-04-01T16:04:00.000-07:00

by Jim Farmer, Southern Voice

ATLANTA PLAYWRIGHT TOPHER PAYNE never expected it. Neither did Process Theatre artistic director DeWayne Morgan. But starting next week, the Process Theatre Company presents the “3 by Topher” Play Festival, a trio of world premieres penned by Payne. According to Morgan, the company mounts a festival each spring, and the timing was perfect, but it wasn’t planned.

“It wasn’t that we were looking to do a play festival of Topher’s work, but he had three plays written at the time,” he says.

“The Perfect Arrangement” is the gayest of the trio. In it, state department workers who have just helped get rid of communists are asked to now take care of “deviants” — in other words, homosexuals. What no one knows is that two of the employees are gay themselves, with marriages to cover their secret.

Payne got the inspiration from the Lavender Scare, which began in 1950 when 190 gay employees were fired from the government for security reasons.

“I’d never heard of it, and I consider myself reasonably savvy,” Payne says. “It seemed so ripe for a story. I did research, watching a lot of ‘50s sitcoms, getting that vocabulary down.”

“ABOVE THE FOLD,” WHICH PAYNE describes as “dark and twisted and fabulous,” also contains gay content. “It’s about people on the periphery of news events no one ever bothered to interview,” he says. “They are hiding or ignored.”

Among the characters are two lesbian co-workers of a young man who later goes on a high school killing spree. Others include the gay makeup artist for a young woman in a coma about to make her TV debut; a woman who loses a beauty pageant; and a young man who has kept quiet about his relationship with a pop star.

Originally, “Above the Fold” was supposed to premiere in New York last year at a theater Payne tactfully refuses to name. According to Payne, the company loved the script and was anxious to produce it, but a donor who was a graduate of Virginia Tech felt uncomfortable with the shooter piece, claiming it was too sympathetic to the killer.

The theater wanted to cut that segment, but Payne balked and decided he would rather have it produced elsewhere. “These people do horrible things, but they are people,” Payne says. “Where did it come from? How do we understand that? I felt that scene drove the whole point home of what it was trying to communicate. I didn’t want to lose that.”

Besides directing “Above the Fold” and “Don’t Look at the Fat Lady,” Morgan is appearing in “The Perfect Arrangement.” He has long been a fan of Payne’s work.

“I think Topher’s main gift is that he is able to make his characters and their words sound so real,” Morgan says.

THE FINAL SHOW is the comedy-drama “Don’t Look at the Fat Lady,” which is loosely based on the real life story of Gail Grinds, a 40-year-old woman who was confined to a sofa for two to five years, weighed 600 pounds and whose skin was literally stuck to the sofa. She died just after emergency workers rescued her.

“Her whole life was reduced to a punchline, but she had a life,” Payne says. “I felt she deserved better. When I see someone who is overweight, [the tendency] is to say ‘how can you do that to yourself.’ It makes us look at our own prejudices towards fat people. I come from Mississippi, the fattest state in the country. We work hard to make fat people invisible,” he says.

Payne is also a weekly columnist for David Atlanta Magazine, a sister publication to Southern Voice.

Return of the Sissies

2007-09-28T15:33:00.000-07:00

By Rob Beck, Southern Voice

THERE’S TRUTH IN THE old adage that there’s never too much of a good thing. Note the Process Theatre's presentation of the local return run of Del Shores’ “Southern Baptist Sissies,” in repertory with Shores’ cult classic “Sordid Lives,” less than six months after “Sissies” concluded its initial Atlanta run in May.The shows kick off on Oct. 3 at Whole World Theater’s Third Space.

The overlapping casts feature most of the original “Sissies” cast, with “Sordid Lives” director and “Sissies” co-director DeWayne Morgan stepping in to fill the role of the Preacher. “Sissies,” co-directed by Morgan and Barbara Cole Uterhardt, tells the story of four boys growing up in a small southern town and coming to terms with their sexual orientation. “Sordid Lives” recounts a Texas family’s misguided but hilarious efforts to get through the funeral of its recently deceased matriarch.

Morgan says both “Sissies” and “Sordid Lives” are such hits with gay audiences — as indicated by the sold-out final three weeks of the initial run of “Sissies” in Atlanta — because Shores’ work resonates with experiences and people familiar to Southern gay men and lesbians.

“Del wrote about who he was growing up in Texas, and Atlanta, while not Texas, is Southern. A lot of the stigmas that he experienced there, gay people experience here,” Morgan says. “Plus, he writes Southern so well, in terms of the comedy and the characters and people. Some of the characters you see in ‘Sordid Lives,’ like Sissy, Latrelle, and Lavonda, are women that you know. When they walk in and start talking, you realize you knew them growing up or you had an aunt who was like that. He captures them so well.”

Topher Payne, who reprises his “Sissies” role as Mark Fuller, concurs that audiences relate to the stories on a personal level, which keeps them coming back for more.“Atlanta is made up so much of a community of transplants,” he says. “You think of all the people that moved to Atlanta from smaller towns throughout the South, and that’s why the experience of seeing the show for so many people speaks to their personal history. It validates the choices that we made, and kind of honors that that sense of community happens a lot earlier in life than we’re often willing to admit.”

For his part as the playwright, Shores is thrilled to hear about the return of his plays to Atlanta, though he admits to surprise at the impact of “Sissies,” the tear-jerking and personal, yet still funny, cousin of the raucous “Sordid Lives.”

“I felt like I was just telling my story,” he says. “I soon found out that I was telling a lot of gay men’s stories, as well as those of gay women and beyond. My producing partner, Sharon Lane, who is no longer with us, always said it was about anybody that felt different, and I think that’s why it really resonated with so many people.”

Payne looks forward to the chance to allow more people to see “Sissies,” which was hard to get into at the end of its run. “We were hoping to provide an opportunity for anybody who wants to see the show,” he says. “Well, dammit, we’ll let you see it.”

FANS OF BOTH PLAYS can look forward to the same trademark heart and humor of previous runs, but with marked improvements, according to cast and crew. Most notable is the addition of Juanita, the wisecracking barfly who was created for the “Sordid Lives” film in 2000 and was much missed by audiences during the play’s 2004 Atlanta production.

“This version has Juanita in it,” Morgan says. “That’s the one thing that is going to delight the audiences, actually getting to see that character.”

Payne is excited about the chance for the cast and crew to refine the production as a whole.

“To be able to come back and say, ‘Okay, let’s try it again,’ is exciting,” he says. “So much of the rehearsal process is taken up by the business of doing theater: learning the blocking, learning the lines, getting to know the cast. We already have that. We have been able to delve deeper into the characters and what the playwright wanted to express, so that’s been a really unique experience.”

Morgan says that at first, the prospect of taking on both plays at the same time was daunting. But the fact that “Sissies” was done so recently, combined with the efforts of Uterhardt as co-director, made the process smoother than expected.

“We’ve saved everything,” he says. “It’s going to be a little different, because we’ve kept the same blocking, and Barbara’s just tweaking the show, making any changes from last year.”

