Staging democracy Theater takes on the Maine Christian Civic League BY MEGAN GRUMBLING
	CLOSE TO HOME Tuesday, Oct 4, Acoustic Coffee, Portland | Oct 13, Parkside Neighborhood Center, Portland | Oct 16, Unity College, Unity | Oct 25, Gorham High School | Nov 2, Bates College | www.roilnow.com | info@roilnow.com

At first, there are only lone voices, strident, sad, and fearful: "I don’t think anyone knows how much this hurts." "You’re an abomination before God." "What does my sexuality have to do with how I do my job?"

Soon, the voices form choruses: "You don’t even know us." "Maybe we don’t want to know you." "Bigots!" "Queers!"

Finally, people appear and take sides on the impromptu stage, their frightened postures stricken with distrust, affront, misunderstanding. Their division comprises complex layers of fears, but comes down to a single question, a simple "yes" or "no." These thoughts and figures are a theatrical representation of the people on either side — and in the middle — of this November’s ballot Question 1. They are given voice in the original voter-education show Close to Home, which will be performed around the state by ROIL, a local activist theater troupe moved to take dramatic action.

On November 8, Mainers will vote on whether to pass a people’s veto of Chapter 10 of the Public Laws of 2005. Mounted by the Maine Christian Civic League, the referendum would revoke the chapter called "An Act to Extend Civil Rights Protections to All People Regardless of Sexual Orientation." A vote for the MCCL’s people’s veto would reopen Maine’s gays and lesbians to legal discrimination in the spheres of the workplace, finance, and housing. But according to the campaign rhetoric of the Maine Christian Civic League and its executive director, the infamous Michael Heath, a vote against the veto is a vote for "special rights" for homosexuals, and would, among other things, "discriminate against people with traditional views of morality," endanger children by the violence supposedly prevalent in same-sex partnerships, and "reward homosexual behavior." If any of that strikes you as at all rabid or egregious, thank the ROILers for taking it upon themselves to publicly dramatize just why this fear-mongering referendum must be defeated.

ROIL got its start this past winter in the joined forces of Portland women Caitlin Corrigan, Johanna Horton, Aliya Levine, and Tessy Seward. Their vision: a performance group, composed of diverse community members, that would address issues of discrimination, prejudice, and class schisms in the greater Portland community (see "Act Like You Care," Aug. 26, by Sara Donnelly).

In its inaugural project, in May, ROIL members joined veteran local theater activist Cathy Plourde and performance artist Michael Keck to work with youth from the Riverton Park housing project. Collaboratively, they and the young people created a series of skits, which they later performed at a celebration of the life of Malcolm X at the Center for Cultural Exchange.

In June, they began planning a theater piece to address the referendum, attracted several more community members, and conducted intensive workshops to develop their script collaboratively. Open auditions rounded out a cast of eight, which includes Seth Berner, Peter Brown, Derek Converse, Joanna Horton, Hannah Legerton, Paul Miller, Christopher Reilling, and Tessy Seward.

As a troupe, they continued honing the script collaboratively, and as a result the writing in Close to Home is acute not just in its range of perspectives on the issue, but in its balance, its honesty, and its empathy. The characters in Close to Home are not just gay activists. A straight mother, who struggles to speak the word "gay," is nonetheless appalled when her daughter’s lesbian preschool teacher is evicted. Executives in a New York City company decide to locate a new project in Burlington rather than Portland because they’d rather not be associated with such a "backwoods" attitude against workplace rights protection. St. Paul gives a visitor from the future an elaboration on his Letter to the Corinthians.

Even when characters are on the "wrong" side of the issue, the troupe has taken care to draw them three-dimensionally, so as to focus on the human elements that can, they hope, unite rather than divide. When a conservative family gathers for bible study time, the kids have some questions about some of the Bible’s now-outdated edicts, and why we’re now allowed to do some things (eat pork and let our women out without veils, for example), but homosexuality is still out. The parents aren’t portrayed as raging bigots, but as people who dearly value their faith as they’ve learned it.

For their rousing finale, the ROIL performers summon up Eleanor Roosevelt’s address to the United Nations in Paris, 1948, in adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. "Where do universal human rights begin?" refrains the troupe. Their voices surge by turns and in concert, and in that strength, Close to Home is as vital a challenge as it is an answer.

Megan Grumbling can be reached at mgrumbling@hotmail.com