x2009 An Interview with Jeffrey Solomon

Date: August 17th, 2009 Author: Jodie Fleming-Stanley
Category(s): x2009 Interview
Comments: 0

Jeffrey Solomon is an Emmy-nominated writer and actor. His one man
play Mother/Son can be seen  as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival
Thursday 6 to Monday 31 August at 5:35pm (No performance on 17 August)
at the SWEET GRASSMARKET, CITY ONE, Apex City Hotel, 61 Grassmarket

Edinburgh. Box Office: Sweet 0870 241 0136, Ticktickets: 0871 594 3123

or http://www.newendtheatre.co.uk/ £9.00 Concessions £8.00 (subject to
availability)

Your play is a very open and honest portrayal of your experiences of
living and loving as a gay man. What was your motivation in writing and
performing this piece?

My mom. She was the one who proposed we march in a pride parade
together…and the experience was just amazing. I’m so grateful we got
to do that. To have come such a distance, from the shame, the secrets,
the coming out, her grief and disappointment at losing the son she
thought she had….dealing with the homophobia of our small town. I
just knew there was something totally extraordinary in this journey
that my mom and i took, and that so many gay kids and their families
take. The religious right bandies around the term “family values” but
this was family values in its truest form. Plus my mom, the original
Jewish mother, on which all others were based, was always destined for
the stage. Her sense of humour is very well presented in the play, as
is her love and outrage. Her over involvement in her son’s life.

Your performance is exactly the bold statement our community needs,
counteracting the Silence = Death mentality sometimes prevalent in
society. Do you think mainstream society is ready for this?

I have had the wonderful experience of being able to perform this play
at high schools, colleges, synagogues and churches for all kinds of
audiences. People love this play. You don’t have to be gay or Jewish
to find something to relate to. Anyone who has tried to navigate an
adult relationship with their parents will relate to this play. I had
a performance once in rural Illinois, and one of the audience members,
a religious conservative with views very much opposed to
homosexuality, spoke to me afterwards to tell me how much he was moved
by the play. How it made him think about the love he had with his dad,
who had recently passed on. The play is about the meaning of our
relationships.

What motivated you to bring it to the Edinburgh Fringe, and do you have
any hopes/aspirations/apprehensions about your time here?

We had wonderful performances of the play last summer in both London
and Leeds and were very much taken by how much UK audiences responded
to the play. We wanted to bring it to a wider UK and international
audience. My hopes are we can get folks into the theater!

You’re an emmy-nominated actor and writer. What were your first
experiences of writing/acting?

Acting out the Wizard of Oz for my grandparents, from beginning to
end. I’m not sure why it wasn’t immediately apparent that they had a
gay child on their hands.

You’ve just got married to your partner. Has this changed you in any
way?

Well, he feels as if he has a legal right (in the state of
Massachusetts anyways) to nag me. Seriously though, i was somewhat
ambivalent when we decided to do it. We had already been together 15
years, so i wasn’t prepared for how emotional it was when we stood
before family and friends. I wept from beginning to end. It is
beautiful to be welcomed inside the tent, or in my case, under the
chuppah (Jewish ceremonial tarp extended over grooms to represent the
home.) I never wanted to be there because i never was invited, or
never thought i belonged. But i definitely did!

JF