After 22 Years of Silence

Revived queer theater group TOSOS II is loud and proud... and very——out

At a table at the Center on a Saturday in June 2001, on the eve of Gay Pride Day, playwright Doric Wilson and director Mark Finley decided to launch TOSOS II, a resurrection of groundbreaking queer theater group TOSOS (an acronym for The Other Side of Silence).

Talk about a prodigy. The infant TOSOS II ran before it could crawl with three critically acclaimed productions last year including Wilson’s own much-lauded play Street Theater. Now the toddler has made new friends in the playground and is co-producing What the F**k?! with Emerging Artists’ Theater Company (EAT), a launch pad for emerging playwrights.

Their first collaboration is an evening of two campy short plays by David Bell set in a New York restaurant. The collaboration with EAT came about because several members of EAT are also involved with TOSOS II. EAT members, Shay Gines and Christopher Borg, have both worked with the TOSOS II gang before.

For Bell, EAT turned out to be a particularly hot one night stand: "I was actually cruising for dates on AOL, but the profile for "Eattheatre" said that it was looking for script submissions, so I threw one in their direction." They liked it and EAT has produced five of his original plays. What the F**k’s?! storyline is based on reality, Bell’s day job is in a restaurant.

TOSOS and TOSOS II co-founder playwright Doric Wilson is one of the forefathers of modern queer theater, and of gay history itself. Wilson’s first gay-themed play was performed in 1961 at the legendary Caffe Cino, a West Village coffeehouse that was Off-Off Broadway’s birthplace. Years later he was present at the Stonewall riots.

Wilson has never stopped to consider his role in throwing open the closet door for Broadway productions like Torch Song Trilogy and Angels in America. He’s always had the life he wanted, and has turned down big-money chances to remain true to his ideals. "When my play A Perfect Relationship was heading for a major Off-Broadway production in the early 1980s, I looked at the producers and director and realized they were people I wouldn’t trust in my apartment overnight, so I cancelled," Wilson says. "I would give my keys to anyone involved in TOSOS II——well, almost anyone," he adds.

Wilson spent ten years on the west coast attending to family matters, and returned to New York in 1991. He wasn’t re-involved with theater until he connected with Mark Finley and Barry Childs. He still writes but hasn’t allowed production of his new material since the early 1980s. He mysteriously declines to elaborate, but admits that’s likely to change with the revival of TOSOS II.

For now he’s happy to provide an opportunity for others, saying "Writers as talented as David Bell will ultimately reach an audience, but I want to help push them along faster if I can."

At the end of What the F**k’s?! opening night performance, as the audience cheered, Doric Wilson leaned over and said quietly, "I’ve been out of the loop for 20 years. When I see these productions and hear the audience laugh and applaud, I remember why I started TOSOS." - Bennett Marcus / Gay City News - September 20-26, 2002 - Vol 1, Issue 17

They also provide grand opportunities to the energetic actors who get to play in them. In Starf**kers, Carol Monda, Shay Gines, and Dayna Steinfeld portray three thirty-something women who, though they ought to know better, prize celebrity (and proximity thereto) above all else. Monda and Gines are bitchy fun as, respectively, Erik Estrada's ex-wife and a cable access self-help guru, while Steinfeld is slightly more sympathetic as the quivering personal assistant to a TV-almost-star. The three gather for lunch at a trendy Manhattan restaurant, where they eventually spy rising movie star Braxton Mitchell (played with blank, guileless charm by hunky Gerry Downey). Their efforts to reel Braxton in-and their caustic gay waiter's efforts to run interference-make for plenty of broad comic shenanigans of the "I Love Lucy"/"Laverne & Shirley" variety.

F**k Off!!, billed as the appetizer, similarly provides Christopher Borg and Desmond Dutcher with meaty roles as a pair of lovers who work together-reluctantly-as waiters at the same chic eatery. Dutcher is very funny as the always on-the-make Mineral, who literally throws himself into the chase of a young new recruit named Cody (nicely played by Jason Bowcutt). Borg is the overwrought, neurotic Jameson, who is convinced that Cody is some kind of plant intended to get Mineral fired.

The jokes come fast and furious, loaded with iconic references and catty, dishy humor. What the F**k?! is perfect fare for The Duplex at 10 o'clock on a Friday night. - Martin Denton / nytheater.com posted Sept. 10, 2002

Playwright David Bell could not have picked a more congenial producer than TOSOS II for What the Fuck?!, his evening of way-over-the-top one-act comedies. His tales from a restaurant packed with raving queens and Sex and the City wannabes have all the bite, zing and madness of queer theater from the wild days of the ’60s and ’70s, but with entirely contemporary subject matter and sensibility. TOSOS was first founded in 1974, and re-established in 2001, so old-made-new is just the ticket. The first one-act, Fuck Off, follows drama queen waiter Jameson (Christopher Borg) and his horndog boyfriend/fellow waiter Mineral (Desmond Dutcher) as they respectively try to terrify and hump naive trainee Cody (Jason Bowcutt). When Jameson’s anger reaches a boiling point, Borg breaks down with a demented verve worthy of Joan Crawford.

In Starfuckers, the abovementioned S. J. Parker clones (don’t they wish) vie comically for the attentions of dim-bulb movie hunk Braxton Mitchell (Gerry Downey), clawing their way past their queen bee waiter (played by Bell himself on the night I went). It was an odd sensation to pass the sub-couture cattle that infest my East Village neighborhood, and then see them so wickedly satirized onstage.

Both plays start with extraneous intros that would be better served if developed into plays of their own. We’re lucky that any minuscule problems Bell has as playwright come from a wickedly overactive imagination. - Jonathan Warman / HX magazine - September 20-26 Vol 1, Issue 17