EDGE Boston

The Five Lesbian Brothers, in their original configuration, were Maureen "Moe" Angelos, Babs Davy, Dominique Dibbell, Peg Healey, and Lisa Kron. The troupe formed in 1989 after working together at the Obie-award-winning WOW Café Theatre in New York.

As their own troup, The Five Lesbian Brothers have won awards of their own: the 2005 GLAAD Media Award for Best New Play, Broadway or Off-Broadway, a Village Voice Obie Award, a Bessie, or New York Dance and Performance Award, and a New York Press Award as Best Performance Group.

The Brothers walk a fine line between broad, subversive comedy and socially charged drama that seeks less to be political than emotionally honest. Their tours have taken them around the U.S. and abroad, to London; their work has had an even longer reach, being produced as far away as Zagreb, Croatia.

With the Theatre Offensive’s "Out on the Edge" festival of LGBT-themed theatrical works, the Brothers have taken a new step by sending Moe Angelos to Boston, where she’s now working with four new Brothers, the so-called "Ladies’ Auxiliary," comprised of local actors Karen "Mal" Malme, Linda Monchik, Brigid O’Connor, and Vanessa Soto.

The brothers-authored play Oedipus at Palm Springs is the selection that the troupe have decided to see produced in Boston. One of the Brothers’ five full-length plays, Oedipus at Palm Springs is a cheeky and yet resonant new take on the nature of familial bonds, especially that of motherhood.

Long-time couple Con (O’Connor) and Fran (Malme) have taken the opportunity to travel to Palm Springs to celebrate the birthday of their close friend Terri (Soto), who meets up with them at a resort along with Terri’s partner Prin (Angelos).

Each couple has their own issues with which to grapple. Con and Fran, parents of a young son, have not had sexual relations since the birth of their child; Terri, an adoptee, is struggling with the death of her adoptive mother and wondering anew about her biological origins; and Prin, a typical bachelor, has long been impossible to pin down in a relationship... until now.

The sexual sparks and emotional chemistry of the four women take amusing, and alarming, turns throughout the play, all the while under the watchful (though blind) eye of the resort’s caretaker, Joni (Monchik), a sort of wise elder and oracle who doesn’t need the use of her eyes to perceive everything that’s going on, from the jealousies and frustrations of marries life to the deep, soulful connection of true romantic love.

Original Brother Moe Angelos, director Kate Caffrey, and the four new brothers, a.k.a., The Ladies’ Auxiliary, met with EDGE recently to sit down, take a good look at the play and its complex dynamic that balances laughter and gasps of shock, discuss the contemporary and classical underpinnings of the work, and share a few good ol’ guffaws.

EDGE: How collaborative was the writing of the play? Did all five original Lesbian Brothers participate in the script, or was it the work of one or two people?

Moe: The Brothers wrote the play. Only four of us, not all five of us, so it was Dominique Dibbell, Peg Healy, Lisa Kron, and myself [who] wrote the play.

EDGE: And how did this play come about? What are the origins of Oedipus at Palm Springs?

Moe: Well, that is the great mystery of it all...

It all started with a joke, as it usually does. We thought it would be really funny... really funny!... to write a play about a lesbian who accidentally sleeps with her mother, and call it Oedipussy. That was the original germ that then grew into a swarming virus, a flesh -virus perhaps...

That idea is quite old, actually, that is an idea from ten years ago, and we abandoned it because it was, like , "Oh, that’s just a joke." But there was something about it that just nagged at us, and so we came back to is. We wrote a whole different play that was about a family that was at a Greek diner called The House of Pan Kakés... maybe even the International House of Pan Kakés!... and it was the same story line, essentially.

But then we were in Palm Springs, writing, and we became intrigued by the people around us. Palm Springs is an extremely odd retirement / gay community. There were all of these wealthy, upper-middle-class lesbians, driving Lexuses and stuff, and we were sort of, "How do they do this?" Because it’s very different than the community we’re from in New York. So [the play] switched locales to Palm Springs.

EDGE: It’s very subversive and funny, this entire idea of the "Lesbian Brothers!"

Moe: It can be confusing for people. Again, it started as a joke. We had written this first play together and come together as a collaborative ensemble, and we were fooling around and pretending we were a circus act, pretending we were tumbling, like the Flying Karamazov Brothers or something like that, and it turned into the Five Lesbian Brothers.

