philip dawkins
photo credit // timeout chicago
He swears he didn't set out to write the next great American gay play when struck with the inspiration for The Homosexuals, now in its world premiere production by About Face Theatre. As Chicago-based playwright Philip Dawkins told me, his play's premise jumped out at him quite unexpectedly one night after he went to a music-sharing party among "a very strong and close-knit circle of gay friends - I was tangent to that circle and I felt like I was watching a play with many lifetimes of gay history in front of me – the connections that they had. I just watched all of their relationships unfolding in front of me, especially since I wasn't immediately within that circle. I went home that night and didn't realize how much it grabbed me because I dreamed about it all night. I pretty much dreamed The Homosexuals and I woke up and had the play in my head and started writing. That's bizarre for me. Usually I spend a lot of time on research and this one I wrote first, leaving purposeful holes in it. I went back and did research and added it, but I had to spill it out on the page first because I couldn't sleep until I did."
Dawkins says his characters aren't based on the men he met at the party at all, but what struck him about them was the significance of their shared histories. "You walk into a room and you're dragging all of your experience with you and what does that mean when everybody knows your experience? When that's part of what makes you who you are to each other? I don't think that's specific to gay cliques or gay urban tribes, but I do think it's a large part of it." As something of an outsider to the particular group he met, he may have had an advantage of objective detachment that allowed him to observe the relationships among this tight-knit, self-selected family - a group he says appeared to be very different from his own associates. "I have quite a few friends and I lean on them heavily as my chosen family, but this group seemed to be very much a well-defined circle. I could walk along the circumference of that circle and know its boundaries."
Comparisons of The Homosexuals to landmark dramas like The Boys in the Band and Love! Valor! Compassion! are inevitable, given that they too deal with circles of gay friends and are very much of their eras (the mid-1960's and the late ‘80s/early ‘90s respectively). The Homosexuals' action takes place between 2000 and 2010, and is centered around Evan, a character about the age of Dawkins, who turned 30 last year. But with his characters, six gay men and one straight woman, he says he wasn't trying to make any categorical statements about gays as a group of people "outside of the seven we meet on that stage," though he says "I think some of those characters are trying to make statements about groups of people, but I'm not." In imagining those seven characters, Dawkins says he says he was inspired by "people I know, people I don't know, people I'd like to know….people who I thought Evan needed at that specific point in his journey."
He notes that a playwright he needed characters who could provide opportunities for dramatic conflict through which Evan would grow and become more confident as a gay man, a journey which Dawkins' play shows in reverse chronology. "What happens here is we actually see Evan get weaker and his friends get stronger and I hope (by the end of the play) we can look back at the beginning and say ‘he actually grew, matured in a way that was either helped or hindered by his friends.' (I ask) how do you express yourself in reference to the people who were buoying you?" In Evan's journey, he becomes for time a lover to at least two of the friends and has some sexual tension with the others, a fact which informed Dawkins' decision to call the play "The Homosexuals." He says, "I personally prefer to say that I'm a ‘homosexual' rather than ‘gay'. ‘Homosexual' says ‘I love this other thing, I love these people. It's more literal, almost clinical. There's this thing outside of me that I claim as my identity."
In choosing to tell the story backwards, Dawkins says he was influenced by a quote from T.S. Eliot's poem, "Four Quartets" which reads:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time
A native of Phoenix, Dawkins moved to Chicago in 1998 to attend Loyola University and seemed destined for big things as an actor after winning the role of Bobby in Pegasus Players' American premiere of the Stephen Sondheim musical Saturday Night. Instead, Dawkins turned to playwriting and has had seven other plays produced professionally before The Homosexuals . His plays have covered a range of genres from fables to surreal comedy and drama. "I tend to genre-hop," he tells me. "I like to listen to the story and let it be told the way it wants to," quickly adding "That sounds so Zen – I don't mean to be so together!" He's also written a number of plays for children's theater and is deeply passionate about the power of theatre for youth, particularly gay youth.
Dawkins teaches playwriting to high school students in Chicago and says "Where I know theater is vital to the gay experience is in public high schools, and that some of my students who are in the theatre club and who are taking theatre classes are doing it because they're gay and that is their form of expression. It's a life-changing, sometimes life-saving experience for them. It's particularly hurtful to me when those programs are cut or not valued because I do think of it as an outreach. It's a safe way for the kids to talk about things they're going through where you can talk really about the characters. You can have a conversation in an open and honest way, talking about somebody (a character) who didn't exist, but who we all know exists (in that classroom)."
