Remembering The Adonis

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From NY Times

 

On most nights, the subterranean sex club Paddles in Chelsea is home to patrons — straight or gay, depending on the hour — absorbed in threesomes and other adventurous behavior. But on a recent afternoon, as dozens of men and women explored its low-lit rooms, the only sex was in the storytelling.

 

The reason was “Adonis Memories,” an immersive work based on first-person accounts by men who frequented the Adonis, a gay porn movie theater that opened in 1975 and proved so popular in the seedy-city era of Times Square that it inspired its own film, “A Night at the Adonis.” Bought by a developer, the Adonis closed in 1989, around the time that two other theaters were shut down after the New York City health commissioner, Dr. Stephen C. Joseph, called them “an AIDS breeding ground.”

 

A site-specific production of the documentary-theater company In Our Words, “Adonis Memories” features eight actors who wander through Paddles in its off hours providing frank and often X-rated accounts of furtive pairings and virginity-vanishing quickies at the theater. In the immersive spirit, shirts come off and pants are lowered with the audience just steps away. But there are also more poetic parts, tales of the Adonis as a refuge where men found companionship and romance before AIDS.

 

Taking the axiom “you had to be there” literally, immersive theater productions — the multidisciplinary genre includes artful extravaganzas like “Sleep No More” as well as more raucous fare like “Drunk Shakespeare” — are resurrecting bygone chapters in gay history this spring. At a time when gay marriage is often greeted with a once-unthinkable yawn, and with anxiety about AIDS no longer omnipresent, these nostalgia-drunk shows are eager to provide audiences an experiential reminder of the dangers and pleasures of an earlier gay age.

 

In addition to “Adonis Memories,” there’s Jeremy Lawrence’s “Lavender Songs,” a solo show set in a Nazi-era underground Berlin cabaret, where a drag queen addresses the audience during what might be his last performance. Two men drafted into the Army before World War II explore their sexual desires in “Seeing You,” a new movement-based show by Randy Weiner, a “Sleep No More” producer, and the choreographer and director Ryan Heffington that begins performances on May 2.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/theater/gay-histories-close-enough-to-touch-but-dont.html