Dominique was working a night job at a night firm and at some delirious hour in the middle of the night she doodled a drawing of us as the Five Lesbian Brothers, and it stuck.

EDGE: You’ve performed this play off-Broadway; what brought you here to the Out on the Edge Festival in Boston?

Moe: We have a long-standing relationship with the Theatre Offensive. We’ve performed here four or five times over the last ten years. Theatre Offensive were co-commissioners [of the off-Broadway production], so we wanted to bring it back here and have it be seen again in Boston, because when we did it here during the commissioning phase, it was just a reading, so Boston never got the benefit of a full production.

EDGE: You’ve recast most of the Lesbian Brothers with local Boston area actors. Where are the other original Brothers?

Moe: Oh, my goodness. Where are they? Two are in Los Angeles, Peggy and Dominique. Babs is in New York with a day job. And Lisa is in New York in a play off-Broadway now.

EDGE: What’s happened to break up the original band of Lesbian Brothers?

Mope People have mortgages and want to have kids, and this life does not necessarily allow for that.

EDGE: How is it to be in this production with different people in the familiar roles? Does that bring to light new creative possibilities?

Moe: Oh, absolutely! It’s been fantastic!

EDGE: How about the rest of the cast? With an original Lesbian Brother in your midst do you feel a need to work according to how they would have done the play? Are you free to pursue your own process and not worry too much about how your roles would be interpreted by the original troupe?

Mal: I was saying to Kate in an earlier conversation that I find Moe’s presence here very grounding. The fact [is] that we are creating something new, but she brings something that kind of holds us... but I feel that she hasn’t imposed anything. Her presence in the show has created this very comfortable, grounding feeling, so that we are creating and honoring something. She’s giving us input when we need it, but letting us fumble around and find really neat stuff.

Vanessa: We’re kind of finding our own process, and it’s interesting because she’s playing a different role; she’s playing Prin, whereas before she played Fran [which is now Mal’s role].

Mal: Yeah, there’s no pressure on me there!

Moe: I’m now playing with a completely different Fran, and I might say a better Fran, even!

[Laughter]

Moe: Seriously!

Kate: A different Fran. When Mo and I talked about this and she said, "Kate, do whatever you want," I think Mo was kind of excited about tackling a new part in the play.

Moe: Yeah, and it’s a huge part, too.

Kate: It’s huge! It’s epic!

Moe: It is epic. Well, consider the source. It’s really Jocasta at Palm Springs, if you want to get down to it...

Kate: Don’t give away the ending!

Moe: No! [Shouting into the microphone.] Don’t print that!

[Laughter]

But think about the sacrifice. Think about being told, "Your child is a curse, and having to give it away." Think about what that means for a woman, to give up your child. If you think you cannot raise a child, do you kill that child [if you’re an ancient Greek], or do you give that child away [as we do now]? And women who do that are sometimes demonized: that is not a popular position.

EDGE: Do you feel like you are a real live Boston edition of The Five Lesbian Brothers?

Mal: I got my tattoo right here!

Linda: We’re the Ladies’ Auxiliary.

EDGE: If you were going to switch it up and take another role, which role would you choose?

Linda: I’d like to be Prin.

Moe: We should switch! I’d be Joni in a second!

Linda: Mo is such a sweetheart, and then yet Prin is the butch one, and she wants everything her own way.

Moe: [to Mal]: You want to be Terri, don’t you? I can sense it!

Mal: I’m all over that, man, all over it. After last night, yeah.

[Laughter]

EDGE: I forgot where I read this, but some place I heard about a man and a woman who got married and then found out that he was her son, and they had to get divorced.

Moe: Really! Well, we were talking about that, like has that every happened? And, I mean, it must have, in the course of human events...

Kate: It’s interesting, because I teach this play, and my students go, "Ahh, that could never happen." And I’m, like, "Hmm, yeah, it could." Especially these days with fertility technology [and sperm banks]. You know, you’re getting your donation from California, and you’re in Boston...

Moe: There’s got to be a lot more brother-sister [relationships happening between unsuspecting people than parent-child]...

