By Daniel Buckwalter
Forget the concept of forgiveness, for there is nothing to be forgiven for.
It’s all about acceptance, according to Eugene playwright Martin Fogarty, and he has taken this thought and put it into two plays — That Kind of Future and Acceptance — which explore sexual and gender identity. Both plays make their debuts this summer on the podcast, Open-Door Playhouse, in Los Angeles.
Fogarty, who has had a play produced at Oregon Contemporary Theatre’s NW 10 Festival and also acted at various houses locally, notes that “I consider myself an ally” of the LGBTQIA community, and that he strongly favors spiritual inclusiveness over moral rigidity. “We need to remember that this is about love,” he says.
In That Kind of Future, the inclusiveness will be hard-won, if it comes at all, after the breakup of a romance between the characters Evan and Julie. Evan has been playing the field, so to speak, and much to Julie’s angst. Now he announces to Julie that he’s gay, a fact that’s not sitting well with her. Bitterness hits hard.
“I feel less angry now … or more?” she yells. “I don’t know. I’m confused! How did you think I was going to react to this?”
Acceptance deals with the relationship dynamic of a young transgender woman, Julie, as she and her husband, Robert, see her elderly father, David, at a hospital.
David has cancer and not long to live. He was harsh to Julie in the early years of being a transgender woman. In fact, they hadn’t seen or spoken to each other in five years.
Acceptance, set with the layout of PeaceHealth RiverBend Hospital in mind, is the stronger of the two plays because there is so little time left for the father, and David wants to take accountability and apologize.
But too much has been said, or worse, left unsaid. “Why couldn’t you just listen to me?” Julie asks. “That’s all I needed from you. I know you didn’t understand, but you didn’t even try to.”
Fogarty says he reached out to Transponder for context and spoke extensively with a transgender woman in preparing to write Acceptance. That learning curve shows, in that the play has a soft, fragile ending, not a crisp, neat conclusion. That just can’t be.
Instead, and after much angst, the play ends quietly with David on his hospital bed wanting to know about the daughter he once refused to acknowledge. Better late than never, he is coming to — acceptance.
That Kind of Future opens at the Open-Door Playhouse podcast July 15, and Acceptance follows in August. More information on how to see the productions and about Open-Door Playhouse is online at OpenDoorPlayhouse.org.
