Latest / Queer Voices / June 17th - PRIDE with the Queer Voices, Jack Vallinski, and SPAMILTON with Derek Charles Livingston!

Transcript

June 17th - PRIDE with the Queer Voices, Jack Vallinski, and SPAMILTON with Derek Charles Livingston! · Queer Voices

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_09: This is KPFT 90.1 FM Houston, 89.5 FM Galveston, 91.9 FM Huntsville, and worldwide on the internet at KPFT.org.
• 0:23
  Brett: You're listening to Queer Voices, the radio show and a podcast that has been an outlet for the LGBTQIA Plus community since the 70s.
• 0:33
  Brett: So the rain postponed our big parade this year, but we heard Queer Voices are carrying on the Pride celebration all June long.
• 0:40
  Brett: Hey, it's our month after all.
• 0:42
  Brett: In this hour, we talk Pride with our Queer Voices staff and the legendary Dak Valensky.
• 0:48
  Brett: We also get to talk about Pamelton at stages with their artistic director, Derek Charles Livingston.
• 0:54
  Brett: I hope you enjoy Queer Voices and consider making a donation in our name at KPFT.org to help keep us on the air.
• 1:01
  Brett: We reach up to 150,000 people every week.
• 1:06
  Brett: Not bad for some LGBTQIA Plus volunteers with a laptop and a microphone.
• 1:11
  Brett: Queer Voices starts now.
• 1:16
  Brett: Welcome to Queer Voices.
• 1:18
  Brett: June is Pride Month, so we thought it'd be a great time to bring our contributors together to discuss it.
• 1:23
  Brett: I am Brett Cullum, and today I am joined by executive producer Brian Lavinka, producer Deborah Monkey Bell, one of my favorite producers of content, Jacob Newsome, and author also my spouse and frequent contributor Artley Ingalls.
• 1:38
  Brett: So here we are, June already.
• 1:40
  Brett: What the heck?
• 1:41
  Brett: How did this happen?
• 1:42
  Deborah: How it happened was we are in fact having our pride celebrations, the parade and festival at least, way early in the month.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_02: Why is that depth?
• 1:52
  Deborah: Well, it's because of the FIFO World Cup having events here in Houston.
• 1:56
  Deborah: The Pride Committee was given the choice of not have pride at all or move it to a different time of the month because it'll be later in the month when the soccer things go on.
• 2:09
  Deborah: It it is different.
• 2:10
  Deborah: I think some people might be thrown off by it, but there's actually so many things happening with Pride.
• 2:18
  Deborah: Different organizations do things, different communities around Houston are doing things.
• 2:25
  Deborah: It's not just the Houston celebration anymore, which I think is very exciting that people in smaller there's like a K Pride, a Woodlands Pride, Bizouria Pride, Galveston.
• 2:39
  Deborah: Yeah, I think Galveston has two or three prides at this point.
• 2:43
  Deborah: Rainbows everywhere.
• 2:45
  Brett: Well, I wanted to ask, what does Pride event mean to you personally?
• 2:48
  Brett: I mean, what is it, what does it symbolize?
• 2:50
  Brett: Is it so relevant?
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know what?
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_02: I used to think that it was just kind of a frivolous waste of time when I was in my 20s, 30s, because I was more of a party boy.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: But as I get older, I I remember that this is for a reason.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_02: It was not a f a party.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_02: It is a protest, it's a riot.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: We should remember that.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_02: It's about our history and remembering who we are and where we came from.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_04: I agree with that point, Brian.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_04: My first pride was at 17 when I graduated from college, and it meant the world to me to see people just so happy and free and just learning what freedom was myself at 17.
• 3:23
  Lee: Yeah, when I can say this uh from a historical perspective, because some of the first pride events that took place in Houston, I was actually there and and part of the buildup, et cetera.
• 3:32
  Lee: So initially, I think what it was was a disability thing that we were so accustomed to living in the shadows and not being out there in front of people that we were taking pride in who we were and making sure the world could see us.
• 3:45
  Deborah: That's perfectly said, Lee.
• 3:48
  Deborah: That is what always has struck me about Pride.
• 3:51
  Deborah: And I remember the first pride events I ever attended was before I actually came out.
• 3:57
  Deborah: I was involved with the National Organization for Women, and we would have a delegation in the parade as allies.
• 4:05
  Deborah: And then later I ended up being co-chair of Pride for two years.
• 4:09
  Deborah: And then later I went to Washington, D.C.
• 4:12
  Deborah: and helped organize a march, which is a direct result of what I did in Pride and what I learned there.
• 4:19
  Deborah: The message to me was it's about our visibility and the power of our visibility, that we're not acting like we have a dirty little secret because we don't.
• 4:29
  Deborah: We don't have any secrets about who we are.
• 4:32
  Deborah: We're not ashamed.
• 4:34
  Deborah: And the other thing, which I think is really the far more powerful, and it's what we're doing right now a lot in this country, when people show up to protest or to demonstrate or to rally, those all can be different things.
• 4:49
  Deborah: It's a way of bearing witness.
• 4:51
  Deborah: So we are bearing witness to our lives and to our community.
• 4:56
  Deborah: The thing now that always excites me the most about pride is when we do the interviews with the grand marshals each year.
• 5:06
  Deborah: Because when I hear the stories about what these people are doing in service to the community, I am just blown away at the magnitude of it.
• 5:16
  Deborah: And when you look at past grand marshals like Brian, for instance, I mean, when you see all the things he's involved in, he yes, he does a radio show, but you know, Texas Pride Impact funds, he was on the Victory Fund, he's with the Legacy Clinic, the Alzheimer's Association.
• 5:34
  Deborah: He does so much in the community.
• 5:37
  Deborah: And so it's it's people like Ethan, who is a contributor, out there doing stuff on the front lines, making a difference.
• 5:45
  Deborah: And so I my heart just fills with pride.
• 5:48
  Deborah: That's where I feel my pride during this time of year.
• 5:51
  Brett: Well, you know what?
• 5:52
  Brett: I I think we have two grand marshals on the Queer Voices thing.
• 5:55
  Brett: Uh, Deborah, you were one too, right?
• 5:57
  Brett: Right.
• 5:58
  Deborah: Yeah, I was in 1997, along with Jimmy Carper, who was also from KPFT.
• 6:04
  Deborah: And well, of course, Jack, who's previous producer, he's been grand marshal.
• 6:09
  Deborah: Of course, he ran Pride for many years.
• 6:11
  Deborah: And Jennifer Renee Poole was a grand marshal, and that's another through the years.
• 6:18
  Deborah: Probably there's some more in there, Brian.
• 6:20
  Deborah: I can't think of who else.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_02: You know, JD has a photo of us all kind of in the studio.
• 6:24
  Deborah: Yeah, I'm not in that one though, because I wasn't in Houston at the time.
• 6:28
  Deborah: Yeah.
• 6:28
  Deborah: Yeah, JD, there you go.
• 6:30
  Deborah: Yep.
• 6:31
  Deborah: And and look at what all he does.
• 6:33
  Deborah: If anyone doesn't know about JD Doyle and his Houston history website and his queer music heritage, I mean, you need to check it out.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and Brian, what year were you?
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_02: I was Grand Marshal in 2011, the male Grand Marshal, and I was Grand Marshall with Tammy Wallace.
• 6:50
  Brett: Wow.
• 6:50
  Brett: Yeah.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_04: Tammy's always on the show.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_04: And how do you become a Grand Marshall?
• 6:56
  Deborah: That's a good question, Jacob.
• 6:58
  Deborah: Grand Marshals are nominated by members of the community, and those nominations go before a committee comprised of former Grand Marshals.
• 7:09
  Deborah: So Ron and I are on that committee.