Payne welcomes the infusion of new blood to the production.“[Morgan and Uterhardt] are kind of taking what DeWayne originally did with the show and honoring that, but having a fresh set of eyes on it has kind of challenged us all,” he says. “A different director will say, ‘Let’s look at it this way,’ and then you suddenly explode with ideas.”

FANS OF THE shows tend to overlap, but comes with its own distinct feel. “Sordid Lives” tends towards non-stop “rip-roaring” humor, according to Morgan, and “Sissies,” while not without its funny moments, leans to the introspective.

“The thing about ‘Sissies’ is it makes you think about how you feel about yourself and accepting yourself for who you are,” Morgan says.

Shores says that “Sissies” is ultimately about the various paths in life he ended up taking along with his characters.

“There’s a scene [in ‘Sissies’] where Mark’s talking to TJ, who was once the love of his life, and he says, ‘I'm going on a journey. A quest,’” Shores says. “That’s what happened with me writing it: I went on a journey to try and find some answers for me, and they’re not all there yet. That’s the way life is. It’s about a journey.”

Through the Years

2007-04-20T05:34:00.000-07:00

Process Theatre stages decades of four gay men's lives with Baptist roots

by Jim Farmer

Southern Voice

If you thought growing up gay was hard on its own merits, try growing up gay in the Baptist Church. That’s the dilemma in Process Theatre’s “Southern Baptist Sissies,” now playing at Whole World Theatre.

The latest play by Del Shores (“Sordid Lives”) follows four men over a few decades after their eventual realization that they might be gay. The main character is Mark Lee Fuller (Topher Payne), who in his teen years develops a crush on T.J. (Matt Sutter). T.J. shares the feelings, but he can’t handle the situation and decides to start dating women. The confident Benny (Greg Morris) becomes a drag queen named Iona Traylor. Andrew (Marcelo Banderas) is the most introspective of the group — and the one most racked with guilt.

“Sissies” flip flops between the men’s stories and those of two barflies who meet and form a friendship. Peanut (George Deavours) is a wisecracking middle-aged gay man who befriends Odette (Jo Howarth), a saucy redhead. Shores’ “Sissies” has its share of patented one-liners, but it ultimately offers more depth and emotion than the popular but lightweight “Sordid Lives.”

And this production is also very well played. Payne handles his lead role easily, going through some tricky emotional material. Payne is matched by Banderas and newcomer Sutter. Banderas’ Andrew is the saddest of the characters, and the actor is able to convey a world of pain in his eyes. Sutter convincingly tries to hide his character’s true self. In a stock role, Deavours also brings energy to “Sissies.”

Probably the best performance is that of Greg Morris. He is really the only one of the four main characters who seems to age at all. At first, he is the kid singing in the choir. A number of years later, he is a fiercely independent grown-up, comfortable in his own shoes.

Process Theatre artistic director DeWayne Morgan makes the backdrop of the church a believable, scary world. He is not afraid to be erotic. A sequence where two of the characters sexually interact while a preacher is mid-sermon is pretty darn steamy.

Perhaps most surprisingly, “Southern Baptist Sissies” proves to be a bleak, cynical piece of work. It features vivid characters dealing with gay issues, yet in the end, it seems unfairly grim, almost retro in its outlook. The show may make for powerful theater, but is this progress?

It’s always easy to cut The Process Theatre a little slack, since they are one of the only troupes in town to go after gay material with such fervor on a regular basis. This is a well-written play that deals impressively and honestly with the pressures of gays and the church. It’s truly worth seeing.

"Babylon" Breaks Taboos and Tradition

2006-04-18T15:51:00.000-07:00

By Noreen Lewis Cochran, GSU Signal

Once again- just like in "Relations Unknown" when Chris says goodbye to his friends-I find myself at the Whole World Theatre's Third Space, fighting back tears. It's the way Topher Payne as the transvestite prostitute Virgin Mary looks at his imaginary reflection in a cathouse mirror. I can't tell you why it bust me up inside or how he does it. It's the magic of theatre. It is also some kind of magic that keeps playwright Marki Shalloe's characters from being stereotypes, even though she gives us characters like the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans (Barbara Washington as Madame).

If Madame were a Tarot card, she would be the Queen of Coins. She reads the cards to find a missing negligee, conjures a spell to find lost money and asserts her dominion over her famous house of ill repute like Cajun royalty. Ms. Washington wears the role as naturally as she does her flowing caftans and her Creole accent is flawless.The Two-Faced Do-Gooder (Barbara Cole as Persephone) is also potentially a stock character, but Ms. Cole turns it into a continual unveiling of the beige persona she wears like her beige costume.

Gradually we learn the truth behind her concealed charms, her hidden intentions and her easy seduction by the gin that flows like water.We've all seen Wisecracking Hooker with the Heart of Gold before, and Virgin Mary is no exception."You're more screwed up than the whore next door," she says to Persephone, "and she hits men with a riding crop for $20."

Payne, however, transforms himself into a woman deploying wit like a weapon against the stings of the world's cruelty. As a man, he uses the world's own prejudice against it to fool the police and protect his savior.

Ms. Shalloe also gives us the Lecherous Musician. Once again (see "Urinetown"), I am glad to see the leading man killed off. This is not a spoiler alert: the show closed March 25 and you have my abject apologies for not getting to it sooner. However, DeWayne Morgan as the decadent harmonica player, brothel customer and drug pusher stands out as a symbol of evil even as the women around him break the law on a daily basis.

They break taboos, too, using a two-way mirror to spy on each other. Director Betty Hart guides the production, lit with subtlety and naturalness by Nina Gooch on a lush set designed by actor Payne, until the audience feels like it, too, is spying on the occupants of Babylon.

There's one more break that cannot go unnoticed, like an 800-pound gorilla in the room. When a leading lady breaks her leg, custom demands that the understudy fill in. Yet Ms. Cole walks the stage in a prescription boot to which no character, even the immensely curious Virgin Mary, refers. Maybe like Ms. Shalloe, Ms. Hart has also refused to give in to stereotype.

Grace Under Fire

2006-03-08T15:04:00.000-08:00

Two local playwrights examine the soul of the South
by Curt Holman, Creative Loafing

