category: two-act play
genre: romantic comedy
running time: 1 hour 45 minutes
setting: a mid-sized American city
period: contemporary

characters:

Bryon June, a writer in his early thirties
Cara June, his sister in her late teens
Patrick, his current boyfriend, in his mid-twenties
Luke, his ex-boyfriend, in his early thirties
Rebecca, a psychologist in her early thirties
Esther, her sister, a singer in her late twenties
Doug, their ex-boyfriend, a psychologist in his mid-thirties
Olivia, Rebecca and Esther’s mother
Agnes, Rebecca and Esther’s aunt
Neil, Bryon’s best friend, a teacher in his early thirties
Maria, his wife, a lawyer in her early thirties
Toro, Bryon and Neil’s buddy, in his early thirties
Silvia Gable, a publisher in her late forties
Hamish, a publisher of erotica in his early forties
A Bartender
A Waitress

story:

Bryon and Patrick are a relatively happy white collar gay couple living in a small American city where Bryon pens porn and Patrick works as a performer in a drag nightclub. Rebecca is a beautiful but embittered psychologist who crosses paths with them while dating a mutual friend, Toro. Almost by accident, Rebecca and Patrick begin a love affair, making Bryon an unwilling participant in an open relationship he never wanted. At the same time, Bryon's aspirations of being a novelist suddenly take off when his friend Maria passes on a copy of his book to mainstream publisher Silvia Gable. At the same time he rekindles interest in a past boyfriend, Luke, who plays guitar in a band helmed by Rebecca's sister, Esther, who has recently become the new object of Patrick's ever expanding sexual appetite. Throw into the mix Doug, Rebecca’s ex who fathered a child with Esther but wants to get back together with Rebecca, and pretty soon the carefully balanced relationship web begins to snap apart and re-configure itself in ways the illustrate both how immature- and how grown up- this group of young professionals really are.

author's comments:

So I set out to purposefully write a mainstream sex comedy and this is what I got: more bisexuality, heated arguments, Jewish jokes and not-so-subtle pop-culture slams than you can shake a stick at. All with a nice helping of sentimentality and ennui, of course. Friends of mine affectionately call this piece “The Exiled for Thirty-Somethings” but I think it actually exists in a much more whimsical world than The Exiled and thus sort of needs to be placed in a category of its own (though once or twice I’ve thought of turning Rebecca and Doug into Regina and Abel, simply because it would be funny to think of their story morphing in such an unexpected way). The humor of this piece is, I think, some of my very best, on par with Attack of the Killer Space Zombies, and like that play I have a certain affection for Gay Porn Writers that makes me sad it hasn’t really been picked up by production companies out there. Of course, the title alone is probably a bit “too much” for some companies, maybe not enough for others. I have often joked that like many bisexuals, Gay Porn Writers the Play doesn’t really seem to fit in with either mainstream gay or straight culture: it has plenty of sex but a lot more thinking and very critical, though sympathetic, portrayals of straights and gays- a combination which seems to be rare (oddly enough) in either gay or straight theater. No one in the play gets to be a martyr or a bigot, and with sexuality still such a political issue in the United States I suppose that does mean that the world isn’t ready yet for Gay Porn Writers and The Women Who Love Them with all its equal opportunity slamming- and celebrating- of the disaster which is modern romance. Oh well. I still love the play, and sometimes that’s all that really matters.