• 7:11
  Deborah: And we vet the people to say, okay, this person, yes, they've met this criteria.
• 7:16
  Deborah: We look at at least three years of activism or contribution to the community, and then exactly where and what that is.
• 7:25
  Deborah: Somebody might have a job that puts them in the community, and they also may be queer, but that doesn't mean that they've done a body of work.
• 7:36
  Deborah: And so we're looking more like someone like Brian, who has been involved in many different things, not only involved in them, but been very effective and provided leadership.
• 7:48
  Deborah: So that's the primary way.
• 7:50
  Deborah: And then we try to get at least three people in each category, and then those are put before the public to vote on.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_02: So it's like a straight-up campaign.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_02: When I became Court Marshal, you had to have voting parties and you had to have endorsements, and it was just a whole shebang to get it's you know it's a popular vote in the community, so you have to kind of pull out all the stops.
• 8:13
  Brett: Yeah, Lee and I were friends with uh Bob Britdick and running campaigns several times, and he was just like, I'm exhausted with this.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_02: It's like running for city council.
• 8:22
  Deborah: It was easier when I became Grand Marshal because it was voted on by the people that actually were the Pride Committee.
• 8:29
  Deborah: At that time, the Pride Committee was made up of people that showed up for the meetings, and then we developed a criteria of who could vote was among the people there that made that selection.
• 8:43
  Deborah: So I opening it up for the community vote, I think was a good way to go.
• 8:48
  Deborah: Then there's certain grand marshals that are chosen because we have the trendsetter grand marshal, which is someone that's 25 years old or younger.
• 8:58
  Deborah: This is chosen strictly by the committee.
• 9:01
  Deborah: We started doing this because there were young people coming up that really had done things that made a significant impact.
• 9:09
  Deborah: And so we wanted to recognize that, reward that, and encourage that.
• 9:14
  Deborah: And in fact, I have seen some former transitor people go on to do many wonderful things.
• 9:22
  Deborah: So that's exciting.
• 9:23
  Deborah: And then we have our distinguished grand marshals.
• 9:26
  Deborah: And before that was called honorary grandmars, and we got to talk, and it's like, well, wait a minute, honorary makes it sound like it's just an honorable mention when quite the contrary.
• 9:38
  Deborah: It is the elite among our community, people that not only have a body of work, but a really significant body of work, and who have really served the community and that we want to celebrate.
• 9:53
  Deborah: Those people are chosen by the committee.
• 9:56
  Deborah: Jacob, that's how you get to be a Grand Marshal.
• 9:58
  Deborah: You get involved with KPFT.
• 10:00
  Deborah: You're on your way.
• 10:01
  Deborah: You're on your way.
• 10:02
  Deborah: Exactly.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_02: I do think there's a visibility that the radio gives you kind of in the community.
• 10:07
  Deborah: That's a funny word to use for it since we're not visible.
• 10:10
  Deborah: We're oddly uh visible.
• 10:13
  Deborah: A lot of our activism takes us beyond the queer community.
• 10:17
  Deborah: Ryan does work with the Alzheimer's Association, but queer people are affected by Alzheimer's.
• 10:23
  Deborah: Yes.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what they're wanting to get the word out to the gay community.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we're not dying of AIDS anymore, we're dying of other things.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_02: So we have to kind of consider these other diseases.
• 10:33
  Brett: That kind of brings me to a question that I wanted to have is like, how has this changed over the years?
• 10:38
  Brett: Because you're talking about maybe a shift in our community as far as what's going to be important or what we're looking at as causes of mortality or politics.
• 10:48
  Brett: Definitely this year it seems very political.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_02: Can't get away from politics, especially in Texas.
• 10:54
  Deborah: Well, especially as queer people, and especially when we have particularly the threat against our trans brothers and sisters in non-violent.
• 11:04
  Deborah: Yeah.
• 11:05
  Deborah: I mean, look at what they're doing with Paxton attacking James Tallerico saying he's trans and saying he's a vegan.
• 11:15
  Deborah: Well, it's like schoolhouse.
• 11:16
  Deborah: Oh my god, he's trans.
• 11:17
  Deborah: It's like schoolhouse haunting.
• 11:20
  Deborah: And it and it and it's juvenile, and of course, Talo Rico, he's like, okay, bring it, because he's got a hot girlfriend.
• 11:28
  Deborah: I know.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_02: I saw a picture of her the other day.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, she's real and she's hot.
• 11:32
  Deborah: And one of the things that they called James Talarico was Talofrico.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_02: I've already seen shirts for that.
• 11:38
  Deborah: Yes.
• 11:39
  Deborah: He you go to his website and you find shirts that say I'm a Talafrico.
• 11:44
  Deborah: I just love it.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_02: Will this be the time that Texas goes blue?
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: Isn't it far away a dream uh coming a reality?
• 11:51
  Deborah: Well, we just have to keep working to make it so because we we cannot have and there's purple.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 11:59
  Deborah: Well we are yes, our cities are at least our blue are purple, but in hearing analysis from different people that I follow, they're really paying attention to this Texas race.
• 12:11
  Deborah: And they think that it could be a game changer.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_02: Well, there's gotta be no worse candidate than Ken Paxton to run it.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, our best candidate to run it against, I guess.
• 12:21
  Deborah: KPFT is not endorsing what we're saying.
• 12:25
  Deborah: This is our individual opinions and thoughts, but the what I say about Paxton is that he's so bad, it's a wonder that he's not already part of Trump's cabinet.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_02: That's funny.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: Oh no.
• 12:37
  Deborah: Right?
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_04: The prerequisite of a scandal to be a part of his cabinet.
• 12:41
  Deborah: So Brett and Lee, what about you?
• 12:44
  Deborah: What are your feelings about pride?
• 12:47
  Lee: Yes.
• 12:47
  Lee: Well, I will say this.
• 12:48
  Lee: I've been around for quite a long time.
• 12:50
  Lee: So remember the the early days and how vastly different it is today than it was then.
• 12:55
  Lee: You know, back in those days, when you got press coverage, it was not good press coverage.
• 13:00
  Lee: You know, except if you're of the school of thought that any pr coverage is good, they chose the the the very interesting visuals of our parade to actually put on over the airwaves.
• 13:12
  Lee: They didn't really show the whole thing, they just showed the thing that that supported their agenda.
• 13:16
  Lee: And some of the TV stations that are now our biggest fans were the people doing this back in those days.
• 13:22
  Lee: And I really uh developed a dislike for our local stations for that reason.
• 13:27
  Lee: It took me years to get over that, where now it's more a positive thing than it was back then.
• 13:33
  Lee: So it has morphed over time.
• 13:34
  Lee: And I'll I'll tell you, no surprise, one of the saddest periods of our parade experience was during the AIDS years, where it was so impactful.
• 13:43
  Lee: And so many people were losing their lives.
• 13:45
  Lee: You'd go to the events and people that you'd saw months earlier healthy and living their best life, you could see now that they were suffering.
• 13:53
  Lee: And it was just really a sad thing to see.
• 13:55
  Lee: And it was just ever present at that time.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know how you they lived through that time.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_02: I came or up in the late 80s, early 90s, and it was kind of on its way to the protease inhibitors, but I can't imagine the early 80s, early to mid-80s, what it was like.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it was it was horrific in a word.
• 14:12
  Deborah: The parade used to be much more organic.
• 14:15
  Deborah: Of course, we were going through the Montrose area, and many of us really missed that.
• 14:21
  Deborah: That seemed so right, and it was comfortable.
• 14:24
  Deborah: As things, as progress is made, we ended up needing to move to the downtown area in order to have the events.
• 14:32
  Deborah: The floats were made by the groups.