Supposedly, whenever you meet new people in the South, the first question they ask is, "What church do you go to?" Which is not to be confused with asking what religion you are. In the rural South particularly, church takes on a social significance arguably equal to -- if not greater than -- a person's spiritual well-being.
Two new plays peer into the soul of the South, one from the godly side, one from the civic side. At the Process Theatre, Marki Shalloe's Babylon airs a moral debate in a New Orleans brothel in 1961. At Onstage Atlanta, Topher Payne's The Attala County Garden Club uses a supernatural twist to satirize gossipy small-town class dynamics in 1987 Mississippi. Both plays have rough patches, but together they imply that in the South, people pray with their fingers crossed behind their back.
Set in New Orleans, Babylon can't help but evoke Hurricane Katrina and the city's struggle to rebuild (although Shalloe wrote the first drafts more than a year ago). Taking place in a whorehouse called Babylon, the play contains an evocative passage about the city on the verge of an earlier flood, which doesn't deter the regular johns from keeping their appointments. Throughout the play, people's primal impulses supersede their self-preservation.
Babylon's plot seems less influenced by Katrina than Blanche DuBois. Comparable to a more decadent A Streetcar Named Desire, the plot concerns a righteous but haunted woman living under the same French Quarter roof as some confrontational hedonists. Persephone (Barbara Cole) takes a job at Babylon as a housekeeper and manicurist, although the Madame (Barbara Washington) also instructs her to keep tabs on the brothel's star attraction, a transvestite and heroin addict nicknamed "Virgin Mary" (Topher Payne).
Persephone's piety collides with Madame and Mary's pragmatic attitudes toward pleasure. Resorting to some overly formal debates on the sacred vs. the profane, Babylon risks being heavy-handed, but the play's pungent whorehouse atmosphere and credible slang terms give the material some grounding.
Babylon's lurid subject matter doesn't lend itself to underacting, but the players, directed by Betty Hart, keep their roles restrained enough to be realistic. Cole's intensity unifies Persephone's bizarre traits while Payne reveals the transvestite's melancholy shadings beneath a jailbait pout.
If Payne's play, The Attala County Garden Club, proves more efficient than Babylon, it also plays for more modest takes. The droll Southern-women comedy, explicitly written in the Steel Magnolias mode, begins with Rose Chipley (Amanda Cucher) moving into her first house with her young husband (an amusingly nonplussed Mark Russ), new baby and beloved "heirloom dining table." Like many a young Southern belle, Rose reveals anxieties about being downwardly mobile and that "the people we are" don't live up to "the people we came from."
When the city garden club (including Rose's own mother) rejects her membership application, Rose considers an offer to join the Attala County Garden Club, despite its reputation as a group of misfits. The play is an insider's view of gardening, status and conformity. The county club's members include African-American Danita (Cheryl Rookwood) and "white trash" Effie Joe (a hilarious Kellie Fortner), setting up a potential snobs-against-underdogs conflict.
Rose learns more about the club's eccentric approaches to gardening, the strange misfortunes that befall its rivals, and its seemingly mystical ability to cultivate hybrid plants. When Rose discovers the garden club's more sinister attributes, the airy play builds to effective moments of both horror-flick suspense and kitschy Southern comedy. Rose's wisecracking hairdresser (Patty Siebert) uses a comical, Sunday school-style felt board to lay out some of the folklore backstory.
Babylon and Attala each build to characters enacting a non-Christian ritual. With Madame's voodoo practices in Babylon and the echoes of Native American lore in Attala, both plays provide reminders that in Dixie, the white Christian culture lays atop other races and religions.
As writers, Payne and Shalloe have little in common besides being attentive students of comic timing, but they both are representative of rising regional playwrights. Neither seems to chase the trends that come out of New York or other, bigger theater cities. They don't dabble in the austere archetypes of the Sam Shepard model, or resort to dysfunctional dark humor like David Lindsay-Abaire or Nicky Silver. Payne specializes in light, accessible comedies while Shalloe relishes delving into strange historical factoids or provocative issues like suicide or masturbation.
Both writers have room to build on their strengths. Payne can explore challenging his audiences and himself more deeply, and Shalloe could benefit from more ambiguity and a willingness to leave points unsaid.
Babylon and The Attala County Garden Club both showcase the playwrights' enthusiasms. The playwrights show affection to eccentric characters while exposing Southern hypocrisies. They hate the sin, but love the sinners.

No Payne, No Gain

2006-03-01T15:11:00.000-08:00

Columnist works it out on three concurrent theater projects
by Jimmy Hilburn, David Atlanta Magazine

IF YOU'RE A REGULAR David reader, then you know Topher Payne's face, with the quirky wit with which he chronicles his trials and tribulations as a twenty-something gay man living in Atlanta in his column Maybe It's Just Me.
But, if you knew what else is on Payne's plate, you'd be amazed he has any time to reflect on his life, let alone laugh about it. Just for starters, the month of March sees the world premiere of a play Payne wrote at Onstage Atlanta, his acting in another play across town, and his set designs for yet another play.
And as the life of a playwright/ actor/columnist goes, he still finds time to squeeze in the proverbial day job - restaurant managing at Metro Fresh, the new Midtown café owned by fellow thespian Mitchell Anderson.
Payne's newest script, "The Attala County Garden Club" marks a unique milestone. After more than half a dozen plays - including productions in Atlanta and New York - he is finally setting this one in his hometown of Kosciusko, Miss., at the time of his childhood.
Payne describes "Attala" as a comic thriller that is "Steel Magnolias meets Buffy The Vampire Slayer." Be prepared for an evening of ruthless social climbing, cryptic spells and rituals, and, of course, handy gardening tips.
In the small-town setting, a woman named Rose has only one avenue to the top tier of society: Membership in the City Garden Club. When Rose is shunned by the club, she has no choice but to join the less esteemed Attala County Garden Club, where a bevy of scorned women engage in witchcraft to exact their revenge.
Rest assured, all the witchcraft is "witch-approved," according to Payne.
"I talked to witches," he says. "I had a friend who hooked me up, because I didn't want it to be like an episode of 'Charmed.'"
GROWING UP IN KOSCIUSKO, mixed with adolescent and teen years in New England and California boarding schools, definitely gave Payne a unique perspective. He found the South to be a fount of source material for his writing.
"Southerners are more interesting than other Americans," Payne says, "because we have the gift of gab. Storytelling is part of our culture. You always have the person that is elected to tell every family story. 'No, no, no, you have to hear Mary Ellen tell it. She tells it better.'
"Southerners have such a casual relationship with the truth," he adds. "What happened isn't as important as the story that comes out of it later."
Let's hope Oprah Winfrey doesn't hear him say that. "Attala County" is undeniably fiction, but its real life setting isn't just Payne's hometown; Oprah was born in Kosciusko too.
"How much do you love that the most notable citizen to come out of this small, very conservative community is a single black billionaire woman," Payne laughs.
CERTAINLY ANOTHER OF PAYNE'S current projects would raise the eyebrows of those hometown conservatives. The day after "Attala County" opens, Payne begins portraying an aging transgender prostitute called Virgin Mary in Marki Shalloe's "Babylon," produced by the Process Theatre.
With high heels and wig, Payne's drag persona measures a towering 6'5" - making sure his first entrance onstage is a showstopper.
"It is absolutely the hardest work I've ever done as an actor because I want to get it right," he says. "This isn't camp drag. There's this simplicity and this beauty to the character that I've never had to tap into before."
Will Topher Payne ever get a week off? Not likely. With 32 relatives coming to town for opening weekend, several new scripts in the works and a trip to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in his near future, he makes Oprah look like a couch potato.

