category: two-act play
genre: drama
running time: 90 minutes
setting: San Francisco
period: contemporary
characters:
Zane Glider, a gay man in his mid-twenties
Aurillio, a handsome drug addict in his early thirties
Lee, his partner, a gay man in his late forties
Evan, a gay college student, 21
Henry, his partner, a college professor in his mid-forties
Celia, a girl on a BART train
Seema, a taxi cab driver
Franco, a straight bar-tender working in a gay bar
Vera, a lesbian from the South
Pauline, her girlfriend
Ricky, a young man with HIV
Isis, a beautiful hermaphrodite
story:
Zane is a young gay man in San Francisco experimenting with crystal meth after falling in with Aurillio, a handsome artist and “functioning meth head” who is in an open relationship with Lee, a middle-aged business man looking to fill a void with weekend debacles of sex and drugs. Evan, a college student also slipping into the drug circles of the Bay Area after being introduced to it all by his partner, deviant college professor Henry, develops a crush on Zane after the two meet in a bar and following a weekend orgy with Lee and Aurillio, Zane goes down to San Jose to have a threesome with Henry and Evan during which Henry overdoses and dies. Zane and Evan flee back to the city where they both resolve to clean up, though it is never revealed if Evan actually does. Aurillio confesses he is in love with Zane but Zane denies this is even possible, pointing out that Aurillio doesn’t even know his last name, and the two of them part for good.
author’s comments:
This play was written in, for me, a unique fashion, starting first as a novel- a long, heavily fictionalized memoir, really- some of which ended up, in fragments, as part of Dry Country, some of which ended up on the cutting room floor, and most of which ended up becoming a play; perhaps the darkest one I’ve ever written. Almost Greek in its slow but obvious unraveling of the tragic coil, ruthless in its approach to the subject matter, this piece was really me laying some demons to rest: my own drug experimentation, my brother’s death by a drug overdose, my fear of my own sexual identity, my anxieties over ever really fitting in anywhere. There was originally a love interest for Zane that was axed from the script entirely because he provided too much hope and the romantic scenes between them never really fit the general tone of the story: Graham ended up in Dry Country, dating Oliver, and taking with him the most straight forward depiction of actual events from my life (my relationship with another young man I met in my early years in the Bay Area). What remained in this play is all much more twisted than most of what I actually went through and observed; the worst case scenarios played out for everything they are worth rather than the close call good luck I generally experienced while skulking around dive bars and expensive homes with less than reputable men. For the company that is brave enough to take on this show I will say that I think it provides a unique and non-moralizing view into a side of gay subculture we rarely see: attractive, successful men, sans the martyrdom of gay bashing or HIV, throwing their lives away simply because they can. It’s not a flattering portrayal, but it’s not a demonizing one either; rather it attempts to be truthful, and there in lies the danger and, I think, this show’s greatest hurtle of ever being done by either gay or straight theater companies.