• 14:35
  Deborah: I was co-chair in 87 and in 88, and in I believe it was 88.
• 14:42
  Deborah: Yes, eighty-eight.
• 14:43
  Deborah: We just no, I may be getting this wrong, either eighty-seven or eighty-eight, we had decided that we would not have floats, that we would just have a march.
• 15:00
  Deborah: But but it was to honor the people that were living with HIV and dying of AIDS.
• 15:08
  Deborah: It was to acknowledge the crisis that was in our community and to still celebrate, but to recognize the impact of a lot of people did not like that.
• 15:20
  Deborah: We got a lot of complaints.
• 15:22
  Deborah: People wanted their party.
• 15:24
  Deborah: I still think it was the right decision to make at that time.
• 15:27
  Deborah: And and thankfully, I think that just around that time marked when there was a big difference moving towards people being able to live with HIV rather than dying of AIDS.
• 15:38
  Deborah: It's interesting for us to talk about the history, our histories with pride and the things that we've seen and done.
• 15:46
  Deborah: So, Brett, is there anything else that particularly is meaningful to you during Pride?
• 15:52
  Brett: You know, Pride has always been very meaningful for me just from the visibility standpoint.
• 15:56
  Brett: But I remember I came out in Memphis, Tennessee, and I remember the first Pride Parade that I went to was in Memphis.
• 16:02
  Brett: And I promise you, it wasn't anything more than like a drag queen in the back of a pickup truck.
• 16:08
  Brett: It was teeny tiny.
• 16:10
  Brett: And I just remember coming to Houston and seeing this nighttime parade that went on for hours and hours that had churches involved, that had businesses involved, that had a real legitimate feeling to it rather than just a ragtag group of people with pickup trucks spraying down the street.
• 16:27
  Brett: But it really gave me a sense of how large this community is and how impactful it is, and how many of us are part of corporations or we own our own businesses.
• 16:39
  Brett: And it really did.
• 16:40
  Brett: Just represented a community to me.
• 16:42
  Brett: And I think that's what really I attached to pride.
• 16:45
  Brett: And that's makes me feel proud to see the diversity and the amount of different things and the different areas that we're in.
• 16:52
  Deborah: Of course, this year the festival and parade are the first weekend in June.
• 16:57
  Deborah: We've got Pride events all month.
• 16:59
  Deborah: We've got fundraising.
• 17:00
  Deborah: Please support KPFT.
• 17:02
  Deborah: And uh check the Montrose Center has a beautiful calendar that they put up.
• 17:08
  Deborah: You can go to their website, the Montrocenter.org, and find that calendar of Pride events and find something to go celebrate and people to see and fun to be had and pride to be shown.
• 17:21
  Brett: Yeah, hey Jacob, what was your memories around pride?
• 17:23
  Brett: What does pride mean to you?
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_04: Thanks for asking.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_04: I think at 17 it meant freedom for me.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_04: Now I kind of think about things differently, especially as the world is the way it is, it's starting to mean survival now.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_04: We're in one of the biggest fights of our lives to even be openly queer and trans.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_04: And even though a lot of the rhetoric is centered around trans people, it's uh it's the one of those old sayings where, you know, if you don't fight for that person, they're gonna come for you next.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_04: Even though gay marriage is legalized, now I think the fight never ended.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_04: And so right now it means survival, and I hopefully one day it means prosperity and that that we could actually have normal lives outside of being attacked constantly.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_04: Outside of that, I think day-to-day pride is just finding joy in the little things and having that be okay, even if the state and federal government doesn't like to validate our existence.
• 18:16
  Brett: True.
• 18:16
  Brett: And it's hard when you feel like your elected officials are against you.
• 18:20
  Brett: It's wild because we've brought up the specter of the 80s and the 90s when it really felt like that as well.
• 18:26
  Brett: And now we've become full cycle.
• 18:27
  Brett: It really just swings like a pendulum.
• 18:30
  Brett: This feels very familiar to me for those that went through the eighties and nineties.
• 18:34
  Brett: We're back in that territory, and I hate that because I feel like we should have gone forward.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_02: But well, they say that history doesn't repeat itself, it rhymes.
• 18:41
  Deborah: Ultimately, I think pride is about community and seeing your friends.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_02: So one of my favorite memories from Pride was the 40th anniversary pride parade where we had all the old grandmarshals come back for the for the event.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_02: And seeing you on the float deb and just saying that you had the best time that you wanted to go back through it again.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_02: That's kind of a highlight for me.
• 19:01
  Deborah: That was the best fun.
• 19:03
  Deborah: And and and it was just to me, seeing all the people that I shared that float with and knowing the contributions that they had made, and that meant a lot.
• 19:13
  Brett: Well, one of the things that I'm definitely proud of is being right here, queer voices.
• 19:16
  Brett: I love the fact that I am in the presence of people like you, Deborah and Brian, who have been grand marshals, and of course, Jacob, who is destined to probably become a grand marshal.
• 19:27
  Brett: About next year.
• 19:28
  Brett: Here you go.
• 19:29
  Brett: Yeah.
• 19:29
  Brett: And and of course, Lee Ingalls, my spouse.
• 19:32
  Brett: We just make this a diverse little group of queer voices, and I appreciate that.
• 19:36
  Brett: I'm very proud to be a part of that.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know what?
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_02: I appreciate the work, Brett, that you're putting in to put the show together.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we had a an engineer drop off, and so you picked up the Slack and you've carried us on boldly into the future.
• 19:49
  Lee: He does a remarkable job.
• 19:50
  Lee: Yeah, he does a remarkable job.
• 19:52
  Lee: I'll have to say that picture.
• 19:53
  Lee: I don't know about boldly, but yes.
• 19:54
  Lee: About gaily into the future.
• 19:56
  Deborah: Now our our shows become much more diverse, not only in the people that participate in producing it, but in the material that we cover.
• 20:06
  Deborah: Lee has talked with someone about cybersecurity and about banks and online banks versus regular brick and border banks.
• 20:16
  Deborah: And that that's something that's not queer focused, although it certainly was a queer person who was providing the information.
• 20:24
  Deborah: But it is something that will affect all people.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: As the LGBTQ community evolves, we need to evolve as a radio show.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_02: Get the different stories, the different voices from different portions of the community.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_02: We can't stay the same because the community around us is evolving.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_02: So we have to evolve with them.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_07: Right.
• 20:41
  Brett: Well, and I hope that anybody that wants to be on the show reaches out to one of us and we we can make you a part of it.
• 20:47
  Brett: Yeah, it's a per voice.
• 20:49
  Deborah: It it's not as hard as we make it seem.
• 20:51
  Deborah: The format that we have is is that we each individually bring in material and help provide content for the show, and various ones of us do the interviews.
• 21:03
  Deborah: So it's uh it's a puzzle that gets put together.
• 21:07
  Brett: We definitely need the pride in the politics and everything else to go around with it.
• 21:10
  Brett: Well, celebrate pride, do something this month.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_02: Let's remind everyone that this is Pride Month, so don't make it about one day, make it the whole month.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_02: Be just your rainbow self all month long.
• 21:21
  Brett: Yeah, as Jacob said, do it daily, right?
• 21:23
  Deborah: Yeah, do it daily and then do it again.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_02: Repeat more rainbows.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_02: Let's go.
• 21:29
  Deborah: Find your happy and joy.
• 21:30
  Deborah: Yeah.
• 21:31
  Deborah: And keep listening to queer voices.
• 21:41
  Brett: This is Brett Cullum, and I am here with Jack Valinsky to talk about pride.
• 21:46
  Brett: Specifically, pride in Houston, because Jack has a long history with the events, and I wanted to find out more about that and his take on our current state of pride here in Houston.
