{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/h98z89325w/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Oral History Interview with Carol Dennis"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/029/original/uo-logo-hires.png?1580744881","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Identifier"]},"value":{"en":["Coll520_do010"]}},{"label":{"en":["Format"]},"value":{"en":["Digital Video File"]}},{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["2018 August 23"]}},{"label":{"en":["Description"]},"value":{"en":["The Eugene Lesbian Oral History Project Collection consists of interviews of 83 people for the Eugene Lesbian Oral History Project, conducted by Professor Judith Raiskin and Curator Linda Long at the University of Oregon starting in the summer of 2018."]}},{"label":{"en":["Abstract"]},"value":{"en":["Carol was born in October 1952. She grew up identifying as a boy, and was attracted to girls at age five or six. She grew up with sexual tension in the house, as her father was possibly a sex addict. Carol discusses her sexuality growing up and in school. Carol had a difficult time, and contemplated suicide. She went to the University of South Florida, but left after two years. She then went to New York and worked in theater. She was involved with the Godspell tour during which time she was drinking and using drugs. She discusses her attraction to the theater, and the love and acceptance at curtain call. She discusses her father's death and her father's friendship with actor Brian Keith. Carol went to Los Angeles and worked primarily as a stage manager, but she had difficult relationships there and decided to move to Eugene because she had heard it was the \"San Francisco for lesbians.\" She became reacquainted Bob Skerry in Eugene, and he helped her create Little Apple Productions to produce plays by and about women. She produced Last Summer at Bluefish Cove. Carol talks about the challenges in running a production company. She also discusses politics, the Oregon Citizens Alliance and the anti-gay ballot measures of the 1990s. She concludes her interview by discussing transgender issues.\n\nKey terms: ACT UP; AIDS (disease); Alcoholics Anonymous; Alcoholism; Ballot Measure 9; Boosler, Elayne; Boys in the Band, Mart Crowley (1968, Drama); Drug abuse; Lesbian separatism -- Oregon; Skerry, Robert; Sex addiction; Theater -- Oregon -- Eugene; Transgender people"]}},{"label":{"en":["Language"]},"value":{"en":["English"]}},{"label":{"en":["Agent"]},"value":{"en":["Carol Dennis (Interviewee)","Judith L. Raiskin (Interviewer)","Linda Long (Interviewer)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Rights Statement"]},"value":{"en":["In Copyright"]}},{"label":{"en":["Publisher"]},"value":{"en":["University of Oregon Libraries"]}},{"label":{"en":["Source Metadata URI"]},"value":{"en":["https://scua.uoregon.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/606993"]}},{"label":{"en":["Type"]},"value":{"en":["Moving Image"]}}],"summary":{"en":["The Eugene Lesbian Oral History Project Collection consists of interviews of 83 people for the Eugene Lesbian Oral History Project, conducted by Professor Judith Raiskin and Curator Linda Long at the University of Oregon starting in the summer of 2018."]},"requiredStatement":{"label":{"en":["Attribution"]},"value":{"en":["In Copyright"]}},"provider":[{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["University of Oregon Libraries"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["University of Oregon Libraries"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/029/original/uo-logo-hires.png?1580744881","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/130/251/small/Coll520_do010.jpg?1636980684","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - Coll520_do010.mp4"]},"duration":8123.15733,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/130/251/small/Coll520_do010.jpg?1636980684","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-universityoforegonlibraries.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/130/251/original/Coll520_do010.mp4?1636980684","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":8123.15733,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["761_Coll520_do010_aligned [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Long: This interview is part of the Eugene Lesbian Oral History Project.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=2.39,7.89"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"The recordings will be made available through the University of Oregon Libraries’ Special Collections and University Archives. This is an oral history interview with Carol Dennis on August 23, 2018 taking place in the University of Oregon Libraries’ recording studio in the Center for Media and Educational Technologies. The interviewers are Linda Long, Curator of Manuscripts in the UO Libraries’ Special Collections and University Archives, and Professor Judith Raiskin of the UO Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Carol, please let us know if you agree to be recorded for this project and that you give your permission for the university to preserve and make available your recorded and transcribed interview.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=7.98,50.67"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/3","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: I enthusiastically agree and give my approval.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=52.2,55.25"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/4","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Long: Thank you very much. That's great. Why don't we just start with some basic questions. Can you tell us when and where you were born, where you grew up and something about your early background?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=55.68,65.22"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/5","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: Yeah. I was born in Cherry Point, North Carolina, which was on the Marine Corps base. My dad was in the Marines as a fighter pilot, spent most of his time, I think, in the Philippines or that part of World War II. I was there until I was one. The family folklore is that I almost didn't make it out of there, that it was— I was born in October 1952, and there was a winter storm and the woman who was— Because it was cold and there was storm coming on, my crib was put by the fireplace. There was a tornado or something and the bricks of the fireplace came down. There was a woman who was taking care of me and she snatched me out of the crib just as the chimney fell on it or something. That's the lore. So every day above ground past the age of one has been a gift, I guess. So we left there— I don't remember, but I'm told I was about one. My dad got re-stationed, or whatever the language is in the military, to Homestead, Florida. So I grew up in and around Miami. By the time I was about three, we moved into the house that I grew up in North Miami Beach. It was a middle-class neighborhood, primarily Jewish. My mother was Jewish, my father was Protestant. So even before I started feeling the “I'm different than everyone else because of my gender identity and my sexual orientation,” even before I started feeling that, I felt the— To some people in the neighborhood, I wasn't Jewish enough, and to other people in the neighborhood, I was just too Jewish. So it was an interesting growing up. We weren't raised in any particular religion. We went to temple on the High Holidays as an excuse to stay out of school.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=65.23,209.51"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/6","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"But in North Miami Beach, in that neighborhood, you didn't want to go to school on the High Holidays anyway, because there was nobody there. I heard the sound of Judaism on the High Holidays.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=209.54,222.87"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/7","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"There were like four Gentile families in my neighborhood and they were all wanting to make sure that we'd learned about Christ. So I went to a Christian Church, every now and then I went to a something else church, I went to a something else church. Mom and Dad both said, \"Choose your own.\" The most interesting thing about going to the churches was having to figure out what to wear because you needed to be in a dress and you needed to have a little something on your head because the men don't wear hats, but the women do. I'm thinking about it now, remembering that those and school were the really hardest times for me to figure out my own self because I grew up a boy but had the body of a girl. I was one of only like two girls in the whole neighborhood, or at least in my younger years in the block that I grew up on. Then as that expanded to the five block neighborhood where you kind of wander and smoked dope with everybody, there were maybe two others. So I grew up identifying as a boy, being attracted to the girls. So that's the other part of the in-betweenness that I grew up with.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=222.88,314.65"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/8","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Raiskin: How old were you when you first felt attracted to girls?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=315.94,319.99"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/9","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: I say around five. But mostly I say around five because I don't really have many memories before the age of five and I don't really have clear memories then either. I just remember that I always had to wear shorts under my dress or skirt because otherwise I just felt naked. It's like, \"Why do people do that? Why do you run around in your underwear with just this “whoooh” that could show— that could expose you?\" So I always had to do that. Also, from as early back as I can remember, so I say five or six, because it's as early back as first grade, it was really hard for me to have girl friends because I always needed to turn it into something more. I always needed to get a kiss out of it or there was just— there was a lot of sexual energy in my life. Some of that could be that there was a lot of sexual tension between my parents. My father was a sex addict. I think one of the reasons why he wasn't close to me and my two sisters was he didn't know how to do that without being inappropriate. So he stayed away from us. Very close relationship with our brother. But during my whole childhood, Dad had lots of affairs. We all knew it and he sometimes brought them home, or they were sitting out in the car waiting for their date as Dad would come in and get something and announce to primarily our mother that he was going out. There were these secret phone calls. So there was a lot of sexual tension in the house. Somewhere along the line, I have come to maybe a theory that that's why every relationship that I tried to create had sexual tension. Now with the boys, that was fine because they loved playing, show me yours, I'll show you mine. I remember being out in a tent in our backyard with all the boys in the neighborhood, while there were four of us, four boys and me, and we were playing strip poker and I always lost. But you see, we were playing with invisible cards. So I always agreed to lose because it was the only way I knew how to get attention. I was obsessed with trying to see theirs because I wanted to know what I was missing. So I didn't have language for all of that. Called myself a lesbian from, I don't know, probably the age of about fifteen when I finally heard that language. But I'm so grateful today for the younger generation who's actually given me a better vocabulary, that I was gender queer all that time. I hope that doesn't disqualify me from this interview. So my childhood was a lot about loneliness.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=321.15,521.4"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/10","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"There was a time when I was in fifth grade where a couple of girls came up to me and said, \"If you don't learn to act and walk like a girl, you're never going to get a boyfriend.\" So I started my research. All right, what do girls do? How do girls walk? What do girls do when they're together? I had no clue.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=521.83,553.4"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/11","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So Susie Rosenstein— Rosenberg, Susie, was someone I really liked.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=554.65,562.85"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/12","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"I went up to her and I asked her, \"What do girls do?\" She didn't really quite know what that question meant. I'm not sure I really did either. But I was with her after school one day when her mom came up to pick her up after school and she told her mom what I asked. I think her mom must have thought I meant, what do girls do sexually? Because she pulled Susie away from me and said that, \"You're not to spend any time with her.\" So I lost that friend. But at the same time, that mom in junior high school, so like two or three years later, ran into— was walking down the hall in junior high school and I was talking to one of my teacher mentors who of course was the gym teacher and also taught math— Oh no, social studies or something like that. But I was talking to her, I don't remember her name. I can see her. She was not very tall, dark, short hair, looked a bit like you. Short, dark hair, slight muscular. She and I were talking and Mrs Rosenberg came up and the teacher said, \"Oh, do you know Carol?\" She said, \"Oh yes, I know Carol very well. I remember when she asked my daughter what girls do,\" because I think that she had gotten back to the tomboy girls do. I think that she had cleaned up her sense of what the question was. I was mortified and I thought very quickly. I said, \"No, I was asking, \"What do sixth grade girls do?\" Because I was in fifth grade and Susie was in sixth grade. \"I was asking what do sixth grade girls do?\" To this day, this question, this moment in the hallway does this to me. The other outing that happened, eighth grade, I loved math. I was good at math. I loved math. And in eighth grade, I walked into my math class, first day of math class, and the teacher, I think her name was Mrs Burger, but I'm not sure, started the class by saying, \"Now, I know you girls don't like math, but we'll make sure you keep up.\" My thought was, \"Oh fuck, she's going to know I'm a boy if I like math.\" So I didn't do math after that. I stopped being good at math because she told me that if I was good at math then you'd know that I felt like a boy inside and I had to keep that secret. That was a big one too. That was a really big one. So my childhood was all about keeping a secret and trying to get a look at a penis because I didn't know what they were supposed to look like. So, starting in high school, there were lots of blowjobs because it was the only way I could see what that was like. But not a lot of girl friends because I would always muck it up with getting a crush.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=563.7,775.02"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/13","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Raiskin: You said you got some language for being a lesbian when you were fifteen or so, where did that language come from?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=775.03,781.79"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/14","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: All right, let's see. Maybe it was sixteen. So I have this sister who's seven years older than me and she's been my hero and my mentor always. She left home when I was about eleven, so that makes her eighteen, to move to New York for fame and fortune in theater.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=784.86,807.96"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/15","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"That's who I followed up to New York. I think her first roommates were gay men. So I don't know that I got the vocabulary around lesbian, but I certainly got the vocabulary around gay. And also my mother was just absolutely amazing. Now, I have seen a photo of my mother when she was about twenty-three years old living in L.A. Now, my mom didn't marry until she was probably close to thirty. She was lying about her age. Jumping ahead, when my dad died in 1980, my mom aged six years, because she lied and said she was three years younger than him, but she was actually three years older.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=808.26,858.96"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/16","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So there was this picture of my mom at about twenty-three in Los Angeles in a backyard. She was the femme of the group. I just don't think she knew it. But everybody else in the group, it was all women and they were all dykes, and she was just this prim and proper little femme and they were all— I wonder if my mom understood me so well and accepted me so well because she knew.