March In Like a Lion

2006-02-24T15:21:00.000-08:00

by Jim Farmer, Southern Voice

Topher Payne is one busy playwright these days. Two of the local gay thespian’s works were staged in the last year, and his new show "The Attala County Garden Club" receives its world premiere next week at Onstage Atlanta.
"Attala" takes place in Kosciusko, Miss., where Payne himself grew up. In the play, young Rose Chipley decides to join the City Garden Club. Rose is a woman in her 20s who just had a baby. Joining the high society club is part of an effort to stake out her own identity. But she is rejected by the garden club president, who ironically is her own mother. Rose is told it is too early for her to join, that the responsibility is too large.
In retaliation, Rose decides to join the Attala County Garden Club, which is unofficially known as the Reject Bin. Inside the new group, the young woman finds a few surprises, including witches who plan to avenge the town that rejected them.
Payne wanted to write a piece about his hometown, but the format strayed a little while he wrote it.
"I haven’t been back in 10 years now," Payne says. "… The child in me has wonderful memories, but the person I’ve become could never live there. As I started writing this, the show changed from being a Southern comedy, a love letter to my home, to something a bit darker."
As part of his research, Payne talked to witches.
"The one thing I wanted to do is respect their world," he says. "So many of the people I interviewed said that often it’s done wrong- I know how I feel when I see the gay community represented on stage or screen and they just get it wrong."
With the Internet, the playwright feels small towns aren’t as isolated as they once were.
"For teenagers growing up in small towns 20 years ago, there was the sense of not being in the norm," he asserts. "They didn’t feel the sense of belonging, and weren’t able interact with anyone outside your immediate environment. It was a time without much connection for those of us who felt different."
Payne says that "Attala" fits well with his other works.
"My plays have a theme: that of finding a common bond, acceptance in unlikely places," he says. "In this show, women who probably would never as much as have conversations with each other find they need each other. One is called white trash, another a home wrecker, another is black, but they unite and join forces."

"Garden Club" Play Has Roots in Kosciusko

2006-01-18T15:24:00.000-08:00

by Nancy Green, The Star-Herald

The world premiere of “The Attala County Garden Club” will be March 3 in Onstage Atlanta’s O2 Theatre.The play is the latest project of Atlanta playwright and columnist Topher Payne, son of Cleve and Sheryl Payne.
“Attala County” is a personal milestone for Payne, as it marks the first play he has set in his home state.“Not just in my home state,” said Payne. “It’s my hometown of Kosciusko, during the period I was growing up there. The story surrounds the experiences I think everyone has living in a small, close-knit community. You want to stand out as an individual, and know your own value, but you also want the comfort of acceptance, fitting in. And that can create some conflict.”

The play, a comedy directed by Jeanette Stinson, tells the tale of a young woman in the 1980s who joins a group of local gardening enthusiasts, then begins to suspect that she has signed up for more than she thought.
Payne is also the author of the comedies “Beached Wails,” “Relations Unknown” and “Bad Mama.”The director describes the play as “Steel Magnolias meets Rosemary’s Baby.”

“That’s the strength of Topher’s writing. There’s some complex issues presented in the story about race, isolation and the fear of people and things we don’t understand. And he addresses all of that while keeping the audience laughing, which I think is the best way to get people to listen,” said Stinson.

"My mother’s only concern was that I don’t use real names. I told her she’d have to wait and see,” said Payne.

Payne attended Kosciusko schools, The Taft School in Connecticut and The Idyllwild Arts Academy in California.His humor column, “Maybe It’s Just Me,” appears weekly in David Magazine distributed in metro areas throughout the Southeast.His plays have been produced throughout the United States, including New York, Atlanta and Los Angeles.

REVIEW: The Book of Liz

2006-01-12T15:29:00.000-08:00

by Wendell Brock, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Sister Elizabeth Donderstock has pretty much had it with her conservative Christian community, the Squeamish. (Think “Amish.”) She’s sweated herself skinny making the group’s signature source of income —- cheese balls —- and when the swishy, upstart Brother Brightbee begins to encroach on her territory, she decides to run away.
Wouldn’t you know the first person she encounters is a woman in a Mr. Peanut costume, who soon enlists Liz to work in a Pilgrim-themed restaurant that’s run by a bunch of recovering alcoholics. Alas, the 12-steppers are so cliquish that they won’t even let Poor Liz keep her transportation in an employee parking spot. (She drives a llama.)
Oh, goody.
“The Book of Liz” —- by the brother-sister team of David and Amy Sedaris —- has arrived in Atlanta, courtesy of Peter Hardy’s Essential Theatre Festival.
Director Lee Nowell’s cast is game to wallow in the tasteless fun and chew on a script that riffs on religious hypocrisy and the empowerment kick while sending up vintage Hollywood potboilers and American classics from “The Scarlet Letter” to “The Crucible.”
This means stock characters like town snoop Sister Butterworth (Dede Bloodworth), slimy interloper Brother Brightbee (Topher Payne) and the humble, put-upon Liz (Rachel Craw), who must go on a journey of initiation before discovering there’s no place like home.
That Payne invests Brightbee with a touch of Charles Busch’s Angela Arden says a good deal about this show’s camp factor. Payne, who has a wry and distinctive monotone, has certainly made himself over since he appeared as a drag queen in “Wizzer Pizzer.”
...In “Liz,” Essential Theatre picked a turkey —- in a good way. Stuffed with cheese and sleaze and covered with nuts, the show is a sinful treat for Sedaris fans and their brethren. Praise the Lord and pass the Williamsburgers.

Double-Header

2005-10-28T22:03:00.000-07:00

Process Theatre returns comedy ‘Relations Unknown,’ campy cult favorite ‘Lesbian Vampires’ to stage.
By Jim Farmer, Southern Voice

Process Theatre’s fall double feature is a truly gay affair. The company is staging both Topher Payne’s gay romantic comedy “Relations Unknown” and gay playwright Charles Busch’s campy cult favorite “Lesbian Vampires of Sodom.”
From its inception in 2002, the company has always shown a willingness to tackle gay fare. Dewaye Morgan, Process Theatre’s artistic director, is gay, as is roughly half of the board, he estimates. Playwright Payne is gay, too.
Both shows have been staged before by Process, but Morgan felt the time was right to bring them back. “Lesbian Vampires of Sodom” is being presented this weekend — as well as Monday, Halloween night — while “Relations Unknown” gets a four-week run.
“Relations Unknown” is about seven men and women, all Atlanta transplants, and how their lives eventually intersect.
“What I love about the show is that it says you can create your own family. All the characters in the play, they lose a friend but can create a community of who’s left,” Morgan says.
Payne says his play explores “a group of people trying hard to handle life on their own.”
“They are forced to rely on each other because of a whirlwind of events, but they are hesitant to do so,” he says.
“RELATIONS UNKNOWN” IS certainly a personal show for Payne, an occasional columnist for David magazine, a publication affiliated with Southern Voice. One of the characters gets sick in the play, and Payne was diagnosed with cancer a while back. But he feels he is a different person now — and the show is different as well.
“When I wrote it I was still going through cancer treatment, going through my own mortality. Looking back it was an optimistic play but not a realistic one. It’s changed from the kind of play you write when you think you are dying to the kind of play you write when you are living,” Payne says.
He admits that the versions are wildly different.
“Lord, it’s changed,” he says. “I took out a romantic interest and introduced Lou. She is a lesbian pot dealer on a mission from God. Once Lou was there the show changed. It gave me room to play.”
Also different is the setup.
“In the first version the breakups and trauma had happened seven years ago. Now, these things have happened 20 months ago and many of the characters are not on speaking terms. They hate each other,” Payne says.
Payne definitely feels he has grown as a playwright, especially since he wrote his first play, “Beached Wails.”
“In terms of craft, I’ve found my voice as a writer,” he says. “The comedy I write now comes from another place. When I re-did ‘Relations Unknown,’ I took away the jokes that sounded like sitcom jokes. I wanted them character-based.”
Earlier this year, Process staged a double feature of Marki Shalloe’s “The Suicide Manual” and Payne’s “Bad Mama,” which featured a funny take-off of Lifetime TV movies and a Judith Light-type character. “Bad Mama” will debut off-Broadway next season, as will another of Payne’s shows, “Above the Fold.”
OF ALL THE SHOWS Process has staged, “Relations Unknown” is among those the troupe was most excited about doing anew.
“We loved ‘Relations Unknown’ the first time we did it,” Morgan says. “It was well-received but it could only run for three weeks at the Top Shelf theater [at Dad’s Garage]. We all had a great time and have had many requests to bring it back. We all told ourselves that once we got more established, we’d do it again for a longer run.”
The restaging has many of the same performers, although a few are switching roles this time.
The return of “Lesbian Vampires” also boasts many of the original cast members. Both plays are directed by Morgan, and Payne has multiple roles in “Sodom.”