Kate: I think it would be very unusual, but not [unheard-of] because a lot of kids don’t know who their parents are.

Moe: The setup of, "You’re a king and you kill your father in the road" is going to be a little harder to come by these days, but the rest... it’s a universal tale, don’t you think?

EDGE: What about finding a director? Especially coming in from another city, was that difficult?

Moe: I feel like I get really lucky with Kate, because we didn’t’ know each other at all. Kate came to me referred by Theatre Offensive, actually, and then we talked on the phone... what... two times?

Kate: Two times.

Moe: And then, I don’t know... I just had a good feeling. It’s proved to be right, because the interesting thing is, this play is a lot about motherhood, and none of the Brothers are mothers. Nor [was] our original director. You know, I don’t think anyone involved with the play at all has been a mother. And Kate has been a mother, and it’s constantly surprising to me; she really knows what she’s talking about, like the other day in rehearsal, when I said, "I have a question about lactation!" and Kate was able to answer it for me. [Motherhood] is a huge component of the play.

EDGE: So is humor. The play is written with a lot of humor that could be played either very broadly, or very subtly, and I wonder which approach you plan to take?

Kate: I would say there’s a mix; I think the Con and Fran story lends itself to huge amounts of humor, but there’s also a really serious subject there. It’s their relationship, and how they are either going to stay together, or break up.

Comedy and tragedy are very closely liked. It’s [a matter of] when you slip on the banana peel, [whether] you cry or you laugh. That’s what we’ve talked about a lot in rehearsal. Even though we do work with some physical comedy and there are some bits that are very funny, and there are some lines in the show that are really funny, in a serious scene; they kind of pop out. I think what makes them so funny is that you recognize them. They are kind of blown out of proportion--kind of--but you know people like this. You know the people who, ten minutes after they started dating, now they’re in couples therapy, and now they’re in sex therapy, and they use all this lingo that’s kind of stereotypical.

I think we can even laugh at ourselves; the Prin and Terri characters are funny in a lot of ways, in some ways because they take themselves so seriously. And then the Joni character, who is the blind seer, the Tiresias character, is a hoot and a half. The actress playing her--she is Joni!

Moe: She’s Joni plus!

Kate: She’s out on a limb!

[Laughter]

Kate: And so oftentimes, her lines carry this weird, dry humor that takes you out of the reality and makes it kind of weird, which I think the Brothers do a lot in their plays.

EDGE: Joni is a very strange character, talking to unseen people on her cell phone about philosophy and creating paintings even though she’s blind.

Linda: It’s the feel of the pigment in my hands, it becomes very powerful; it’s the sensing of everything that’s happening in the environment that is profound for me. You don’t need your eyes.

It’s called vision, rather than sight. There’s a funny line, Prin says to me, "What is that thing you go to?" and I say, "It’s a vision quest." But the vision quest is actually something people go on to find inner vision. For me this play has been really eye opening! [Laughter] Can I say something? As far as this motherhood thing, I mean, I met Fran and I’m saying, She’s the mother? And last night we had our first run through, and I was crying. It’s because they are so centered, and for me what comes through... it sounds trite, but what we’re talking about here is human experience and human relationships, and that’s what Oedipus is about, too, humanity and love and problems with love. What society says we can and cannot do. It’s beautifully done, but probably there will be some people who won’t see that. They’ll see other things. They’ll see what society sees. But I think the message is coming across very clearly, and the director’s making sure that it’s loud. and the writers did... it’s entertaining and provocative, but the message is clear. Love is a rocky road.

EDGE: Many of the most powerful passages in the play could be either comic or dramatic, and reading the script you can imagine both possibilities...

Kate: Yes, and I think the choices that we make are pretty strong, but I also think that a lot of it depends a lot on our audience. I think every night our audience is going to react differently to different things, and I think that is the challenging thing to the actors in this show, because they are going to get a laugh on Thursday night and then expect it on Friday night, and it may not be there, because it’s a different audience. But, you know, that’s the thing that’s cool about theatre. It’s always new, and it’s always fun.

EDGE: The play is subversive in the same way as the name of the troupe, with its gender-bending sensibilities, because the women talk like men; they have some of the same complaints as men, like Con’s sexual frustration; but they will then turn around and want to talk about their feelings and their relationship.