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=859.19,892.76"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/17","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Raiskin: How did she come by that circle of friends?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=892.78,895.75"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/18","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: I don't have a clue and we never really talked about it. It might've been around movies and stuff. Family lore, and I think that it's true, when my mom was in L.A.— We had family in L.A. My mom was born and raised in New York City. So moving to Miami was very comfortable because it's the Southern most borough of New York.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=895.77,918.73"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/19","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"But we had lots of family in L.A. I think one of my mom's first jobs in L.A was as an editor at Disney. Then for a while she worked at Max Factor. So she was kind of with artsy kind of people. So I don't really know. But when the movie Boys in the Band came out, my mom took me. Then when we left I said, \"I need to get that book.\" So we went— or at least this is the way I remember it. Then my mom didn't drive, so we would have had to have taken a taxi or a bus to the movie. So she knew something about it and she maybe also didn't want to go to the movie by herself because my mom also didn't have very many friends.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=920.37,967.36"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/20","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"My mom also started losing her hearing when I was about two. So by the time I was a teenager, I was her ears. So we bonded. The way I remember it, before we got home from seeing The Boys in the Band, I had the script and I slept with it under my pillow. Even though it is the most painful story of our history, it was finally people who felt like I felt, their outsides finally matched my insides. I was so grateful for that. I was also suicidal from the age of eleven. That didn't lift until I was about twenty-eight years old and watched my father dying of cancer. When I realized I didn't mean die, I just meant feel better. I didn't mean die. I'd never seen die before. But from the age of eleven, anything that went wrong, my thought was, I don't belong here. I just don't belong here. There's an analogy that I've come up with in my adult years that life is a game of musical chairs. In musical chairs, there's one more person circling than there are chairs. So the music plays, the music plays and when the music stops, everybody runs for a chair and the person who doesn't get a chair is out. Well, my life was a constant game of musical chairs. I always lost, but God never let me sit the next round out. I just had to keep playing and playing and playing and there was never a place. So that expanded into, “I must be what's wrong with the world.” So whether it was race riots or wars or my parents' divorce or any of that stuff, I was what's wrong?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=968.75,1098.93"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/21","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And if I were gone, the world would come back into balance. So suicide was always my first option. I often had a plan, but I never— I did try once at the age of— I guess I was seventeen or eighteen. I was on tour with West Side Story in the role of Anybodys, the tomboy, of course. It was a dream role for me. Now, that was another movie that gave me something, because I went to see the movie West Side Story and I saw Anybodys. Now, if you ask most people about the movie West Side Story, they'll name Tony, they'll name Bernardo, they'll name Maria, maybe they'll name Anita. But nobody except us names Anybodys because she was us. So I'm touring Florida, it's a Florida tour.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=1099.52,1158.92"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/22","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Raiskin: With what company?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=1158.94,1160.76"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/23","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: I went to the University of South Florida. When I graduated high school, I went to the University of South Florida studying theater.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=1160.76,1167.16"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/24","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"In the summer between my freshman and sophomore years, they put together a program that was a combination of— It was actually a producer from Texas. The stars of the show were from New York and Equity. They came down and they cast the incidental and the chorus parts at the University of South Florida Theater Department. Then we toured and I got cast as Anybodys. I went into the auditions as Anybody. In other words, I went in as me and not as who I would have gone into an audition with femming it up or doing whatever I could. As a matter of fact, I went into the audition and I played— I didn't even say anything about wanting the role of Anybodys and the director said, \"Would you like to play Anybodys?\" And I said, \"Yes. Thank you.\" So I'm on tour and I'm falling in love with one of the costars, with one of my college buddies who was also in the show. I'm going to say her name and you probably will know it because she went on to be Elayne Boosler. So I fell in love with Elayne Boosler. We've remained friends, not close friends, but every now and then we'll email each other in these later years. Now, she doesn't know this part of the story. So if she ever watches this, “Elayne, I'm sorry I didn't share this with you.” So we're in the hotel and I'm in Elayne's room afterwards and I'm feeling the sexual tension and wanting to tell her that I've got a crush on her or that I'm in love with her or whatever. She's fallen in love with one of the musicians, which she— one of the trumpet players, I think, who was also I think from New York, but I don't remember. Anyway, I'm trying to get it out and she says, \"Are you a fucking lesbian?\" As Elayne Boosler would do. \"Are you a fucking lesbian?\" I said, \"Yes.\" She was very kind and she said, \"Well, I'm not that way.\" It was late at night and that morning I left, it was— I don't know, maybe 5:00 in the morning. I left the hotel. We were in Fort Lauderdale. We were on the beach. There was a Highway One or whatever it's called in Miami. I ran across the highway and I was bee-lining it for the ocean. That's where I was going to do it, I was going to throw myself in the ocean. I see this guy down the beach, I don't know, maybe quarter mile. He looks at me and he jumps in his car and he's heading my way. I figure I want to die, I don't want to get raped. So I start running from him and he catches me and says, \"I saw what you were about to do. I knew I had to stop you.\" We end up talking for several hours until the sunrises. Then of course he propositions me and it's like, \"Fuck you.\" But I don't know if I would've done it because I was also having the thought, \"These are the only clean pants I have. Do I really know want to ruin them?\" You know what goes through your mind when you're bee-lining it to the ocean to take your life. I don't know. But that was the only attempt that I made. Later when I was on tour with Godspell— because by then I moved— So, I left college after two and a half years. I never got any kind of a degree. I have a high school diploma, that's the highest I ever got, plus about two and a half years of college. I left college to go to New York and I moved to New York with my best friend Darryl and his boyfriend, Glenn.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=1167.72,1408.72"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/25","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Darryl now, after world traveling for forty years, him not me, he now lives in Eugene and we have been able to rekindle our friendship and do theater together again, which is just magical.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=1409.59,1423.81"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/26","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Glenn died of AIDS many, many years ago. So Darryl and I moved to New York together after he graduated from college. Within eight months, I got cast in a touring company of Godspell. I was on the road with Godspell and I did that on and off for about two and a half years. In St. Louis— combination of my drinking and my drugging and my suicidal stuff— the hotel in St. Louis is where I had a nervous breakdown. My body was kind of falling apart because I wasn't taking care of myself. I was drinking a lot and shoving a lot of cocaine up my nose. My ankles were kind of giving out, my knees were kind of giving out. There were several shows that I had to just— I had to not do it. The understudies would go on. There were times at that point that— the only times that I could breathe was— so I was in the hotel room in St. Louis, I pushed the hotel bed near the window and I would stand on the bed in the window sill, inside the window, but imagining that I was outside the window and I could tumble down anytime I wanted to. That's where I could breathe because I figured I could at least be in control of that. Shortly after that, I had to leave the show. I went back to New York. My sister took care of me for about a year. I think I might have stopped drinking for a little while, but I don't think I stopped smoking pot and I don't think I stopped doing cocaine, but I don't really remember that year. About two years later, I started my life in Alcoholics Anonymous. I've been clean and sober now for over forty years. That's where I grew up. So do I need to jump back anywhere or shall I just continue on from where I am?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=1424.09,1561.08"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/27","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Childhood stories. What do you need?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=1561.78,1563.56"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/28","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Raiskin: I think keep going. Where are you now? So now you're in?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=1563.58,1568.05"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/29","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: I'm in New York. Yeah. I do want to go back because there's a really important— I have a brother, and maybe this actually ties in really nicely. My brother died about two years ago at the age of sixty-five.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=1568.07,1587.28"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/30","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"He outlived our dad by two years and he wasn't sure he would.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=1587.28,1590.48"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/31","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Curtis and I were very close friends. He was my protector in high school. He was also a heroin addict. When we were in high school, he would come home late at night and be so wound up. He would wake me up and we'd go out, sit on the porch and just talk. He tried to kick at home a couple of times and I just— I have visceral memories of holding him while he threw up and sweated and all of that stuff. Anyway, the end of my drinking and using, I was shoving cocaine up my nose a lot, bleeding it out, shoving it back in. I looked at myself in the mirror and I saw my brother. That's when I recognized that I was an addict. That's what got me to stop, is that I saw my brother, I saw his life in me. So I stopped the cocaine cold turkey, which meant that I was— Then I had two weeks of being drunk and that was my bottom. That was when I realized that I had to stop. My last drunk was around Halloween at the J.I. Rodale Theater in Allentown, Pennsylvania. My friend David Rodale, who's from the Rodale family, the Prevention Magazine, family and stuff, he was one of the first to die of AIDS. I think he's probably counted in the first 100. But before he died, he opened a theater in honor of his grandfather who loved theater.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=1592.75,1691.5"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/32","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"They were of course millionaires, so he could do that, the J.I.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=1691.83,1695.04"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/33","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rodale Theater. I was there for the opening show or something like that and a whole bunch of us went. We were at the Rodale Farmhouse and the show. The first night that I was there, which was probably the night before Halloween, I got so drunk. The next morning, I had the worst hangover I'd ever had. I couldn't even put clothes on without it hurting. I couldn't think of having anything in my stomach except mashed potatoes. I was so sick and I promised myself that that night at the next— after the show of the next party I wouldn't have anything to drink. At the party, by the time I'd remembered my promise, I'd had three beers and I was off and running. The next morning, I woke up clear as a bell and I knew that when I got home I was going to call AA. I don't even know where I heard of AA. Maybe sitting on the subways late at night, you don't make eye contact with people because they'll follow you home, so you read the ads, and maybe there was an ad. Anyway, so I woke up the next morning and everybody was already in the kitchen. I went in there and they said, \"Oh, you were so funny last night.\" They laughed, and I laughed. I thought I was very embarrassing the night before. We were talking about what are we going to do when we get back to the city and people were saying, \"Oh, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that.\" I said, \"Well, I'm going to call AA.\" They laughed, so I laughed and I got home and I called AA.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=1695.23,1795.08"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/34","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Raiskin: Can I ask you, what do you think attracted you to theater?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=1796.35,1800.2"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/35","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: That's a really good question. The first answer is my sister, because she was doing theater in junior high and high school. It's really hard for me to say, but I can tell you that after I got sober, it was really hard for me to do theater again, because the adrenaline high is so wonderful. I realized as I hit my bottom that the only place I felt loved and accepted was not while I was doing a play, but the curtain call at the end. So that might inform “the why” I wanted to.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=1801.7,1858.83"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/36","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Raiskin: I was wondering when you were talking about Boys in a Band, the idea that queer people act, and not on stage, in life.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=1859.57,1868.07"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/37","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: Yeah. Oh! Well, I think that's why I was good at it. That might've been why I was good at it. But I think it was more— maybe it was about that game of musical chairs, is that if I was cast in a part, that character had a seat. I didn't, but that character did. But it was a lot about ego, a lot about— at least I had an identity. I could say, \"Oh, I'm an actor.\" What's nice is that in the years that I lived in New York, that's how I supported myself. I wasn't the waitress who's waiting for the acting job. All of my jobs, if I wasn't on stage, I was running props or running sound or doing wardrobe or working in the box office or selling concessions or ushering. It was all about theater. Maybe a lot of it, too, is that being queer was the norm in theater. Not so much for the women, but for the men. Since I identified as a man anyway— I mean, I really— So backtracking a little bit more, when I was eighteen I was considering a sex change operation. But part of my thought process was that it's probably easier to go through life as a man trapped inside a woman's body than as a five foot, two inch man. I would always be a boy. I also knew that if I were to transition, I would be a gay man. And that's a sad life. So I stayed like this. I have to say I'm glad I did because as I got older, especially reaching menopause and not having to be reminded every month that I'm in the wrong body, I have really smoothed out my gender confusion to whatever this is. This is who I am. I no longer have the desire to change the outside to match the inside. I personally am glad I waited long enough, but I also don't know what it's like to live on the really far ends of the gender spectrum. I've always been somewhere in the middle.