Culture Surfing: Topher Payne's Top Five

2005-09-21T22:05:00.000-07:00

by Curt Holman, Creative Loafing

Topher Payne is a local actor and playwright whose comedy Relations Unknown will be staged by Process Theatre beginning Oct. 21 at Whole World's Third Space Theatre.

1) The Butcher and the Thief - An awesome play about Burke and Hare, Irish serial killers terrorizing 19th-century Scotland, told by two actors using puppets, masks, court transcripts and no small amount of gore. Saw it at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

2) Bear Me Safely Over - Sheri Joseph: A badass debut novel that introduces two Georgia families about to be connected by marriage. It manages to include wild horses, fundamentalism and the dangers of Piedmont Park after dark.

3) Showgirls: The VIP Edition DVD - The greatest post-modern comedy of all time finally got the respect it deserves. With drinking games, lap dance tutorials and commentary tracks that will make you laugh till you pee a little, this is the item I would save if my apartment caught on fire.

4) Dead Letters - The Rasmus: I met this Dutch flight attendant whose iPod was filled with tracks by this whiny band from Finland that makes me think of the early '90s - in a good way, if that's possible.

5) The Alanis Morissette Song Lyric Generator - I am an unapologetic Alanis fan but will concede my girl has a tendency to complain about, well, everything. Take lyrical revenge on those who have done you wrong at www.brunching.com/alanislyrics.html.

Topher Payne Acts Up

2005-05-21T22:08:00.000-07:00

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

2005-05-18T14:52:00.000-07:00

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

2005-05-09T14:54:00.000-07:00

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

2005-05-01T14:42:00.000-07:00

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."

Not 'Bad' at All

2005-03-04T14:57:00.000-08:00

Three plays shown together in an uncommon structure show strong wit, gay sensibility, and a maturation of local playwright’s talent.

by Jim Farmer, Southern Voice

Process Theatre’s “Bad Mama,” written by local gay playwright Topher Payne, takes motherhood to the extreme. A trio of sketches about the lengths some maternal figures go to for their young, the show is often fresh and funny.
“Bad Mama” opens with “Letters From Home,” which contains three short segments. The first, entitled “What Were You Expecting,” stars Marcie Millard as Shelley, a pregnant mom living in New Jersey who is convinced her new son is going to be a gay, even pulling out a rainbow flag in anticipation.
“The Groom’s Cake” finds a protective mother (Frankie Earle) creating chaos for her son as he is about to get married. Finding fault in all aspects of the wedding, including the bride and cake, she eventually takes a journey that lands her in jail.
In “Wish You Were Here,” a couple breaks up when the father leaves the mother and takes a much-younger male lover. The two argue over what is good for their daughter and try to gain her favor.
Each part of “Letters From Home” is persuasively performed.

Payne debuted the second “Bad Mama” sketch, “Entertaining Lesbians,” off-off-Broadway at the 2004 Manhattan Fall Collection Festival. In it, Rowena (Millard) and Tad (Larry Davis) want to get their daughter into a prestigious school. To gain favor, Rowena invites a lesbian couple with a kid in the school to their home.
Worried that the women won’t think they are cool, Rowena concocts a plan. She makes her African-American cook her best friend for the evening. The plan goes haywire when their daughter is kidnapped and Rowena gets a surprise knock at the door from her trailer trash mother. The lesbians have a secret of their own.

The sharpest skit in “Bad Mama” is “A Lifetime Original Movie Starring Judith Light.” The fictional TV movie is called “Her Moment of Truth in a Crisis: What is Happening to My Life? The Karen Hirshberger-Dittmeyer Story.”
Jane Bass stars as television actress Light, portraying a housewife whose husband (Paine Calabro playing John Stamos) is a serial killer, daughter (Rachel Sorsa as Hilary Duff) becomes a prostitute, and son (Larry Davis as one of the Culkin brothers) is physically abusive. Davis also plays “Facts of Life” alum Nancy McKeon as a butch female cop. Adding to her TV-movie plight, Light’s character gets an un-curable female disease when her breast implant fails.
The sketch is cleverly written, poking fun at the melodramatic twists of the genre. Bass sets just the right tone here, taking the material seriously enough but clearly in on the joke.
...The performers in “Bad Mama” are collectively a witty bunch. Millard, just off a run of Theater Gael’s “Dancing at Lughnasa,” has a comic flair that is well-suited to the material. Other standouts include Bass and Sorsa.
...The overall production is quite humorous and shows a sharpening of the playwright’s talents over past works.

Mama's Boy

2005-02-17T15:00:00.000-08:00

Mommy dearests give birth to absurdist comedy in Bad Mama, an evening of short plays by Topher Payne opening Feb. 24 in the Process Theatre's New Play Rep at Whole World Theatre's Third Space.

by Curt Holman, Creative Loafing

Comprised of the dinner party farce "Entertaining Lesbians," the TV parody "A Lifetime Original Movie Starring Judith Light," and three monologues under the title "Letters from Home," Bad Mama takes parenting to its most absurd extremes. Having celebrated Southern women with his previous play, Beached Wails, the 25-year-old actor/playwright describes how he pokes fun at motherhood and the media in Bad Mama.

Creative Loafing: What does Bad Mama say about motherhood?
Payne: In all the plays, the mothers desire to be in better situations, and they see their children as the avenue to that, so everybody wins. It's not the theory but the practice in which things fall apart. In "Entertaining Lesbians," a straight white woman does everything she can to blend into "diverse" society to get her 4-year-old in a good pre-school. The pregnant mom in the monologue "What Are You Expecting" wants to raise her son to be a "gay best friend," like the ones she's seen on television. But every mama in the show starts out with the best intentions.

Do any of them resemble your own mother?
She'd probably be offended to know this, but my own mother's probably most like Ruth in the monologue "The Groom's Cake." They're both Mississippi mothers who never lose their poise, but Ruth goes from being inconvenienced by people at her son's wedding to actually eliminating them.

