According to Allen Conkle, after experiencing "some rough times" and almost going "to the place where all the dead theatre companies go," Nomenil Theater Company has returned with renewed vigor and enthusiasm. Beginning its ninth year, Nomenil is presenting a revival of the inventive and humorous Pushin' Up Roses, "a nerd punk love tale," written by Conkle and Courtney Evans.
Gregg Shapiro: The last time I interviewed you, it was just before the premiere of Faggot Bunny Daddy. What has Nomenil done since?
Allen Conkle: We were a part of the Rhinoceros festival last year, working our piece Like Our Parents Smoking Cornsilk with a couple of folks from the Neo-Futurists and Sweetback. It was a blast. I also wrote a piece which we performed on the El called a Commercial Failure, in honor of Citizenworks' Big Business Day ( which was ) another thrill. I have been working on a piece about the life of Wendy O. Williams ( of the Plasmatics ) and revising our techno-popera Love Pollution for a ( possible ) Spring opening. My co-creatress Courtney Evans decided to move home to Nashville to go back to grad school. So, I was basically on my own in many ways. Bill Drew has been a great help, a Godsend, but we really needed to re-group. I fell into this major depression and decided, "Allen, if you love it. Find a way to do it." So, I thought I would go back to where it all started to see if I could still find the reason I loved it so much.
GS: Pushin' Up Roses is a musical.
AC: Pushin' Up is musical but it is not really a "musical." There is one traditional over-the-top number and some musical vignettes but generally I think it's a comedy.
GS: Are there ways in which this production differs from the previous production?
AC: Yes. It is a new production. This is such a cool and exciting experience for me. I don't know how many writers and directors get to revisit their work 10 years after its conception and apply all that they have learned to the first piece they have worked on/written. I think it is a huge challenge to look at it as new and not expect or even to desire this production to be the same as the original. Of course, I miss the original cast, my Courtney, and the experience in some ways. But I am thrilled and excited by the dynamic that the new cast shares. Adam, Samaiya, Michelle, Bill, Josh and Javier are so enthused and talented. We are having a great deal of fun. And we have Three Dollar Bill ... live music!
GS: Is the music a combination of original and existing music?
AC: Yes. I listen to lots of records to find sounds and music that has the feeling I want to create. I kind of search for obscure songs from my past that I think feel right. And things I have never heard before. ... Three Dollar Bill is playing Rose's band! Chris, Jane and Sarah are composing original music and creating the sound and feeling to back Samaiya Ewing, who portrays Rose, on her rock and roll adventure.
GS: Pushin' Up Roses is being presented at Frankie J's Theater. Why?
AC: About eight months ago my friend Michele's husband Jason read this article about Frankie J in the Reader and suggested I check it out. I was in this pit of depression so I was like "yeah, whatever"? Then I went to see Sweetback's production of Freaks and I loved the intimacy of the space. Plus the price was right!
GS: You are directing this production. Have you ever played one of the characters in the past? If so, which one?
AC: I played Arnold the self-loathing queer. Josh ( Middleton ) is much sexier. I am pleased to just direct and do back-stage stuff.
GS: Pushin' Up Roses begins when the characters, Billy ( Adam Cook ) , Rose ( Ewing ) , and Arnold ( Middleton ) , are children. How old are they supposed to be?
AC: They are in early elementary school.
GS: As the co-playwright, how much of you is in any of the characters?
AC: Billy is me in so many ways, or the person I once was. He was the way I percieved myself for most of my life.
GS: Javier Ayala plays Billy's mother and Bill Drew plays dyke punk rocker Cretin. Why did you cast male actors to play the parts of the mother and Cretin? Was this also done in a past production?
AC: Actually, Bill Drew was Billy's Mom in the past production. He is so funny. He cracks us all up. I love to play with gender. I often cast women in men's roles as well. I think it's interesting to see what people bring to characters of the opposite sex.
GS: Faggot Bunny Daddy examined gay men's relationships with their fathers, while, to some degree, Pushin' Up Roses looks at a gay man's relationship with his mother.
AC: I think that those relationships are the ones that mold us into the adults we become and I would venture to say how we view the world and our role in it. With Faggot Bunny Daddy I saw a common link between many of my gay male friends and colleagues. We discovered that the relationships between gay men and their fathers were rarely explored in as far as we could see, so we explored it. Mom in Pushin Up Roses is more a tribute to my own mother/friend who was killed in an auto accident 12 years ago. The play is equally about lesbians and their relationships with their parents. More so than that, it is about the confusion and challenge and joy in the relationships between queer women and men.
GS: After losing touch with each other, Billy and Rose are reunited. Rose is a rock star, whose band Sugar Puppy Cum is playing at a place called the Hell Hole, and who says things such as "Rock and roll is in my soul." Is she based on someone?
AC: Actually, she is based on several people. I went to school with this girl Rose who was sort of the oddball, as I was. We would hang out together at school and sing dirty songs on the swings like "Lock your butt, lock your tits." Don't ask. We lost touch. Later she appeared at my college and was a total punk and I was in my androgyny pseudo new wave punk phase so we hung out a little and still had the same thing in common. The other influences on Rose are actually from the Homocore scene from a little ways back. Azita, the lead singer of Scissor Girls. We were theater dorks and wanted to be as cool as her. So after a show—Flying Luttenbachers, Godco and Scissor Girls, I think—we took off and drove to San Francisco. When we got back ( Pushin' Up ) Roses was born.
GS: Billy turns out to be a gay man and Rose turns out to be a lesbian. Do you think pre-sexually active people recognize that aspect of themselves in others?
AC: Yes, I think so. My theory is that we all are born with a genetic predisposition to gayness or straightness or bi-ness in varying degrees. There are actually probably very few purely straight people and very few purely gay people, most fall in between. So it's not that hard to believe these folks would find one another. We are drawn to "like" individuals as I believe the law of the universe is "like attracts like."
