Early on in “Unpacking in P’town,” a character says, “We tend to be more realistic when we’re half-naked and holding an umbrella drink” — and while the statement may seem a bit dubious, the rest of the play bears it out.
In the play, premiering at the New Conservatory Theatre on March 1, four LGBTQ former vaudeville performers meet for their annual gathering in Provincetown in 1959. The occasion provides them with an opportunity to face up to some hard truths and make important changes in their lives. One character comes out to his father, while another resumes creating art, another commits to his boyfriend and another character applies to art school.
“Unpacking” is the final work in the “Words and Music” trilogy by Oakland-based playwright Jewelle Gomez. All three plays spotlight historically significant queer artists of color and were funded by the theater’s New Voices/New Work program. New Voices develops LGBTQ-themed theater and plays for young audiences.
“My grandmother Lydia was a dancer and a singer, and ‘Unpacking’ is loosely based on her and her friends, many of whom were LGBTQ,” Gomez said in an interview with The Examiner.
“She had a real aptitude for enjoying whoever she liked,” Gomez said. “It didn’t matter who they were — white, black, gay, straight, old, young. If she liked you, she liked you. A lot of the values I have as a lesbian feminist activist grew out of who she was.”
As the play opens, the four main characters are arriving at the summer cottage Lydia co-owns with her friend Scottie, a gay man who moved to the U.S. many years ago from Scotland.
“Scottie is afraid to tell his father that, No. 1, he’s gay, No. 2, his lover is Black,” Gomez said. “So he tries to get Lydia to pretend to be his girlfriend.”
Buster, Scottie’s boyfriend, knows he needs to commit to Scottie, but can’t muster up the nerve to talk to him about it. Meanwhile, Minty, an artist, is paralyzed with grief and unable to create art after being dumped by her girlfriend.
“Each one of them has to make a step that’s going to open a door to the next chapter in their lives,” Gomez said.
In the warm embrace of friends who over the years have become family — not to mention the swimwear and umbrella drinks — each of the four main characters is finally able to recognize this fact and act on it.
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Since the play is set in 1959, Scottie’s fear of coming out to his father is all the more realistic. Another realistic element: the character is modeled on a performer who Gomez knew when she was growing up.
“My character, Scottie, was an actual Scottish singer who was a friend of [Gomez’s] grandmother,” said actor Matt Weimer. “Apparently in real life he was short and blond. I’m neither of those, but it’s nice to know he was a real person.”
The other two plays in Gomez’s trilogy also focus on real people. The first play, “Waiting for Giovanni,” is a historical fiction about James Baldwin, an internationally recognized African American author and activist who was also gay.
The second, “Leaving the Blues,” focuses on Alberta Hunter, a gay African American jazz and blues singer and songwriter whose career spanned the early 1920s to the late 1980s.
Weimer also appeared in “Leaving the Blues” playing several different characters. “There’s a special significance in bringing these long-ago artists to life,” the actor said.
Gomez elaborated on the importance of spotlighting historical figures.
“For me as a writer, one of the things that annoys me: You see LGBTQ people or sometimes people of color depicted as though we’re aliens who just dropped down on earth, with no community, no history,” Gomez said.
All her characters have a history, she said. Scottie has Scottish ancestors he calls upon to help him, Minty has her ancestors and Buster has his aunt who helped him survive living in poverty.
“I’m trying to pull together this idea of contextual community,” Gomez said. “We all need a context in order to be whole in this world, and you cannot reduce people to a single element. That’s what makes life interesting.”
