BY SCOTT C. MORGAN
A gay love story is at the heart of the new play Airline Miles, and its out playwright, Hank Perritt, wouldn't have it any other way.
"I've been told that writers should always draw from their own experience," Perritt said during a recent telephone interview around rehearsals.
To that end, Perritt said he always incorporates gay characters into his fictional writing, which would range from his contributions to the 2010 Chicago show You Took Away My Flag: A Musical About Kosovo to his recently published novel Arian.
Perritt also incorporates his life's work experience—which has largely been locally as a professor of law and former dean at Chicago-Kent College of Law into his writing—into his writing. (Perritt also notably ran as an openly gay Democratic candidate for Illinois' 10th Congressional District in 2002, ultimately losing to Mark Kirk.)
So it should come as no surprise that a slightly off-the-wall court case, based upon actual recent lawsuits that have been filed, would be the jumping off point for Perritt's latest play.
Airline Miles involves a failing businessman with family problems named Richard Ginsburg (Gary Houston), who suddenly becomes so obsessed about losing his first-class privileges from a frequent-flyer program that he decides to hire a lawyer and sue the airline. That initially unlucky lawyer Ginsburg hires is Brendan Scope (Brandon Thompson), a brash and up-and-coming young lawyer whose career successes up to this point also hide some personal relationship failures with his ex-partner, Bobby (Jordan Phelps).
"The bizarre nature of the legal dispute allows me to show the character of Richard as being kind of kooky at the beginning to later becoming a loving surrogate father to Brendan," Perritt said. "And with Brendan, he initially appears to be professionally perfect while he his personal life has fallen apart."
Airline Miles also focuses on the difficulties people face at the end of relationships and issues of spousal abuse, something Perritt seems to hint at in a brief online biography when talking about his late partner, Mitchell Bergmann, who passed away in July of 2010.
In that biography about Perritt, it says, "He has known that he was gay since he was about four years old, but was too terrified to tell anyone until he was in his mid-thirties. He was blessed by being in a loving, but tumultuous, relationship with Mitchell Bergmann for 25 years."
Perritt sees playwriting as a natural for him as a lawyer and law professor, since he says practicing law involves a lot of storytelling and framing facts to get across a particular and convincing narrative, be it for a jury or in teaching hypothetical situations to law students.
And in recent years Perritt has increasingly sought out more opportunities to be a part of Chicago's theater scene. He is producer and a managing member of Modofac Productions, LLC, which is co-producing Airline Miles along with The Artistic Home (of which Perritt is vice president and a member of the board of directors).
"I just love the collaborative process of theater," Perritt said. "At rehearsals, it's spine-tingling to see and hear something that I've written come to life by actors who make it flow and increase the depth and meaning of the dialogue."
Modofac Productions and The Artistic Home present Airline Miles Aug. 3-12 at The Second Stage Theatre, 3408 N. Sheffield Ave. Performances are at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays with 5 p.m. matinees on Sundays. Tickets are $20 and $15 for students; visit www.airlinemilesplay.com for more information.
Latino solos
Collaboraction and Teatro Vitsta have teamed up to create the new Yo Solo Theatre Festival of Latino Solo Shows, which is currently running through Aug. 12 on the third floor of the Flat Iron Arts Building in Chicago's Wicker Park neighborhood.
Taking a page from the defunct Live Bait Theater's former Fillet of Solo Festival, the festival consists of three programs rotating in repertory featuring two solo works apiece.
Program A features Febronio Zatarain's La Risa de Dios (which focuses on how the Windy City's Latino immigrant community sees the city of Chicago) and Lisandra Tena's Guera, which consists of four-to-six-minute "meal menu" performance pieces drawn from her experiences with her father.
Program B features KJ Sanchez's Highway 47, which is about the 15-year legal battle over the New Mexico land grant of Tome. Also on the bill is Sandra Delgado's para Graciela, which is inspired by the playwright's maternal grandmother and is drawn from interviews with Delgado's mother and aunts.
However, it's Program C that already comes with plenty of acclaim, since it includes Juan Francisco Villa's award-winning New York piece Empanada for a Dream, which looks at a family from the Lower East Side that is torn apart by a terrible secret. Also on that bill is Rey Andujar's Antipoda, which is described as "a journey across the Americas' landscape through the lens of racial identity, crime and sexuality through Corporeal Mime and bilingual Spoken Word."
Yo Solo Theatre Festival of Latino Solo Shows continues through Aug. 12 at the Flat Iron Arts Building, 1579 N. Milwaukee Ave. Call 312-226-9633 or visit www.yosolofestival.com for more information.