"A Lifetime Original Movie Starring Judith Light" features characters written to be played in imitation of TV actors like Judith Light and John Stamos. How do you and the cast handle that?
I watched about 50 Lifetime movies to prepare for it, and they have amazingly precise structures. I picked the famous actors not because they're bad, but because whenever they're in material like Lifetime movies, you can see the autopilot switch on, which I thought was beautiful. Each cast member is encouraged to study the performer they're playing, as if, say, Shari Belafonte sat down and said, 'This is the best script I've ever read!' and gave it her all.

Best Bets: Eula Mae's

2004-07-01T22:00:00.000-07:00

by Collin Kelley, Atlanta Intown Magazine

I was delighted to see that a revival of Eula Mae's Beauty, Bait, and Tackle will be staged this month at Onstage Atlanta. Many moons ago (okay, over a decade), I was acting in a play running in repertory with one of the first incarnations of the show created by Frank Blocker and Chuck Richards. Frank and Chuck were playing all the characters (mostly female, and these guys do not make pretty ladies, trust me) and it was a riot. Since then, the comedy/musical/drag show has garnered acclaim from an off-Broadway run.
This outing, Chuck and Frank have turned the show over to other actors, including Topher Payne, who nearly stole the show in last year's The Santaland Diaries at Horizon.

No Payne, No Gain

2004-06-24T21:56:00.000-07:00

by Brian Suber, David Atlanta Magazine

Theater dervish Topher Payne discusses his latest stage creation, the challenges of comedy, and Joan Crawford worship.

TOPHER PAYNE HAS DONE MORE in his early 20s than most people twice his age. This Renaissance man lists actor, playwright, author, and coffee-slinger among his many credits. We caught up with Payne between rehearsals for his latest role in Eula Mae's Beauty, Bait, and Tackle, writing a musical, launching a play in New York, penning a book, and hawking coffee at Outwrite Bookstore and Coffeehouse.

So, what brought you to Atlanta?
I was born in Mississippi and went to school in Connecticut and California. Later, I toured with a children's theater production of a puppet show. I was supposed to be in Atlanta for ten months. That was five years ago. This is the longest I've been in one place since I was 12 years old, and Atlanta is a great place to call home.

When did the acting bug first bite?
I was doing church plays when I was four. My first role was a sparrow, I had one line and I forgot it. I auditioned for The Client (the 1994 film role went to Brad Renfro) when I was 12 or 13 and haven't looked back since.

And now you play several roles, including women, in Eula Mae's Beauty, Bait, and Tackle. How did you prepare?
Carefully. I didn't want to play the character as a man in drag but as a woman. One of the characters I play is a mother in her 40s whose life has been for shit. A lot of playing the roles is a matter of logistics. I have to tap dance in high heels and deal with the weight of boobs. It's real eye-opening experience and completely different from anything I've ever done.

Eula Mae's sounds like a hoot. What will people see?
There are actually two stories going on: The first is Eula Mae, a rodeo rider who's been pursued by the same man for years. Every year he proposes, and every year she says "no." Then something happens that makes her think maybe she should accept the proposal. The second story is about Rita Mae, who is competing in the Miss Alabama Pageant for the ninth consecutive time. She is bound and determined to win, but every year she loses, and this is her last qualifying year. The great thing about the show is that three people play all the characters.

What did you learn from playing Rita Mae?
Rita Mae is by far the most optimistic character I've ever played. In a swimsuit competition, this woman would never have a chance of winning, but she has this dream and all she can control is the energy and effort she puts into it. I am very goal-oriented and have very clear steps toward what I want. With Rita Mae, what she gains has little to do with wins or losses, just the attempt.

Which is harder, comedy or drama?
For me, comedy. With drama, you pour your heart out on the stage and you don't know how the audience felt until curtain call. With comedy, you have to sell it right there immediately, and when you don't get that response there can be real terror.

Where can we see you next?
I will probably audition for five shows next year and will be blessed if I get one. (Laughs) I'm also working on a new play, Christina Darling, that is Mommie Dearest from Joan Crawford's point of view. There's a new book I'm working on with my sister called Cinema Shindig, on how to throw the ultimate movie party. We're having a lot of fun doing it, and I'm getting to know my sister as an adult in the process. Also I have my first show opening in New York in November as part of The Fall Collection Series.

Wait. Joan Crawford?
(Laughs) I have had two role models: My father and Joan Crawford. There's a common theme there, personal happiness as an ultimate goal. After working for 25 years, my father quit and went with my mother after the life he was supposed to be living. He never would have found happiness if he had not taken the risk. With Joan, it was a search for happiness that she never found. But you gotta look.

As an actor, what's your dream role?
Now I'm writing so much that I only do one or two shows per year, and try out for roles where I feel I can bring something new. For me, the greatest roles are not the typical Hamlet or Mercutio; I've seen that. I guess because I am the most uncoordinated human being- I'm 6'2" and move around like someone learning to walk- my dream would be to lead a show-stopping song and dance performance. But I can't carry a tune in a bucket.

Atlanta Burning

2004-06-01T22:02:00.000-07:00

People On the Rise in the Atlanta Arts Scene
2004 Atlanta Pride Guide

"...the strong willed Scarlett O' Hara types who prove the term "Southern Belle" can apply both to women and men. Atlanta's red-hot gay and lesbian community can always be counted on to move forward as keepers of the flame".

"TOPHER PAYNE. His first play, Beached Wails, is currently being produced around the Southeast. His next work, Christina Darling, (a retelling of Mommie Dearest from beleaguered Joan's perspective) is in workshops with the Process Theatre Company. Not bad for someone under 25."

Relations Unknown

2003-06-26T21:49:00.000-07:00

Review by Wendell Brock, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Topher Payne's semi-autobiographical play traipses out high heels and wigs and plenty of references to the epicenter of gay life in Atlanta -- the corner of 10th Street and Piedmont Avenue. In the tradition of Armistead Maupin's "Tales of the City," the Process Theatre world premiere documents an incestuous circle of gay and straight friends who are transformed by love, death, Harry Potter and sperm-bank visits.
While the plot twists can be improbable and the emotions maudlin, the play buzzes along on the energy of Payne's crackling dialogue and loopy characterizations. Narissa (Cherise Jefferson) used to date Owen (Larry Davis), who is now the partner of Chris (Joshua Howland), who's dying of cancer and whose former boyfriend Shep (Dan Balmer) is HIV-positive. Into the chaos steps confused researcher Ms. Eckles (the delightful Marcie Millard), Chris' Mississippi mama, Dorothy Jean (Betty Mitchell), handsome hustler Cliff (Theroun Patterson) and an offstage drag queen named Reba McFlatTire. On the night we saw the show, Payne substituted for an injured Howland. His naturalistic performance merged with the facts of his life in moments of dark comic poignancy. At 23, this playwright seems wise beyond his years.

