Pouring Tea: Black Gay Men of the South Tell Their Tales

Fahari Arts Institute and Community Prevention Network present Pouring Tea: Black Gay Men of the South Tell Their Tales Created and Performed by E. Patrick Johnson This dramatic reading is based on the oral histories collected in Johnson’s book, Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South–An Oral History, published by the University of North Carolina Press. The oral histories are from black gay men who were born, raised, and continue to live in the South and range in age from 19 to 93. This performance covers the following topics: coming of age in the South, religion, sex, transgenderism, love stories, and coming out. Johnson embodies these and others’ stories in the show. The show is ideal for college campuses and special events. “Johnson … manages to vividly evoke the presence of seven individuals. The enactment of their stories of growing up black and gay in the South, as ‘co-performatively interpreted’ (Johnson’s phrase) by an openly black gay man born in the South, constitutes a profound critique of racism, sexism, and homophobia in our culture. Their stories are painful, poignant, funny, and triumphant. Storytellers recall physical and sexual abuse, poverty, the fear of being unwanted; fear of damnation and hell, thoughts of suicide. Humor, however, pervades even the most painful of memories. Bursts of laughter accompanied Michael’s memories of reactions to his sexuality from his homophobic family, particularly his recollection of his father’s attempt to cut his newly permed bangs with a pair of hedge clippers. The audience responded similarly when the soft-spoken Freddie recalls ‘carrying a single edge razor blade … to sharpen pencils,’ and cutting a bully in order to gain a measure of respect as a ‘mean little sissy.’” Johnson is a prolific performer and scholar, and an inspiring teacher, whose research and artistry has greatly impacted African American studies, performance studies, and sexuality studies. He has written two award-winning books, Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity (Duke UP, 2003), which won the Lilla A. Heston Award, the Errol Hill Book Award, and was a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South—An Oral History (University of North Carolina UP, 2008), which was recognized as a Stonewall Book Award Honor Book by the LGBT Round Table of the American Library Association. He co-edited Black Queer Studies—A Critical Anthology (Duke UP, 2005). He is currently co-editing two anthologies with Ramon Rivera-Servera—one on black and Latina/o queer performance work, Blaktino Queer Performance, and the other on black solo women performers, solo/black/woman. His essays have appeared in Text and Performance Quarterly, Callaloo, Theater Journal, and the Journal of Homosexuality, among others. Johnson’s performance work dovetails with his written work. He toured his one-man show, Strange Fruit, an autobiographical mediation on race, gender, class, and region to over 30 college campuses from 1998 – 2003. His staged reading, “Pouring Tea: Black Gay Men of the South Tell Their Tales” is based on his book, Sweet Tea, and has toured to over 80 college campuses from 2006 to the present. In 2009, he translated the staged reading into a full-length stage play, Sweet Tea—The Play, which was co-produced by About Face Theater and the Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women and Gender in the Arts and Media at Columbia College, Chicago. The play had its world premiere in April 2010 and had a month run to rave reviews. He won a Black Theatre Alliance Award for Best Solo Performance for the show. In Fall 2011, the show had a 4-week run at Signature Theatre in Arlington, Virginia. He was also awarded the Leslie Irene Coger Award for Outstanding Contributions to Performance by the National Communication Association, the Randy Majors Memorial Award for Outstanding Contributions to LGBT Scholarship in Communication and was inducted into the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame—all in 2010.