Much of the coverage of the 2003 Tony Awards focused not on the winners and losers, but on the gayness of the show itself, with the final tally being: very gay. Says Larry Fine in Reuters: “The 57th Tony Awards show was a big night for gays on Broadway, with top honors going to gay-themed productions and artists relishing the openness that has marked this theatrical season.”

To wit, best play was Richard Greenberg’s gay Take Me Out, and the best actor was Harvey Fierstein in a dress in Hairspray. The winners of the best original score Tony then kicked it up a notch, as Blake Green reported in Newsday: “Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, who wrote the score for Hairspray and are partners in real life, may have made Tony history by joyfully kissing on stage as they accepted their award.”

Fine’s Reuters account gives a more full accounting of the big smooch, complete with the accompanying dialog: “'We’re not allowed to get married but I want to declare I love you and I’d like to live with you the rest of my life,’ said Shaiman, who then kissed Wittman.”

The bottom line was expressed by Brendan Lemon of Out magazine: “The Tony’s were gayer than usual.”

Generally unremarked upon were the Tony ratings, which hovered around eight million, same as last year. Broadway ticket grosses are similarly static, hovering around 11 million sold for several seasons running.

Vigging Out

It’s an ArtsLine personality parade this issue, starting with a great piece by Linton Weeks in the Washington Post on June 4, about the kind of background character that is an important creator of our culture without us ever knowing about it. The kind of mysterious mover and/or shaker who arranges for people like Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose to write books and go on speaking tours and otherwise capitalize most efficiently on their celebrity.

The fella in question is named David Vigliano, or “The Vig,” as Weeks’ article dubs him. The Vig is a literary agent whose clients currently include not only the famed sniper-hunting lawman, but also notorious plagiarizer Jayson Blair. New York and national media have continued to be full of (largely disgusted) reports of Blair’s negotiations for book and TV deals—so when “The Man Who Brought Down the Times” comes out, you’ll know who to blame: The Vig.

In the article Vigliano reports that last year his agency had nine books on the best-seller list. His clients, it seems, range from former Clinton spokeslady Dee Dee Myers to religious novelist Jerry Jenkins (co-author of the Left Behind series) to self-help gurus like celebrity dermatologist Nicholas Perricone.

Did I just write “celebrity dermatologist?” Yes. And that’s the world people like the Vig have created for us; we have long since graduated from a time where fame is reserved for actors, athletes, and politicians. To wit, “In the 1980s, Vigliano sold a story about a transvestite stock analyst who murdered his wife, went to prison and died as a result of AIDS…he’s also handled a book about shark attacks.”

Did a shark write the book? The article doesn’t say.

Everybody Hates Michael

Michael Riedel’s first love was politics—among the other revelations in a long profile on the widely loathed New York Post theatre columnist in the Observer, is the fact that “in elementary school, he was named president of Fourth Graders for Ford.”

Bernadette Peters currently appearing on Broadway in Gypsy

The hook of the piece is Riedel’s recent hammering at Bernadette Peters, the star of Gypsy who keeps flaking on performances. In the Post, Riedel has questioned her appropriateness for the role, questioned her physical ability to sing the part, and generally questioned how many beers the producers had had when they cast her. The Broadway community, author Michael Heyman explains, takes umbrage because Peters is such a beloved figure.

Heyman quotes producer Emanuel Azenberg, “who produced Movin’ Out and La Bohème and worked with Ms. Peters on the musical The Goodbye Girl for 188 performances in 1993.”

“Everyone who’s worked with her really likes her,” Azenberg says in the article. “Whether she’s the perfect Mama Rose is irrelevant; she’s a nice lady.”

Heyman lets this insane opinion—Azenberg has got the point exactly wrong—go unchallenged. And frustratingly, the article spends not nearly enough time considering the real advantage of a figure like Riedel: namely, that by being nasty and controversial he enlivens a Broadway theatre industry that has grown increasingly dull and formulaic. “It is arguably a sign of Broadway’s resurgence that after 14 years on the beat, Mr. Riedel’s moment…is near.”

There’s no “resurgence.” Alas, the vast majority of American entertainment seekers still have no use for Broadway, and no amount of in-jokey catfighting will change that.

It’s A Joke. I Think.

Talking about race on the Internet has its pros and cons. On the one hand, the anonymity of the medium allows for some unexpected honesty; on the other hand, the difficulty in interpreting tone online means that some people are unsure whether the writer is kidding or not.

Artist damali ayo's Web site www.Rent-A-Negro - is it genius or heinous?

This tonal ambiguity was a focus of the coverage of performance artist damali ayo’s Web site, www.Rent-A-Negro.com. The various publications that ran features on ayo’s hilarious, confrontational online art project all included quotes from people who were baffled upon interacting with it.

“I don’t know if it’s genius or heinous,” said one interviewee to the Washington Post. In fact, ArtsLine is glad to report, it is genius. Much like the similarly buzz-worthy BlackPeopleLoveUs.com site, ayo’s work gleefully satirizes white people’s patronizing attitudes towards The Other, using the cheesy tropes of Internet marketing to do it. “Why Rent a Negro?” the homepage asks. “How much does it cost? What can I expect from the service?” and so on.

Technology reporter Katherine Mieszkowski’s short piece about ayo in Salon.com details what kind of responses the artist has gotten thus far, from readers black and white.

“So far, ayo’s received about 40 responses to her rental request form, which asks would-be renters to answer: 'Have you used black people before?’…The requests to play golf, go to a corporate party, attend a BBQ or just go to a bar have come from the likes of California, Ohio, Indiana, Texas, South Africa, Germany and Canada. But ayo says only about a third of these potential renters are clearly in on the joke. As for the remainder, she’s just not sure.”

ayo is straightforward in explaining to her various interviewers where the idea came from. “She says she’s trying to draw attention to the ways people of color are treated differently,” explains the Post. “But not everybody likes her art. Invitations to lynching parties have come from both blacks and whites angry about the site. 'People are very literal,’ she says. 'I understand that.”

ayo’s next project, according to her website (http://damaliayo.com/), is called DIY reparations. In it, “ayo panhandles for reparations on the streets of every city she visits in the next year.” Something to look forward to.

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