God Bless all those who sail in her

review
TAKEN IN
I should first declare an element of bias in this review: I'm an unabashed fan of Rikki Beadle-Blair's work, and have been since the seminal Metrosexuality back in the late 90s. Through his work on the stage (Pretty Boy, Faggamuffin) to the aforementioned Metrosexuality, through to the dazzlingly beautiful paen to diversity that is FIT (review to follow), and upcoming feature films KickOff and Bashment, he never fails to deliver.

Beadle-Blair is at the heart of a very special movement. Together with sometimes collaborator John R. Gordon (Skin Deep, Noah's Arc: Jumping the Broom, Faggamuffin, Souljah), Beadle-Blair's work puts the audience in a headlock and drags them kicking and screaming into a world of diversity. Taken In is an ensemble piece starring many of the FIT actors - Ludvig Bonin, Duncan MacInnes, Jay Brown et al - most of whom play the disparate souls who fleetingly reside in Trask House, a refuge for the society's rejects. Remember the theme music for Superted? "When he was made, they found something wrong with him: and threw him away like a piece of rubbish!" That sums up the characters who end up in Trask House. "Then, from outer space, a spotty man brought him to life, with his cosmic dust! He took him to a magic cloud..." Rikki Beadle-Blair is the spotty man - social worker Cameron - and Trask House is his magic cloud. His cosmic dust is a lil (sometimes tough) love, respect and a shoulder to cry on. Rikki Beadle-Blair often plays these characters: the big brother, the knight in shining armour; the wise, older, sexy dude. He's a British, male Whoopi Goldberg. His character is the yin to the yang of the mad, broken souls who make up the rest of the cast, an oasis of love and calm and wisdom we all wish we had in our lives. It begs the question, what happens in all the Trask Houses where there isn't a Cameron? Taken In asks some profound questions about how we, as a society, deals with our "Superteds" - the broken toys in the toy box - and forces us to look at how we, the audience (supposedly functional and normal) perceive society's outcasts. I suspect anyone with an ounce of compassion and consciousness came away from Taken In with a different perspective on that guy begging outside the Tube station - and more importantly, on how they react to him. As the saying goes, "There, but for the grace of God." For anyone who doesn't get that, the point is hammered home in one of the plays more sobering moments. Homeless Mikey (Jack Shalloo) is recalling his first kiss on a swing, with troubled posh girl Zoe (Katie Borland): "What do you think happened to her?" Zoe asks. "Do you think she’s looking out of window at a swing now, wondering what happened to you? What happens Mikey? To all little kids on swings? Where do they all go?" We're looking at them, of course. The scene drives home the awful realisation that the broken individuals before us (and all around us) were once blissfully innocent children on swings. Taken In isn't a grim misery-fest, however, and there's laughs a plenty. There isn't a single weak link in the cast: Ludvig Bonin (FIT, Souljah) is spellbinding as childlike, cookie-monster Derek (demonic Sam's incitement to his suicide nearly led to an audience revolt) and Jennifer Daley raised more than a few belly laughs as Vin. Duncan MacInnes' Sam (who Cameron is literally "taken in" by) is deliciously Machiavellian. But it's almost unfair to single anyone out: everyone shines in a tightly plotted narrative that doesn't have an ounce of fat. Rikki Beadle-Blair and his troupe of young actors are a brilliant collision of talent: sexy, electric, heart-pounding, and good for the soul. Taken In is another masterclass in lump-in-the-throat, thought-provoking, raw theatre.

Taken In was written and directed by Rikki Beadle-Blair. It was staged at The Drill Hall, London, on 15-16 April 2010.

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Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time

Back in January, I featured a gallery of Uganda-born artist Orokie's beautiful work. ka-os|theory reader Eshu has kindly given me some new, previously unseen Orokie art to share. "The first," Eshu says, "shows his playfulness, love of life: 'Screaming Boxers'."

"The second shows a darker political side: 'Lake Scythe.'"
"The third is a cartoon drawing, typical of the jokes he would send, playing with gay history. Here, the White art of Carl Van Vechten..."
More of Orokie's work can be found in Mein schwules Auge 6: Das schwule Jahrbuch der Erotik. Title quote: "Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time." Thomas Merton, American writer, 1915-1968.

Return to innocence

out
of
time


What transports you right back to childhood?

