PastOut

PastOut: Five Years Ago in OutSmart

July09coverFive Years Ago in OutSmart

By Donalevan Maines

T hat face, that voice: über female impersonator Jimmy James returned to Houston for two weeks with a multi-media show at 1415 Bar & Grille in Montrose. “You have to see and hear his show to believe it,” swooned Collin McClure.

RuPaul was back, too, with a new CD, Red Hot. After taking a couple of years off to recharge, he relayed this new revelation: “If you can dance, you can start a revolution. The revolution starts when you start to dance.”

Openly gay comic Kirk Keevert started tickling audiences at a new venue when improvisational troupe ComedySportz Houston inaugurated a permanent home in Town & Country.

The Lone Star Volleyball Association hosted an open house at its new home, the Willowbrook Sports Complex.

Houston welcomed Stephen L. Williams as the new health department director.

Former OutSmart writer Eric A.T. Dieckman competed in the finals of Houston’s Funniest Person Contest at Laff Stop.

Dionne Redmond and Steve Jerome co-hosted “After Hours: Black on Black,” a program dealing with issues relating to the African-American LGBT community, 2–3 a.m., on KPFT-FM.

At Holocaust Museum Houston, Joe Watts directed Bent, the drama that Richard Gere made famous on Broadway about gay men confronting the Third Reich, in conjunction with the museum’s special exhibition on “Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals 1933–1945.” The sell-out production of Bent would also travel to Galveston, where it wowed audiences at Strand Street Theatre.

Theatre Under the Stars presented a cast of both deaf and hearing performers in Big River, its annual free summer show at Miller Outdoor Theatre in Hermann Park. The Broadway hit had been nominated for the Tony Award for best revival of a musical. Its openly gay director/choreographer, Jeff Calhoun, had earned a Tony nomination for choreographing the 1994 revival of Grease that featured Rosie O’Donnell‘s Broadway debut.

Back in Montrose, gayborhood dentist Bruce Smith and therapist Tony Carroll celebrated almost 10 years together—and news of their wedding in Toronto—by defecting from Log Cabin Republicans and waving a new banner that said “Fed-Up Republicans. Vote Democrat.”

Donalevan Maines also writes about David Bowers in this issue of OutSmart .

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Don Maines

Donalevan Maines is a regular contributor to OutSmart Magazine.

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