You Are Confused! — A Spanglish Coming-Of-Age Story — Debuts At Bath Beach’s Harry Warren Theatre

This weekend, the Ryan Repertory Company will present You Are Confused! — a coming-of-age story full of surprises written by Eduardo Leanez and Patrick E. Horrigan — at Bath Beach’s tiny and rustic Harry Warren Theatre (2445 Bath Avenue).

The one-man-show, performed in English and Spanish by Leanez, focusses on Yoel, a hyper-active kid with a passion for boy bands, soap operas, fashion shows, action heroes, and Olympic athletes. But his greatest role model, and his toughest critic, is his mother.

Fiercely devoted to her son, Yoel’s mother is also blind to his gifts and his burgeoning sexuality. Audiences are taken on a fast-moving trip through Yoel’s childhood in Caracas to his young-adulthood in New York as he battles the bullies within, the bullies at home, and the bullies out there in the world.

Tickets, which can be purchased here, are available for the following performance times:

• Thursday, June 18, 7:30pm
• Friday, June 19, 7:30pm
• Saturday, June 20, 7:30pm
• Sunday, June 21, 3:00pm

Tickets are $20 for general admission and $15 for students and seniors. Special Friday night performances, which include pre-show beverages and a post-show reception with beverages, hors d’oeuvres and the creative team, cost $25.

We got to check out the 70-minute play last weekend and it was equal parts heartbreaking and hilarious. Though the show touched on some dark subject matter like bullying, the overall message was one of relentless optimism, imagination, and the power to reinvent oneself.

Leanez and Horrigan sat down to chat with us about their semi-autobiographical character Yoel, Latin American mothers, and how the play has evolved “with the times.”

1. Can you talk about how you came up with the concept for “You Are Confused!”

EL: I started doing a stand-up comedy routine about coming out to my parents, about how many times I had to do it to make sure they understood I am a gay man. Although the actual process of coming out to them was a bit dramatic at first, I found comedy to be a good channel to digest the situation and grow stronger from it. Some friends in the Hispanic theater community saw the routine and invited me to participate in a festival in Washington Heights in the summer of 2011. At that point I had approximately fifteen minutes of material, and I needed to extend it to an hour, so I approached Patrick and asked his help to develop the show. He is so good with story structure, so very soon he said let’s see the relationship of these characters over the years, and then we decided to stay more with the mother-son relationship throughout the show. That first version of the show was well-received by the audience and critics, so we decided to keep working on it and also started working with director Rosalie Purvis. Having her as part of the development process lead to a version that we produced in the spring of 2012.

PEH: Once Eduardo asked me to collaborate with him, I became really interested in the project because in part it’s about a person’s love of pop culture and how his identity is shaped by all the encounters he has with pop culture, especially as a kid. For all the differences between Eduardo and me in terms of culture, language, temperament, and so on, both of us were artistically inclined as children, and pop culture really had a force for us that shaped who we became as adults. Just another word about Rosalie’s contribution to the show: she has helped us understand and deepen the material immeasurably. She also added one of my favorite parts of the show, which is a wordless “ballet” in which Yoel goes through a kind of “dark night of the soul,” wrestling with his fears of confronting the homophobia, internalized and external, that has been such a massive part of his upbringing. Rosalie is amazing.

2. Eduardo, the play is inspired by your own stand-up routine and experiences growing up gay in a Latino family. How much of your character Yoel’s experience is autobiographical and how much of it is fiction?

EL: Most situations in Yoel’s story are taken from my own experience, but most of them have received a theatrical treatment to make them either more dramatic or more comic. Other situations are fantasies that I had when I was a child and still have to some extent.

3. For Patrick, it must have been difficult co-writing a play based on someone else’s life. Can you describe what that process was like?

PEH: This show was our first artistic collaboration, so it’s been a learning process — for me, learning about how Eduardo thinks and expresses himself on a level that goes beyond our everyday communication, and then trying to blend that with my own ways of working as a writer. Sometimes Eduardo writes best “on his feet”—pacing the floor, acting things out, while I sit at the keyboard and try to record as much of what I’m hearing as fast as I can. Then we go back and start editing and sculpting and adding and cutting, first separately, then together (comparing notes), and that still goes on. For this latest production at the Harry Warren Theatre, we added new material and reworked some passages we were never fully satisfied with. The show is very much still alive in our hands, and I think we’ll continue to tinker with it. And even though much of it is inspired by Eduardo’s own experience, at the same time it’s a “universal” story that I, for one, strongly relate to. To connect with an audience, autobiography has to go beyond the specific life incidents that inspired it to become something that other people can see themselves in—including people who, on the surface, might seem to be not at all like the protagonist. So this show presented me with an intellectual, analytical, story-telling challenge, and I’ve had to use my skills as a writer to meet that challenge. It’s also true that, because I’m married to Eduardo, there is a special joy in creating this show with him.