• 21:56
  Brett: But first, Jack Valinsky, if you don't know him, is a legend here on.
• 22:00
  Brett: Voices.
• 22:00
  Brett: He's been a host for many years.
• 22:02
  Brett: He's been involved in politics for decades as well.
• 22:05
  Brett: You can find him outside the polls at every single election.
• 22:08
  Brett: He's just one of those people that never stops doing the work.
• 22:12
  Brett: Thank you for being here today, Jack.
• 22:13
  Brett: Sure.
• 22:14
  Brett: Happy to join.
• 22:14
  Brett: First up, I always wondered how did you get involved with Pride?
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_06: So I moved here in the end of 1981.
• 22:22
  Brett: Okay.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_06: I waited a few months, and I was really in the closet at the time.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_06: And I started listening to KPFT, and I heard Ray Hill on the radio.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_06: And I was interested in volunteering, mostly just to run the board.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_06: And I remember I called him and he says, come on by.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_06: For like a couple of weeks, he pretty much ignored me in the lobby because he would show up at the last minute.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_06: So one day I spent about eight hours at my radio station producing some little 10-minute bit because I didn't really know what I was doing.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_06: And I was not, I was a technician.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_06: I was an assistant chief engineer.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_06: So I wasn't really an on-air person.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_06: So I played this tape to him, reel-to-reel tape to Ray off the air, and he says, You can do pretty much anything you want to do.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_06: So Ray at that time did a lot of interviewing with Larry Monarch.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_06: And Larry was involved in both Pride and the Caucus.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_06: So those three things were what I got involved in for many, many years.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_06: And it was a very interesting thing because at least how I felt was the door was the door was wide open to do things.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_06: And one and one of the examples was when Pride decided to bring Tina Turner in.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_06: And Tina Turner was not very well known at the time.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_06: She went through a breakup and Pride brought them in.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_06: And Larry says, I've got some extra money.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_06: We'd like to produce a commercial to put on commercial radio.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_06: And he just said, do it.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_06: And I did it.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_06: And I got a professional voice to do it.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_06: And it was on Magic and another station called Curly.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_06: And there were people who said they were driving off the road when they heard the gay political caucus on these black-oriented radio stations.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_06: So there was lots of opportunity to do things.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_06: And the joke sort of was that Ray says that there was only five activists in the city, and we all just changed hats on the organizations.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_06: Even though Pride and the Caucus were two separate organizations, they're basically the same people doing it.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_06: And the rally, we didn't have a festival, the rally after the parade would be done by the caucus.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_06: So I learned a lot.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_06: I had never had any idea of wanting to be on the air, but I sort of got pushed on it.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_06: After a few years of doing that race as I've got other things to do.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_06: And he left the radio show to me and Mike Meesh.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_06: And that's sort of how that happened.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_06: And pride, Larry, went back to New Orleans after a while.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_06: And I was always the third wheel or the fourth wheel.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_06: And I was happy doing that, being the background person.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_06: And things just happened.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_06: One of them was eight, where people just couldn't continue.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_06: And it's got thrown on my lap.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_06: So that's sort of how I got involved.
• 24:59
  Brett: What was the first year that you went to the Houston parade?
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_06: So in 1982, Lee Harrington was the announcer on the stage, which was at Lower West Timmer.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_06: This is a daytime parade.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_06: I don't know who gave me the job.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_06: Maybe I just started doing it.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_06: The parade was not in order.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_06: So I was the one telling, whispering into Lee Harrington's ear as he was the announcer, what was the next uh unit, next float.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_06: That's how I got started in that.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_06: That night they had the rally at Spots Park.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_06: I didn't even know where Spots Park was.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_06: It was a really interesting time because we were under a lot of pressure.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_06: We what we were much more family.
• 25:33
  Brett: I can see that.
• 25:34
  Brett: It was more grassroots, obviously.
• 25:36
  Brett: And it was a smaller affair.
• 25:38
  Brett: And that's what's fascinating to me is how this thing grew.
• 25:41
  Brett: And did you ever get a sense of it just like when you said, oh my gosh, this thing is getting bigger and bigger?
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_06: My real background is operations, making things work.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_06: Sometimes being the front person was not something I really wanted to do, but it sort of just happened.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_06: I organized the parade in that we had it on the database.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_06: You know, we went out there when we used to line up near the school, the near middle school off of Westheimer.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_06: At one time, we measured every inch of that road where all the drivers were, where all the trees were, and we put all the floats against the school because there was less trees and it was wider street.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_06: And we put the other vehicles in the neighborhood.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_06: And we would at Westheimer, where the two merged, we would be bringing them out, you know, unit by unit.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_06: One of the other reasons why all the floats were together was basically the same company did a lot of the floats.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_06: So they were able to jump from one to another.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_06: And you didn't want to have all the floats in one thing.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_06: You wanted to spread them out.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_06: The other thing that I did was got the parade starting on time.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_06: And none of the stuff that I say I did, I did alone.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_06: There was lots of other people who helped out.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_06: And I know I probably burnt a lot of people out, but and I got burnt out at times, but making the parade start on time, especially when we became the night parade, was just we had to, we just had to.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_06: But the moment as we were building the parade, every year we try to solve another problem.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_06: We try to get better, we try to get another organization in, getting the police in, getting the fire in, getting all these other organizations, getting the first gay, straight alliance of high school in.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_06: But getting the mayor in the parade, it was Mayor Lanier, was tough because all Houston, unlike a lot of other cities, we were late to get a lot of politicians in the parade.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_06: Certainly we had Schiller Jackson Lee.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_06: Certainly we had a few other people like Garnett Coleman or Deborah Damberg or other elected officials.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_06: But getting the mayor in the parade, because Kathy Whitmeyer never was in the Pride Parade.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_06: So we got Mayor Lee Brown in there, and I had heard the story that after his car went down the road, he parked on the side of the road to watch the rest of the parade.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_06: But the real big thing that put Houston on the map was a night parade.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_06: And I am very proud of that.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_06: There was, we knew that because people were dying in our community and having a parade on a Sunday afternoon in the hot heat, where the the police at that time wanted us to have the parade as early as possible on that Sunday afternoon because they felt we'd be less drunk and they'd be less rowdy.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_06: But we took this idea, and it originally was sort of Larry Bonaris's idea, although he had long left Houston, of what to do with the parade to make it more relevant to the community.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_06: And four of us, myself, Lee Harrington, Brandon Wolfe, and Rainbow the Clown, we sat in my townhouse for a number of weeks and just said, okay, can we do this?
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_06: Can we do this?
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_06: Can we do this?
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_06: We basically came up with four things.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_06: Number one, do it in the spring.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_06: Number two, do it in the fall.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_06: Number three, keep it where it was.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_06: Or number four, let's do something completely crazy and do a night parade.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_06: We took a poll, we talked to the business owners, we did a whole thing, and we basically had two years to do this.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_06: So it was not rushed.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_06: So the first year we got all the information together, and I ended up being the deciding vote to go for the night parade.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_06: And I was not for it at the time, but I listened to people.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_06: When you're the leader, you don't always get what you want.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_06: You've got to listen to what people you try to lead, but you also got to listen to what people want.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_06: And pretty much everybody was on board except for one bar owner who I vote name.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_06: Two years later, that bar owner came along because not only did he have the Sunday business, he had the whole weekend business because people came in.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_06: That night, Lee Harrington would, before cell phones, before all this, he'd call you up at 11 o'clock at night and say, You need to do this, this, this, this, this.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_06: And you call him back and say, Can you help me with this?
