One-man show explores gay history

Jade Esteban Estrada sounds tired on the telephone Wednesday afternoon. Exhaustion, he admits, has been plaguing him.

The beast has followed him through months and months on the road as one of America's most prolific gay performers.

The road-weary Estrada has no problem with being so tired -- he's doing what he loves.

"I had my 135th performance just a couple of weeks ago," said Estrada, "and when I did, I was just thinking there's nothing in the world I'd rather be doing."

Right now the Latino pop star, gay rights activist, and award-winning playwright and actor is in the middle of four nights of shows in St. Louis performing his one-man theater pieces, "Icons: The Lesbian and Gay History of the World Volume 1" and "Volume 2."

The St. Louis run ends on Sunday. On Monday and Tuesday, Estrada brings the shows to Cape Girardeau with performances at Independence Place at 8 p.m.

Both shows tell world history through the perspective of famous homosexuals, such as Ellen Degeneres, Michaelangelo, Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Stein, Greek poet Sappho, Susan B. Anthony, 9/11 hero Mark Bingham, Billy Jean King and Alexander the Great. Like acting, history is a subject that compels Estrada.

"If I had a perfect life, I would be a history teacher during the daytime and doing theater at night."

Through the performance, Estrada switches between characters, requiring a great acting range. "Icons" is not a drag show performance, but an educational and entertaining look at the homosexual's role in history.

The performances will be a return to Cape Girardeau for Estrada, who brought "Volume 1" to the city in November 2003. The reception, he said, was great, which is one reason he decided to come back.

Denise Eaker, a.k.a. the Delta Dyke, is the person responsible for bringing Estrada back to Cape Girardeau. Eaker runs the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community center called Visions of Pride, a place set on "three acres of pride" on Garden Lane.

"Know that you are loved and never alone," is the message Eaker tries to put out to the local gay community. Visions of Pride disseminates that message through a crisis line, community activities and charitable giving. Right now, Visions is working to get together disaster relief for victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Eaker said the gay community in Cape Girardeau needs to assert itself and get over an identity crisis that has caused local gays to hide in the closet.

"I'm asking the gay community to go out on a limb," Eaker said of the show. "If you're queer you need to get off the sidelines and stop hiding. It's time to stand up and let our voices be heard.

"'Icons' shows us where we've been, where we're going and where we could go. I'm not asking people to march up and down Broadway. I'm asking to understand their culture, I'm asking them to understand what their hopes and fears are."

While 'Icons' addresses the history, "Somebody Else's Life" explores the hopes and fears. Written and performed by St. Louis gay theater guru Jerry Rabushka, "Somebody Else's Life" consists of three snapshots of gay life -- from the controversy over gay marriage to the isolation experienced by gay teens.

Rabushka plays six characters in the half-comedy, half-drama, including a conservative religious husband and wife living next door to a married gay couple and a gay teen ousted by friends at a party after his first homosexual kiss.

The experiences portrayed in "Somebody Else's Life" really hit home with the gay community, said Rabushka, especially the last act about the teen.

"Just about every gay person knows when you're a 16-year-old in high school, your life is hell," said Rabushka. "They can relate to that."

While larger metro areas have chances for homosexuals to see gay theater, those chances are rare in smaller towns like Cape Girardeau, said Rabushka.

"Everybody's gay in L.A., they say, and you're not a big deal there," Rabushka says with a chuckle. "You come down to Cape Girardeau and it's not something you see every day."

The message of both productions is geared not only toward gays. Rabushka, Estrada and Eaker want the straight community to check the shows out, too.

The race, religion and sexual orientation of the characters isn't the main point, said Estrada.

"These are key figures who all shaped who we are today," Estrada said. "This is a story of the history of the world."

Estrada sees a lot of injustice in history -- from slavery to the Holocaust to the oppression of women to religious warfare to the gay rights controversies of today (by the way, he doesn't condone gay marriage, just civil unions). Even though time has passed and technology has grown, the conflict has just taken new forms.

Estrada wants the world to know progress has been made, but unless the lessons of history are heeded, the progress may be lost.

As he tells the audience at the end of his show, "History has a funny way of repeating itself."

Rabushka hopes his play can help the straight world understand that homosexuals are humans, just like heteros, with the same hopes, dreams and insecurities, shared by all members of the human race.

msanders@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182