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=1868.09,2028.77"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/38","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Raiskin: Why did you think being a gay man, a transition gay man, would be a sad life, as opposed to other—","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=2029.43,2034.29"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/39","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: Because of Boys in the Band. So, I mean—","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=2034.31,2038.2"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/40","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Long: But why? I'm confused about that because if you had transitioned to be a gay— to be male, then you would have been straight, because you were attracted to women.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=2038.77,2051.16"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/41","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: No, see, sexual orientation and gender identity are absolutely separate. As a matter of fact, if you really look at the statistics, there are huge percentages of people who transition who then become— their gender identity follows them, or not gender identity— their sexual orientation follows.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=2051.18,2073.37"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/42","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Raiskin: But you were attracted to girls as a child. Did that change?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=2073.39,2077.21"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/43","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: It would have.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=2077.23,2078.26"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/44","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Raiskin: Okay.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=2078.3,2079.01"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/45","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: I think that it would have. And there are a lot of female to male transgender folks who then become gay men, and there are a lot of male to female transgender folks, so transgender women who then become lesbians. Now, there's a part of me that wonders if that were to have happened, would it have been that being a gay man would have— So, intimacy with other men would have been the closest I could get to the correct genitalia. I wonder that. But yeah, so sexual orientation and gender, it oftentimes that when one transitions, the orientation follows you. So you're still queer and now you're queer in this new body. It's fascinating.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=2079.01,2137.45"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/46","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Long: Can I ask?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=2137.72,2138.18"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/47","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: Yeah.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=2138.18,2138.69"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/48","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Long: When you made that decision to call A.A., how old were you?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=2138.72,2143.02"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/49","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: I was twenty-five, yeah, yeah. And another thing that helped me, so there was this nervous breakdown that I had and then there was the— so there was a time I guess prior to the breakdown, must have been. Time doesn't make any sense to me back then because life was just chaotic. The tour that I was on with Godspell, there was a time that we sat down in Washington, D.C. for a little while, and one of the guys in the play, Jimmy, who also died of AIDS. Half the men in my Godspell company had died of AIDS. He grew up in Washington and his minister or priest, Presbyterian, is it a minister or a priest? I don't really know. So his minister was a gay man, a celibate gay man. And I was talking to Jimmy about, you know, at twenty-three, I had come to— Oh, this is an important story. At twenty-three, I was doing children's theater in the Shenandoah Valley and I had never seen winter turned to spring, and I had this religious epiphany, which combined with a woman in the company that I was falling in love with, you know, me and my love— Relationships lasted two months at the most. She was Christian. I was trying to convince her to be a lesbian with me. She was trying to convince me to be a Christian with her. She won. So I became a Christian. I identified as a Christian, but I didn't know how to reconcile being a Christian and being gay. So Jimmy took me to a lunch with his minister and the minister gave me this. He said to me, \"Carol, God has given you a special way to love. If you abuse it, it's a sin. If you don't, it's not.\" And that's when I realized that I was going to the bars, getting drunk, picking people up just to feel whole and then throwing them away. And when I stopped doing that, that was the linchpin that led me to realize I was a drunk and an addict, and that I was using women to fill the emptiness in me.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=2143.04,2305.69"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/50","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And when I stopped doing that, that's when I got sober.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=2307.88,2310.45"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/51","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And for about the first three years, I kind of did the same thing in A.A. I was trying to find somebody to fill me up. My A.A. home group in New York City was a lesbian feminist, separatist A.A.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=2312.5,2323.61"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/52","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"group. And yes, I was going to try to stay sober, but I figured if I was going to stay clean and sober and I had this big hole in me, I had to fill it with someone, so I better fill it with a clean and sober woman because then we could stay clean and sober together. And I learned that that doesn't really work.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=2323.62,2344.96"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/53","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"There was a woman, Julie, I was in my first year of sobriety and I got this big crush on her. I asked her to come over and spend the night just to snuggle because I was feeling really lonely and stuff.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=2346.53,2368.26"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/54","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"She came over to snuggle, but I had ulterior motives of course, and I was a really good seducer. I was a really good seducer. I also thought I was God's gift to women because I was really good at getting women to orgasm because I couldn't, so it was my job. It was their job to do it for me. Anyway, Julie came over, we're spending the night, I'm snuggling, I'm using all my tricks. She just won't go there. I don't remember when it was that she said it to me.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=2369.84,2410.32"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/55","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"She said, \"You know, Carol, sometimes we just need to be held.\" And that just opened up a whole world to me, that I didn't have to buy being held with giving somebody an orgasm, whether it was a blowjob or pretending I was in love with somebody. I didn't have to buy it with sex. I could just ask to be held. Julie changed my life.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=2411.23,2443.64"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/56","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"But it really took me a very long time to— Still to this day, I have a hard time having women friends. I'm in a great marriage with Amber. Amber Dennis, Amber Lunch, who is also an important part of this community.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=2447.74,2465.17"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/57","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Raiskin: Is it too fast ask you to tell us about how you knew about Eugene or coming here?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=2465.18,2472.93"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/58","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: Oh, no, no. Well, yes, yes because— Okay so I'm three years sober in New York City in a horrible relationship. So Julie changed my life, but it still didn't mean that I didn't try to find a woman to fit into that hole. And I found a woman named Kathy and she was awful. She said to me, \"The only thing that'll ever make me leave you is if you have an affair.\" I'm working on a show in New York called, I'm Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Road. It's a public theater. It's at Circle in the square downtown. I'm the assistant stage manager, my sister is the production stage manager, and they're taking a company to L.A., and they're going to be looking for someone to do the job of an assistant stage manager and to understudy two of the women in the show. I could do that. So I auditioned for that and that's how I got from New York to L.A. In that transition from New York to LA, right around here is when my dad died. So it's 1980.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=2472.95,2548.16"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/59","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"High school, I'm the baby in the family. My high school graduation, my father who has had all these affairs— at my high school graduation, we're standing outside the high school, he comes up to me and he says, \"You're the baby, you graduated high school, my job is done, I'm divorcing your mother and leaving.\" And he does. He stays in Miami for a little while, but the whole divorce proceeding, which was awful because my brother and I were still under age, enough to get a child support. So we were brought in to the divorce hearings and we were told that we wouldn't be asked about Dad's affairs, but of course we were. It was horrible. Anyway, so the whole divorce goes way in my mom's favor. She gets the house, she's going to get child support, she's going to get alimony. My dad doesn't want to do any of that, so he remarries a woman named Jeannie and then they vanish. So for nine years we don't know where he is, whether he's alive or dead or anything. And then— oh, this is an amazing— My life is full of amazing stories. My mom discovers— now, this isn't true anymore, but it used to be back in the '70s and '80s, that if you had somebody's Social Security number and they were still working, you could send a letter to them through Social Security. You just have to not seal the letter so that it could be opened and read to make sure that it's not manipulative or a threat or something like that. You put the letter in an unsealed envelope, you send it to Social Security, and they forward it. My mom decided to do that after nine years to say, \"Your children need a father. You might hate me, but you don't hate your children. So here are all their addresses.\" But she sealed the letter, and she also, in order to make my dad comfortable opening it, put my sister Marjorie's, my oldest sister's return address on it. So Social Security returned the letter to Marjorie who opened it, realized what mom was doing, put in photos of now dad's grandchildren. Because my brother— so my brother ends up getting sent to prison. That's a whole other story.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=2553.72,2711.53"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/60","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Comes out of jail, marries, becomes the best dad ever, but never really stopped drugging. He stopped the heroin, which was great.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=2711.81,2720.93"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/61","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And two years ago died of hepatitis that he got from when he was shooting drugs. Anyway, puts in photos of— You know, you're a grandfather, your son is doing fine, here's all of us, and sends it, and he gets it. He sends us a letter back June 1980, right around Father's Day, \"I needed to be away from your mother. I'm sorry I can't let you know where I am because she’s still trying to track me down.\" She had forgotten about him by then. Not forgotten, but had to let go of all of that. So we get this letter back saying, \"I love you, but I can't tell you where I am.\" And then in September— Now, my father is not Jewish, he's Protestant. We get a letter from the rabbi in Honolulu. He's the groundskeeper at Temple Bethel or whatever it's called, the— I guess he liked Jews. He was the groundskeeper in the Temple in Honolulu. We get a letter from the rabbi, Rabbi Nodel saying, \"Your father is dying. The doctors give him a couple of days. He would love to hear from you before he dies. Here's the phone number.\" Within thirty-six hours, my brother and sisters and I were at his bedside. Two things saved my life there. One, I walked into his hospital room. He was sixty-three years old and looked ninety. He was about ninety pounds. He was a five foot 10 inch man, looked a lot like Henry Fonda. My dad looked like Henry Fonda. My mom looked like Judy Garland. They were oftentimes mistaken for celebrities. When I walked into his room, there was a white light on his left shoulder and I knew there was a God. I've forgotten, I don't know anymore that there's a God, but I remember that I knew in that moment that there was a very patient, loving, something waiting for him to go. And I also, like I said earlier, I'd never seen “die” before. All of those years that I said I wanted to die. I didn't mean that, I meant start over. I also understood at that moment, that three years clean and sober, that that's what A.A. lets me do. The steps and the sponsorship, and the fellowship lets me wipe the slate clean and start over. He lives another two months. The doctor said our visit just brought him back, but it was a horrible two months. I don't think I ever came out to my dad. I did tell him that I was an alcoholic because there was a meeting. Of course, there was an A.A. meeting right downstairs in the hospital every day at noon so I could get to a meeting, of course. And of course that when I called the central office of A.A. in Honolulu as soon as we arrived, the person who's answering the phone at midnight is a cancer care nurse, of course, and told me what to expect when I walked into the room. You know, all of these things. I don't think I came out to him. I told him I was an alcoholic and he said, \"Well, we all carry our own burdens.\" Anyway, the other part of the story, and I'm veering off a little bit, but you'll get me back. When my dad was in the service, when he was a bomber pilot, which I think he hated, but—","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=2721.44,2964.01"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/62","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Long: Was that in World War II?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=2964.03,2965.73"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/63","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: It was World War II. His tail gunner was an actor named Brian Keith, who you may know from TV shows, like Family Affair and from movies like Parent Trap. Became a very famous actor in the '70s, '80s. And Brian Keith lived in Hawaii and they became pen pals. They became pen pals. They never saw each other, even though they were in the same town, but they became pen pals. One of the things that we found when we went through my dad's stuff was a stack of letters from Brian Keith where he really confided in my dad a lot about his marriage. I sent a letter to Mr. Keith letting him know those letters were destroyed. They will never see— nobody’s going to see them. Anyway, my brother and I— So all four of us flew out there together. Me and my two sisters from New York, Curtis from Florida, we all got there. And so Curtis and I had to get back sooner than Marjorie and Kathy. So Curtis and I were on the same flight back. We were only able to stay a week, and one of the things dad said as we relieving is my biggest regret is that I never got to introduce you all to Brian Keith because both my sisters are in theater and me, and my brother would've loved him.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=2965.93,3050.61"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/64","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So Curtis and I get on the plane, we walked back to our seats and who walks onto the plane headed towards first-class is Brian Keith.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=3051.6,3059.39"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/65","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"We sent a note up. After the plane takes off, he comes and spends a half an hour with us. And Dad lived long enough to get a letter from us saying we met Brian Keith. And Brian Keith was very angry at Dad because here he was spilling his guts about his own marriage and his relationships, and he never knew that Dad had a marriage before Jeannie and a whole family before him, before that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=3061.46,3088.23"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/66","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So he's kind of pissed. But we got to meet him.