This works for me: Childrens TV in Britain; the late 1980s. And was there ever anything more apt? "When he was made, they found something wrong with him: and threw him away like a piece of rubbish!"

The gay coming-of-age in 47 seconds (see if you can spot the many parallels)...

Title quote: "Return to innocence." Lyrics, Enigma - Return To Innocence (1993).

Behind The Sun

Garçon Reports
a news compendium
with a gay bias

||| "My parents are super-Catholic and they come from a culture in Nigeria where there weren’t any visible gay people who were out and were happy. I left home when I was 20. My parents threw me out [for being gay]." Blighty's own Kele Okereke talks to Butt magazine. And in the spirit of said publication...

||| Scotland: Report on two African men smuggled
into the country, imprisoned and forced to take part in pornography and sex acts.

||| The 7 craziest things
blamed on gays.

||| Jesus Christ!
Is that a six-pack, or are you just pleased to see me?

||| Are mixed race celebrities - like JLS and Leona Lewis - really the best of both worlds? Boffins collected a random sample of faces on Facebook (black, white, and mixed) and rated their attractiveness. "Despite people of mixed race only accounting for one in 33 of the population, they made up one in 10 of the 'very beautiful' category." Additionally, there was a "55% chance that mixed-race faces were regarded as being more good-looking than either black or white ones."

||| Vibe magazine
licks Buju Banton's bucket ass.

||| 4th Annual Power 50: America's most influential gay men and women...

||| ...And performance artist, scenester and HIV activist Kalup Linzy
makes the Beautiful People 2010 edition of Paper.

||| Is there a crisis in gay journalism? "An independent and professional gay press in decline is a serious threat to the well being of the gay community," Tim Vollmer
writes.

||| Find a gay-friendly campus: Campus Pride, a national organization
that promotes safe college environments for gay students.

||| Engorged
gays.

||| Editing for the enemy: The gay staff at publishing houses
making sure the words of right wing bigots get to a bookstore near you.

||| Should gay business owners
out themselves when interviewing job candidates? You might wonder "Why?", but the rationale is that some staff quit when they discover they're employed by a gay-owned business. This results in lost time - and money...

||| Discrimination
destroys the lives of older gay couple married for 20 years.

||| A Gay Officer at War: The journals of a 10-year armed services veteran and psychologist.

||| Barack Obama
extends hospital visitation rights, other powers, to gay couples.

||| Next Magazine looks at St Vincent's Hospital (above), and its role in dealing with the "gay plague" in 1981.

||| Arkansas: Judge
overturns ban on gay adoption.

||| Testimony: "The
first openly gay student I ever taught."

||| The United Church of Christ embraces marriage equality and gay families in a new advert:



||| Vman Magazine's five hottest Hollywood men. They all look the same to me. (Wonder why that is?)

||| The New York Times
looks at Skin Tight U.S.A., a costume-fetish party held at the Stonewall Inn (right).

||| Rufus Wainwright on 50 Cent: "I love, love 50 Cent. I think he's just the sexiest, and I know he's gay. That cute little voice of his. It's okay, 50 Cent. Feel free to call me anytime. My boyfriend and I are experts. You can come over for dinner. And maybe dessert."

||| Porn
for the blind.

||| How gay teenagers
took over TV.

||| Ricky Martin is officially gay, so girls
are crying.

||| This is Madieye Diallo, a young gay man whose body was dumped on his parent's doorstep - following his burial. His body was exhumed by a degenerate mob on a homophobic witchhunt.

||| The
anti-gay politics of South Africa's escalating race war. "Both sides are using gay panic to their benefit, tapping into South Africa's latent homophobia and showing their true colors: it's worse to be gay than a racist."

||| Africa's rampant homophobia is threatening the fight against HIV.

||| Malawi: Steven Manjeza seriously ill. "He has been held on remand in an overcrowded, squalid call for over three months, without proper food, sanitation or medical care,"
says Peter Tatchell of OutRage.

||| Uganda: US senate
wants "kill gays" Bill withdrawn.

||| Uganda: Canadian bishops
condemn the Bill.

||| Morocco
gets it's first gay magazine, Mithly (gay, in Arabic).

||| Egypt's GBLT community
finds a safe harbour in cyberspace.

||| This is Dr Srinivas Ramchandra Siras (right), who was
driven to suicide following charges of homosexuality after a "sting operation by a television channel which exposed him having sexual relations with a rickshaw puller".

