THE CHESLEY/CHAMBERS
PLAYWRIGHTS PROJECT

THE WORD FROM KAMPALA
A new play by CHRIS WEIKEL
Directed by DOUGLAS DUBOIS
FEBRUARY 28, 2022 at 7pm
THE PETE @ THE FLEA THEATER
20 THOMAS STREET, NEW YORK, NY 10007
NYC/NYS COVID Guidelines are in effect. Must show proof of vaccination
Tickets are free, however, event registration is required.
Jane and Jeremy are unexpectedly visited in their suburban Ohio home by old friend from their days serving as missionaries in Africa. The visit brings them face to face with a troubling connection between their religious work, their estranged son Paul, and Uganda’s restrictive anti-gay policies. The couple must confront the far-reaching unintended consequences of their past actions in a deeply personal way. This play was a 2014 commission of the Smith Prize for Political Theatre administered by National New Play Network.
The Robert Chesley/Jane Chambers Playwrights Project is an ongoing, intermittent forum for playwrights to have their work presented to an invited audience.
It is an opportunity for LGBTQIA+ playwrights to have their voices heard.
The series honors Jane Chambers (1937-1983), playwright, noted for being a pioneer in writing theatrical works with openly lesbian characters and perhaps best known for Last Summer at Bluefish Cove and Robert Chesley (1943-1990), playwright, theater critic, and musical composer, perhaps best known for his play Jerker — arguably two of the most original and impassioned voices to contribute to our theatrical heritage.
CALLING ALL WRITERS!!!
As an LGBTQIA+ theater company, we value the diversity of artistic, cultural and life perspectives our artists bring to our stages. As storytellers, we champion the voices that aren’t being heard.
We welcome your submissions of plays and musicals, short or long, to be considered for our play reading series and main-stage productions.
Let your voice be heard! We can’t wait to get to know you!
HONORED PLAYWRIGHTS' BIOS
JANE CHAMBERS
From Dr. Sara Warner’s Afterword to Lesbian & Queer Plays from the Jane Chambers Prize, edited by Maya Roth and Jennifer-Scott Mobley (NoPassport Press, 2019):
Jane Chambers was in rehearsals for Kudzu at Playwrights Horizons in 1981 when she became ill with what would be diagnosed as a brain tumor. The cancer proved to be as malignant as the invasive vine for which the play is named. Chambers lost the ability to write and couldn’t complete the revisions for Kudzu, which had been optioned for a Broadway run. The producer backed out, and Chambers never made it to the Great White Way. She would have been the first lesbian to stage a play about lesbians – happy, well-adjusted lesbians – on Broadway. Audiences would have to wait decades for alternatives to those “god-damned sick and dirty” women whose love for other women resulted in their condemnation (The God of Vengeance), suicide (The Children’s Hour), or homicidal urges (The Killing of Sister George). Nuanced and complex lesbian characters began to appear on Broadway (often as minor players, typically in musicals) in the late 1990s (e.g., Falsettos, Rent, The Color Purple), but it wasn’t until 2006 that a lesbian-themed work by a lesbian creator, Lisa Kron’s Well, achieved what Chambers was poised to do in the 1980s.
One of the most important dramatists of the twentieth century, Chambers’ reputation rests largely on “the lesbian plays” she wrote during the 1970s, though these constitute only a fraction of her astonishing creative output. In her brief life – she died one month shy of her forty-sixth birthday – Chambers wrote at least thirty-five plays, seventeen novels (two of which were published), thirty-two screenplays and television scripts, thirteen short stories, one poetry collection, and dozens of articles. Chambers’ luck changed radically in 1980 when John Glines invited her to stage Last Summer at Bluefish Cove (1974) as part of the First Gay American Arts Festival in New York. A resounding success, the festival run at the West Side Mainstage Theatre was extended, followed by a transfer to the Actors Playhouse in Greenwich Village. The play received a Villager Downtown Theatre Award, and a California production garnered the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award (1983).
Chambers headlined the second Gay American Theatre Festival with My Blue Heaven (1981), her most idealized portrait of a lesbian relationship, and one of the earliest examples of a same-sex wedding in American drama. Her Tales of the Revolution and Other American Fables (1969), a bracing exploration of the sexism, homophobia, and racism of contemporary society, earned her a fellowship to the O’Neill Playwriting Center in 1972. That same year, Chambers was elected Chairperson of the New Jersey Women's Political Caucus (agitating alongside Bella Abzug and Gloria Steinem) and co-founded Women’s Interart Theatre. In 1982, Chambers made her last public appearance when she received the Fund for Human Dignity Award and her legacy lives on in the Women and Theatre Program’s annual Jane Chambers Playwriting Award, founded in 1983.
ROBERT CHESLEY
From the Robert Chesley/Victor Bumbalo Foundation website:
After receiving his B.A. in Music from Reed College in Portland, Oregon in 1965, Robert Chesley spent ten years teaching private school in upstate New York. From 1965-75, Chesley composed the music to over five dozen songs and choral works, chiefly to texts by poets such as Emily Dickinson, Willa Cather, James Agee, Walter de la Mare, Gertrude Stein and Walt Whitman. In 1976, he came out as a gay teacher and moved to New York City. During the next few years, his essays and theater criticism appeared in Gay Community News, The Advocate, Gaysweek, The San Francisco Review of Books, The Bay Guardian and The New York Native.
