Auditions are scheduled (10/20/14) to cast volunteers to read oral histories in a performance at the Lyric Theater in Blacksburg this Saturday.
The live theatrical presentation weaves a dozen oral histories into an artistic tapestry that focuses on resiliency in the LGBTQ Appalachian community. It’s the headliner for the 10th Annual Gay in Appalachia’ event, presented by the LGBTQ Caucus at Virginia Tech.
Carrie Cline who produced this oral history presentation called Revelations. Is originally from New York. But when she moved to West Virginia she began to wonder about something.
"If people in Appalachia are marginalized by the greater world, then the people who raise and are role models for gays and transgender, queer Appalachians may be teaching people how to rise above the stigma."
With a Rockefeller Scholarship, she began to explore the ways people who are other than straight Appalachians incorporate the resiliency that’s such a core part of Appalachian culture. She took oral histories from dozens of people and created a performance piece from what they said
"It opens with people talking about strong roll models in their own lives one person says my gramma taught me not to use the term ‘four eyes’ and not to put other people down. Someone else, a gay man, talks about an aunt who was very much herself, wore big grass skirts through the Krogers and his mother who would have 40 people over for Thanksgiving and also just going her own way and finding her own path. So several of these kinds of stories are exchanged and then people move on to the theme of realizing that they were different in terms of gender and sexuality."
It’s a relatively new inquiry, says David Cline, no relation, a history professor at Virginia Tech.
"The standard narrative is one that privileges large urban areas and often privleges the west coast or the north of this country and kind of leaves out the more rural areas and the American South."
Cline is working on a project with faculty and students in the Virginia Tech History Department, along with colleagues in the University Libraries’ Special Collections and campus partners including HokiePRIDE, the LGBT Faculty/Staff Caucus, and the Ex Lapide Society, the LGBTQ alumni network at VT to collect more oral histories from the American South and specifically Virginia Tech.
"And so this is, in some ways a corrective, looking at these areas to recognize the really deep history that’s here."
When Revelations was performed here 8 years ago, it was standing room only. Part of the appeal is the opportunity to participate in it, a way to understand others’ experiences by reading their words aloud to an audience. Kline is looking to cast 12 readers for the performance which includes a variety of characters from their 20s to their 70s.
"And you will not have to memorize parts, but you’ll have a chance to experience what someone else has been through. You’ll be reading the words, very powerful words of someone else, of lesbians of gay men of transgender people of bisexual people and it’s a wonderful opportunity to walk in someone else’s shoes, again, without having to memorize but to experience that and then share it with a dozen other people and then share it with the community at the end of the week."
Kline and her husband Michael will devote six days in creative residency at Virginia Tech working on the production. They’re also musicians and they will perform their songs before the performance.
Auditions to read one of the 12 roles in Revelations are at the Graduate Life Center at Virginia Tech at 7:00 tonight, 10/20. The performance is this Saturday afternoon.