||| Argentina: The marriage of Alex Freyre and José Maria Di Bello has been
annulled. The couple were the first men to be married in that country.

||| Mexico City: As the capital grows more liberal, conservatives are rallying elsewhere.

||| The New York Times
looks at gay Prague.

||| Italy's highest court
rejects marriages for gay couples.

||| Homosexuality, not celibacy, causes pedophilia,
says Vatican's Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone.

||| ...But the Vatican seems to think he went a bit
too far.

||| Peter Tatchell
welcomes a statement from English and Welsh bishops rejecting the claims.

||| Catholic Church in Malta "as devious as the Mafia in
covering up years of sexual abuse against orphans".

||| Six psychiatrists
debunk the cardinal's link between homosexuality and paedophilia.

||| Back into the closet: gays find few friends in aged care.

||| Former Olympic medal-winner Daniel Kowalski
comes out.

||| More on George's antics
in Australia.

||| Nearly all UK GBLT asylum claims
refused; Border Agency "cruel and discriminatory".

||| Marriage equality in the United Kingdom a "developing area", government minister says as Labour
launches its GBLT manifesto.

||| Relentless Peter Tatchell: the
reluctant national treasure.

||| Róisín Ingle takes a historical walking tour of gay Dublin, as The George - Dublin's best known gay bar - celebrates 25 years.

||| Gay age of consent case
reveals "simmering constitutional tension" between Britain and Gibraltar.

||| A pack of 15 teenagers held in connection with the homophobic attack on trainee police constable James Parkes (right) won't face charges.

||| Manchester United players
share a celebratory kiss on the pitch.

||| Gay
swans.

||| Campaign posters from over the years
(25 more pictures). Mostly Conservative targeting Labour - but this is the Telegraph we're talking about...


||| JK Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter books, speaks out against David Cameron and his "nasty" Conservative party. Make sure you read the ka-os|theory dossier on Tory homophobia.

||| Muslim doctors and nurses
can ignore NHS hygiene rules, introduced to restrict the spread of superbugs like MRSA and Clostridium difficile...

||| ...And "persecuted Christians"
join forces to end "discrimination" at work.

||| The man who killed himself after
being suspended over non-PC joke.

||| Some things are too awful to contemplate: The
bestiality farm.

||| Was the New York Post racist for cropping
this picture?

||| Dolce & Gabbana are up to their old tricks,
coaxing out another pride of mostly-naked Italian footballers. I don't think much of this lot - where are their tits?

||| Those loveable Aussies! Recipe book
calls for "ground black people"! The wags!

||| "We have learned our lesson: black people cannot run a country. They inherited a priceless jewel and made it worthless. They have not got the wisdom – they will never have the wisdom – to run a country. We have tried to teach them, but they have not learned and they are not grateful for what we gave them. They wanted the whole cake, and now there are only crumbs left." Afrikaners
want a separate homeland, and a new separation of whites and blacks. I've a better solution: how about a separate planet? No one else wants them within earshot.

||| Zimbabwe's 30th birthday: How did Robert Mugabe
turn hope into misery?

||| Rebels in Democratic Republic of Congo
kidnap a Spanish doctor and harvest his body hair, allegedly in the hope it will "give them magic powers in battle".

||| Caste discrimination against India's 'untouchables' an international
issue; Dalits continue to suffer discrimination.

||| The Big Picture: Earthquake in Yushu, China, below
(35 more pictures).


||| Say what you like about their human rights record, but the Chinese have the right idea when it comes to population control. Shame governments in the west don't have the balls to restrain uncontrolled breeding.7ft10in by 4ft capsule apartments (left) to solve China's housing problem.

||| This
is a lamp (left).

||| This
is an iPod dock (right).

||| Double dose of
good news for all my fellow alcoholic chocoholics: "Dark chocolate reduces damage to the blood vessels in patients who have suffered scarring on the liver due to excessive drinking or disease, new studies have found. It also reduces blood pressure in the liver as it contains high levels of anti-oxidants which mop of damaging particles from the body."

||| Cancer danger
of night light.

||| Animal pictures of the week (30 more pictures). Above, trapped red fox pups in Connecticut.

||| Dog meets iPad...



||| Where have all the whales gone?

||| Toad sausages
dropped from the sky to help save the quoll.

||| Earthworms form herds
and make group decisions.

||| Mysterious radio waves emitted
from nearby galaxy.

