Thomas Michael Garguilo's Blog: Stonewall Revival

Stonewall Revival - The first stage reading

All the world's a stage.
Or so sayeth Mr William Shakespeare in As You Like It.
This post celebrates the upcoming stage reading from Stonewall Revival at Firehouse Theatre in Richmond, Virginia.
After the lengthy, exhilarating, frustrating, monotonous, and euphoric process of writing a novel, the following months become a haze of unending possibilities for promoting one's "masterpiece."
Unlike the novel, which has a beginning, middle, and end, the promotion process offers no similar satisfaction. There will always be one more opportunity to build awareness, one more idea for generating interest, one more tool to test, one more avenue to explore. And each opportunity, idea, and test feeds the beast known as "If only I'd have (blank), I'd have sold more books."
Soon, one almost forgets about the book and its inspiration.
Then, a miracle happens. And you return to the beginning - to the book.
In my case, that return to the words and the joy of writing came from an invitation from my friend, Joel Bassin. He's the Producing Artistic Director at Firehouse Theatre and an all-around great guy. After attending one of my readings from Stonewall Revival at 1708 Gallery, Joel suggested a stage reading at Firehouse with professional actors reading the dialogue that I'd crafted.
His offer turned out to be even more generous than I'd originally imagined because it forced me to return to the words.
Though I'd read Stonewall Revival dozens of times during its creation and editing, I hadn't really gone back to it in the last four or five months. Suddenly, I had to get reacquainted with my old friend and decide which portions of her I'd extract and reshape into something suitable to be read from the stage of a theatre.
In the process of deconstructing and reconstructing three chapters for the stage reading, I was able to see things that I couldn't appreciate during the year-long writing and editing of the novel. There were moments and phrases that still thrilled me and made me smile. And there were also passages and word choices that seemed like they were trying too hard. The opportunity to focus on the best parts, reshape the weaker parts, and add some new inventions elicited a renewed sense of wonder. That same sense of wonder that only live theatre can bring.
If you're in the Richmond area on Oct 24th, please stop by the Firehouse Theatre and say hello.

OPEN A NEW WINDOW...

New York has a long history of famous windows.
At holiday time, tourists and residents clamor to see any number of well-decorated windows at the city's major department stores.
For those of us of a certain age, the memory of Windows on the World can elicit profound melancholy.
Recently, I was taken aback by reports of the shattering of a certain window at 53 Christopher Street - a place I've come to know very well.
This post is prompted by some of the articles I read about that incident.
A number of outlets ran a photo of that famous window to accompany the reporting of what happened. Quite a few showed a very old photo - a photo from the Stonewall that I remember - from the early 1990s when Jimmy Pisano re-opened that space.
How can you tell the difference?
For the last 10 years or so, the bar at 53 Christopher has been known as The Stonewall Inn, and its red neon has honored the space with those three words.
Back in the '90s, early 1991 to be exact, a red neon Stonewall was installed by Jimmy in an effort to reboot his struggling bar. So, when I see a photo of that space with just Stonewall filling the window, I know it's Jimmy's neon.
Another clue is anchored to the wall, just to the left of the entrance. It was a small brass plaque that identified what had occurred at that space in 1969. Jimmy had put it there because when he originally opened his bar in early 1990 he actually didn't call the space Stonewall. He called it New Jimmy's to honor the man who taught him the bar business - Jimmy Merry. That plaque came down after Jimmy Pisano died in 1994 and was replaced by numerous other markers by well-intentioned folks seeking to honor the space in different ways. Though he hadn't originally named the bar for himself, I had always enjoyed seeing that brass plaque on the facade of the building because it was an accidental way of keeping his name tied to that place after he died. Through the back half of 1994 and into 1995, it reminded all of us who worked to keep that space open of who had made the resurrection of Stonewall possible in the first place.
To see a series of photos of the window at 53 Christopher visit www.StonewallRevival.com or visit this Facebook link:
https://www.facebook.com/StonewallRev...
I'm sharing these photos because they help to chronicle the history of Stonewall. I think it's important to get the history of that space right. Even a perhaps small detail like what the window of that space looked like at various times over the years since Jimmy made Stonewall possible again.
Back in 1969, that window was always obscured - blackened to prevent anyone from seeing in or seeing out.
The world has thankfully changed. Maybe not nearly as much as it should have by now, but certainly far more than many of us might have imagined.

Before the parade passes by...

I wrote Stonewall Revival to draw attention to some photos that I'd been saving. From when my first partner, Jimmy Pisano, re-opened the space as a gay bar in 1990 -the first time the space was a bar again since the original Stonewall Riots occurred two decades earlier.
In a few days, another Pride Parade will march past 53 Christopher Street and thousands will cheer the place that is widely credited with starting the LGBTQ civil rights movement.
My purpose in writing the book and in sharing the photos (www.StonewallRevival.com) is to draw attention to what Jimmy did.
He's the forgotten footnote in the history of that place.
I'd like to give him his footnote.