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_06: He says, No, I'm too busy.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_06: You got to do it.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_06: So for some reason, Lee wanted to have the most excellent parade in the country.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_06: And so this was the occasion where Lee did a lot of the work for him.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_06: And he did this incredible work because every time he came up with a problem, he would solve it.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_06: But the night of the first parade, as the sun was going down, Lee was nowhere to be found.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_06: And finally he comes out and he says, I've been so worried that something would go wrong.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_06: I just couldn't be out here.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_06: But seeing the floats light up was the most incredible thing.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_06: This was not our parade.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_06: This was the community's parade.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_06: And we were there to do the best parade for the community and for the city to show off that we are a community that can do things.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_06: And that put us on the map.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_06: We're the first city in North America, I guess in the Northern Hemisphere, that did a night parade, uh, because Sydney did it in Australia.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_06: And in fact, me, it was the beginning of having email correspondent with them a lot about how things, how they did things.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_06: And we had to work behind the scenes to make sure it was legal to do it.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_06: Denise Parker helped us with it.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_06: The things that we had as problems are different than what they have today.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_06: And basically what paid for pride in those days was t-shirt sales and beer money.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_06: The beer companies were were basically the only corporate sponsorship that touched pride because everybody else was afraid.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_06: One of our first big ones was Chase Bank.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_06: And Chase wasn't even the New York Parade, but they're in our parade.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_06: And I know some people say, hey, I wish we could still be back there without having all this corporate sponsorship and have the community groups.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_06: And I wish we could too.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_06: But a lot of the community businesses are gone.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_06: A lot of the bars are gone.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_06: It cost a lot of money to do a float.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_06: And I was talking to Carrie Ann just last week about some things, and she says, you wouldn't believe the stuff we now have to pay for in the city that you all didn't have to used to do.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_06: And I'm not blaming the city because it cost a lot of money.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_06: You know, security alone is a big, big item.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_06: One of my jobs after the parade was I was called the traffic and transportation department and the police department and say, any problems?
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_06: Do we need a meet?
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_06: And almost obvious was no.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_06: The other thing we did was we had monthly public meetings.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_06: And they used to be at the Metropolitan Multiservice Center, among other places.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_06: But there were open meetings to the public.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_06: And the July meeting was tell us what went wrong.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_06: And we would write that down and try to accommodate everything we could with what you know, what was possible.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_06: We try to learn how to not take anything personal.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_06: And some of those ideas were great.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_06: Absolutely great.
• 32:04
  Brett: But what were the biggest problems when you had it in Montrose?
• 32:07
  Brett: Because I know they had to eventually move it to downtown.
• 32:09
  Brett: And the last couple of years that I did it in Montrose, crowd control was kind of hard.
• 32:13
  Brett: I noticed that people were not paying attention to the barriers anymore.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_06: One of the things what I loved about Ray Hill, and it started to be me, was Ray Hill wasn't like a leader in a lot of organizations.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_06: He just sort of went out and did things.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_06: And that's sort of how I am now.
• 32:26
  Brett: That's how you've always been.
• 32:27
  Brett: Yeah.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_06: So I was part of a number of different organizations.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_06: But Ray Hill on his own used to walk up and down the lineup and talk to every unit and thank them for being in the parade.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_06: Tell them there's going to be protesters out there.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_06: Tell them to ignore them because we're not going to change their money.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_06: Tell them that there's probably kids, young people two blocks away, just looking around the buildings, watching the parade because they're not comfortable enough to be in the parade.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_06: And maybe in a year or two years, they'll be up front like everybody else.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_06: That was part of what we were doing.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_06: It was the one day in the year that pride, that the community was spotlighted.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_06: And we worked with the press.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_06: One of the other things we used to do is we used to have a press conference.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_06: And we would, we would sort of say it was mandatory for all events that was happening during Pride Week that they send a representative to talk to the press.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_06: Part of that was teaching these organizations how to talk to the press.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_06: So it wasn't just a Ray Hill or me talking to the press.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_06: So there was lots of little things that we did, but we did have some problems.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_06: The protesters came.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_06: Usually we didn't have a problem with that.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_06: There was one year where we had this incredible rain and the mosquitoes were all over the place.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_06: And we were lucky enough to, and the city doesn't deal with that.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_06: It's a county.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_06: We had the county spray for mosquitoes.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_06: Usually the county only sprays for mosquitoes for disease, not for inconvenience, but they did that.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_06: And a lot of it was just working with people.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_06: And I'm not always the best person with working with people, but we did.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_06: We listened to people.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_06: We worked with the politicians, we worked with the with the businesses, we worked with the corporations, we worked with the community to try to make this an event that we can all work on.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_06: And when the parade was over at midnight, we would go back to the office and drink some beers and just talk about what went right, what didn't go right, and started planning for the next year.
• 34:17
  Brett: How long did you stay with the Pride Organizations?
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_06: I was there from about 1982 to about the mid-2000s.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_06: The last two years, I was actually a paid employee.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_06: But for all that other time, I was a volunteer.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_06: And um it was the greatest thing.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_06: Working on this year-round to make this event.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_06: One of the things we couldn't do in Montrose, we couldn't do a really good festival.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_06: There just wasn't a big piece of land to do it.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_06: As disappointed as a lot of us were when they moved it downtown, that was one of the things they gained.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_06: They gained the area to do a festival that we just couldn't do.
• 34:49
  Brett: Well, what do you think pride means now?
• 34:51
  Brett: I'm hearing these younger people, and they're sounding like we almost did in the 80s.
• 34:56
  Brett: There's feeling like they're targeted.
• 34:58
  Brett: Obviously, the pendulum's swinging back.
• 34:59
  Brett: We're losing corporate sponsorships left and right.
• 35:02
  Brett: Pride organizations are really struggling to do that.
• 35:05
  Brett: What does it mean today?
• 35:06
  Brett: What is the fight here now?
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_06: So I grew up near the Scranton area of northeastern Pennsylvania.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_06: And today I'm sit looking on Facebook and I'm seeing they're having an event in Scranton.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_06: They're having an event in Brooksbury.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_06: They're having events in these rural areas here in Cady and Missouri County and the woodlands.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_06: That is an incredible thing.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_06: And yes, they're smaller, but they're more orientated to the community.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_06: It's hard for me to judge.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_06: As much as I try to, you know, keep keep knowing that.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_06: I think there's a lot of disconnect in the community.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_06: One of the things we used to do is on the day of the parade, we were in the building that's now legacy.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_06: That was a club, and we had an office down there, and it was great.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_06: Jay Allen owned the building, and we paid rent, but he gave us a lot more than what we paid for.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_06: On the day of the parade at noon, we would have all the key volunteers and a few special guests and the grand marshals.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_06: And what we would do what I call the Last Supper.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_06: And what we would do is we would talk about the final things we need to talk to.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_06: And then we brought in somebody like Phyllis Fry or an e Parker or Ray Hill and have them tell the young volunteers why we're doing this, what it's about.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_06: And that was the best thing.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_06: It's like every time we learn how to do something that worked, we try to do it better.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_06: And it's a different world now.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, we have Facebook, we have it on TV, which we never dreamed of it.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_06: Certainly in my day dealing with AIDS, you know, losing people year after year.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_06: And I had heard stories where people went to a parade and a week later they died.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_06: It's like you hear about people who are sick and make it to that Christmas and then a year a week later they're gone.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_06: And we're a different community.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_06: In many ways, we're much bigger and better.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_06: In many ways, we don't need pride, but you still see these stories of young people who don't find the connection.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_06: You still see these people growing up in families that don't allow them to have the connection.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_06: We're seeing the libraries lose the books about us.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_06: We saw the rainbow crossing go away.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_06: The battle isn't over with.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_06: We still got lots and lots of things to deal deal with.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_06: We're worried about democracy right now.
• 37:12
  Brett: I know that you are a big advocate of voting and voting often and making sure.