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=3089.61,3092.83"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/67","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"That's how I get to Los Angeles. Now, in LA, I don't know how to work the room as an actor. For about a minute and a half, I have a manager and an agent, but my agent loses her franchise. My manager doesn't know what to do with me without— there was another agent who was interested in me, but because I signed with this one, he said, \"What do I want with you anymore?\" So I started becoming an— I worked a lot as a stage manager there. So how do I keep this related to relationships and things? Because I don't want to just give my career stuff. Although, I did get to coordinate the first fifteen minutes in the last fifteen minutes of the '84 Olympics. I do want to say that because that was pretty damn special. But I still kept trying to fill that hole and I wasn't doing it with drugs or alcohol anymore, but I really did love adrenaline and I just kept making sure I got into relationships that were really unhealthy. So now I'm at a loss.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=3096.75,3173.38"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/68","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Raiskin: How did you get to Eugene?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=3173.38,3174.51"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/69","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: Yes. There we go. Yes, that's the connection. Thank you. Because this is a history about Eugene. Anyway, so I'm in L.A., I stayed in LA for ten years. I'm doing a lot of event coordinating and stage managing in L.A. Oh, and I'm in gay A.A. in L.A. Now, in gay A.A.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=3174.53,3194.35"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/70","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"in L.A., in the ‘80s, at the height of the AIDS epidemic, they were announcing memorial services almost every meeting. And it was during that time that I shifted, I think a lot of A.A. in that era, in probably places like New York, San Francisco, and L.A. shifted from the desire to live sober to the goal of dying sober. It's an extraordinary shift. I want to stay sober to the end of my life because I saw people dying of AIDS who had a spiritual life and those who didn't have a spiritual life. And I want to die like the ones who have a spiritual life. A.A. is sort of my church. It's not a religion. I hope it never becomes a religion. But 100 years from now, it's going to be really interesting to see what the dogma has turned into.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=3194.37,3271.09"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/71","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So the grieving was really getting to me. I was in a relationship with a woman named Terry. Again, not a very good relationship.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=3271.1,3284.79"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/72","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"We were together for six years. For the first three years, it was lovely. And then we hit something, an intimacy that I think scared the shit out of her and she became violent, throwing things, violent explosions of anger, throwing things at me. I stayed for three years.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=3285.81,3308.34"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/73","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"As a matter of fact, we moved up here together, not knowing whether it was the drive by shootings, all the deaths from AIDS or was it us? We came up here and learned that it was us.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=3308.42,3317.61"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/74","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Anyway, what was happening was that I couldn't cope with the grieving anymore and I needed to find someplace to go where I could just rest for a little while. I didn't intend to stay. Terry, who's the person I was with, her grandmother had a farm up in Philomath, and she used to come up here for the summers, to spend the summers on the farm. And so she knew it was a beautiful area. And we also had kind of heard that Eugene is kind of the San Francisco for lesbians. So we heard that there was a very—","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=3318.29,3359.38"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/75","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Raiskin: How did you hear that?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=3359.38,3360.2"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/76","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: I don't remember. Yeah, I don't remember it. It was just its reputation. The original thought when we were going to leave L.A.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=3360.8,3370.24"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/77","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"was to go to Grass Valley, California. Terry had a friend who was building a house in Grass Valley and the trailer that she and her girlfriend had been living in was now going to be available when they moved into the house. So we were going to move into the trailer until we found our way. We went up to take a pickup truck load of stuff up there and had the most godawful fight with the person that was there, whose house it was. And I said, \"We can't go.\" And so we said to each other, \"Okay, if there was no leg up anywhere, if nobody was offering us a place, or a leg up anywhere, where would we go?\" And we said, \"Eugene.\" I don't really know why. I had looked it up on the Chamber of Commerce website.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=3370.44,3420.23"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/78","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"There was still the Oregon Repertory Theater was posted, ORT.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=3420.46,3423.26"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/79","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And I thought, \"Oh, I could be there.\" And there was ACE and there was—","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=3424.34,3428.19"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/80","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Raiskin: ACE stands for?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=3428.21,3428.99"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/81","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: Actors Cabaret, which still exists. And there was The Very Little Theatre, but I'm union so I needed a place where I could work more professionally. Well, when we got up here and we found out that ORT doesn't exist anymore, had folded about two years before that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=3429.01,3447.87"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/82","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Anyway, we didn't go to Grass Valley, we sold everything we owned, we fit in the back of a pickup truck, we drove up here, we arrived on February 15, 1990 through a really bad snow storm.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=3448.2,3463.82"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/83","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Here she is, a California gal, I'm a Miami gal, we've got this pickup truck. And I remember my dad saying, \"Always drive in the ridges of an eighteen-wheeler if you're in a snow storm. I don't know how he knew that. He grew up in Florida, too. But so we're coming up the coast and we're trying to get across. We couldn't come across.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=3464.38,3487.52"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/84","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"One was blocked by a semi jackknife and the other was windy so we finally got to Eugene. The first thing we discovered in Eugene after about ten months was that it wasn't the drive by shootings in LA and it wasn't all the death and dying, it was us. And so Terry stayed about another year, we split up, I kept a little apartment that we found, she moved in with some friends in A.A., and then she went back to L.A. We've gotten in touch with each other. She wrote me about two years later when our friend Jane died of AIDS, and she's the only woman I know, lesbian who I know who died of AIDS.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=3487.95,3533.95"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/85","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So that's what got me to Eugene. The other thing I found, not only did ORT no longer exist and that there really was no professional theater here, so I didn't know what to do about that, but also our impression that there was a really welcoming tight lesbian community—that’s not what I found. What I found when I got here was that there were lots of very tight lesbian communities and that it was really hard to knock on the door of any of them. I found my way to gay A.A. meetings here and that was nice, but it was also all that— it was still a lot of— I was still in pickup mode when I went to those meetings. The other thing I found was Shanti, which I don't think exists here anymore. And there was Shanti and there was—","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=3537.95,3601.26"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/86","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Raiskin: Can you describe what Shanti was?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=3601.28,3602.35"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/87","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: Yeah. Shanti, it was an AIDS activist support organization. And there was another one here. Shanti and this other group that was called AIDS Alliance of Lane County, that's what it was called. So I've found myself with AIDS Alliance of Lane County and they had some support groups for those of us grieving. Shanti and AIDS Alliance of Lane County meshed and became HIV Alliance. And so what was happening was— so I found that, and I would go to those support groups and— Did I find those before or after? So here's another one of those wonderful stories in my life. I'm jumping back just slightly. So the first job I had here was at \"Olan Mills Portrait Studio! We're calling in your neighborhood today only to offer you— \" I lasted two months. I started getting sick to my stomach when I went into work.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=3602.35,3669.93"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/88","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Long: Was it a photo portrait studio?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=3669.94,3671.8"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/89","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: Yes. Olan Mills is like this national thing where you go in and you pay like $9 to get your portrait and to get your photo done. And what they do is for $9.99 or whatever it might be now, you come in for the shoot and then when you come back, you get two free, 8 by 10 photos, and they're actually pretty nice. But what they offer you are the ones that didn't come out so good so you have to pay for the ones that did. But I got to tell you, there was one time I made a phone call, and I hated just barging in on people's lives, but there was this one time where the woman said, \"I just want to thank you because a month before my father passed away, we did this and that was the portrait we used at his funeral.\" So that kind of made it all— But anyway, so that lasted about two and a half months. And then I got a job in the laundry room at the Hilton Hotel. The hardest $3.90 I've ever worked to make. At the end of the year that I was there, it was $4.10. Hard work. But anyway, here I am walking into the lobby of the Hilton Hotel downtown to turn in or to fill out an application or whatever you do. And there's a guy at the bell station, the bell hop, who looks so much like a guy named Bob Skerry, who was the company manager on my first company of Godspell. And he also worked in the Edgar Lansbury Broadway production office that produced Godspell and other things, and that's where I sometimes worked. So this guy looked just like Bob, but I mean Bob Skerry was like a Broadway company manager. He ran Lincoln Center Theater for a while and I'm getting close and it says Bob. He's dying of AIDS and he wanted someplace beautiful to die, and his partner—I will eventually remember his name because he's still alive, Bob died. It's Bob Skerry. It's Bob Skerry, who he and I did not like each other when we were doing Godspell together. We just did not like each other at all. But if you know the movie Longtime Companion, about the all the friends who had a house on Long Island and one by one they died. They lived that life.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=3671.82,3835.55"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/90","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bob and Gary, Gary Gunas, who was also a Broadway producer who now lives in London. Bob and Gary were one of the team of couples that bought a house in Fire Island and one by one they died and it left Bob and Gary as the last owners. They sold the house.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=3836.74,3854.06"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/91","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Gary was now with Don. I mean Bob was now with Don. Donny, who's still alive. Gary's also still alive in London. They sold the house. Bob took his share of it. He and Donny— I guess Don must've known about how beautiful it was. Bob wanted to die someplace beautiful where he could grow roses. So they came out here and took the money from Fire Island and bought two acres in Vinita. And I had the pleasure of knowing Bob and becoming friends with him for about three years before he finally died. And Gary came out and I got to see Gary again. Anyway, so there's Bob Skerry. He says, \"Put me down as a reference.\" And he and I worked together there for a year and became friends. When it was time for me to start Little Apple Productions, Bob and Gary were my mentors. They walked me through how to do it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=3854.8,3917.06"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/92","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"The reason that I created Little Apple Productions was because I couldn't bust into any of these damn lesbian groups. I was lonely. It didn't feel like home, but I didn't want to go back to L.A. I would go back to New York like every couple of years and I would sort of, \"Now, I'm home again.\" But I'd come back to Eugene and I just— I don't know why I stayed, but I stayed.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=3919.34,3947.73"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/93","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Raiskin: Did you go to any of the social gathering places that we have heard about? I think the Riv Room was closed by the time you came.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=3947.74,3956.46"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/94","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: Yes, the Riv Room was closed.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=3956.48,3958.07"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/95","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Raiskin: A lot of the social gatherings were closed by the time you came.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=3959.15,3959.66"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/96","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: I went to Perry's, but it's a bar and I'm clean and sober. I would try to go to some of the Sunday lesbian singles gathering things and it just— I don't know how to talk to people. I know that I don't seem like an introvert, but I am. I like rules. I'd rather go to a workshop where there's somebody at the front talking and you break out into circles and they tell you what to talk about. I don't know how to just go to a gathering and talk.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=3959.68,3999.87"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/97","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Raiskin: Did you ever go to Mother Kali’s?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=4000.34,4002.31"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/98","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: Oh, all the time. Yes. And Izzy was also. Izzy—","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=4002.33,4006.4"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/99","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Raiskin: Izzy Harbaugh?