True Fake

2003-05-27T21:51:00.000-07:00

"Credeaux Canvas"

Review by Curt Holman, Creative Loafing

You can almost feel Atlanta Classical Theatre's delight in decorating the set of The Credeaux Canvas. Keith Bunin's comedy-drama takes place in the tiny attic apartment of impoverished New Yorkers, and every detail is perfect: the hot plate, the stacks of empty pizza boxes, the arty postcards over the unmade bed, the rec room wall paneling.
Canvas finds humor in the plight of poor artists: "Did you get a clean glass from the tub?" But it also shows keen insights into the emotional risks of devotion, whether to art or to other people.
Jamie (Theroun Patterson), the penniless son of an art dealer, comes up with a get-rich quick scheme: to have his art-school roommate Winston (Topher Payne) paint an original work in the style of Jean-Paul Credeaux, a long-dead (and fictional) painter sure to be the next big thing. Jamie will pass the forgery off as a "discovery" to a credulous art collector (Michele McCullough).
What complicates the play isn't Jamie and Winston's fraud, but their friendship, especially when Jamie suggests that his girlfriend Amelia (Kimberly Jurgen) be the model. The tension in the nude posing scene is both erotic and comic, especially when Winston offers to make her more comfortable by removing his clothes. But as Amelia quizzes Winston about his work and his love life, the artist begins to feel "revealed." The scene has an intriguing dynamic of exposure and intimacy, although admittedly the talk would be less interesting if the actors were fully dressed.
Payne seems to play most of his roles in the same mild-mannered style, but it's a rewarding choice for Winston. By playing the part as sheltered and tentative, Payne makes the character seem unsure of his own feelings, as if he's not as remote as he'd like to be. The Credeaux Canvas pushes the humor a little hard but proves a surprisingly poignant drama, with Winston, who avoids emotional entanglements, turning his own self-portrait into a still life.

His Family Still Going to the Beach

2003-03-07T21:54:00.000-08:00

Now they sit in the audience for play 'Beached Wails'
BY SANDRA OKAMOTO, Columbus Ledger-Enquirer

Topher Payne sat nervously in the technicians' booth.
It was a year ago, and about 40 of the playwright's relatives had come from Mississippi to watch the premiere of "Beached Wails" in Atlanta.
"On opening night, I sat in the booth and I was able to observe both shows -- one on the stage and one in the audience," said Payne, 23. After watching that run, he immediately went to work and rewrote the second act. That version premiered in Atlanta in October.
"It was a new play," he said. "It's done for now."
"Beached Wails" is now playing in the Garret Theatre of the Playwright Cafe -- its first run outside of Atlanta.
"We're thrilled about it," Payne said.
For as long as Payne can remember, his mother and her three sisters would go to the beach every year. That week "was as firmly rooted as Christmas. When I grew up, I was surprised other families didn't do that."
He was intrigued about the four sisters' trips. "The way they talked and communicated with each other" made him want to be a fly on the wall.
Asked if he'd ever been on one of those trips, the answer came quickly: "Good Lord, no."
The motto in his family is that the play is "loosely based" on the four sisters. "My mother is very quick to point that out," Payne said.
His mother and his aunts liked the play very much. "They tease each other," he reports. "Every time a character gets a laugh, they take credit for it."
Payne attended boarding schools in Connecticut and California -- the Taft School in Watertown, Conn., and Idyllwild Arts Academy in Idyllwild, Calif. "They could not have been more divergent," he said. "Taft School was more 'Dead Poets Society' and Idyllwild was 'Fame.' I was this lanky Mississippi boy taking it all in."
But he says he didn't learn to write in school. He was much younger when he started writing and performing.
"I will always remember my stage debut," he said. "I played a sparrow in the church Christmas play. I had one line but couldn't remember it. I was 4. The first thing I ever wrote was my own version of 'A Christmas Carol.' "
When he was in sixth grade, his parents bought him a video camera. "It was one of the greatest things for me, but one of the dumbest things for them because they had to sit through hours of my movies."
He said he has a "gloriously extended family," and his "endless number of cousins" became actors in his movies. Even then, he didn't have enough people. So he dressed up mannequins and disguised his own voice and turned the dummies around so people couldn't see that it wasn't a real person.
"I was a very odd child, but it all worked out in the end."

Living for Today

2002-11-01T21:41:00.000-08:00

Young gay playwright talks about his latest works, sheds light on motivation to live life to the fullest.
Topher Payne, a 22-year-old playwright, balances a part-time job with productions of two plays and pursuing his dreams at breakneck speed.

By Mike Fleming, Southern Voice

To approach Topher Payne as he holds court behind the counter at Outwrite Books & Coffeehouse is to be greeted warmly with wit, sensitivity and intelligence — hints that there is something deeper stirring beneath.
In fact, the young coffee slinger is also a playwright in a whirlwind of activity in the local theater scene, including two current shows.
It's possible right now to be out on the town for an entire day of "non-stop Topher theater," Payne says.
And that's all part of Payne's plan to realize his dreams, he says.
"I've always been taught that if you're not doing what you were placed on this Earth to do, you are wasting your life," Payne says. "I have always believed that nothing is impossible if you want it bad enough."
Not bad for a high school drop out who has been on his own since age 15.
"It's not age that matters," he says. "It's experience."
That experience includes theater work in his home state of Mississippi and director of audience development at Woodruff Arts Center.
He decided to move on and take the job at Outwrite to give himself the time he needs to work on his craft.
Payne's comedy "Beached Wails" is enjoying "small but enthusiastic" audiences in a world-premiere production by Atlanta Classical Theatre. The show is the story of four Southern sisters and how they deal with adversity. It runs for an additional two weeks.
The play is based on Payne's own mother and aunts, who will attend the Nov. 1 performance.
"When I was growing up, I was fascinated just listening to them talk," Payne says. "It wasn't just what they said, but how they were saying it, and I think that comes off in this show."
"Beached Wails" is in part a response to another well loved Southern play about women, "Steel Magnolias," Payne says.
"Of course I'm aware of and love 'Steel Magnolias' like every other Southern gay man," he says. "But there were not really a lot of tough choices in that show. The thing I love about the women in 'Beached' is that they are all incredible women and they are all marvelously flawed."
While "Beached" runs, Payne's just-for-fun show "Solid Gold! That '70s Cabaret," shows in connection with Process Theatre Company.
In the show, Payne plays Cher circa the 1970s, Sonny Bono ("not at the same time," Payne assures), Brad Majors from "Rocky Horror" and a mystery character whose presence is a surprise in the show.
So how does a 22-year-old not only know what he wants, but how to pursue it?
"I've always taken chances," Payne says.
Payne will step back from stage work after "That 70s Cabaret" and devote more time to writing plays. His adaptation of "Cyrano," set in the 1960s, opens in March with Atlanta Classical Theatre. Four plays he's still writing should come to fruition next year.
"We have to take advantage of the time we're given," Payne says. "I could... be hit by a bus tomorrow. We have to approach things realistically and say 'This is what we're going to do with the time we have."