Kate: I think there’s a lot of comment on gender [in this play]. In lesbian relationships, or gay relationships, it’s not a clear-cut thing. It’s not like there’s a man and a woman. It’s not even always like there’s a butch and a femme.

In the Prin and Terri relationship, Prin is the butch and Terri is the femme. But in the Fran and Con relationship, they go back and forth a lot; Fran is the butch who has had the baby, and she’s having all these feminine feeling sin this feminine body, and she’s all screwed up about it; and Con is the one who resents that Fran is more feminine, but she’s the one who [like a man] says, "I want sex!"

Moe: She’s toppy. She’s bossy. Bossy femme.

Kate: And there are these moments when we see that it’s about motherhood. And what is that? Is it feminine? Is it masculine? I know mothering is feminine, but if you have two guys... who’s the mother? If you have two women... who’s the father?

EDGE: Or even if you have two penguins...

Kate: There you go!

Moe: "Tango!"

Kate: "Tango!" I just bought that book for my son. He loves it.

EDGE: Prin and Fran are best buddies. How are you interpreting that relationship? The dialogue is very male sounding, lots of "Hey, man!" and "Hey, pal!" You expect to see them kick back, crack open a beer, and turn on a football game. Or is there something softer there that you are finding?

Mal: I think that there are many layers to it. Of course, that’s the old stereotype: the butches hang out and beat each other up, it’s all masculine [horseplay] and bravado. This play delves under so many layers of that, and we see the vulnerability in that, as well.

EDGE: And as for Con and Fran, they are having a marital spat, so that Fan has to turn around from that relationship with her best buddy and deal with her partner, and it’s a complicated, gender-challenging role.

Mal: It’s very complex, and I feel that that word doesn’t even do justice. When I was asked to do this part, I was like, "I’m not a mom; nor do I ever see myself becoming a mom; so what will be my process in figuring that out and honoring the play and the character and exploring that stuff?" Kate’s been phenomenal, Bridget’s been phenomenal, everybody’s been phenomenal, but I’m still figuring that out, and talking to a lot of outside sources about what it’s like to be a butch-identified person and yet give birth and have all those changes happen. It’s an experience I don’t think I’ll personally ever go through, so it’s fascinating to play something like that.

EDGE: And meantime, it’s been four years: Con wants to have some sex, already!

Brigid: Yes, absolutely. That’s pretty much her through-line. What I like about it is that any couple can relate to how a relationship changes as soon as you add a kid in. The whole dynamic is up in the air, and you have to re-negotiate everything, and that happens to be the biggest piece for them at this point. I think it’s a really nice exploration of, What does it mean to be in a relationship? What does it mean to be a parent? What does it mean to be parents and be lesbians in this society, and how do you move forward as a couple?

EDGE: When it came to casting the pay with local actors, did Moe hand that process over to Kate, or was she involved in it?

Moe: I pretty much trusted Kate on it. We talked a little bit, bit... I said, "Here’s the part I played before. I don’t feel married to that part. Use your judgment." I’m not from Boston, so Kate has a much better frame of reference of the people we are working with and the people who are in the community. I felt trusting of you to make the right choices.

Kate: And Moe was at the initial auditions. That was actually the first time we met face to face, so it was great to get her input on actors and how she saw certain people. That was incredibly helpful.

EDGE: What is your sense about the differences between the Boston and New York theatre scenes?

Moe: I feel like an imposter, because I’ve just been dropped here in the middle of a theatre scene that I don’t really know the terrain of, so it’s been a learning experience for me. I haven’t seen anything [in the way of a theatrical production] since I’ve been here, so I can’t speak to the work too much.

EDGE: Do you worry that whereas a NY audience wouldn’t have a problem with a play in which a character sleeps with her mother, a Boston audience might get all Puritanical about it?

Moe: Yeah, maybe. I can say that as a town, I would say that Boston is a little more conservative than New York. But still an extremely educated audience, who will know the original play, and I’m hoping that they’ll get with us on the ride.