||| Microsoft
using slave labour to build Xboxes in China. 16 and 17-year-olds paid 37 pence an hour for 15 hour shifts.

||| "The Internet makes it easy,
being mean. Instead of shaking your Internetty fist at all that angers you though, what if you ignored it and discussed things that do work, things that are wonderful, and encouraged others to do the same?" Preach, sista, preach!

||| YouTube
celebrates its fifth birthday.

||| Adobe vs Apple:
War of the geeks.

||| How the internet
has changed photography.

||| Free Lossless Audio Codec: Welcome to a world
where MP3 is a byword for sh*t and vinyl is better than sex.

||| DListed
reminds us of a time when Ricky Martin was "nekkid ass nekkid on a light table". This is a good thing.


||| Left: Singer, songwriter and model Steph Jones "glams it up and Tweets this pic from his photoshoot for TightRope Magazine".

||| Toni Braxton goes ballroom in new video Make My Heart. There's voguing galore as Toni and the children serve it!

||| Chris Brown is lensed by Kevin Amato
for Flaunt magazine.

||| The provision for the lead actor in Doctor Who to change every once in a while - first done in 1966 - was
based upon bad LSD trips, according to newly released internal BBC memos. More: Doctor Who's acid test.

||| Those same BBC documents reveal viewer reaction to each new incumbent in the role over the last 47 years.

||| Your correspondent is increasingly disenchanted with what Steven Moffat's doing with Doctor Who (plot? Who needs plot?), and Shadowlocked has
7 things I hope Steven Moffat leaves out of Doctor Who (decent scripts aren't on the list, but Moffat's so far ensured there aren't any, anyway).

||| Reaction to the second episode in the new series is patchy, too: "Light on plotting, heavy on modern parallels," The Guardian
says. "Inconsistent, downright illogical, flat and emotionally uninvolving," according to IGN.

||| Comedian Griff Rhys Jones
criticises 'ratings obsessed' TV bosses.

||| Speaking of which, the BBC has shown a monumental lack of respect for license fee payers by
cancelling Survivors, just as it was hitting its stride. Looks like we'll have to rely on American snooze-fests like FlashForward and the painful Heroes, and an increasingly hollow Doctor Who for a science-fiction fix.

||| Six
Eastenders have been axed by new incoming producer Bryan Kirkwood: Derek Martin (Charlie Slater), Cliff Parisi (Minty Peterson), Liam Bergin (the abysmal Danny Mitchell), Kate Williams (Liz) and Belinda Owusu (Libby Fox) - who follows her on screen sister, Tiana Benjamin's, upcoming exit. David Proud (slimey Adam Best) is also exiting. The departures of Preeya Kalidas (Amira Masood) and Barbara Windsor (Peggy Mitchell) have previously been announced.

||| EastEnders' gay Muslim plot is rapidly approaching its
climax.

||| The fall-out from the cancellation of The Bill after 27 years on air
continues: "The loss of The Bill will have a dreadful effect on the ecosystem of drama."

||| Tru: A XXX Parody. Yes, it's a
porn version of True Blood. Without Mechad Brooks, I don't see how it could be hotter.

||| I Love You Phillip Morris, thought to have been shelved indefinitely, will now
be released 30th July.

||| Stonewall Uprising, a new documentary
chronicling the 1969 riots in New York's Greenwich Village:


||| Not content with abysmal remakes of successful films, Hollywood is now churning out new versions of films that were flops first time around.

||| Meinhardt Raabe, the munchkin coroner in The Wizard Of Oz, is really most sincerely dead. He was 94.

||| Kevin Prince-Boateng is all "all hunger and desire and passion",
apparently.

||| Puma
reinvents the shoe box.

||| Ryan Phillipe covers Men's Health, and DListed has
something to say about it.

||| World's
biggest rocking horse.

||| And finally, a little Tired Old Queen At The Movies to cheer us all up!



||| LAST WEEK'S EDITION

||| READ MORE GARÇON REPORTS, ONE YEAR AGO: 19.4.09

_____________________________________________________Photobucket
Issue 61 of Garçon Reports covers the period
10-18 April 2010 - plus some stuff I missed!


(What do all the top headlines for each edition of
"Garçon Reports" have in common?)

ka-os|theory is not responsible for the content
of external websites.

POSTSCRIPT
"You know, we might just as well not have bothered to come.
The whole thing's been ridiculous."

© 2010
Photobucket
 
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