Bergen County Players tackle gay marriage in nine short plays

"Why would a man want to marry another man?" asks an exasperated Tony Curtis in the classic 1959 cross-dressing movie comedy "Some Like It Hot."

"Security," Jack Lemmon shoots back.

"Every jest is an earnest in the womb of time." So wrote George Bernard Shaw in 1904.  Gay marriage, a punchline back in 1959, is now the law of the land less than 60 years later.

But that, of course, isn't the end of the story. While much of the country had become comfortable with same-sex marriage even before it was legalized nationwide in 2015, many people still are not. And even granting gay marriage as the new normal, it still raises practical, logistical, even aesthetic questions. 

Are gay wedding vows the same as straight wedding vows? Do the same ceremonies, traditions, rituals apply? Which side of the family pays for the banquet hall and the band? Is same-sex marriage simply marriage, period, or is it — somehow — its own thing? How do you handle family, friends and relatives who may be at different comfort levels with the whole idea? Or do you simply throw up your hands and say, "It's their problem"?

Those are the kinds of questions that inspired "Standing on Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays," an evening of nine short plays by various writers that was first produced in 2009 — six years before national legalization — that will be staged for two performances on Saturday and Sunday by the Bergen County Players of Oradell. The nine-member cast is directed by Mark Rinis.

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This is one of several issue-oriented theater pieces ("The Vagina Monologues" and "The Laramie Project" are other examples) that have popped up around the country in recent years. When "Standing on Ceremony" had its off-Broadway premiere in November 2011 (it ran at the Minetta Lane Theatre for six weeks), 50 other theater companies around the company had simultaneous productions on the same night.

Since then, "Standing on Ceremony" has averaged around 10 to 15 productions annually, some in far-flung places like Peru and New Zealand. But this production in Bergen County is a homecoming of sorts for the man who conceived the project.

Brian Shnipper, who now lives on the West Coast, grew up in Haworth, and was a Bergen County Players member in the 1980s and 1990s. When he married his partner, Boyd, in 2014, he had two ceremonies — one in Los Angeles and one in his hometown.

"We did it in our backyard in L.A., and we had just had a pool built, so we stood on what was the waterfall, and about 75 of our good friends and family members gathered," he remembers. "It was about 10 minutes of ceremony, and the rest was just an enjoyable day in the California sunshine. Then we came back east and had another ceremony for our family and relatives in Haworth. And it was so humid. We were dripping wet by the end of it. But it was still a beautiful day."

His head was in a very different place then from where it was in 2009 when he conceived "Standing on Ceremony." 

Proposition 8, the California ballot measure banning same-sex marriage — to date, the legal last hurrah of gay marriage opponents — had just passed in November 2008.

"I was sitting in my home in Los Angeles, and my dogs were at my feet, and I was in a home I had shared with my partner for four years, and I thought, 'How am I less normal than any other couple in America?' " he recalls.

That's when Shnipper, a theater director, got the idea of reaching out to some playwrights for 10-minute pleces on the subject of gay marriage.

He aimed high — among the people he solicited were Neil LaBute ("In the Company of Men," "The Shape of Things") and Paul Rudnick ("Jeffrey," "The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told"). But evidently the topic grabbed them, and the playlets duly arrived. "The first four said yes, and we were off to the races," Shnipper, says.

The nine pieces in "Standing on Ceremony" are a varied lot.  Some are dark: like "Strange Fruit," (LaBute) about gay-bashing. Others, like Rudnick's two — yes, two — contributions, are more satirical. "The Gay Agenda" is about a conservative woman who starts hearing voices in her head — specifically, gay voices. "My Husband" is about a woman who runs a piece in the New York Times about her son's non-existent wedding. "He doesn't even have a boyfriend," Shnipper says.

There are wistful plays, like "London Mosquitoes" (Moisés Kaufman), about a man who looks back at his 40-year relationship and wonders — now that same-sex marriage is legal — whether tying the knot now would validate or invalidate what came before. And there are intense pieces like "On Facebook," adapted by playwright Doug Wright from an actual — heated — Facebook thread. 

Apart from subject matter, the key thing the plays have in common is that none of them are agitprop.

It wasn't speechifying that made gay marriage law, Shnipper says. It was ordinary people — friends and family members — sharing their personal stories that put a human face on same-sex marriage. These plays, he says, do the same.

"You come at it from the standpoint that we all understand what marriage is about, whether you're gay or straight,"  says Shnipper, who now lives in Portland Ore. "So this becomes a universal piece, rather than for a niche audience.

"You don't win people over by bashing them over the head with politics and messages. You win them by letting the story say: this is about people, not issues."

WHAT: "Standing on Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays"

WHEN: 8 p.m. June 10, 2 p.m. June 11

WHERE: Bergen County Players, 298 Kinderkamack Road, Oradell. 201 261-4200 or bcplayers.org

HOW MUCH: $11