Topher Payne Acts Up

by Matt Burkhalter, ATLANTAboy.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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