Cover Story: John McGivern, Hasani Issa and "Take Me Out"
There is no more anticipated theatrical event this spring than the Chamber Theatre's Milwaukee premiere of Richard Greenberg's acclaimed, "Take Me Out" which opens Friday, April 21 at the Broadway Theatre Center. Daring to explore the uneasy relationship of gender and sexuality in the world of professional sports, "Take Me Out" took Broadway by storm, winning a cluster of awards, including the Tony award for Best New Play and the Pulitzer.
  Notorious for its adult content, explicit dialogue and locker room nudity, "Take Me Out" features Milwaukee favorite, John McGivern and New York actor Hasani Issa, who is making his Milwaukee Chamber Theatre debut, as Darren Lemming, the star center fielder who underestimates the impact his coming out will have on himself and professional baseball.
  Both performers generously took time away from their busy rehearsal schedule to talk to Quest. 

Quest: Hasani, what is your background?

Hasani Issa: I'm originally from Washington, D.C. of a white mother and a black father. I went to Howard University n D.C., graduated in '99. Spent a year out in California at the American Conservatory Theatre. Left there after a year and went to New York, where I've been ever since.

Quest: Can you take a moment to give some background on "Take Me Out?"

Hasani Issa: Sure. It's written by Richard Greenberg. It's about a bi-racial baseball player who comes out and announces that's gay. The play then becomes a hurricane that surrounds him and the announcement and how it affects the rest of the season and how it affects Darren, who is kind of a golden boy to his teammates and everyone around him.

John McGivern: It is a show that on the outside looks like just a show about baseball when in fact it is a show about relationships and families in a broader sense. It is all around the subject of baseball.

Quest: Have you seen a previous production?

Hasani Issa: I saw it when it was here in New York, the original production.

John McGivern: I haven't. In fact, it was playing in Chicago and I knew that it was down there. I got a call from the guy who cast me who asked if I wanted to come down and I said, "Not really. I'd really rather not."

Quest: John, what role are you playing?

John McGivern: I play Mason Marzac who is an accountant who happens to be handed the account of Darren who is the star player. Mason is a gay man as well and is handed this account because his boss is retiring. He ends up having a meeting with Darren and Darren says, "What do you know about baseball?" And I'm like, "I know nothing about baseball." He says, "Well, I think that it is important that you find out what I do." He takes my character on this journey where he knew nothing and was intimidated and in the course of this journey, comes to love baseball. There are these two nine-page speeches that he gives right to the audience about what baseball means to not only him but to society. And it is this beautiful, beautiful metaphor about how baseball can be related to all of our lives. It is great writing and I'm thrilled to be able to do it.

Quest: Did you ever play baseball? Are you baseball fans?

Hasani Issa: Only recently. I grew up in D.C. and we didn't have a baseball team so it wasn't really a sport that I became attached to. We just got a team a couple of years ago and since then I've quite an avid fan of the Nationals, even though they were in last place.

John McGivern: No. I've a brother a year older than me and a brother 2 years older than me and both of them Ð we went to a Catholic school here in Milwaukee and there was a Catholic Little League where they had teams like the "Popes" the "Bishops" and the "Cardinals" and both of my brothers played. I was the boy in the family who couldn't throw a ball. I was always, "Please don't make me do this." But I spent a lot of time in the summer up in Lincoln Park where all the teams played, so I spent some time around it.

Quest: Has the play renewed your enthusiasm for baseball?

John McGivern: It has, That's kinda why I went last year, I knew I was going to do this. And it seemed so far away but I thought that we might as well go. Then I went on my own. Which is remarkable.

Quest: You're sound very much like the character you play!

John McGivern: (laughs) I know, it's true.

Quest: What do you feel is the greatest appeal of "Take Me Out?"

Hasani Issa: I think that it is a very timely topic, especially with all of the furor over gay marriage and the place of gay marriage in American society, so that it is very provocative in that way. It challenges people to think about things that they may or may not feel comfortable thinking about. It takes a topic which is very controversial and provocative and puts it with the most non-controversial activity in America, which is baseball, which makes for a very interesting combination

John McGivern: History speaks that what they will take away is the fact that no matter what our stories are that there is a similarity and a real humanity in all of us that is relatable. That we are so much more alike than we are different, in truth. And that whatever our lifestyle is, whatever troubles that we go through, we've all gone through stuff that is incredibly similar. It speaks to a spirit that's kind and I think that it makes people think about how they treat people.