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=4006.42,4007.26"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/100","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: Yes. Any step I took on a show with any show in town that I directed with Little Apple or any of the other theaters that asked me to direct, if there was anything that I needed to know that might be considered sexist or in any way, Izzy was my person. \"Okay, I'm doing this. It says, you know, and the script is like this. How do I get around that?\" She also sort of just gave me— Izzy and Peg Morton, every time Little Apple Productions had a play, they were the first to buy tickets. Anyway, so I thought, okay, how do I create family here and how do I break into the lesbian communities? It occurred to me, I have something to offer. When I was in L.A., I had two friends, the two women that I understudied in the play Getting My Act Together. One is, her name is Kay Cole. She was in the original production of Chorus Line, was a regular on the Carol Burnett show for a while. She and I became very close friends. And Margot Rose, who also did a lot in New York and L.A. They were the two women that I understudied in Getting My Act Together.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=4007.31,4096.32"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/101","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"After Getting My Act Together was over, they were in the L.A.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=4097.48,4100.6"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/102","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"production of Last Summer at Bluefish Cove. And Kay sent me her script, or maybe sent me to Eugene with her script on the goodbye party or whatever, said, \"Take this.\" So I had the script Last Summer at Bluefish Cove by Carolyn Chambers.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=4100.62,4118.82"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/103","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Raiskin: Can you describe that play?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=4119.08,4120.14"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/104","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: Yes. Last Summer at Bluefish Cove is a play about a group of women who every summer go to Bluefish Cove, which is, it's a fantasy place. It's a fictional place, but it's sort of the lesbian equivalent to Fire Island. So every summer this group of women go there. And sometimes there's a new person, sometimes this person who used to be with that person is now with this person, and this person is with this person and what do you do? And it's at the beginning, it's set in 1974, so it's the second wave feminism. And so that's going on. Lesbianism is going on. There is a straight woman who accidentally gets sent there by a realtor because she's in the middle of a divorce and wants someplace quiet where she's not going to have to deal with men hitting on her. The realtor says go there. But she doesn't know she's in a bevy of lesbians. And Lil, who is the sort of the leader of this group, found out two months prior that she's got ovarian cancer, and is dying, which is why the play is called Last Summer at Bluefish Cove. And it's a powerful, wonderful play. It's a well-written play. It's a story about friendship and loss and love. And it's still to this day, probably the only lesbian play that has ever reached any kind of success in New York. Late 1970s, '78, '79 maybe. The L.A. production was '82, '84 maybe. Nobody will touch it. It's an amazing play, and nobody will touch it. And so I wanted to produce Last Summer at Bluefish Cove. As a matter of fact, I wanted to direct Last Summer at Bluefish Cove, and I was pretty convinced I couldn't talk any of the local theater companies into doing it. I'm not sure I really approached— So Chris and Randy were the Leebrick and the Lord of the Lord Leebrick Theater, which is now the Oregon Contemporary Theatre. I'm not sure I approached them about producing it, but I wanted to direct it. So I figured the only way I'm ever going to direct it is to create a theater company to direct it. And that's when Little Apple Productions was born in 1993. So it was Little Apple Productions because I learned to do theater in the Big Apple, and I thought Eugene could be the Little Apple. So it was Little Apple Productions. And Little Apple productions was created to produce plays by and about women because nobody was doing it. I had women playwrights, wonderful, successful— no, not successful.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=4120.16,4310.27"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/105","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Wonderful, accomplished women playwrights from all over the country sending me scripts because nobody was doing them. And it's interesting. Theater is a male dominated from the top down art, but there are probably more artistic directors, or managing directors of regional theaters in the country who are women than men. But they don't produce these plays either. They're starting to.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=4310.3,4341.5"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/106","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"But in 1990s— ‘80s, ‘90's, it wasn't happening. And so I wanted to create this thing called Little Apple Productions dedicated to producing plays by and about women. And our first production would be Last Summer at Bluefish Cove. And I went to Bob Skerry, and I said, \"Can you help me? I need to know how to do this.\" And so we did it the way they do it in New York, for profit, with angels.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=4342.42,4373.28"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/107","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So I went out looking for investors. And there was this guy— what's his name? I can't remember his name. It was a man in the gay male community who I made friends with, and I knew he had means. He had money. Not a lot of money, but he had more money than most people I knew. And I said, \"I want to do this. And I've got a budget of $8,500, and I want to raise it from the community.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=4373.84,4405.71"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/108","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Can you start with an investment of $850 so I can say I've got 10 percent of it in the bank?\" And it took a little convincing, but he did it. He gave me $850. And I raised the $8,500 selling shares at $50 a share. And that the agreement was you would get a share of the profits back based on the percentage of the whole budget that you own, which is how it works in New York. If you're an investor in theater, you get your investment back. If the show is successful and more. We raised the $8,500. My Aunt Lillian in New York was one of them. I think she bought one share, but that one share meant more to me than anything because she was a stock market wizard.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=4406.65,4463.79"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/109","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"She retired at like eighty, and by the time she was 104 and died, she left us, she had a lot of money in the bank. So her endorsement, she read the business plan, she read the prospectus, all of that stuff. Her endorsement of just one share was remarkable. We made the $8,500. We did the show, everybody got their money back, plus I think it was a 15 percent profit. So anyway, so we did Last Summer at Bluefish Cove, and we did it at the old Lord Leebrick Theater over on Charnelton. And we ran for three weekends, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. The theater seats about 100, and we were setting up chairs every night, turning people away. We had about 1,200 people come through. And it was a huge success, and Little Apple Productions was born.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=4464.8,4527.1"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/110","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Raiskin: Did you feel you had enough talented actors in Eugene?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=4527.68,4532.99"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/111","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yes. And what was very fun is that Storm Kennedy played one of the major parts, and she's not a lesbo. And her partner in the play was a woman named Deltra Ferguson, who is a staple here. And they got such a crush on each other. They never consummated. But still twenty years or thirty years later, still there's this energy between them. It's so sweet.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=4533.01,4562.56"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/112","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Long: And what year was that?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=4563.15,4564.41"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/113","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: So, '93 is when I started. I think it was '94 when it was produced.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=4564.53,4572.84"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/114","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And Bob didn't make it to the opening night. He died just a month before. But he was my guide. He's the person who taught me that you budget a play to break even at 50 percent ticket sales. So I had to price the tickets so that if we sold only half the house, we'd break even.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=4574.3,4603.17"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/115","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Also all the actors got paid. They didn't get paid a lot, but they got paid. And LaRosa built the set out in her barn when she lived out wherever it was she lived out in Lorane. I will try to find those photos of the crew that built the set because it's like Marty— so many of the women from women’s land who were now living here.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=4603.38,4632.02"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/116","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"It was like it was the lesbian creme de la creme.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=4634.21,4638.57"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/117","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Raiskin: So you broke into the lesbian community.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=4638.57,4640.26"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/118","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: Yeah. By having them build the set. And it was so interesting because LaRosa is this amazing cabinet maker. And I had to keep saying to her, \"It just has to look like it works. It doesn't have to actually work.\" So we built the whole set over the course of about three weeks out in her barn. And Randy and Chris who ran the Lord Leebrick Theater, they built the sets in their own theater so it took forever. We were a rental, so we only had three days to get in there, build the set in there, tech the lights, and open the show. And we did it. Just like a jigsaw puzzle, we brought the set in piece by piece. We had a crew of about ten of the sweetest little butches you've ever seen. Brrrms and brrrms. And it was great. Built the set in about ten hours. And Robin Riversong, and I mean Cynda. I mean it was just this amazing group of women who, some of them had done theater before, some of them hadn't. Diane Robson was our lighting designer. Maybe even the set designer. No, she was our set designer. And Robin was the lighting designer. It was just amazing. The play takes place in a cabin on the beach. And so we had this cabin that was just a breakaway kind of wall, so you could see through it and into it, and the beach was all around it. And it was just burlap with foam rubber underneath. So that was the sand of the beach. I mean, it was amazing. It was absolutely amazing.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=4640.28,4755.54"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/119","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And it was my way in.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=4756.02,4763.2"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/120","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And what I got from that was that— what I've learned over the years is that a lot of people who come to Eugene from other places come here to do some kind of spiritual healing. And if your spiritual healing resonates with theirs, then it's almost like string theory. You're just, swoosh, you're in. But if it doesn't, don't break in because I've got work to do. I'm doing this really hard work. So what I've discovered is that when you come to Eugene and you want to find your Mishpachah here, your family, it's show what you bring. What are you adding? Because we've all gotten taken away from way too much. What are you adding? And as soon as I showed what I was adding, all these doors opened up. It was amazing.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=4763.55,4835.44"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/121","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And so the next play, I think the very next one was Hannah Free.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=4837.22,4843.29"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/122","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Claudia Allen is a playwright who is in Chicago, and she's been for decades now the resident playwright in one of the main Chicago theaters. And she sent me the play Hannah Free because she couldn't get produced anywhere. And we did it. And Hannah Free, which later became a movie, not a very good movie, but it became a movie. Hannah Free is the story of two old women. They're in their eighties, and they've been lovers for decades. One of them, Hannah, has always known that she loved, and I'm not remembering the other character's name, always known that there was something there. But the other one went the traditional way, knew that she'd loved Hannah, but married, had children, that sort of thing. But later in life, like in their fifties, I think, they find each other, and they make a home together. Well, now they're in this nursing home, and Hannah's love is in a coma. And they're in the same nursing home, but they don't have the privilege of being together. And the daughter won't let Hannah visit. And so in the absence of those visits—I wish I could remember her character's name—her spirit visits Hannah in her room until finally the daughter acquiesces and lets them see each other. And in the meantime we have these beautiful flashbacks to who they were before, and how they got there. It's a beautiful play. But just like Last Summer at Bluefish Cove, it doesn't get produced. And it's a fucking shame. So we produced, and we did it beautifully. And again, we had full houses. And then a fun play called Clue in the Old Birdbath, which we did at Tsunami Books. We were the very first performance at Tsunami Books. So it's probably '98 then, maybe, something like that. And Clue in the Old Birdbath is a playwright in Portland who sent us her musical. And it's a feminist satire of the Nancy Drew stories. Clue in the Old Birdbath. And of course Nancy's a big old homo. And it's wonderful, and it's music, and so we did it at Tsunami Books. And again— well, actually, we didn't sell out. So one of the things that happened with Little Apple Productions is that we— And so there was Bluefish Cove, Hannah Free, Clue in the Old Birdbath, Transfigurations, and then also a play called Buddha's Aunt. So what happened during the seven years that we existed was that it was in that time that women in the lesbian community started having babies. And we stopped having audiences. We still had money in the bank. I still had people stopping me on the streets saying, \"I'm so glad you're doing what you're doing. I can't come.\" Still wanting to buy stock. Oh, I think I skipped that part. Let me backtrack. So after Bluefish Cove, and if I already told you this, let me know, and I'll come back. After Bluefish Cove, we were at the closing night party, and a woman named Amy Wade was there and her husband David. And Amy loved the play, and she dragged David. Now in that whole time, the 1,200 people, there were maybe three men that came. And one of the men and his wife left, and demanded their money back. Because nobody told them it was going to be a lesbian play. And nobody would want to sit next to her husband. They were so offended because nobody wanted to— it was a full house. We were setting up chairs.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=4844.34,5115.69"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/123","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Somebody had to sit next to him. And it's like it wasn't a lesbian play. It's a play about a group of friends who were losing a friend to cancer, and they just happened to be lesbians.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=5115.7,5127.37"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/124","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Anyway, so David comes, and he's a lawyer. We're at the closing night party, and David Wade comes up to me and says, \"You know Carol, I love the way you did this.\" And I think Amy was an investor. \"I love the way you did this, gathering up all the investors, but do you know you broke the law?