The Homosexuals will play at the Victory Gardens Richard Christiansen Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln Avenue, through July 24, 2011. For ticket information, visit the Victory Gardens box office, www.aboutfacetheatre.com or call 773-871-3000.
Dawkins says his characters aren't based on the men he met at the party at all, but what struck him about them was the significance of their shared histories. "You walk into a room and you're dragging all of your experience with you and what does that mean when everybody knows your experience? When that's part of what makes you who you are to each other? I don't think that's specific to gay cliques or gay urban tribes, but I do think it's a large part of it." As something of an outsider to the particular group he met, he may have had an advantage of objective detachment that allowed him to observe the relationships among this tight-knit, self-selected family - a group he says appeared to be very different from his own associates. "I have quite a few friends and I lean on them heavily as my chosen family, but this group seemed to be very much a well-defined circle. I could walk along the circumference of that circle and know its boundaries."
Comparisons of The Homosexuals to landmark dramas like The Boys in the Band and Love! Valor! Compassion! are inevitable, given that they too deal with circles of gay friends and are very much of their eras (the mid-1960's and the late ‘80s/early ‘90s respectively). The Homosexuals' action takes place between 2000 and 2010, and is centered around Evan, a character about the age of Dawkins, who turned 30 last year. But with his characters, six gay men and one straight woman, he says he wasn't trying to make any categorical statements about gays as a group of people "outside of the seven we meet on that stage," though he says "I think some of those characters are trying to make statements about groups of people, but I'm not." In imagining those seven characters, Dawkins says he says he was inspired by "people I know, people I don't know, people I'd like to know….people who I thought Evan needed at that specific point in his journey."
He notes that a playwright he needed characters who could provide opportunities for dramatic conflict through which Evan would grow and become more confident as a gay man, a journey which Dawkins' play shows in reverse chronology. "What happens here is we actually see Evan get weaker and his friends get stronger and I hope (by the end of the play) we can look back at the beginning and say ‘he actually grew, matured in a way that was either helped or hindered by his friends.' (I ask) how do you express yourself in reference to the people who were buoying you?" In Evan's journey, he becomes for time a lover to at least two of the friends and has some sexual tension with the others, a fact which informed Dawkins' decision to call the play "The Homosexuals." He says, "I personally prefer to say that I'm a ‘homosexual' rather than ‘gay'. ‘Homosexual' says ‘I love this other thing, I love these people. It's more literal, almost clinical. There's this thing outside of me that I claim as my identity."
In choosing to tell the story backwards, Dawkins says he was influenced by a quote from T.S. Eliot's poem, "Four Quartets" which reads:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time
A native of Phoenix, Dawkins moved to Chicago in 1998 to attend Loyola University and seemed destined for big things as an actor after winning the role of Bobby in Pegasus Players' American premiere of the Stephen Sondheim musical Saturday Night. Instead, Dawkins turned to playwriting and has had seven other plays produced professionally before The Homosexuals . His plays have covered a range of genres from fables to surreal comedy and drama. "I tend to genre-hop," he tells me. "I like to listen to the story and let it be told the way it wants to," quickly adding "That sounds so Zen – I don't mean to be so together!" He's also written a number of plays for children's theater and is deeply passionate about the power of theatre for youth, particularly gay youth.
Dawkins teaches playwriting to high school students in Chicago and says "Where I know theater is vital to the gay experience is in public high schools, and that some of my students who are in the theatre club and who are taking theatre classes are doing it because they're gay and that is their form of expression. It's a life-changing, sometimes life-saving experience for them. It's particularly hurtful to me when those programs are cut or not valued because I do think of it as an outreach. It's a safe way for the kids to talk about things they're going through where you can talk really about the characters. You can have a conversation in an open and honest way, talking about somebody (a character) who didn't exist, but who we all know exists (in that classroom)."
The Homosexuals will play at the Victory Gardens Richard Christiansen Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln Avenue, through July 24, 2011. For ticket information, visit the Victory Gardens box office, www.aboutfacetheatre.com or call 773-871-3000.