Quest: Part of the appeal of "Take Me Out" for audiences is the promise of male nudity.

Hasani Issa: I don't see anything wrong with going to a play for a little bit of titillation. But with particular play, I think even the nudity acts as kind of a statement, a symbol of male sexuality, as a line between male heterosexuality and male homosexuality and where is that line and what does it mean. So, even in the nudity, I think the play is trying to make a statement and challenge assumptions.

Quest: John, as one of the actors who doesn't get naked, how do you feel about it?

John McGivern: Very disappointed. (laughs) But everyone has their crosses to bear. I'm disappointed, No one has ever asked me to take my clothes off. But it's okay.

Quest: I suppose that you could always do that as part of the Opening Night curtain call?

John McGivern: Don't you think? I'll tell them that you told me to. People will say, "Oh, no John!" (laughs) "We didn't mean it."

"Take Me Out" opens Friday, April 21 and runs through May 7 at the Cabot Theatre in Milwaukee's Broadway Theatre Center. For tickets, call 414-291-7800.

Task Force’s Winter Party Warms $300K To Gay Groups
By Steve Vargas and Nathan Mathis
Miami Beach - Backs and bodies - smooth, freckled, tattooed, tan and mostly all ripped - pulsed in the salt breeze on South Beach at the dance party finale at the Winter Party, held March 5 and yearly to raise money for local and national gay rights groups.
  As the sun set, house anthems spread a bittersweet euphoria across the crowd of 5,000 partygoers, mostly men.
“It’s a male-bonding, sensual, tribal-type of connection, being able to touch and be physical with other guys and express what you never got as a kid,” Mark Heiner, a bartender in town from New York told us.
  The bash unofficially kicked off what is known as “circuit party” season, attendees said - for the next six months, some will travel a world-circuit in search of the best party around.
  “It looks pretty, but there’s a dark side that can happen,” Heiner said, nodding to the drug abuse and often-futile search for love that he said can mark the scene.
  In Miami Beach, though, the beach party wound down a five-day winter festival which this year drew 10,000 guests - at least 6,000 from snow socked northern cities and other points out of town.
  Begun in 1994 to raise cash to defeat anti-gay state legislation, the Winter Party is now run by the National Gay  and Lesbian Task Force, a non-profit advocacy group working to build grassroots support for gay rights.
  Amid the South Beach soiree, the group has retained its political mission, kicking two-thirds of the festival’s estimated $300,000 in profits back to local gay groups.
  “People want to stereotype gay people into being white, handsome and dancing - and that is definitely a part of our community that we’re intensely proud of,” Matt Foreman, executive director of the national Task Force said. “But our community is also families with children, poor people and people of color.” He also added, “ I don’t see any tension between serious work and good parties, but we’re going to keep on broadening the festival.”
  This year, then, the five-day bash spilled beyond house-heavy circuit parties to include golf, museums, wine-tasting and beachfront films, a family picnic and fashion show - in part reflecting the evolution of an aging gay rights movement that now reaches out to baby boomers, too, said festival spokeswoman Sharon Kersten.
  But beneath the bamboo scaffold and billowing white banners on the beach, dancing was still the main point.
“It makes you feel so happy and independent,” Connecticut financial consultant Emre Algan said. “It makes me feel creative, like I can be myself.”
  The crowd at the Beach Party was ruled cute, not hard, by a soft-spoken spectator from Atlanta, standing along the seaside fence.
  The sun-splashed vibe was all about community, family and pride.
  Later as dark fell, so did the bass - from soaring, lyric-filled anthems to deep tribal house. Meanwhile, in speedos and cargo shorts, golden-backed boys twirled fluorescent scarves like trippy windmill waves, a move called “flagging.” Otherwise, there was no voguing, no posing, just dancing - for itself, for the way it looks, for the way it feels.
  “It’s more about a free spirit, to do your own thing, to set trends,” pharmacist Richard Long said before heading to the risers for a view of the sun-kissed crowd.
  Standing there, it just seemed possible that dancers might be “the athletes of God” or at least that’s what Albert Einstein once said, according to Circuit Noize magazine, handed out at the party.  And as diva Kim English took the stage at sunset, belting out her anthem “Unspeakable Joy,” it was so: Crowds rose in a cheer between the sand dunes and sea and lost themselves in the swirl.