\" I said, \"No.\" He said, \"Well, you're not going to be in trouble unless anybody complains. And since all the investors got their money back plus, nobody's going to complain.\" But in the state of Oregon, if you have more than ten investors in a company, you have to register to sell stock. So David's a lawyer, he knows. And so Amy said, \"And since you brought it up, David, you have to help her.\" He said, \"I'm not a securities attorney, I don't know anything about it.\" Well, there's this thing called a U-7 which is for small Oregon-only stock offerings. And I did it. It took me a year of filling out the forms, and going to David to ask what does this question mean. Because he wasn't permitted to advise me on how to fill the format because he's not a securities attorney. But he could tell me what the legalese meant. And at the Secretary of State's office or whatever the security and exchange office in Salem is called, there was this amazing man named Michael Horowitz. And he was the person who had to approve my U-7. And he worked with me for six months. So I'd send in a draft. He said, \"No, I can't accept this. But see on question number seven, if you were to say something like—\" And he was from New York. And he had this really awful nasal thing going on. \"So if you want to say something like, that would kind of maybe answer the question if you were to do that.\" And he worked with me until finally it was done and approved. We are, to this day I believe, the smallest stock offering in the entire history of Oregon. We were able to come out of escrow at $9,500. By the time we finish selling stock, we had $11,200 in the bank. And we ran on that money and ticket sales, plus a couple of small $1,000 grants from the Lane Arts Council. We ran on that and ticket sales for seven years.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=5127.65,5281.43"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/125","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And when we were done, we still had a couple of hundred dollars in the bank. And every year I had to have a shareholders meeting.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=5282.55,5289.14"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/126","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"There were about sixty-fivde people in the community. My sisters bought shares, my Aunt Lillian bought shares, people in the community bought shares. That book that I gave you has all the names of people who bought shares, and it was very clear. And David, the attorney, and Michael, up in Salem was very clear. He said, \"You have to be sure you tell everybody that they're never going to see their money again. Because if somebody invests and thinks that you've promised them a profit, or a cut of the door, or anything like that, you could get in trouble.\" So it was clear to everybody that you won't see your money again, but you'll see good theater. And when it finally got approved, David Wade sent me a letter. Oh no, actually I went into his office to tell him it was approved, and he took me around to all of the partners in his office introducing me as the newest Eugene securities and exchange attorney because I'd done it all on my own with just him and Michael. And so Little Apple was a for profit, publicly held C Corp.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=5289.14,5359.15"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/127","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Long: And Carol, all during this time when you were producing these plays, how did you support yourself?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=5360.27,5366.62"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/128","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: Oh, Sundance Natural Foods became my home. And Gavin McComas, who is the owner there, gave me all the time I needed to do the theater. So yeah. So I went from the basement of the Hilton.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=5366.66,5385.26"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/129","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Here's another one of the stories. So there was Bob Skerry, of course, in the lobby of the Hilton, and helped me get the job in the basement of the Hilton. And Bob's new boyfriend, Donnie, worked at Sundance. And Don knew that they were hiring stockers at Sundance. Bob told me, I applied, Don said, \"Put me down as a reference.\" I interviewed and I got the grocery stocker job. And I was there for seven years, the same seven years.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=5386.56,5416.9"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/130","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Gavin is a wonderful guy. He's much more interested in the life story that you can bring to his store than the expertise that you can bring. He wants people who can share their stories and tell stories.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=5420.6,5437.75"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/131","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And I think I really got the job because he was saying, \"What are some of the things that you do when you're not at work?\" And at that time I was writing a novella. I didn't know it was going to be a novella until I finished it, and it was only 100 pages. I was writing a book, a novel. And he said, \"Well, what's what kind of novel?\" And I kind of looked away, and I said, \"Lesbian erotica.\" And I think I got the job because he thought I was interesting.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=5437.75,5467.88"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/132","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Long: Did you ever publish that?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=5469.37,5471.1"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/133","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: No, but I got a nibble from Firebrands. Yeah, I got a nibble from them, but that's as far as it got. So yeah, so that's how I was able to— Oh, and the other thing that made me able to run Little Apple is that, and another great story, I lived in a tiny little duplex at the end of Thirtieth. So you know where the Albertsons is at Thirtieth and Hilyard. Well there's a little residential Thirtieth street that dead ends before the Amazon Creek, and then Hilyard and Amazon.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=5471.12,5513.06"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/134","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And there used to be— there was a duplex, a house that Robin lives in, Robin [Frakes 01:32:02] lives in, and then another duplex. And then this quarter acre field that had two little houses on it. Well, I was living in one of those duplexes because it was what I could afford. And the guy that lived in this house opened a pizza parlor in Sunriver. And he wanted somebody to be in the house so that it wouldn't be vacant. And he said, \"Is $250 a month too much?\" And I said, \"No, that's great.\" So I was there for about six years. And so the reason I was able to run Little Apple Productions was that I had the job at Sundance with a boss that let me take the time off. And I never really took time off, but he let me know that I could take time off when the show was running. And a place that was affordable. And this guy, he apologized profusely when he needed to raise it to $275, and then $300. That was the reason that I could run Little Apple Productions. Because I had affordable housing, which is why I am so committed to fighting for affordable housing because it makes all the difference in the world. And not just affordable housing for folks who are very low income. But affordable housing for those of us in the middle class. It makes such a difference in quality of life.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=5513.84,5618.35"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/135","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So that's how I was able to do that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=5618.95,5621.39"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/136","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So, so the other thing that Little Apple Productions did, and I don't remember the exact years, but it was probably '96, '97, '98, '99, maybe those summers, was the Eugene Women in Theater Festival.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=5621.78,5637.78"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/137","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So every summer. And people from all over the country would apply to come here, and they would travel here. And the Eugene Women in Theater Festival was to give women a place to perform.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=5638.59,5653.54"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/138","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And so we had dancers, we had musicians, we had spoken word.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=5654.41,5657.82"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/139","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Some of it was local, some of it was from all over the country. And again it was in those seven years when lesbians were settling down and having babies. So, from Last Summer at Bluefish Cove where we couldn't set up enough chairs to the final Eugene Women in Theater Festival where I had a hard time finding eighty people to come through the door. That was 1993 to 2000. So Little Apple Productions folded.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=5658.24,5691.51"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/140","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Raiskin: Because people are making their lesbian families and staying home more. And you met your partner when?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=5691.53,5698.38"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/141","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: Well, Amber and I met at Sundance, but we weren't sweeties until 2004. But we met in '93 I think. She was the grocery buyer at Sundance, and I was the mid-shift stocker, meaning I worked from nine to five. That's the mid shift. So she was my boss. And we crushed on each other pretty hard. But it wasn't until 2004 that we were both single at the same time. And my mom had just died.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=5699.3,5730.68"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/142","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And we'd been friends and confidants the whole time. And Amber found out that my mom died, and called, and said, \"I hear you're single. I was going to invite you over for a cheap pizza and a bad movie, but I heard your mom died, so if you need to talk, let me know.\" And I called her and we talked. And we talked for hours. And then we started hanging out more. And I at first thought we were just hanging out like we used to do. Just because we always snuggled and flirted and stuff. She thought we were dating. I didn't think we were dating for two weeks or three weeks or so after. But with the demise of Little Apple Productions, I was now known as a good director. And so Lord Leebrick would bring me into direct shows, and I guess that's where I would do it. And then I was also then called upon to do things like direct Soromundi's twentieth anniversary—","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=5733.38,5796.29"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/143","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Raiskin: Lesbian Chorus.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=5796.45,5797.24"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/144","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: Yeah, Soromundi Lesbian Chorus of Eugene. So they were having their twentieth anniversary celebration. I think that was in 2004, something like that. So they wanted it directed. So we created a story arc, that sort of thing. So lots of community organizations would then call me and say, \"We want an event for our fundraiser.\" So I would do stuff like that and stayed in theater.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=5797.25,5824.44"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/145","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Raiskin: So thinking a little bit about your being here during Oregon politics around gays. Some of it is the measures and also the marriage rollercoaster. I'm wondering how that affected you.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=5824.46,5836.26"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/146","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: So I think the other thing that happened during the 90s, and the other thing that affected Little Apple Productions, what I saw during that time was that our priority became to fight the OCA.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=5836.28,5854.86"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/147","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Raiskin: The Oregon Citizens Alliance.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=5855.31,5856.89"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/148","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: Yeah. The Oregon citizens Alliance, which was putting all these horrible ballot measures up. And it was in the same period of time that Little Apple folded that we lost— So there was the Lavender Network. So we lost the Lavender Network, which was a queer news periodical, a monthly. We lost the LGBT Helpline. There was so many things that had been put in place as social supports and social outreach and networking and stuff, that all the money got siphoned off to an organization like Basic Rights Oregon and organizations that were fighting those ballot measures, that these other things died.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=5856.91,5910.1"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/149","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Now I look at Little Apple Productions, and one of the things— I mean I see that the lesbian community was having babies and settling down. I also see that I, as a producer, was unable to convince the general population in Eugene that women's theater is not just for women, it's about women, and everybody's got a woman in their lives. So I wasn't able to cross over into the more mainstream audience. And so my audience, my niche audience, became lesbians and feminists. And that was where I fell down.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=5911.82,5949.14"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/150","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"The other thing that I learned, because Amber, my spouse, got her master's in Arts Administration, and one of the things she did was sort of the history of arts and social movements. And in her research she also found that, with Little Apple Productions, my focus was to give artists a place to show their work as the priority.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=5951.42,5978.09"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/151","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And I did that, but I didn't grow the audience. So it was primarily for the artists, and not for the audience. So it was not breaking out into the general population to show that women's theater and lesbian stories can be everybody's story. It was the settling down and having babies, and it was the siphoning off money around the OCA stuff.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=5978.57,6001.88"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/152","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Raiskin: And I think historically too, when I think about Fun Home. And I think it's going to be in Eugene this year.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=6001.9,6007.89"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/153","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: Yeah. OCT is doing it. Oregon Contemporary—","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=6007.91,6009.85"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/154","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Raiskin: It's interesting that that has been able to catch audience.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=6009.87,6013.83"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/155","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Long: So what's Fun Home?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=6013.83,6014.02"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/156","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: Yes. Yes. And so that's— I think that we can now say that from Jane Chambers’ Last Summer at Bluefish Cove to Fun Home—","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=6014.04,6022.98"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/157","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Raiskin: By Alison Bechdel.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=6023.0,6023.89"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/158","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: —we finally have another lesbian story in the mainstream theater.