Out, the gay culture magazine, will hold a Sept. 23 panel at Off-Broadway's Public Theater in connection to the current production of Richard Greenberg's Take Me Out.
The event is titled "Inside the Locker Room." Out editor in-chief Brendan Lemon will moderate, with director George C. Wolfe, Greenberg and a member of the show's cast discussing gay life in the sports world.
Take Me Out, about a famous baseball player holding a press conference and telling the world he's gay, began previews Aug. 23. The staging is a co-production between the Public and London's Donmar Warehouse.
According to the Donmar Warehouse website, the following dialogue may sum up the new work: "If I'm gonna have sex — and I am because I'm young and rich and famous and talented and handsome so it's a law — I'd rather do it with a guy, but, when all is said and done, Kippy? I'd rather just play ball."
In the play, "Darren Leeming is a young iconic baseball star, living life large, male as can be, envied by everyone. He calls a press conference and, without telling anyone what he is about to do, he comes out to the waiting media." The play, about sports, race, and sexual politics, "chronicles the fall-out as the ripples of his actions spread through the team, the media and across the nation." Performances of the co-production with London's Donmar Warehouse began at The Public's Anspacher Theater Aug. 23, following a summer run in London, June 20-Aug. 3. Take Me Out will be the first Public Theater show of the 2002-2003 season. Official opening for the play is Sept. 5.
Joe Mantello directs a cast that includes Kevin Carroll (45 Seconds From Broadway, Angels in America), Dominic Fumusa (Tape and [sic]), Gene Gabriel, Neal Huff (The Public's Tempest and Troilus and Cressida), Robert M. Jimenez (The Public's Richard II, Marisol, Othello), Stephen Mendillo (Broadway's Wild Honey, Orpheus Descending, A View from the Bridge), Denis O'Hare (Cabaret, Ten Unknowns), Kohl Sudduth, Daniel Sunjata (a Lincoln Center Twelfth Night and Williamstown Theatre vet, playing the ballplayer who outs himself), Frederick Weller (The Shape of Things) and James Yaegashi (an Alabama Shakespeare Festival vet).
Contact the Public Theater box office, 425 Lafayette Street, on-line at www.publictheater.org; and via phone at (212) 239 6200.