Wailing Wall

2002-02-26T21:45:00.000-08:00

Beached Wails airs sisterly conflicts
by Curt Holman,

Creative Loafing

Perhaps young playwright Topher Payne can be forgiven for the terrible pun in his title Beached Wails. Writing in the tired subgenre of the Southern women dramedy, a la Steel Magnolias, Payne offers a reasonably original and well-observed work that currently plays on "off nights" on the 14th Street Playhouse's second stage, where Atlanta Classical Theatre is also presenting The Coast of Illyria by Dorothy Parker and Ross Evans.
Directed by Sonny Goff, Wails depicts the loving but fractious relationship of four sisters: matronly Virgie (Leigh McClelland), caustic widow Brenda (Kathy Simmons), "saved" Christian Katie (Julie Oshins) and working mother Dana (Jennifer Gaydeski). They're enjoying their annual vacation to Gulf Shores, but Hurricane Louis threatens to cut their trip short.
Inclement weather closes the roads and strands the women in a beach house with an amiable, 21-year-old underwear model (Scott Shelfer), who wears gratuitously little and bends over a lot (in a gesture at equal exposure, Dana frequently shows off her legs). The tradition for this kind of play is for each character to have a deep-seated problem to air out, but Brenda's is rather surprising, as she believes the hurricane might be a sign from her late husband -- who was also named Louis.
Given that the play involves a hurricane, it shouldn't be a surprise that the speeches can get a little windy, while savage arguments blow up with insufficient warning. But the four actresses have an easy chemistry with each other, comfortably delivering Payne's quips about pain-in-the-neck husbands, prayer circles and useless wedding presents. But Beached Wails could use a more definitive ending: Closing the show with the sisters miming along to a Supremes song seems like an idea of last resort.

To Sleep or Not To Sleep

2001-05-01T21:39:00.000-07:00

By Shannon Wilder, Catalyst Magazine

In case you’re laboring under the delusion that Atlanta suffers from a lack of theater talent, you should spend a day — literally — with the producers, actors and directors of The 24-Hour Plays. It’s a headlong leap into the manic soul of the creative process.
The 24-Hour Plays are just that: plays completely created and produced in 24 hours. The first eight hours are dedicated to the writers who, fueled by a variety of (legal) stimulants, team up to pen entire (albeit 12-minute-long) plays. Hard on their heels are the directors, who have a few moments to familiarize themselves with the works before casting actors and spending the rest of the day rehearsing. The shows go on at 9:00 p.m. and by 11:00 p.m., exactly 24 hours after it began, the day is over.
There’s a reason the producers use the tagline “Embrace the Chaos.” Here’s a rundown:

11:00 p.m.: Still sporting a fetching plaid polyester pantsuit — the costume from a play in which she’s currently appearing — Synchronicity Performance Group’s Julie Oshins offers the 16 writers goodies — magnets, crayons, bubble blowing solution, etc. — from a brown paper sack. There are two of each; writers drawing the same item become partners. Topher Payne and Marc Cram hit it off immediately and are spouting ideas before other pairs have even figured out where to sit. Payne, who runs a daycare center, has written for The 24-Hour Plays three times, acted twice and directed once. Cram, who manages the Zoo Atlanta gift shop, is a veteran (once acting, once writing) and co-author of The Zurich Plays, a 1997 hit that was restaged this April at Dad’s Garage. He says the 24-hour process is good for him. “I’ve spent years writing plays that never got finished,” he says. “But this allows me to focus deeply. By staying up all night, I can produce something worth seeing.”

12:15 a.m.: Ensconced in a dressing room, Payne and Cram are bouncing ideas off one another, fueled by a bottle of black currant grappa and two bags of potato chips. Cram thought the grappa would hasten the creative process; instead it’s making his lips stick together. That’s a liability for a pair that talks as much as these two do. Payne says they hit on their topic pretty quickly — a takeoff on reality-based TV shows titled The Last Temptation of Survivor pitting Benito Mussolini, Marilyn Monroe, Alexander the Great and Jeffrey Dahmer against Don King, Mother Teresa, Elizabeth Taylor and Willie Nelson for a trip to Heaven and a new Ford Taurus. Satan and Kathie Lee Gifford emcee.

1:30 a.m.: Taking a smoke break — nicotine is a popular fuel source around here — Payne and Cram are hashing out plot details. The Survivor-like tribal warfare, says Payne, will center on games such as Twister and a three-legged race. Their original idea called for a sack race, but they changed out of consideration for directors. Had they left it in, someone would be spending their Sunday morning searching for sacks. Or, more likely, the director would have yanked the scene. They can do that. One set of writers noted on their cover page that the work should be presented more seriously than campy. “See that line,” the director said to his actors at rehearsal, “I want you to take your pens and mark it out. Completely.”

8:00 a.m.: Directors gather in the theater and choose scripts from Oshins’ outstretched hand. They begin to read. Some laugh, some groan. Marc Cram sidles up to Kate Warner, director of Last Temptation, and hands her a list of actors he and Payne want cast. Though Oshins technically handed over the reins to Synchronicity day producer Michele Pearce at this point, she opts to stay for casting.

8:30 a.m.: Casting begins. Head shots for 60 actors are on the rehearsal room table. Directors number off from one to eight and pick accordingly; the last one choosing twice and then working back down the line. Those who need two or three actors are done in minutes. For Warner, who has 10 actors to cast, the process is somewhat longer. Though one of her choices draws a groan of disappointment, no one gets nasty. Instead they trade or share — Warner is splitting Randy Cohlina with another director. The actor’s mischievous, diabolical look makes him perfect for Last Temptation’s Jeffrey Dahmer and another play’s Satan.

9:30 a.m.: Warner seeks a scantily clad young man for the final scene of Last Temptation. Someone mentions Mirlis has just cast one who might be willing to take on both roles, because he has virtually no lines. Topher Payne has returned after a few hours of downtime and is wandering the theater desperately seeking the director who cast him. He’s talked to everyone, but he can’t figure out who it is.

9:45 a.m.: Actors are flooding into the building with suitcases and makeup bags in tow, and rehearsals are beginning in hallways and classrooms throughout the former school building in which Horizon is housed. Payne bounds into the third-floor classroom where director Kate Warner is waiting for the cast of Last Temptation to appear. He’s been cast as Mussolini in his own play and he’s wondering if he’ll have time to dart home later and re-watch Tea With Mussolini to get an idea of how the little dictator, um, dictates.

3:30 p.m.: Horizon’s matinee of The Bible goes on; rehearsing groups try to get out of the way. Nevertheless, patrons inevitably encounter actors declaiming about photography, stupid man tricks and the unbearable lightness of being Jeffrey Dahmer.

11:00 p.m.: Last Temptation comes to a close as Mother Teresa saves Jeffrey Dahmer’s soul by prohibiting him from touching Seiling, who’s back in his boy-toy getup and slathered with chocolate syrup. The entire company comes out for a bow, and friends and family swarm them offering hugs and congratulations. Moments later, actors are downstairs in the rehearsal room swigging beer, putting on their street clothes and feeling both elated and despondent that it’s over. Meanwhile, Jeffrey Dahmer is presumably driving off to Heaven in that brand new Ford Taurus while Mother Teresa learns the true meaning of venal sin.

All In a Day's Work

2000-08-05T21:35:00.000-07:00

Best of the 24-Hour Plays benefits from its selectivity
By Curt Holman, Creative Loafing

...Clint Thornton and Topher Payne provide an even more satisfying spoof on Irish nostalgia with "Ashes to Ashes, Spud to Spud," placing Hansel and Gretel (Justin Welborn and Alison Hastings) in the midst of the keening and genuflecting of the great potato famine.