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=6023.91,6029.08"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/159","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fun Home, so it's Alison—","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=6029.38,6033.52"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/160","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Raiskin: Alison Bechdel.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=6033.52,6034.54"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/161","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: —Bechdel who has done “Dykes to Watch Out For,” is that her, comic strip for decades. Finally caught the attention of somebody who wanted to turn it into a Broadway musical. And it is her story about coming out, and also the story of her father's suicide around not being able to accept the fact that he was gay. And it's powerful.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=6035.21,6059.37"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/162","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"I haven't seen it, but the score, I mean, all you got to do is listen to the score. And it's finally, finally. So yeah. So in the ‘90s, we lost a lot.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=6059.37,6074.86"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/163","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Raiskin: And then what about the marriage roller coaster. That's another political effect in the community.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=6074.87,6085.43"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/164","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: The tough one on that was that the OCA finally found the right word—marriage—that would convert even our allies into people to vote against us. Because they hooked into, well— but marriage is this man and woman thing. We'll give you domestic partnership.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=6085.45,6106.71"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/165","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"We'll give you civil something, civil unions, or something. But marriage really is between a man and a woman. So they found the word that broke our hearts. But it's— Broke our hearts, you know?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=6106.71,6122.18"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/166","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"But it's interesting because it was that word then that got us to where we are today. And also going back a little ways to the AIDS epidemic. That taught us how to protest. I was one of the people back during the height of the AIDS protests and the screaming and yelling about why aren't you doing anything about this? And we knew the answer. It's because it's just a bunch of faggots dying. So who cares? We want them out anyway, I was one of the voices about ACT UP to say, please stop. Stop throwing blood on people.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=6123.73,6165.54"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/167","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Stop making waves. Stop being violent. Stop breaking windows.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=6165.54,6168.73"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/168","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Stop doing that because you're just wrecking the effort. But now looking back on it, ACT UP is the only way we got there. It's the only way we got there. But again, lesbians were left out. Even though in big cities it's the lesbians who were staffing the call centers and delivering the meals. Twenty-five friends, I lost twenty- five friends. I said that to— So I was working on a job. So I took my theater stuff and I started working with research organizations that wanted to do multimedia stuff and I would help them create heart stories about the research they were doing. And one of the projects I was doing, it was actually a food handler's safety online program and we were translating it into Vietnamese. And so we found a couple of people in the community who speak Vietnamese, one of them who did the voiceover and the other one who was following along in the script to make sure that it didn't get misunderstood. And she and I had a private moment and we were talking about Vietnam and she saw the tears in my eyes and she said, \"It really affects you.\" I said, \"Yeah, what was done in my name just really affects me.\" And so she got that. And then we were talking more about my life. And I had told her that I lost twenty-five friends to AIDS and she said, \"That's like a war zone.\" And it just really brought the, that if somebody from a war zone says that losing twenty-five friends to AIDS is like living in a war zone, it let me allow the impact of it to really sink in.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=6168.74,6280.14"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/169","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So when I talk about the AIDS epidemic and then when Jane died, she was a heroin addict. I met her in AA and she probably caught it then, but it was in honor of her. So she probably, I think she died in 1994, maybe. In honor of her, I wrote a pamphlet called Lesbian Safer Sex: If We Wait Until We Have To, We Will Have Waited Too Long. And I wrote it, I was on the speakers Bureau at HIV Alliance or whatever it was called at that time. This was before their speakers Bureau, you had to be HIV positive. This was their speakers Bureau could be people who were affected by the loss from AIDS. And so I wrote that pamphlet and they were distributing it and the CDC picked it up and I was very proud of that. And I won something called the Ribbon of Hope award from the family AIDS foundation for that. And that was in honor of Jane, that we understood that even though she didn't catch, she didn't contract HIV from lesbian sex, she could pass it. And so she and her partner were always safe and I just, it was like, let's get it out there. I am so tired of losing people. Let's not do that. Let's not become another dispendable population because they won't do anything if it's just us lezzies.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=6285.99,6382.9"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/170","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Raiskin: Did you work with Carol Queen on safe sex performances or anything like that?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=6382.92,6388.18"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/171","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: No, uh-uh [negative], no. What I did do was that I put together a little hour long presentation called “The Politics of Women and HIV.” And it was about how women were being blamed for the spread of HIV all over the world instead of the men who refuse to use condoms. And so I knew Lizzie Reis and I think she might've been the first professor to invite me in, but for about four years, and this is what I did with the Speakers Bureau, for about four years, I gave that presentation at almost every women's studies 101 class.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=6388.18,6432.36"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/172","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And that was my way of giving back. And I loved doing that. And then the Speakers Bureau became, you had to be HIV positive to be it. And so I didn't have the foundation for going in anymore. And also the research would— kept changing and I didn't have the time to keep up with the research, so. But, but it was really fascinating to— in some of these classes there were guys that were like part of ROTC and stuff like that. And there was one time I was talking about the fact that in Southeast Asia we went in and in order to service the servicemen, we created, these brothels. The military created these brothels and local girls, usually girls, would service our servicemen. And then when we left, that was their only income.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=6435.22,6495.27"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/173","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"That was their only livelihood. And this one guy said, we never did that. And I said, yeah, just look it up, look it up. And then the girls and the women are blamed for the spread of HIV in places like Thailand, which is where the servicemen would go. And so that was really important to me. And all of that was done in Jane's honor. Yeah. So.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=6495.6,6519.76"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/174","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Long: So what is your life like today? Are you retired? Are you still doing theater?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=6520.06,6524.2"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/175","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: I am. So after Little Apple closed, like I said, I became known as a good director. And so lots of community organizations would come and ask me to, for CALC for a couple of years, a community reading of the Martin Luther King, Jr. speech, the anti Vietnam war speech, community readings, bringing, bringing members of the community together to read portions of the speech out loud. I did that a couple of times. Oh, and Transfigurations was probably the last thing that we did. And that brings us to today as well. So twenty years ago, Eliza Roaring Springs and Deltra Ferguson wrote, they were commissioned to write a play about what it's like to be transgender in Oregon. So they went around the state and they interviewed folks and they came back and they wrote this play that I then help them shape and reshape, and then we did staged readings of it. We did five staged readings of it between 1998 and 2000 at organizations and stuff. And there was the Northwest Coalition for Malicious Harassment was having their regional conference here, its Northwest coalition, so their Northwest conference out at Lane Community College. And I proposed doing that, doing the reading of the play there. And it was interesting, they originally had us in a plenary session, am I saying that right?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=6524.22,6617.83"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/176","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Where everybody's together. They originally had it there and then they got push back. So the Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment is about identifying racial discrimination and discrimination in general. And when some of their members realized that the plenary sort of keynote was going to be about trans folks, they said no. And we became a workshop that competed with like five other workshops and we were at the blue door, at Lane. And we had a full house, so there were about a hundred people there. And we did a reading of that. And there was a guy there from, is it Wyoming where Matthew Shepard was killed? He was from that area and was there during the whole thing about Matthew Shepard. And he said about this play that if people had seen this play where he lived before Matthew Shepard was killed, Matthew Shepard might still be alive today. And we had people saying that about Last Summer at Bluefish Cove as well, that if people had seen that play before voting.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=6617.83,6684.94"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/177","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So, Transfigurations. So after I left Sundance, I spent a year at Grizzly's Granola, great place to work. It's a new owner now, but making real granola. Anyway, I spent a year there and then I got hired on at the Oregon Center for Applied Science. It's now just called the ORCAS. And it's now just, I think they've sold it actually.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=6685.42,6711.79"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/178","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And it was two researchers from Oregon Research Institute who got tired of seeing all their research only turn into magazine articles and wanted their findings to be applied. They created the Oregon Center for Applied Science where they would take their research on sexuality, smoking cessation, healthy living, that sort of stuff, and make online interactive programs. And because of my reputation from a Little Apple, I got the notice of a guy named Will Dolittle, who is a videographer in town and had been here forever, who did most of their video shoots. And so he brought me in to start assistant directing and stuff like that. And then eventually I got hired on at ORCAS as a production manager and a writer. So we would take their research, like on working with a family member with dementia. And there's just so much you can do with written word or even spoken word. But what if you created a scene where the family member with dementia is having a hard time and you show the right way to redirect or to calm them down and stuff like that. So I started doing that for ORCAS and so I was there for ten years and then when I left there, I went to Western Oregon University, the research institute at Western Oregon University and did the same thing there. And then all of that time, in those fifteen years I would get asked to direct at the Lord Leebrick Theater. And they always, it was great. They always asked me to direct the real meaty ones.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=6712.36,6817.21"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/179","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"I'm going to put a lozenge in my mouth since I'm getting dry. So, I continued to direct maybe one or two plays a year. Is just going to be horrible? And then, so fortunately I spent five years at Western Oregon University, which means I've invested, so I get a little pension from there. So the idea was to retire on January 1, 2017 and about five years ago I started having this idea of a theater company called Minority Voices Theater, which would kind of extend the scope of Little Apple beyond just doing plays by and about women, to doing plays by and about marginalized communities. People who don't get to see themselves on our local stages, whether it's based on race, ethnicity, culture, gender, sexual orientation, the local theater companies just don't produce those plays because they don't think there's an audience. Fun Home, there's an audience and OCT is doing it. I'm very glad.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=6821.29,6903.15"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/180","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So about five years ago I had that idea and my friend Stanley Coleman, who's kind of new in town, he was very new in town five years ago. I said to him, \"If I ever do this, do you want to, would you do it with me?\" And he said, \"yes.\" He's an African American actor, director, musician. So, but the plan was on January 1, 2017, I would retire, I would do nothing for about six months. And then let Minority Voices kind of grow organically as we just put the pieces together and see where it wants to go. But after the 2016 election, I could not wait. Not only were people being ignored here on our local stages, they were now being attacked on our streets.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=6904.4,6952.28"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/181","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And so right after the election, I emailed Stan and I said, \"Let's do it now.\" And he said, \"Okay.\" I got on the Secretary of State's website and registered the name “Minority Voices Theater.” And I said, \"Stan, you've been talking to me about this play called Having Our Say, the Delany sisters first 100 years, how would you like to direct it as our first production?\" And he said, \"Yes.\" He said, \"That would be wonderful.\" So the Delany sisters are two people who lived from, I think they were born around 1896 and they died, one of them was 104 when she died, the other 107. We meet them in this play at 101 and 103 and they tell their life story while they're making a celebratory dinner for their late father's birthday and you are the interviewer in their parlor that's come to talk to them about their biography, because the book is based on their biography.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=6954.03,7018.93"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/182","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And they tell you their life story while they're making this dinner and their life story is the history of the United States all through the twentieth century as seen through the eyes of two educated middle class black women. There's a thing called, there's a thing on YouTube that's, it's a Ted Talk, The Danger of the One Story, and what it is is that if we only know this one story about this group, we think everybody is that way. This play tells the other story.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=7019.59,7054.13"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/183","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"They, they are, it's all of the discrimination, all of the N word and all of the being afraid that they're going to be lynched and it's a perspective from two women who were given the foundation from their father: You don't need to put up with any of this shit.