I have often spoken with people about representation, the need to see ourselves reflected in the media around us to affirm that we exist and that we’re not alone. As a film-festival programmer, I usually find that in the movies, but I’m happy to expand my cultural horizon this week to include the world of theater.
GayFest! is a 16-day festival that showcases LGBT actors, playwrights and subject matter. I spoke with a veteran of the festival, actor and director Shamus Hunter McCarty. A three-time Broadway World-nominated performer, McCarty will be directing “MMF,” which explores the consequences of love in a nontraditional relationship.
PGN: So, with a name like that, I’m guessing you’re a nice Italian boy.
SHM: [Laughs] Actually, I am! The funny thing is my mom is completely Italian and culturally I was raised Italian — a lot of yelling and hugs and lots of sauce. My dad is only one quarter Irish, but it was the one quarter that had the name attached! So they picked a name for me that would go with it; Antonio McCarty just didn’t go as well.
PGN: Where did you grow up?
SHM: My dad was in the Coast Guard and he played international rugby, so we moved around a lot before I was 6 but I grew up mostly in Lancaster.
PGN: Dad played international rugby?
SHM: Yeah, he’s retired from all that now and he’s a sales manager at a flooring company, but he had a really exciting life at one time, before we came around. I’m the youngest of three; I have two older sisters, Megan and Shandy.
PGN: When I think of Lancaster, I think of horse and buggies and churning butter.
SHM: True, we lived next to an Amish farm and that was hysterical. Our driveway was literally next to their pasture so there would be cows outside our front door every day. They were very friendly but odd; sometimes the matriarch of the family would show up at our door with a bushel of corn. My mom was a project manager and worked from home so the Amish mom would show up with produce and say, “My daughters need to go to the dentist. Can you take us now?”
PGN: Were you friends with the kids?
SHM: Yes. Amish play is very different than English play. [Laughs] We’d spend, like, four hours playing hide and seek in a barn, and then they’d say, “OK, let’s play with our toys!” They had little Amish dolls which they would pretend were working and that was fun to them. Of course we do the same thing in a way: We have simulated video games like FarmVille and other things like that.
PGN: Give me a Lancaster memory.
SHM: Lancaster has a very distinct smell because of all the farming; it smells like fertilizer. You go nose blind to it after a while but whenever I go home, the first 30 minutes I’m like, “Oh God, what is this place?” but then it’s like, “Oh right, this is what home smells like.”
PGN: What were you like as a wee tot?
SHM: I’d imagine awful. I think that comes with the territory as the youngest. My sisters would totally manipulate me. I distinctly remember being tricked into spending my life savings at 7 years old to buy a CD for one of them. But we were also very close and always had each others’ backs.
PGN: Did they play dress-up with you?
SHM: Please, of course! Though I think I insisted on it more than they did! I remember having one big fight with my sister Shandy because she wouldn’t let me play with her Barbie figurines. I needed them because I had a lot of action figures and I would stage shows with them, which I think is how my love of directing manifested itself, but I needed some female characters and she wouldn’t let me use hers. I’d have to sneak and nab them when she wasn’t looking.
PGN: Tell me about coming out.
SHM: I think I’ve always known. By 6 I knew I was different, by 13 I knew I was at least bi, and by 14 I knew, Nope, it’s definitely boys. When I came out to my mom at 16 I said, “Mom I’m gay … ” and her response was, “Well, then why isn’t your room cleaner?”
PGN: That’s great. How did your military/rugby rough dad respond?
SHM: Good, we had our first moments of “This is weird and uncomfortable” where nobody knows how to respond but after that he was fine. They’ve met all my boyfriends, we do holidays together, it’s been fine.
PGN: Tell me about your first time on stage.
SHM: It was in fifth grade and I was in a show called “GB (which stood for geography bee) and the Magic of America.” I played the bee, stinger and all. I remember the day my teacher, Mrs. Smith, called me out into the hall. That never happened to me so in my head, I was like, OK, this is impossible, I didn’t do it, someone lied! Then she said, “We’d like to offer you the lead in the pageant” and I thought I’d died. A star was born and the next year I got to play the wizard in “The Magic of Reading,” so you know, I was hot stuff at New Castle Elementary School.
