A fairy extravaganza
"If you like plays like Grease or Ragtime, this is nothing like that." -- Broadway World
Scandalous Conduct: A Fairy Extravaganza (installation photo: John Hesselbarth)
I would have bet money that I had sent a Matthew Lawrence Update last month when I was running a crowdfunding campaign1, but according to Substack my last missive to you was in June. Boy has a lot happened since June!
The big news is that the video installation I co-created—Scandalous Conduct: A Fairy Extravaganza—is up for the next two weeks at the Great Friends Meeting House in Newport, Rhode Island. My partner Jason and I have spent the last five years writing, producing, casting, directing, and editing this oddball project, and now here it is just like that. If you’re in Rhode Island and want to know more about the 1919 Newport Sex Scandal, you can visit the Meeting House (21 Farewell Street in Newport) Thursday through Sunday from 12-4pm through October 6. One great thing about the space is that it is only a block away from the YMCA where so much of the story takes place. The video is 67 minutes long, free to watch, and loops continuously. The critics would be raving if there were any critics left2, but viewers are comparing it to the films of Kenneth Anger and Rainer Werner Fassbinder so we feel like it’s landing roughly where we wanted it to even if I haven’t seen a Kenneth Anger film in nearly twenty years.
We were also featured on The Public’s Radio last week. James Baumgartner from Artscape says it’s “a fascinating bit of forgotten local history that’s presented in a thoroughly enjoyable way.”
If you’d like to hear about the making of Scandalous Conduct, Jason and I are giving an in-person talk next week at Rhode Island Historical Society. It’s free but registration is required. I loathe pumpkin spice season and hate Halloween BUT October is both LGBT History Month and American Archives Month so an October 1 event about LGBT archival research is really my one moment to feel seasonally relevant.
Tony Orrico and Christopher-Rasheem McMillan for Headmaster No. 10
I’m going to be honest: the rollout for this issue of Headmaster has been rocky at best. The Boston Art Book Fair—reliably our best sales event of the year—got postponed, seemingly indefinitely. At the last minute we canceled our appearance at the Queer/Trans Zine Fest in Providence because my mom was in the hospital. The New England Art Book Fair in Portland and the New York Queer Zine Fest both overlapped with our Scandalous Conduct exhibition… so basically, we haven’t done any shows this fall. Sadly and annoyingly, we’re also aborting our plans to exhibit at this year’s Miss Read Art Book Fair in Berlin. (Annoyingly for me, because I have never been to Berlin and feel like this would have been my one chance.)
HOWEVER, barring any calamities, hospitalizations, or unforeseen natural disasters, we’ll be at the Haus of Codec Halloween Art Marketplace in Providence’s Dexter Park on October 26, which is likely our last show of 2024.
Laurent Pellissier for Headmaster No. 10
I recently wrapped up a work project at Providence Public Library, processing records relating to the RI AIDS Quilt. My favorite discovery from that project was a painting created in memory of Marvin Feldman, the subject of the very first AIDS Quilt panel made by in 1986 by activist Cleve Jones. Feldman was born and raised in Providence and attended Classical High School before moving to San Francisco as a young man. A local art teacher who’d known Feldman—sorry but I don’t have her name handy—created a painting in his memory (though I have only seen a photo, not the artwork itself). Among other details, the memorial features a maypole, a unicorn, and a blinged-out rhino holding party balloons.
This absence of income for the fall means that I am once again open to part-time or even full-time work! Having received a job rejection this very morning I am a bit down in the dumps about my future prospects, so please send anything relevant my way. My website is due for an update but you can get a general idea of my skillset here.
As a former local arts critic I am allowed to make this joke.