It was hard to get people on the ride in New York, I’ll gotta tell ya, because of what you’re saying about comedy and [tragedy being mixed in this play]. [The audience] come in, they sit down, they look: "Oedipus at Palm Springs." The play begins. They sit there and they think, "That’s Jocasta, that’s Oedipus, now they’re talking about Laius... she’s Tiresias." And five minutes later, they forget it and they’re in this bubbly little comedy about Fran and Con and their sex problems. And then suddenly, uh-oh, it takes a serious turn--and sometimes they don’t want to take the ride. It’s a turn that you’ve got to be willing to go on; it’s like, "Oh no, don’t really turn this into Oedipus now; what are you doing, you’re not really going to do that! It was such a nice, funny play!"

EDGE: But doesn’t comedy have to be part of a story that deals with such harsh emotional material?

Moe: I would say that it needs to be funny, but that’s the Brothers. You catch more flies with honey. If you make ’em laugh, people will accept a lot more than if you’re [declaiming to] them. So I’m curious; the audiences we had before when we did the reading were fine with it.

EDGE: Plus, this is part of the Out on the Edge festival from the Theatre Offensive; no one is going to be coming to your play expecting to see Man of La Mancha.

Moe: Unless it’s "Drag King of La Mancha!" I know the theatre community has said to me that they have great interest in this particular part of the festival.

Kate: I’m making all of my straight friends come.

Moe: They should! As I said before, Oedipus is a universal story. Any theatrical endeavor is full of minute-to-minute catastrophes and speed bumps that you have to get through. But when we get in the rehearsal room it is so fun! Even though it’s a tragedy of epic proportions, we really are having a lot of fun in the rehearsal process, and I think that makes it bearable.

Nobody does Oedipus any more. Nobody does that play, and there’s a reason: it is a drag! It’s a downer!

Kate: I don’t think it’s a downer. I think at the ending, you do have extreme feelings....

Moe: Catharsis.

Kate: I wasn’t going to use that word, but I think one of the big feelings you have is fear. One of the big things that we’re playing with in the play is the role of fate. The Greeks were all about fate and destiny, and a lot of Oedipus is about how he has a destiny and he’s going to fulfill it. A lot of things are really out of our control.

EDGE: When you play Terri, what is your process to bring into your performance all the emotions your character has to sort through: her mother has just died, the relationship with Con is rocky, Terri is a mother herself now, it’s Terri’s birthday party they are celebrating in Palm Springs... how are you shaping all of that?)

Vanessa: It really feels like Prin, at this point, is Terri’s lifeline, because her adoptive mother has just died, she doesn’t know her adoptive mother, and she feels lost.

EDGE: What do you think about what Moe and Kate have been saying? Is the end a downer?

Vanessa: I do think that the end is huge important moment for Terri because it’s actually hope. Terri has to find herself; she’s forced to.

EDGE: On the comedy meter, how do you feel that your ensemble execution of this play will register?

Vanessa: It’s hard to tell without an audience, honestly. We’re still kind of discovering it right now.

Brigid: We think it’s funny. I think if you read the synopsis you’d think that there is no humor in it, and that’s just not at all true. It’s got fairly dark stuff going on, but there’s still a fair amount of humor in it.

Mal: You’ve got to find the humor in human relationships, or what the hell do you have?

EDGE: I think I had the opposite reaction. I had the response that Moe was describing. I thought it was going to be a complete comedy, and I was surprised at how much gravity there was in the script.

Brigid: I think some people will be surprised. People sometimes go in with preconceptions in either direction; I think it will be interesting to see how the audience goes on the journey.

EDGE: In the notes online, it says that the Brothers have a plan to take Oedipus at Palm Springs back out on the road. Do you think that you’d recruit some of the Ladies’ Auxiliary here to take the play elsewhere, or might you reconstitute the New York Brothers?

Moe: Maybe. I dunno... I could see very easily that the Original Flavor Brothers would write, and then the new, cool Ranch Flavor Brothers would maybe be in the play, because I don’t now that necessarily all of the brothers want to perform any more; it’s demanding.

Mal: What do you guys pay?

Moe: I think unfortunately you know!

Mal: Yeah, we’ll talk.

Moe: Or, [I could imagine] that the Ladies’ Auxiliary does some of the other Brothers plays, because the work is just sitting there, and it’s too hard to get the Five middle aged Lesbian Brothers together to do it. I still want to have the work be out there and performed. I got myself some nice new brothers, and we’ll see how it goes!