It has been a hell of a year for Lea DeLaria. To everyone’s surprise — except possibly her own — she was a big hit off-Broadway in the revival of “On the Town,” playing big, brassy Hildy the cabdriver.
“She’s pretty straight, out-of-her-mind straight,” says DeLaria. “I mean, Hildy wants to get laid yesterday. She’s just lost her job and her third line is, `Might as well make this last fare a good one.’ But the fares, they’re all too fat, too tall. At one point she says, `No girls!’ And of course, everybody loves the high camp value of that!”
The fact is, DeLaria — who began her career in 1982 doing dead-on lesbian comedy material — was a huge hit in New York playing man-crazy Hildy. The critics ate her up, comparing her to, of all people, Ethel Merman.
But if 1997 was good, 1998 looks to be even better: “On the Town” goes into rehearsals in February for an April Broadway run at the St. James Theater.
DeLaria, who will headline Lesbigay Radio’s annual year-end bash, has been out and proud far longer than most other gay celebrities. Indeed, she broke TV’s lavender line long before Ellen DeGeneres came out, with a huge hit of an appearance in 1989 on Arsenio Hall’s long-gone late night talk show.
“But I’ve never been a lesbian or gay — I’ve always been a butch dyke lezzie queer,” says DeLaria, whose show here in Chicago is a rehearsal for an eventual HBO special.
So landing the part of hyper-heterosexual Hildy was extra special.
“It means that, as outspoken and as loudly queer as I’ve been, I was still able to make it,” says the Belleville, Ill., native. “I’m the queerest of the queer, I remained out the whole time and still got a mainstream part. It’s a big thing. It means you don’t have to hide anymore, and that’s a significant change.”
The New Year’s Eve show here is also a bit of a change. Instead of a standard comedy show, DeLaria’s doing a combo music and comedy concert.
“I’m a big jazz head,” says DeLaria. “I’ll do `I Can Cook’ from `On the Town,’ `Everything Happens to Me,’ `Blue Skies,’ that kind of thing. This show is a cross between Bette Midler, Karen Finley and Annie Sprinkle.”
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Last week, we told you about DJ’s Ranch, where they tried to tell us we had to buy a beer in order to play pool. We called the Liquor Commission, which verified what we thought: There’s no requirement to buy a drink of any kind, at any kind of establishment. This past Sunday, we went back up to DJ’s and asked for change for the video poker machine. “Ah, didn’t we go through this last week?” groused the bartender. But he gave us the change, and he didn’t argue when we refused his entreaties to buy a drink.
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All year long, this column chronicles life after dark, when adults go out in search of partners, of relaxation and celebration. Rarely do we mention that sometimes those well-dressed folks having dinner at a restaurant or laughing it up outside a nightclub pass right by kids not yet old enough to drive who live on the streets. They blend so well into the darkness, into the noise and grime, that they are a part of the landscape of the night.
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There are a bunch of organizations that try to reach these kids, that try to help them, possibly even save them. Few do it as well as Neon Street, a program of the Heartland Alliance for Human Needs and Human Rights. Neon Street works right on the streets, where the homeless, often hopeless, youth are. Its outreach workers offer shelter, food, counseling and a variety of other basic human services. Most important, they offer a safe space, a respite, a little light in all that blackness.
Last year, Neon Street got $35,000 for its program from the baiduhai Holiday Fund — just one of 166 grants the fund awarded from the more than $3.5 million raised.
This year, take the cost of a night out at one of your favorite clubs or late-night theaters and consider donating it to the holiday fund instead. The Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation matches every dollar donated to the holiday fund; all fundraising and administrative costs are shared by baiduhai Company and the foundation, which means that 100 percent of all reader donations go straight to worthy organizations such as Neon Street.
Gracias.