Premiere: 1992 Michigan State University production

Poster from world premiere of And Divided We Fall

The flyer from the premiere.

Michigan State University put almost 10 grand into the play back in 1992, before the gays in the military thing was so overdone. It was rather topical, however.

Oh, and although I wasn't in charge of promotions (i was just the playwright—I was allowed to all rehearsals and actually talked with the director a lot and all of that) I did draw the graphic. I recognize it more than remember it. Anyway, the graphic was our ROTC patch slightly altered.

Front cover of premiere program.
The front cover from the program. The play only ran two nights.
inside front cover of program.
Inside front cover of the program. More than 40 people showed up for the open casting call. I was the only gay associated with the production. Misha Davenport was bi, however. Everyone else was straight, at least at the time of the play. (And there's actually a funny story about how on opening night an old friend hooked up with one of the cast members. They (boy/girl) just had to work out that no matter what each other first thought, they were both straight (they each assumed the other was gay because... well, Jennifer thought Chris was gay because the first time she saw him, he kissed a guy (on stage), and Chris thought Jen was gay because she was an old friend of mine).
Next page of program.
The rest of the credits. You'll see here that I also picked up third place in the competition—with a play that didn't get produced until 5 yearyears later in 1997! Oh, and we actually had sponsors and everything for this show!
Masthead of The State News from May 8, 1992. It has a picture from the play over the newspaper name, along with the words "Divided Unites," letting everyone know about the play.
The masthead of the State News on opening day. We got front page, above-the-masthead notice!
Review from The State News, headline "Play Explores Gay Rights."

I'm trying to make it so y'all can read the clips, even with the non-quote in this article. The non-quote is... Well, you see, I told a four-paragraph story and the writer paraphrased it down to two sentences and put quotation marks around it. I had all sorts of folks calling me up saying, "You didn't say this!" Because it didn't even sound like me.

I was at work, at Quality Dairy, complaining about the quote when I turned around and not 10 feet from where I stood was the reporter, come to see what I thought.

Man, I felt like crap, but hopefully she never did such a thing again.

Ticket from the Wharton Center for the play.
The Wharton Center is a world-class performance space. The official-looking tickets made it really real to me.
Picture from the play.
Yeah, I know, the photos ain't that great.
Picture from And Divided We Fall at Michigan State University.
 
Lansing State Journal mention of "And Divided We Fall."
I had to get with it to get the Lansing State Journal to notice us, but I did it!

 

1994 POW Revival

Poster from the 1994 POW revival of And Divided We Fall.
I can't remember whose idea it was to use a flag for the poster. Anyway, I think our materials looked a lot better this time around.
Front cover of the program for POW's revival of And Divided We Fall.
Our promotions person did a wonderful job with the posters and program!
Inside the program for POW's revival of And Divided We Fall.
Inside the program.
Inside the program for POW's revival of And Divided We Fall.
POW (Pissed Off Wimmin) was known for the wildly funny bios we'd write. I hang my head in shame that I used scare quotes, however.
Back cover of the program for POW's revival of And Divided We Fall.
It was wonderful to get advertisers in our programs!
Ticket for POW's revival of And Divided We Fall.
The tickets. Somehow, the TicketMastery feel of the first tickets felt a little more distinguished, although these looked a lot better.
Article from The Detroit News about Therese Szymanski's And Divided We Fall.
The big pull-quote is from Therese Szymanski, who spent more than an hour on the phone with the reviewer who, like many others, didn't think you could give a play a title like And Divided We Fall, have it be about something as serious as gays in the military, include a brutal fag bashing and have it be a comedy. Didn't believe it till he saw it.
Full page article from Metro Times about Therese Szymanski's And Divided We Fall.

This was truly amazing.

First off, Metro Times is a tabloid-sized newspaper and we got a full page. Next up, that box on the left? That was in the table of contents—so we got some awesome attention from the paper.

Finally, this is my favourite article about me or something of mine ever, mostly because it has the best paragraph ever—see if you can figure out which paragraph it is. (If you need a hint, look for the word smirk.)

Cast picture from Therese Szymanski's And Divided We Fall.
We used just a few flags for the cast photos—and I don't think I had anything to do with that.
Cast picture from Therese Szymanski's And Divided We Fall.
We had some fun with the cast photos.
Article from The Oakland Press about Therese Szymanski's And Divided We Fall.
The Oakland Press also stopped to pay attention to a comedy about gays in the military. My assistant director, Lessa Bouchard, who, last I heard, actually works in theatre to this day, said I had a way of grabbing topical issues.
Cast and crew picture from Therese Szymanski's And Divided We Fall.
The cast finally got me on stage for a few of the photos.

 

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