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=7054.77,7076.21"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/184","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"One of them became the first woman dentist in New York and the other one, the first black high school teacher in New York City.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=7077.21,7086.73"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/185","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And she got that job by applying by mail and then when she got a letter saying we love your your resume, we would love to meet you. She was advised and she was friends with some of the most well-known black activists at the time. She was advised by one of them, tell them you can't come. So she wrote a letter back saying, \"I'm afraid I can't be there, but I would love the job.\" They hired her and didn't know she was black until she walked in. They needed her, they kept her and she stayed a teacher. So anyway, so Minority Voices Theater was born. The first thing we did was The Delany Sisters.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=7087.35,7126.03"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/186","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"The next thing we did was the play Vita and Virginia. And Vita and Virginia is a play by Eileen Atkins and it's a play that she created and starred in, in London and New York, taken from the twenty- year correspondence between Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf and their love affair. And we do staged readings only so that we can reach into the community and pull people in who maybe don't think that they're actors, but we can teach them how to do a staged reading. And the reason for that is that the excuse that a lot of the theater companies use for not being able to do plays that have people of color in them is that we don't have people of color who are actors locally. So the idea is we reach out into the community, we teach them how to do that, and three to five years from now we have a more diverse bench and there's no more excuse. Plus we get those stories out. That's what we did with The Delany Sisters. We used Charmaine Coleman and Arbrella Luvert who are two pillars in the African American community here. And what a boom for us. What a boon for us to be able to have them in our first production. With Vita and Virginia, we used two actors.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=7126.48,7199.41"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/187","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Sharon Schless played Vito Sackville-West and Donella Alston, Donella Elizabeth Alston who is a local actor and she's African American, played Virginia Woolf. So there's another way to do this.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=7199.91,7212.75"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/188","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"It's called nontraditional casting and it's to give people of color who are already actors, opportunities to do parts that they've never done before and to tell that story.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=7212.77,7223.25"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/189","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And then we did Now I Am Your Neighbor, which is a play that was locally created from local interviews about what it's like to be an immigrant living in Lane County. And we used immigrants to come in and we interviewed immigrants and then only one person in the cast was telling part of their own story. But the others were again, they'd never been on stage before. Most of them, they just, I teach them how to project, how to create a character, how to take direction, the arc of a whole story. And they were wonderful. And it's going to happen again. And this September and I'm so excited.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=7224.52,7263.72"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/190","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And then the arc back to twenty years ago with Transfigurations. So there's an organization in town called Trans*Ponder and it is a trans founded and led organization that advocates for the rights and services for trans folks. And that's the other thing about Minority Voices Theater is that we will always partner with a local organization that advocates for the minority or marginalized group that's being represented in that play. We will always partner with them and share the proceeds. In our first year we were able to give away about $6,000. So, into our second year I wanted to do Transfigurations and I went to Trans*Ponder. So, back in 2017 I went to Trans*Ponder and I said, I want to do this and I want to do it as a fundraiser and an in partnership because you can help promote it and help me cast it. Twenty years ago we couldn't cast it with people who identified as trans. It wasn't safe for them to be on that stage. And for some of the people whose stories were in the play, they had a hard time getting the courage to even come. This year we did it with almost all people who identified as trans or were somewhere on the non-binary trans spectrum and we filled up the house and it was so well received. So I worked with the folks at Trans*Ponder because it is twenty years old and some of the vocabularies changed and the stories are twenty years old. So we decided between the folks at Trans*Ponder, the playwrights and me, we decided not to rewrite it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=7264.18,7375.35"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/191","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"The only thing we did was that twenty years ago, transgender was used, I don't know even what part of speech it is, as an adjective? It was oftentimes said transgendered. So this person is transgendered. And what was explained to me is that, that sounds like it happened to you rather than embracing. So we eliminated the “ed” throughout the play and intersex instead of intersexed, we eliminated those “ed's.” But other than that we didn't rewrite anything and the playwrights were thrilled to come and see it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=7375.51,7413.92"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/192","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Deltra who lives in Ashland now, she came up for it. So we did the play, which is a one-act and twenty years ago we'd do the one-act, we'd have an intermission and then we'd do a talk back, which Lizzie Reis contributed an awful lot to the curriculum of the talk back. This time since it's twenty years old, Oblio at Trans*Ponder came up with the idea, let's do the play, have an intermission and let's do the world premiere of The Trans Monologues, based on sort of the same premise as The Vagina Monologues. So we did that. And so it brought the stories up to date. So we had four of those. So three of them came from the people that were actors, readers in the play, and they each told some of their own story in the second act.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=7413.92,7465.13"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/193","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And then, maybe they were even four. And then the final monologue, there was this wonderful sweet young person named Oliver, who when I put out the call for people to come and— My ears just popped. I can actually hear myself now. When I put out the call for people to want to be in the play, Oliver showed up.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=7465.58,7487.1"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/194","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Now Oliver is thirteen and there's no part in the play for Oliver.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=7487.62,7492.82"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/195","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"But I told him, how about you write a monologue for the second act? And so he started doing that and we were getting closer and closer and I'm not hearing anything from Oliver about the monologue and I need to vet it, I want to work with him, I want to.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=7493.15,7507.16"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/196","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So I go to Oliver's house and he and his mom are there and we sit down and Oliver opens up his laptop and says, \"You know—\" I said, \"Well, just read me what you've got.\" And he said, \"No, it's really not done. I really just kind of just kind of started writing, you know.\" And his mom started and then his mom said, \"And I would sort of help him remember what was next and you know, that sort of thing. So it's really just random thoughts.\" And that's when I thought, that's the monologue, is that it's Oliver's monologue with his mom standing behind him saying what she was going through at the time. And that's what closed the show, was the monologue between Oliver saying, \"You know, I didn't know what it was. I didn't know who to tell. I didn't think I should be here.\" Oliver gave me so much hope, I was Oliver. And Oliver has a way, and then mom's saying, \"You know, I went through it with my oldest daughter, so it wasn't foreign to me, but I still didn't see it in Oliver.\" And then the monologue ends with the two of them hugging. So, that's how I'm going to spend my retirement. My theory about retirement is that pre-retirement, you help other people fulfill their dreams. And in retirement you fulfill your own.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=7507.91,7599.59"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/197","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And I promised myself when I survived my childhood and didn't end up killing myself, I promised myself as an adult that when I got big enough, my skin got thick enough, and my shoulders got broad enough, I would reach back and try to make the world safer for folks like me. And so I did that with eight years on the board of the Lane Education Service District. I spoke out for kids like me and I'm doing that now on the advisory council for the Community Health Centers of Lane County. I'm on the advisory board there and I have brought to the front that we're now, I think the Community Health Centers was already on this track, but it's now a priority to make sure that their physicians are trained to work with people who are transgender.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=7600.66,7665.17"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/198","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Raiskin: I know that you, your work does this, but I'm wondering if you would like to say something directly to a young person who might watch this interview about wisdom that you gathered from your life.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=7665.18,7679.81"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/199","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: So, I guess I want to tell a story. So when I was probably in my late twenties I'm guessing, maybe early thirties, maybe mid-thirties, I don't know. I was in therapy and I'm trying to remember even where I lived, I might've already been in Eugene, so I don't know when it was. I was working with a therapist and she asked me to close my eyes and visualize a field and visualize me as a child across the field and go to her and give her a hug. And I said, I can't because if I get near her I'm going to beat the crap out of her for what she did to me. So the rest of my time from then till now has been to learn to embrace her. And I have. And people like Oliver show me that she wasn't broken, the world was, that she wasn't sinful, the world had, the world was. There was nothing, absolutely nothing wrong with her. It took me a long time to embrace her. I'm glad I have. Because I no longer want to kill myself. That was a long journey. That was a long journey past when I was twenty- eight years old, and saw that white light on my father's shoulder and realized that when I thought die, I didn't mean die. I meant start over. That was a very long journey from then to embracing that little girl. My mother, over our piano in our house in Miami, there's a print of a Renoir and it's a child in a sort of, in a white kind of ermine kind of robe, very fancy, obviously a royal of some kind or very wealthy, pageboy kind of haircut. And it's a copy of a Renoir. And so it's a little, this little, this little boy or this little girl, mom put it there because she thought it reminded her of me. And it was this little girl that was up on top of the piano, over the piano all my life. And when mom sold that house and moved out, there were some things that I wanted and I wanted that because she got it because it reminded her of me. I only found out within the last few years that it's a boy. So all this time, that little girl, and that's the little girl that I visualized in the field. I would sit in my bed and meditate on that portrait, wanting to hug her. And then I found out, she says as androg, as androgynous as I am and she's still in the prominent place in my house, always will be. So that's what I would say is that it's the world who is sinful, not us. And sinful, I don't mean in like a religious sense, but I guess in the, I think the, whether it's the Hebrew or the Aramaic word for sin actually means miss the mark. The world just kind of misses the mark. And I am so glad that I have lived long enough to get it, that this is the body I'm in and I don't want to make any judgements about people who make other decisions. But I'm glad I lived long enough to be in this body and embrace it. And to see marriage and I got married, I got married five times to the same person. Because first we did our own ceremony, with 180 friends before it was, and it was lovely.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=7694.75,7977.26"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/200","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Then we got domestic partnered, then we got, we did our name change cause the domestic partnership didn't do a name change. So Amber and I chose a new family name. I am now Carol, I was born Carol Denise Horn and she was born, I don't know whether she wants me to reveal her birth name, but she's Amber Latitia Lunch, here. And so what we did was we wanted to create a new family.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=7977.71,8005.32"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/201","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So we took our middle names and so I am now, she is now Amber Lee and I am Carol Lee. And we took my Denise and turned it into Dennis and that's our last name. So we got, so then we had to go to the courts and pay $500 to have it changed legally. And then we got married and then, oh— and before getting married, married we put the title of the house in both our names. So that's, we got married five times. So, I'm glad I lived long enough to see that. And I have to live long enough to see us get through the mess we're in now. I have to hang onto the hope that the mess we're in now is the final death throes of the kind of bigotry that this country was born into.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=8005.32,8060.93"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/202","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"The more rights we get as marginalized communities, whether it's gender or sexual orientation or culture, or race, or ethnicity, the more we get, the louder the dominant culture needs to scream because they're going to lose their power. I want to live long enough to know that we've got to the other side of it without losing it all. And if we're not going to get to the other side of it without losing it all, if we indeed lose it all, I want the history books to show that I was part of the resistance. That's going to, that's got to be the legacy, so.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=8065.37,8116.66"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/203","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Long: Thank you very much. Carol. Appreciate that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=8118.41,8120.32"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/204","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dennis: Do you need some water?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=8120.32,8123.12"},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/205","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"[END OF INTERVIEW]","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251#t=8123.14,8123.24"}]},{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["English [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://uoregon.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1634/collection_resources/55970/file/130251/transcript/92572/annotation/206","type":"Annotation","motivation":"subtitling","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/file_transcripts/associated_files/000/092/572/original/761_Coll520_do010_aligned.vtt?1776852347","format":"text/vtt","language":"en"},"target":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/file_transcripts/associated_files/000/092/572/original/761_Coll520_do010_aligned.vtt?1776852347"}]}]}]}