Coming Out Was Never So Much Fun
by Corey Stulce, The Vital Voice, St. Louis, MO
August 27, 2004
When you get tired of hearing the music swell and watching the over-dramatized coming out movies, television programs and play out there that seem to wrench every bit of emotion out of the topic, you may want to check out Jerry Rabushka's play "Empty Closets," a more comical lok at a serious time in someone's life.
"One of my biggest pet peeves is that a lot of times coming out is played as maudlin," Rabushka said. "I just wanted to have fun with it."
Rabushka, who said his own coming out was in the late 70s was "no big deal," will once again present his 1998 play on Sept. 3 and 4 before he and the rest of the cast take the production to the National Gay and Lesbian Theatre Festival in Columbus, Ohio.
The play was originally written to be performed on the PrideFest stage, so it was designed so that anyone walking by would be able to jump in and enjoy the show. It revolved around a coming out workshop where various folks could remark on their unusual leaps from the closet.
Rabushka plays Joey, who finds that he people around him couldn't care less about him coming ou. Tyler, played by Gerald Ortiz, thinks he is coming out every time he has sex, more or less keeping a revolving door on his closet. And there's also a straight woman coming out to her lesbian mothers.
"What? There's a man!"
Evidently the moms want to know where they went wrong and why their little princess didn't turn out to be gay as well.
"The neat thing about this play is that there is an equal mix of gay and lesbian," Rabushka said. "That's rare with these type of plays."
He and his producer, Skip Hardesty, attended the festival a couple years ago, and Rabushka said it's great and enlightening to see what types of gay theater are being produced around the country.
