Drama Queens, a five-star arts journal focusing on female artists

REVIEW:  Lovebird Jamboree by L.A. Henderson

Lovebird Jamboree is a poignant exploration of the lives and experiences that fueled the 1969 revolution remembered in this year’s Stonewall 50 celebrations.  Playwright Sarah Elizabeth Brown’s eight monologues based on interviews with members of the LGBTQI community, three of them intertwining, give us an idea of the joyous and painful paths walked in less enlightened times, monologues that show how far society has come and how far we have yet to go.

Arlin (Andy Reiff) is a young man who comes out and moves to New York, enthralled by the promise of a new city and his first love.  Reiff plays Arlin with the sweetness of a teenager discovering love, and the show begins with a lovely “happily ever after.”  Sadie (Margo Sinalese, appearing courtesy of Actor’s Equity Association) is an older woman who moves from a heterosexual marriage to realizing her true sexuality with wonderful Midwestern matter-of-factness as she sorts her way through her life, and Sinalese plays her with simplicity and a spot on accent.  Plum (Alana Jessica) is a transgender woman yet to complete her physical transformation who is still working through her feelings about herself, her body and how to relate to her lovers, and Jessica beautifully walks a touching tightrope between bravado and insecurity.  Monty (Justin Bennett, appearing courtesy of Actor’s Equity Association) is a gay man who has agreed to be a sperm donor for his lesbian friends Abby and Leslie (Averie Bueller and Catherine Rogala, respectively) who wrestles with his role and degree of involvement in the baby’s life.  Bennett has just the right degree of mild hysteria and self-doubt that morphs into a determination to do his best for his child and friends.  Eden (Imana Breaux) is a young woman who falls for a rich classmate who has no clue about Eden’s feeling for her, causing Eden much frustrated longing and heartache.  Breaux is touching as she embodies Eden’s feelings of otherness and bittersweet looking in from the outside.  Baseball-loving Abby is in the throes of planning her wedding to Leslie, agonizing over her family’s feelings as well as wedding arrangements.  Steve (Meaghan J. Johnson) is a young transgender man also working his way through his and other’s feelings as he moves from female to male, and Johnson brings an analysis wise beyond the character’s years.  Leslie working through her feelings as she packs up her office, having been fired from her job at a nursing home after management learns of her pregnancy as well as sexuality.  Rogala, appearing courtesy of Actor’s Equity Association, embodies Leslie’s fierce love, which fuels her anger as well as her planning for her life with Abby and their child.

Although an amalgam of different people, each monologue gives us an idea of the deep emotional sturm und drang experienced when realizing “who” we truly are is sometimes not what anyone—sometimes even ourselves—thought at first, and then trying to be true in living that life.  Yes, the stories certainly remind us how far we’ve come and how far we have yet to go when “the love that dared not speak its name” began to unapologetically speak up for itself.  But more importantly, the stories and actors show us the underlying longing we all share regardless of our physical or emotional gender or sexual preferences—the longing for love from and acceptance of who we truly are by our families, friends, lovers and the world, even if we may not easily love and accept ourselves sometimes.