PGN: What a trajectory!
SHM: Yes, then in high school I became a stage manager and later started directing.
PGN: And currently you’re directing “MMF” for GayFest! and “SEX TALK” for the Fringe Festival in New Jersey. What kind of sex fiend are you?
SHM: Ha! There is kind of a theme there. It’s really funny, I do find that sex and gender are at the forefront of a lot of my projects. It’s been somewhat unintentional but it makes sense given my aesthetic and ideas about the roles sex and gender play in society. I was a women- and gender-studies minor as an undergrad.
PGN: Do you think growing up with sisters and a strong mother influenced that?
SHM: Oh yes, like any gay man I worship my mother. When she was getting her associate’s degree in communications and journalism, she had a professor tell her not to try because women couldn’t be writers. When I was 10, she started writing for a local paper … just talking about it I get a little emotional because I’m so proud of her for having the guts to say, “Screw you” and pursue it anyway. I’m fortunate to have a lot of women as artistic mentors. Not that I don’t meet strong men, but I’m less interested in telling those stories. I feel that there are already plenty of stories about men saying, “Look at us overcoming our difficulties.”
PGN: How would you describe your style as a director?
SHM: I think I’m an actor’s director. I like to think that I’m highly collaborative and I’ve gotten a lot of good feedback from this show, but they also want work so maybe they’re just saying nice things so I’ll hire them again!
PGN: What’s the most difficult aspect of directing?
SHM: At the level I am now, there’s always a certain amount of DIY: times where you just don’t have the budget or it’s just easier to do it yourself. Finding the balance of when to give up the reins is tricky, or knowing your limitations. On “MMF” we lost our scenic designer — no biggie, life happens — but I had to create something myself and I’m not a designer Then we got another designer, which was great but I’d already blocked out the show, so we had to redo everything. It’s like going backwards while trying to go forward. It can get tricky.
PGN: What’s the biggest calamity you’ve had as an actor?
SHM: I was doing an audition last month for a company I’ve been trying to get into for ages. The artistic director was there along with a national playwright and four lines into my monologue I went to straddle a chair backwards and brrrp, my pants split wide open! I haven’t heard from them yet …
PGN: No lines blown?
SHM: Of course! Last year I was on stage doing a five-page monologue and I had a prop break right at the start. I looked down at it and when I looked back up I completely lost my place in the script. Totally blank. Fortunately the setup of the monologue implied that I’d already said it to one of the other characters off stage, so I turned to her and said, “Chloe, what did I say to you?” She was startled but said, “You were talking about the pigeons” and then I was back on track. That was one of the scariest moments I’ve had on stage. It was surreal.
PGN: Speaking of surreal, you were in “A Clockwork Orange.” Did it give you nightmares?
SHM: That was challenging for a lot of reasons. To start, we did it with masks on, which was cool because as a performer it gave me a little bit of distance from the character. That being said, it brought up some of the hardest conversations I’ve ever had during a show: what it means to play a rapist and rape victim on stage, and even though we did it very broad — more suggested than literal — it also brought up a lot of heavy conversations after the show. People were offended and challenged. It’s not a show for everyone and sometimes they forget that when marketing a show. Though with this show you’d think people would know it’s not going to be The Muppets.
PGN: You’ve been involved in Quince Productions’ GayFest! for some time. Why is it important to have this type of festival?
SHM: One is that Quince is a place where Philadelphian artists can start. It can be hard to get auditions in this town if you didn’t go to UArts or Temple, etc. Rich Rubin, the founder of Quince, is not like that. He has an open call for every show. It’s wonderful and inclusive, and a place where many actors, directors and designers have started. It’s also a place where you can find a variety of LGBT stories. Other companies have done “queer” shows, but they’re usually about rich white males, which I find highly problematic. I mean, it’s old. What conversation are you creating with that, how are you informing, what are you bringing that’s new? One of the things I like about Quince is that they’re not afraid of alienating people in the sense that not all plays are for all people. They’re not afraid to do works that are controversial or that have to cater to everyone. And as a director, I appreciate that Rich allows you to tell the story in the way you want to tell it.