• 37:17
  Brett: I'm hoping that these midterms we get a little bit of relief, but as yet to see.
• 37:21
  Brett: I appreciate your history with Pride.
• 37:23
  Brett: I think of your name and I think of the organization a lot of times because I think when I moved here, you were definitely at the head of it.
• 37:29
  Brett: And I appreciate all that you've done for it.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_06: So the one thing we're working on right now, I'm sort of like working on undercover in a bit.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_06: Pride had a banner district along Lower West Time.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_06: Yes.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_06: After Pride moved downtown, pretty much everybody forgot about it.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_06: As there was talk about taking away the crossing, I was actually on the phone with Councilmember Kamen, and I said to her, But you know, there's a banner district.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_06: And so we have been working since October through the city's bureaucracy with the help of district C, with the help of some other people, to try to get this going again.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_06: And hopefully in a few weeks we're going to be able to make an announcement, but we'll see.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_06: We'll see if you can have those banners back up.
• 38:09
  Brett: Well, it's wild.
• 38:10
  Brett: I mean, the the crosswalk being painted over and everything else.
• 38:13
  Brett: It's just, I'm like, where are we?
• 38:15
  Brett: I mean, what this is we're supposed to be moving forward, not backwards, but well, and this is the thing.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_06: They came after the rainbow crossings, but then they went after everybody else who had decorative crossings.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_06: True.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_06: So all over the state.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_06: And we're hearing in other, you know, other states too, but Texas is Texas.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_06: And, you know, but there's always defiance.
• 38:34
  Brett: Well, thank goodness for that.
• 38:36
  Brett: And I think you've you've definitely invoked a couple of names that make me think of Defiance Personified with Ray Hill.
• 38:42
  Brett: I thank you for your defiance too.
• 38:44
  Brett: So always great to get your take on pride and your history with it.
• 38:48
  Brett: So I appreciate that.
• 38:49
  Brett: Thank you so much.
• 38:58
  Brett: Hi there.
• 38:59
  Brett: This is Brett Colombic.
• 39:00
  Brett: I'm joined by Derek Charles Livingston, the artistic director of Stages Houston.
• 39:05
  Brett: And they have just announced that their summer musical, Spamalton and 21 Chump Street, is gonna be extended through about the 4th of July, am I right?
• 39:14
  Brett: July 5th, yes.
• 39:16
  Brett: July 5th.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_03: I like to call it Lanford Wilson Day.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 39:18
  Brett: So that's where the Twitter.
• 39:20
  Brett: We just lost Apple.
• 39:21
  Brett: Yeah, no one got that joke, but that's a good one.
• 39:23
  Brett: The scenery people did.
• 39:24
  Brett: The hardcore fleet people got that.
• 39:26
  Brett: Yes, they did.
• 39:26
  Brett: But okay, so tell me what are these about?
• 39:28
  Brett: What what why extend them?
• 39:30
  Brett: Why do you think it's popular?
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_03: I'll start with the your first question.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_03: So what are they about?
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_03: So Spamleton uses the music of Hamilton to tell the story of Lynn Manuel Miranda, who has set out to re-energize and reform Broadway into something that's very powerful and relevant and modern by bringing in hip-hop and rap tunes to the Broadway musical.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_03: And in it, he is struggling with a Leslie Odom character who wants to hew to more traditional Broadway type of music.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_03: And so it uses mostly the music of Hamilton with lyrics rewritten by Gerard Allison Drini, who for 40 years has been doing the Forbidden Broadway series so brilliantly.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_03: So you can imagine the lyrics are brilliant.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_03: And it references, I won't give away a number because we're actually having a contest, but it references a couple of dozen other Broadway musicals along the way.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_03: So if you're a fan of Hamilton, it is a pure delight because it's the music of Hamilton and it's about the guy who created it.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_03: If you're a musical theater lover, it's a lot of fun because it is an irreverent and loving reference to all the shows that you love.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_03: Or if you just love a very smart, very well written, very well staged, all praises to Valerie Rochelle, who is my associate artistic director here, who staged it show, then Spamleton has something for you.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_03: And 21 Chump Street, because I wanted to celebrate Lynn Manuel Miranda.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, partly we did Spamblet because it's also the 10th anniversary of Hamilton sweeping the Broadway, sweeping the Tony Awards.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_03: Can you believe it's already been 10 years?
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_03: I know already.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_03: And I wanted to find a way of honoring him and having a full evening because Spambleton really is a long one act.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_03: And so 21 Chump Street is a show that he wrote in between In the Heights and Hamilton.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_03: It was originally a this American Life story about the perils of making wrong love decisions.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_03: And on one of This American Life's anniversary, they commissioned Lynn Manuel Miranda to write a musical based on one of their stories.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_03: So it is a short, short, a true become radio show commissioned to be a short musical that was then performed at Brooklyn Academy of Music.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you can also see it on YouTube, that is this amazing, very smart, again, very well written, very tight musical by Lynn Manuel Miranda.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_03: So putting them together really was a way of celebrating him and his achievements and the voice that he has brought to Broadway.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_03: And it's about a young student at his southern, South Florida high school who falls in love with a new girl in school, and she talks him into procuring weed for him.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_03: And if you're fans of 21 Jump Street, you might have some insight as to who this Naomi actually is.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_03: And that's all I'll say, so people are enticed to come see it.
• 42:12
  Brett: You know, Forbidden Broadway, I remember that used to come out every year, and I would just like kill to hear all of their spoof songs.
• 42:19
  Brett: So I mean you're in good hands with that one.
• 42:21
  Brett: And an actual work by Lynn Manuel, Miranda backing up to it.
• 42:25
  Brett: That's that's gotta be amazing.
• 42:27
  Brett: And of course, I can't believe you said that, 10 years.
• 42:29
  Brett: Yeah, I know.
• 42:30
  Brett: How classic is that, right?
• 42:32
  Brett: And he really did reinvent roughly.
• 42:34
  Brett: Because I mean, you look at like what what was up this past year and like the jellicoball and things.
• 42:39
  Brett: I mean, it's he really did kind of revolutionize everything.
• 42:42
  Brett: So But it's obviously it's doing well because you're extending.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, and it's funny because I think a lot of people sort of looked at me askance when I decided to do it.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_03: Like, Derek, well, I guess this is kind of a cheesy gimmicky thing to do, and no one really said that to my face until after it took off and they realized how good it was.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_03: They're like, Yeah, I didn't I was kind of looking at you and wondering, but but now I really see his brilliance.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_03: Even before the ensemble gets to the final song with Spamleton, the audience literally is on its feet because it is so delightful, so smart, so quick-witted.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_03: And Ballery has done, again, I said, uh, just a top-notch job of staging it.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_03: And there's a really great ensemble of actors singers who are doing it.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_03: And John Cornelius, our music director, is really keeping them really tight, and the music is really is really achieved at a very high level.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_03: And our sound designers done a really good job of making sure you can hear all of those lyrics because when they're flying by like that, and they're the music you know, but new lyrics, you really have to hear it.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_03: And so he's done a really wonderful job of of making having great clarity of sound in there so you can hear all of those lyrics.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_03: Hamilton moves at such a fast pace.
• 43:47
  Brett: Yes.
• 43:48
  Brett: The way that they deliver the songs.
• 43:49
  Brett: I mean, it was like I remember for years, it was like Sonnheim was famous for having those fast moving songs, and then along comes Hamilton, and I'm like, oh my god.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you know, it's funny because.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_03: Sondheim is referenced a few times, and Ben Franklin Sondheim appears in Spamalton with a spoof of another hundred people, which is, you know, this song that he's so well known for that has the lyrics flying by.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_03: And a Linman Momiranda actually says to Sondheim, Wait, didn't you write this, which has all these lyrics?
