Roger Q. Mason's LAVENDER MEN Will Premiere in Los Angeles With Skylight Theatre and Playwrights' Arena
The production will also be accessible to a national audience via streaming performances beginning August 20.
Acclaimed Black Filipinx playwright and Kilroys List honoree Roger Q. Mason will premiere their much-anticipated play Lavender Men with Skylight Theatre Company and Playwrights' Arena in Los Angeles, August 6-September 4. Directed by Lovell Holder, this genre-pushing play courageously re-imagines one of America's most beloved historical icons, President Abraham Lincoln, through a queer person of color's storytelling lens.
The production will also be accessible to a national audience via streaming performances beginning August 20. Visit www.LavenderMenPlayLA.com for more information and to purchase tickets.
Lavender Men is a historical fantasia which follows Taffeta, a self-proclaimed "fabulous queer creation of color," as she invades Abe Lincoln's private world to confront issues of visibility, race and LGBTQ+ inclusion that still challenge us today. The play is an embrace to every queer, fat person of color who has been ignored, neglected or erased for being themselves unapologetically in this world. They are beautiful; they are essential; they are perfect - just the way they are.
"The myth of Abraham Lincoln is often perpetuated at the expense of people of color," said Mason. "His self-made, rags-to-riches legend of ascent to leadership is an origin story for the contemporary, freedom-seeking white American man. But Lincoln's life, and we, the People, are more complicated than the myth which emboldens our country's power structure. Inspired by my black queer experience, I dismantle this exclusivist tale from within and carve a new story of America for people who live and love like me."
Lavender Men received a Broadway reading in 2019 at Circle in the Square. The World Premiere was scheduled to be produced by Skylight Theatre in April 2020, when the pandemic hit. The play was subsequently featured on the prestigious Kilroys List and the lead character inspired a short film, Taffeta, directed by Holder which has been screened at the British Film Institute's BFI Flare Festival (Best of Fest), the SCAD Savannah Film Festival (Best Pride Short), The Lonely Wolf Film Festival in London (Best Short Film, Best Queer Film, Best Director), HollyShorts Film Festival (Official Selection), OutFest and OutFest Fusion in Los Angeles (Official Selection), the Bentonville Film Festival (Official Selection), Reeling LGBT Film Festival in Chicago (Official Selection), Rio LGBT Film Festival in Brazil (Official Selection), and Poland LGBT Film Festival (Official Selection), and Inside Out Toronto LGBT Film Festival (Official Selecition).
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