Chesley began writing for gay theater in 1980 and his first play, a one-act titled Hell, I Love You, was produced by Theatre Rhinoceros in San Francisco. Productions of his subsequent plays followed in San Francisco, New York City and Los Angeles, as well as in other U.S. cities and Toronto and London. Night Sweat became the first produced full-length play to deal with the AIDS crisis, when staged by Meridian Gay Theatre in New York City in 1984. Jerker or the Helping Hand had its premiere at the Celebration Theatre in Los Angeles in 1986. A subsequent radio broadcast by KPFK-Los Angeles of excerpts from the play prompted the Federal Communications Commission to attempt broadcast censorship for the first time since 1975. Jerker has since become his most performed play.
Robert Chesley leaves a literary legacy of 10 full-length plays and 21 one-acts, as well as short stories, novels, an opera libretto, and the text for a dance-theater piece. The catalogue of his music lists more than 60 works composed between 1964 and 1976, and includes songs for solo voice, choral pieces and instrumental works. He was a member of the Dramatists Guild and the Society of Gay and Lesbian Composers.
PAST PLAYWRIGHTS
SWAN ADAMSON
The Dads Try to Get Married (2010)
KATHY ANDERSON
Incoming (2008)
VIRGINIA BAETA
Damaged Goods (2015)
LESLIE BRAMM
The Minute Man (2013)
J. STEPHEN BRANTLEY
The Jamb
Billy Baal (2015)
KEVIN BROFSKY
Dancing Straight
Tops and Bottoms (2004)
Hurricane Damage (2015)
N’dom (2017)
VICTOR BUMBALO
Questa (2006)
JANE CHAMBERS
My Blue Heaven (2013)
ROBERT CHESLEY
Stray Dog Story (2013)
MERYL COHN
Almost Home
And Sophie Comes Too (2008)
Insatiable Hunger
CONSTANCE COGDON
Dog Opera (2005)
JOSH CONKEL
I Wanna Destroy You
FIONA COYNE
Careful
BOB CRUZ
Schadenfreude! (2003)
The Writers Block (2003)
EMMA DONOGHUE
I Know My Own Heart (2008)
LINDA EISENSTEIN
That Was No Lady from the Sea! (2004)
Zombie Grrrlz from the Crypt (2004)
STEVEN FALES
Missionary Position (2008)
Who’s Your Daddy?
LISA FARBER
Penny’s One Date (2005)
MARK FINLEY
Christmas Moon
The Chiselers (2008)
Forever Under (2008)
How Do We Get Her in the Water?
The Mermaid (2003)
THE FIVE LESBIAN BROTHERS
The Secretaries
KEVIN R. FREE
Balboa Is Not Drowning (2018)
CAROLYN GAGE
The Countess and the Lesbians (2008)
JOE GODFREY
Winter Cruise
JEWELLE GOMEZ
Waiting for Giovanni (2013)
DONETTA LAVINIA GREYS
The B Factor
The Review: Or How to Eat Your Enemy
BARBARA KAHN
The Lady was a Gentleman (2018)
GEORGETTE KELLEY
Ballast (2015)
BYRON LOYD
Dixie Boy Fireworks
CHARLES LUDLAM
Caprice
HECTOR LUGO
La Tosca…!
JIMMY MAIZE
In One Room (2004)
BRIAN MERRIMAN
Eirebrushed
Wretched Little Brat
L. JAY MEYER
Minor Victories (2004)
TIM MULLANEY
What to Say (Glass Houses) (2004)
MERRIL MUSHROOM
Bar Dykes (2018)
NICK MWALUKO
Waafrika (2005)
BOB OST
Breeders (2008)
DAVID PARR
Slap & Tickle
NICHOLAS A PATRICCA
Oh, Holy Allen Ginsberg… (2008)
ROBERT PATRICK
Hollywood at Sunset (2003)
The Haunted Host & Sound (2008)
Untold Decades
DUNCAN PFLASTER
Light and Noise and Bees and Boys
FELICE PICANO
The Bombay Trunk (2003)
POMO AFRO HOMOS
Dark Fruit (2021)
HARRISON DAVID RIVERS
This Bitter Earth (2019)
ROBBIE ROBERTSON
Revival (2014)
Satan in High Heels (2013)
GARET SCOTT
Roll with the Punches (2003)
MARTIN SHERMAN
Bent
ALISHA SILVER
Golden (2008)
BILL SOLLY & MARK FINLEY
A Night at Danny Larue’s (2018)
AYLA XUAN CHI SULLIVAN
Last Stop (2021)
DANIEL TALBOT
Slipping (2009)
RON TAVEL
Kitchenette (2005)
VANDA
Screaming in the Wilderness (2004)
BRUCE WARD
Fabulous Ride into the Unknown (2003)
KATHLEEN WARNOCK
The Audience/Rock the Line (2005)
Outlook
The Further Adventures of…(2014)
CHRIS WEIKEL
Making it up as We Go Along (2004)
Speaking Parts
Dansport (2004)
Pig Tale: An Urban Faerie Story (2008)
Provenance
Secret Identity
Penny Penniworth
Gareth and Lynette
Nelly (2015)
The Word from Kampala (2022)
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Clothes for a Summer Hotel (2005)
The Parade or Approaching the
End of a Summer
DORIC WILSON
The Boy Next Door
Forever After
Now She Dances! (2004)
The West Street Gang
LANFORD WILSON
Say DeKooning