The planners of the first Long Island Fringe Festival not only invited "Decades Apart: Reflections of Three Gay Men" to be part of the event, but also to be part of the opening ceremonies. As writer-performer Rick Pulos recalls it, his one-man show came on right after "a frickin' marching band." Neither the audience nor Pulos seemed to be prepared for one another, though Pulos persevered despite the homophobic insults and catcalls hurled toward the stage. When he returned the following night for his second scheduled performance, the festival producer said, "I'm really surprised that you came back."
That was in 2009, and subsequent audiences in other locales have had a better idea of what they were buying into: A play about three gay men in three succeeding decades. While Pulos has performed "Decades Apart" twice in San Francisco for conference and convention groups, it will be having its first open-to-the-public run at Exit Theatre on Aug. 14-16.
The piece had its debut in 2009 at Brooklyn's Ryan Repertory Theatre, shortly before the Long Island Fringe Fest debacle, and Pulos most recently performed it at a well-received run in Santa Monica in 2011 at Highways Performance Space. Negotiations to perform "Decades Apart" in Miami, Provincetown, and Fire Island have fallen through for various reasons, leading Pulos and Barbara Parisi, his director and producer, to take matters in their own hands.
"I said, 'I'm tired of this. Let's rent a space,' and I found Exit Theatre," Pulos said in a recent telephone interview. "And since I'm from the Bay Area, I figured I could sell some tickets to family, friends, and friends of friends. And since part of the show takes place in San Francisco, it just seems like a really good fit."
Rick Pulos is a Bay Area native who now makes his creative home in Brooklyn, where Decades Apart premiered in 2009.
In the solo show, Pulos plays a gay character of the 1970s in San Francisco, another gay character in New York of the 1980s, and finally a gay character in 1990s Los Angeles. In addition to the characters' spoken words to the audience, Pulos has created an elaborate multi-media backdrop including three projections screens with historic images, headlines, news clips, and original animation pertaining to each character's place in time. "I'm performing in front of the screens, behind the screens, and in tandem with the screens," he said. "The music has also been very carefully chosen for its relevance to the story."
Bob, the 1970s San Francisco character, is carefree in sex and love, as well as in bathhouses. "Bob is celebrating the end of 1979, thinking that everything's good and saying that the 1980s are going to be a great decade for my sisters and brothers," Pulos said. "And, of course, it is not."
The 1980s introduces a buttoned-down gay Republican named Patrick who feels lost amid his decade, which, of course, includes the onslaught of AIDS. "He actually uses a line from Larry Kramer's 'The Normal Heart,' that the fags in New York City are fucking each other to death."
Danny is the 1990s character, described as a club kid who parties hard, cruises Santa Monica Boulevard, and pays a big price. "For a while, everyone was saying AIDS was a death sentence," Pulos said, "and then came along the antiretroviral drugs and hooking up on the Internet, and in a lot of minds, it might seem that people were returning to a dangerous path."
But it's not HIV or AIDS that takes its toll on Danny, and Pulos said that "Decades Apart" is not an AIDS play. "I did kind of live in LA during the 1990s, and there are elements I pull from my own experiences," he said. "But the question I began asking myself was, who would I have been in these characters' situations? A lot of these things have been tackled a thousand times before, but the way I do it with this piece, I think, is a little bit different."
Pulos spent most his childhood growing up in Antioch, and after high school, headed straight for Yale. His parents now live in Reno, but his drama teacher from Antioch High School will be attending the SF performances, as well as some of his former neighbors, whose now-grown daughter called Pulos to check if her father needed to be warned of any nudity. I said, "It's tastefully done, it's not sexual, and it's artistic. There's really no reason to warn anyone."
In fact, the show is specifically recommended for mature audiences, which somehow got lost in translation at the Long Island Fringe Fest. "They sat a boy and girl in their Sunday outfits, like 7- and 8-years-old, right in the front row. And I'm doing the show, trying to edit myself because I do use curse words, and finally they let the girl stay but removed the boy, I guess because of the gay angle."
Pulos has invited his parents to several performances when he has been on the West Coast, but so far they have declined. "My mom called me one night and asked, 'Do you really get naked in this thing?' And I said, yeah, but you can t really see anything, and it's not sexual.' She said, 'Well, I'm not comfortable with that.' And I said, 'You've seen everything I've got, but only now it's bigger.' She didn't think that was funny at all."
Decades Apart: Reflections of Three Gay Men will run Aug. 14-16 at Exit Theatre. Tickets are $25. Call (718) 996-4800 or go to decadesapart.org