14 Steps to Oz

by Brian Suber, David Atlanta Magazine

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