4. Though the play is half in English and half in Spanish, even non-Spanish speakers can to understand the gist of what is being said. Can you talk about the decision to incorporate the Spanish language?

EL: I’m not sure if the proportion is half and half. I feel that the show is predominantly in English, but Spanish is constantly present, a word here, a phrase there, and then we have some specific sections that are entirely in Spanish, like the soap opera section. Being an actor with an accent, I cannot pretend that Spanish is not part of my life every day. My memories from childhood and adolescence are in Spanish because I moved to the US when I was 24 years old. I also think that it brings realism to the story. I want people to understand that even though the story is narrated mostly in English, and though there are many references to American pop culture, the childhood and adolescence of the main character happen in Venezuela; he grows up in Latin America and then as a young adult moves to the US, where he can freely be an openly gay man and tell us his story. So Spanish is the root and background of his story. It cannot be omitted.

5. Bath Beach is home to quite a large and diverse Latino immigrant population. The play follows Yoel’s childhood and adolescence in Caracas, Venezuela. How might Spanish-speaking immigrants from other Central and South American countries relate to Yoel’s experiences?

EL: Most of Yoel’s idols are largely known in Latin America and the world: Menudo, Hispanic telenovelas, Ricky Martin, Jean Claude Van Damme, Greg Louganis, etc. And the situations between mother and son are loaded with that Latin flavor. Any Latin person can relate to those icons and also to a mother like Yoel’s. And seeing Yoel’s story unfold may help Hispanic and non-Hispanic people relate better to the childhood and development of kids that are different from what society establishes as the norm. That makes it a universal story.

6. There were several super-contemporary references in the play. For example, Yoel’s mother mentions Caitlin Jenner at one point. Can you describe how the script has evolved over time?

EL: We have always talked about keeping the script fresh and up to date in a way by referencing current events, especially if they affect the LGBTQ community. And since the story is a flashback that eventually returns to the present as a fresh and relaxed conversation, the present-day sections of the show will always be good for us to reference the happenings and news of the moment whenever the show is performed.

PEH: I remember early on reading an article in The New York Times about gender-nonconformity in kids and how some of them have these amazingly supportive, creative-minded parents. At some point, we thought that would be a good way to introduce Yoel’s monologue — a current news item that would propel him into an examination of his own past and to asses his past in light of contemporary developments. That’s always been the basic structure of the show. We keep finding that current history plays in our favor—progress in LGBTQ civil rights, marriage equality, transgender issues — because Yoel is bullied by just about everyone for being “effeminate,” and he grows up to become a gay man who must learn how to come out, to respect himself, and to teach others to respect him as well. These are the issues relating to gender and sexuality that we are all living through right now.

7. Finally, for Eduardo. Has your mother seen the play yet? What are her thoughts?

EL: Unfortunately my mom has not seen the show, though she might have seen a video or an interview in Spanish. She doesn’t speak English, so I don’t know how much she would understand. I know that she would see that many situations in the show happened for real in our lives but that they have been “treated.” And also she would realize that Yoel’s mother is very different from her. Having said that, the title of the show is a direct reference to what she told my brother when I came out to my family–i.e., that I was “confused.” It’s funny, because he told her that a 30-year-old man could not be confused about his sexual orientation anymore and that she needed to accept the facts and stop saying that. But Yoel’s mother is a mix of so many women who, besides my mother, shaped my personal life growing up in Venezuela. At the end, I am happy to say that time is wise, and nowadays all my family accept me the way I am. They have met my husband, Patrick, and have shown respect and love to both of us. As Yoel’s mother says, “time goes by and we all change with the times.”

PEH: Although Eduardo’s parents haven’t yet seen the show, my father did see it a couple of years ago. One line in particular stood out to him, and it’s when Yoel, now an adult, says, “sometimes I have to remind myself to take people the way they are, just as I want them to take me the way I am.” My dad told us that he really liked that line, I think because it acknowledges that, for all the mistakes our parents sometimes make with us as gay and lesbian kids, they often do mean well, while we, meanwhile, have the power to make them feel guilty, stupid, prejudiced, etc. when the truth is that they’re struggling to understand, to relate, and to be happy just like we are. Just like everyone is.