By Avery Mangahas
Coming out as gay in today’s world is easier than it once was, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Northeastern’s student theatre group Acting Out decided to explore this issue on the stage in “Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are,” which was performed Sunday. They invited the audience to contribute to a dialogue about the thought-provoking topic after the show.
The play was written by sophomores Miranda Paquet, an English major, Matt LaBroad, a computer engineering major, and James Wood, an international business major; it was directed by junior behavioral neuroscience major Christina Wamsley along with Wood. The show explored how coming out inevitably effects relationships between family and friends.
“We choose a play or write a play that is about a specific issue that we feel affects the Northeastern community,” Paquet said. “This semester, Jamie, Matt and I wrote a play about coming out and sexuality and bullying.”
With its focus on bullying, the plot attempts to answer the question of what not to do when your friend or child comes out.
It begins with three young adult friends discussing their same-sex experiences, but soon segues into one of the friends recalling his experiences with bullying in high school. In flashback sequences, the protagonist, John, comes out to a female friend who has a crush on him, then is forcibly outed by her, and experiences bullying and trauma inflicted by former friends and his mother. Occasionally the present day John comments on these experiences, often with a simple, “[Expletive] happens.”
The only character who is not repulsed by John’s homosexuality is his outer’s mother, who makes long speeches about how some of her friends are gay and it’s really OK.
Most of the play consists of inspirational speeches. There’s not a lot of action, but there’s a lot of talking, and this play is, in the words of it’s co-writer Paquet,” anything but subtle.” The material may seem tired, but the play covers a hot topic. Dan Savage, a sex advice columnist, visited Northeastern Feb. 11 to talk about the issue of gay bullying and bashing, particularly in middle and high school.
Wood said Savage wasn’t the only inspiration.
“There was a lot in the news at the time [when we were writing the play],” he said. “A boy had committed suicide, it was just happening all over. And we were like okay, here’s an issue we want to cover.”
But “Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are” was obviously heavily influenced by “It Gets Better.” After the show, the cast gave away several copies of Savage’s recently published book, “It Gets Better: Coming Out, Overcoming Bullying, and Creating a Life Worth Living.” During the question and answer session after the show, a regular feature of Acting Out productions, the cast asked the audience, does it really get better?
“I think that it is definitely getting better but I would like to see it get better here at Northeastern,” said Frank Marino, a middler international affairs major studying human services and social activism. “I think that there’s still a lot where we need to grow. I would like to see the LGBTQ community at Northeastern become a little more active and fight for things that we need.”
Marino’s list included a full-time staffed LGBTQ Resource Center and LGBTQ Living Learning Communities in residence halls.
“There’s no Living Learning Community when [students are] filling out their freshman housing preferences where it says ‘here, come here, come live with us and you’ll be safe and you’ll be welcome and we’ll celebrate you and welcome you into the Northeastern community,’” Marino said. “There should be those things. I wanted those when I was a freshman and I didn’t have them.”
In his conversations with upper level staffers in student life about obtaining these resources, Marino said he has experienced push back.
“Upper-level administration is saying the desire for it is not there, the clout is not there, people aren’t coming out and saying it. And I’ve told them it’s not a welcoming community.”
Wood said one of the goals of the show was to raise awareness of Northeastern’s LGBTQ community.
“We have a lot of gay members and we know that there’s [an LGBTQ] community on campus,” said Wood. “So we wanted to send the message out.”
Gift bags given to audience members included a black wrist band with the inscription “A Kiss is a Kiss,” a piece of dialogue from the show about how a kiss feels the same no matter the gender involved. Students were encouraged to wear them as a token of visibility and support for Northeastern’s LGBTQ community, and as a way to start a dialogue on campus about sexuality. Marino said this is a step in the right direction. But he’s hoping this is just the beginning.
“I would like to see more students coming out and being an active member of the LGTBQ community at Northeastern. We need to scream louder and we need more people,” Marino said.
Erin McGyver, a junior communication studies major who saw the play, said she feels the same.
“We need more activism on campus, we need more people to step up, whether they’re gay or not, whether they know somebody who is or not,” McGyver said. “Just the fact to have it out here and start the conversation is the most important thing.”