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_03: And Sondheim says, shh, shh.
• 44:21
  Brett: Exactly.
• 44:22
  Brett: You know, one of the things I think is interesting is that a lot of times in our theaters here in Houston, and it's traditionally summer is kind of a lighter space.
• 44:30
  Brett: It's uh there's not as many shows.
• 44:32
  Brett: I'm looking, and like by August, everything goes blah, you know.
• 44:36
  Brett: And then we really don't pick up until September.
• 44:38
  Brett: What do you think?
• 44:39
  Brett: Is that a tradition everywhere?
• 44:40
  Brett: Is that like kind of the season is September to Well, sure.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_03: I think I mean the the traditional theater season in regional theaters and even on Broadway really is September to June.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_03: That's how summer stock came to be is that people would go away to vacation and they would watch these musicals that didn't have necessarily the same production values, that could happen within a week or two weeks, and people would put them up and so you'd have an entertainment while you're away in the Catskills or wherever it was cooler.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_03: And I think one of the things that's happened here in Houston is that the audiences that are here are actually very excited about the possibility of seeing shows in the summer.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_03: And I think if you look at what we're doing with the Spamleton Chump leaning into entertainment and then following up with Holland Barbara, you know, from Broadway and beyond, it's Holland's 30th show at stages.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_03: Only 30th.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_03: No, I mean I thought it was way more than that.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_03: 30th show.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, 80 players is traditionally in the summer does a musical and the alley does summer chills.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_03: So I think it's a way of of giving people just uh a lighter entertainment quotient that still invites them to come to the theater during the summer.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_03: There are there are fewer things that are competing.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_03: Not not that we as theaters compete because I we really view each other as colleagues, but there are fewer different shows, and so it allows people to get a chance to go see a lot of them.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_03: And what's really fun with Spamleton is I noticed all these people showing up in Hamilton t-shirts because they're such huge fans.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_03: And it it but the show doesn't disappoint.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_03: It doesn't make you feel like, oh, I didn't quite see Hamilton.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_03: What you what you can walk away with is a reverence for a show that you really love.
• 46:08
  Brett: No, it's funny.
• 46:08
  Brett: Summer musicals do really well.
• 46:10
  Brett: I mean, I know that the Alley has their tradition of doing the summer chiller.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 46:14
  Brett: Which they've gone whole hog this year because they started with misery and now they're Misery is that's it, man, right?
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_03: It's evolved with three different spaces on it, so it's crazy, right?
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my gosh.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_03: No, don't even even start out of that.
• 46:25
  Brett: Yeah.
• 46:26
  Brett: But yes.
• 46:26
  Brett: And you've got Holland coming in, and and that's what what is the date for her going?
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_03: Holland starts, oh no, you put me on the spot, July eighth is when that opens.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_03: I yes.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 46:39
  Brett: I think I'm seeing it on the 10th or something.
• 46:41
  Brett: So I think I think you're yes.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_03: And that'll be lovely because it is it's it's a cabaret, and you know, if you know Holland, you know how engaging she is.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_03: So it's it's Holland being Holland, singing songs at from Broadway.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_03: And also, the second part are songs that she has sung at stages.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_03: So if you know Holland, it's great retrospective of her time here.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_03: And if you don't, it's just a chance to get to know someone who's one of as as as you pointed out, as you were warded, one of Houston's great talents in musical theater.
• 47:07
  Brett: I mean, she is just iconic with it.
• 47:09
  Brett: I will have to say, one of my favorite memories of Holland was when she did the lead, Kira and Xana do at stages.
• 47:16
  Brett: And if you can imagine, stages at that time was actually in a smaller space.
• 47:21
  Brett: Yes.
• 47:22
  Brett: And they had to roller skate, and I was like, Holland.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, the thing, a talent like Holland, she really can draw you in in a small space and fill a large space as well.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 47:34
  Brett: So and I guess I just saw her in Beautiful at the Hobby Center, and she was amazing.
• 47:39
  Brett: Wasn't Beautiful a wonderful show?
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_03: I never talked about my theater, but I am I am a Houston theater fan.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_03: And so I am too chance a chance to go to to Tuts and to see another theater really succeed so well with Beautiful.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_03: And all about Houston talent that was in it as well, right?
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_03: It was insane.
• 47:55
  Brett: I mean, we had a lot of Houston talent, which is what I really love, is that you've and in fact I think even for Spambleton, you've got some new Houston talent that I haven't seen yet.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_03: So and that's hard to stump me on that because I see a lot.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_03: All of everyone in that show is a Houstonian.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, we've already cast our come from away.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_03: And here's the only part I'll tease you about because we have to talk about it later.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_03: Everyone in that show is a Houstonian as well.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so we're really we have great talent here in Houston, and a lot of people, you know, we have great training programs here.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_03: So people either had those training programs and didn't leave, or they left and they came back because this is really home for them.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_03: And and more and more theaters are providing a way for them to do work and to do work at a high level, at a really high caliber.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_03: So they don't have to be on tour, they don't have to be in Broadway to do their best work in a theater that showcases the art of producing theater at a high level.
• 48:45
  Brett: Well, I've I've noticed a trend.
• 48:47
  Brett: There's a lot of people moving from New York here, and you you've had one in your Lehman trilogy production.
• 48:53
  Brett: Yeah, Spencer, Playche, right?
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_03: Spencer, yeah.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_03: Two Broadway shows under his belt, a first-class national tour of Lion King for a number of years, and came here and killed it in Lehman trilogy and has worked as 80 players and kills it, and then has worked at the alley a couple of times.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, he's a prime example of somebody who is literally Broadway talent, who so many can see here.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_03: And he brought his wife, who's the same thing.
• 49:14
  Brett: So I mean there you go.
• 49:15
  Brett: That's a great actor and singer, right?
• 49:17
  Brett: Yeah.
• 49:18
  Brett: Well, one of the things I wanted to ask you about, because it's June.
• 49:21
  Brett: Yes.
• 49:21
  Brett: Pride month.
• 49:22
  Brett: What did you do for Pride?
• 49:24
  Brett: What did Derek Charles Livingston do for Pride?
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_03: Interestingly enough, last week I had to go to Oklahoma and I went to the to to Black Wall Street, and there's a an exceptional museum that really depicts the the historical black community that was there before the massacre and really honors the people who stayed in that community, rebuilt that community.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_03: And it's the museum itself was only five or six years old.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_03: But and here's where it intersects with pride.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_03: So it's this this amazing modern building that they raised these funds for.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_03: And on the outside of it is a quote from James Baldwin, an openly gay African-American man who was that 60 years ago, 70 years ago.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_03: And the the quote embossed outside in Ray's Letters is James Baldwin.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_03: So I took a picture in front of that.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_03: He's he's been a longtime hero of mine because of being an early groundbreaker, both as a queer man and as a black man, and writing in both of those spaces, literally in the 1950s, and doing so proudly, right?
• 50:26
  Brett: So yeah, just amazing.
• 50:27
  Brett: Yeah, absolutely.
• 50:28
  Brett: I'm gonna challenge you this next year just to see if you take the bait.
• 50:32
  Brett: You know, we were talking before this interview about some events that used to happen theatrically in Pride around this time.
• 50:39
  Brett: I think that I used to do an annual reading of the normal heart at stages.
• 50:43
  Brett: We used to do it.
• 50:44
  Brett: Yes, and it was just a one-off thing.
• 50:46
  Brett: It was a cast that we had had gotten together with a guy that used to direct shows here, and we would just do one night only and just do like a pride night, you know, famous gay play, whatever.
• 50:57
  Brett: And then the alley had a pride cabaret at one point, and we've had a lot of different things.