PGN: What can people look forward to at the fest?
SHM: The opening party is on Aug. 12, and then there is a whole wonderful slate of shows to follow. There’s comedy like “The Bang Group,” in from New York for their third GayFest! performance. There’s the serious drama “Wolves,” and the comedy “My Favorite Husbands,” “Harbor” by Tony Award nominee Chad Beguelin and a lot of special events, as well as including pay-what-you-can previews.
PGN: Tell me about your show.
SHM: “MMF” is a really cool play. Rich and I read a few scripts and when I read “MMF” I knew it was the one. It’s about a triad relationship; I think some of the publicity says that they’re polyamorous, which they are, but within the triad they’re monogamous. It also speaks to bisexuality, which is not a subject often covered in Philadelphia theater. “MMF” is a play about relationships without labels. They talk about “we” and “us” but they don’t feel the need to label it. And I’m fascinated with the way labels change and evolve. Am I still gay, am I queer and what does it mean today? And the voices of the characters are super strong. They’re quick and kind of like the Italian side of me. I have big feelings and they’re really fast and fiery, much to the chagrin of my boyfriend.
PGN: What’s his name?
SHM: Artur Almeida. He owns Almeida Floral Designs in the Gayborhood. He’s Portuguese and amazing and so supportive. He’s always the first in the audience and cheers the loudest. For the last show I did, “SEX TALK,” he made us penis puppets that were plants that came up out of flower pots. We have two French bulldogs, Butters and Montega.
PGN: I would think being Portuguese he’d be a little fiery too.
SHM: No, he’s a passionate, soulful man, but very calm and smart about handling me. For “SEX TALK,” I had to make these sperms on giant poles for the show because, you know, it’s sex talk, and I asked if he would help do it while I was in rehearsal for “MMF” and he replied, “I would love to, but I feel like the last time you asked me to do something like this you came back and I had done it all wrong, so I’m going to go ahead and not do it this time.” [Laughs] I’m a crazy person and he’s adept at handling my failings that way! “I’ll help you when you can show me exactly what you want so I don’t disappoint you.”
PGN: Most unusual job?
SHM: I worked as a standardized patient; that’s where you’re a mock patient to help train medical students. I had to pretend to be a 16-year-old with a potential STD and my first line was, “It really burns when I pee.” It went down from there.
PGN: Special skills?
SHM: I can wiggle my ears, I can do a basic cartwheel and I do a number of accents.
PGN: A place (non-sexual) where you like to be kissed?
SHM: Under the moonlight? Actually I like butterfly kisses, I appreciate those little nods of love.
PGN: Any superstitious rituals?
SHM: I have certain underwear and socks that I like to wear on audition days. And a few songs that fire me up like “Oscar Wilde” by Company of Thieves or “Really Don’t Care” by Demi Lovato. I had a teacher who said that she used to warm up her humanity before an audition, not just her voice or body. That way she goes into an audition as a person, not just a desperate actor.
PGN: My fire-up song now is “Bang Bang” with Jessie J and Ariana Grande, but I have to be careful when I’m driving because I’ll crank it up and the next thing I know I’m doing 80 miles per hour!
SHM: There are so many songs these days that have police sirens in the background that I’m constantly pulling over going, “Oh no, what did I do?” and it’s just the radio! Did I mention I’m a crazy person?
For more info about GayFest! go to: http://www.quinceproductions.com/gayfest.html.
Shamus Hunter McCarty can be seen performing next month in “Animal Farm to Table” as part of the Philadelphia Fringe Festival and in his return to EgoPo Classic Theatre for “The Hairy Ape” at the Tennesee Williams’ Theatre Festival. In the spring he will return to the Eagle Theatre for “Peter and the Starcatcher.”
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