• 51:01
  Brett: So I would love to see one of the theaters come up with something because I noticed this year we we don't have it.
• 51:07
  Brett: I mean, I have to say Spambleton, yeah.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_03: I will give that to you.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it's definitely mentioned the normal heart because my undergraduate degree is in theater.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_03: Of course.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_03: No pun intended, it's heart and its politics and its fight.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_03: And famously, Larry Cramer and I got into a fight later when I was the chair of the March on Washington in '93.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_03: But that's neither here nor there.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_03: I so I directed one of the first productions of that.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_03: But you know, here's a teaser, and maybe somebody out there will say, that's a great idea.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_03: Here's stages, here's some money to do this.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_03: The Inheritance was on Broadway a number of years ago, a an epic play about gay men living in New York in a very particular time that crosses both the AIDS crisis as well as the hopefulness of a of the generation that really came of age around the the early and mid the I guess the early teens and 2000.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_03: But it's a huge, huge play.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_03: And it probably something I don't think we can afford to do.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_03: Every regional theater that's done it, has done it as a labor of love, and only a few have done it because it's so large.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_03: But I have long thought that wouldn't it be great to do a day-long celebration where you where we had actors read that play.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_03: So it's it's it's on my mind.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_03: And I actually saw the very final performances on Broadway because of the pandemic, it literally closed the next day.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_03: The governor of New York closed the theaters.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_03: So I I got a chance to see it on Broadway, and then I saw the opening night at the Geffen in Los Angeles, and got a chance to talk to Matthew Lopez.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_03: And it was funny because I loved it in New York.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_03: It it und it undid me.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_03: I was so I I sobbed so hard, Brett.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_03: I heed.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_03: Literally, strangers walked up to me at intermission and hugged me.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_03: No, literally, because I was, you know, in my early 20s, I was an AIDS prevention educator.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_03: And so I was working in this AIDS organization, and so my friends were dying and clients were dying, and I never really sort of processed that grief.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_03: And so sitting in this Broadway theater, I processed.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so it was a it was one of the most moving, profound experiences I had in the theater.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_03: But even as I was sitting there, like having this profound experience, the theater practitioner me was going, okay, he should look at this.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, here's something he should fix.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, something he should fix.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_03: I saw it in Los Angeles, and it's as if we had a conversation and he agreed with me because the LA script, he that that that is the that that script is the one that I want to do.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_03: So there is a version of the of that of the inheritance that Matthew Lopez worked on and created that is out there to be read.
• 53:39
  Brett: Well, I I challenge you, definitely.
• 53:41
  Brett: Yeah let's get it together.
• 53:43
  Brett: But this Pride Month, we'll all go see Spamleton.
• 53:46
  Brett: But I decided that because we're coming up on this 4th of July thing, right?
• 53:51
  Brett: And it's the 250th anniversary of America and all that.
• 53:55
  Brett: So I looked at the schedule and I said, All right, I'm gonna go to this on that weekend because if I'm gonna celebrate something about America, it's gonna be Lynn Manuel, Miranda, you know, writing and changing Broadway forever and and and bringing all of this influence of his culture and other cultures into this space.
• 54:14
  Brett: So a little dig.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_03: And the show he was is was creating was about a founding father, so it is appropriate to see it that weekend.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_03: That was not lost on me either.
• 54:24
  Brett: I definitely I will be there, I think the Thursday or Friday before the Fourth of July.
• 54:29
  Brett: Yeah, I know that.
• 54:30
  Brett: But Spamblet, 21 Chump Street, and then after the Fourth of July, July 8th, we're starting with Helen Vavre, her cabaret.
• 54:37
  Brett: So stages got you covered with music all summer.
• 54:41
  Brett: Yes.
• 54:41
  Brett: And then kick off your season in September Come From Away.
• 54:45
  Brett: Yes.
• 54:45
  Brett: Yeah, yeah.
• 54:46
  Brett: That's amazing.
• 54:46
  Brett: What a beautiful story that is.
• 54:48
  Brett: Well, just one last pride shout out.
• 54:50
  Brett: Sure.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_03: Do you have like a best pride memory of going to a pride or something that happened on Pride or not necessarily Pride itself, but at I was a young kid, the 87th March on Washington.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't know if you've ever been to the metro in Washington, D.C., you notice it's this big cavern, and and it was filled with people who had just been to the march, queer people everywhere.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_03: And I was with a college mate of mine, we actually are co-godparents to a kid who's now 28 years old.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_03: And we were both teenagers, and we came, we stepped off the metro, and there was this throng of queer people everywhere.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_03: And I was sure she's she's like five foot three, and I'm like six foot two, and I was sure she was gonna lose me.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_03: And so I started chanting as I marched through the metro system.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_03: What do we want?
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_03: And the entire cade yelled back, gay rights, when do we want them?
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_03: Now.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_03: So I literally walked through with thousands, leading a chant of thousands and thousands of people in this echo chamber, and it was like the emotional thinking, this great empowerment moment early in my life, right?
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_03: And then she she was able to find me.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_03: Good.
• 55:55
  Brett: You lost her and never saw her again.
• 55:56
  Brett: That was a thing that was gonna be the thing.
• 55:58
  Brett: No, no, that's a that's an amazing story, and that's definitely something that I would put down in my in the books as a great pride memory.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 56:05
  Brett: It's a it's an important time to celebrate it, and I feel like this year feels very it hits a little bit different this year.
• 56:10
  Brett: 2026 Pride is a little bit more cautionary and dire, and it's a little bit more important.
• 56:15
  Brett: It feels a little bit heavier.
• 56:16
  Brett: So I'm glad that we can go to stages and laugh at Spambleton and and kind of get out of that for a little bit.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_03: So hopefully in the fall, because I know that because of the rain here, we've had to reschedule part of it, that we'll find a way to celebrate it or or come together in our collective voices and really recognize just how important it is still to celebrate who we are.
• 56:35
  Brett: Yeah.
• 56:35
  Brett: Well, they they announced today actually that they are agreeing on a date.
• 56:39
  Brett: Good.
• 56:40
  Brett: And I would not be surprised if it is in the fall.
• 56:42
  Brett: And we'll get to see because there's been so many people wanting to move this parade from June into the fall because Houston is so blazingly hot.
• 56:49
  Brett: Yeah.
• 56:50
  Brett: So we'll see how that works out.
• 56:51
  Brett: So stay tuned on that one.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_03: But I lived in Las Vegas and its pride is in the fall simply because of that.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, it makes sense.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_03: And Palm Springs is also in the fall, again, because of that.
• 57:01
  Brett: So well, that's probably why Stonewall happened.
• 57:03
  Brett: They were cranky, they were hot.
• 57:06
  Brett: And couldn't get a decent drink.
• 57:08
  Brett: Yes.
• 57:08
  Brett: And Tutie Carlin.
• 57:10
  Brett: Everything all at once.
• 57:10
  Brett: All right, my theater person.
• 57:12
  Brett: There we go.
• 57:13
  Brett: All right.
• 57:14
  Brett: Well, thank you, Derek, for using you.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_03: Always a pleasure.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you so much.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_03: Bye.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_09: This has been Queer Voices, heard on KPFT Houston, and as a podcast available from several podcasting sources.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_09: Check our webpage queervoices.org for more information.
• 57:42
  Ghost of Glenn: Some of the material in this program has been edited to improve clarity and runtime.
• 57:46
  Ghost of Glenn: This program does not endorse any political views or animal species.
• 57:48
  Ghost of Glenn: Views, opinions, and endorsements are those of the participants and the organizations they represent.
• 57:52
  Ghost of Glenn: In case of death, please discontinue use and discard remaining products.