The following is a preview of my program notes for the national premiere of The Jamb at Eclectic Company Theatre, opening January 15th, 2010.

It’s been twenty winters since I first stumbled into Gramercy Park and became mesmerized by my adopted hometown. New York has changed a lot since then, and I hope I have too. Certainly my life looks different now, and my priorities have shifted. I question my life’s purpose much less these days. But I still struggle every moment with how best to manifest it.

Change is hard – it’s supposed to be – especially when you feel like there’s no road map for where you’re going. The Jamb’s Tuffer and Roderick have each arrived at a kind of spiritual limbo where quick fixes no longer bring any fulfillment. We all go up against it. A few of us break through it. At a certain point, there is nothing left but to take real responsibility, not only for ourselves, but for the world in which we live. Gay Americans face a great many issues these days but, to me, this is the most important. It’s beginning to look like we may get our place at the proverbial table – so just what do we want to bring to it?

I sometimes have tiny panics while bringing in the groceries, or pulling weeds, or watching soccer as my partner folds bath towels. I must confess a phobia of khaki pants and white picket fences. Sometimes, for two seconds, I wonder what the fuck I am doing all grown up and settled down, and I long a little for my days as a horny longhaired bar-hopping hooligan.

But only a little. Because while change is hard, it’s also tremendously rewarding. And the great thing about personal transformation is that there’s always more of it to be had. I’m not crazy about the new LED lights they’ve put on the Christmas tree in Gramercy Park, but I don’t have time to bitch about it. I’m turning forty this year and, like the characters in The Jamb, I am finally realizing that life is less about growing up than growing constantly. We’ve got stuff to take care of! May we all learn more, and do more, and become much more than we can now imagine.

It’s tough to be stuck in the jamb, but it’s also a great spot to find one’s self. It’s a place of infinite potential. From here, anything can happen. It just takes one big step – and a willingness to take full responsibility for whatever you create on the far side of that threshold.

Thanks to everyone at ECT for giving my play its national premiere. I also want to acknowledge those who inspired or fostered The Jamb in its earliest forms: Mike Albo, Darrell Blackburn, Hunter Gilmore, Robert M. Lohman, Lue McWilliams, McNeely Myers, Michael Villane, Jonathan Warman and, most especially, Moshe & Ruthie Rosenberg and all my teachers at The Centre in Manhattan.

J.Stephen Brantley
New York City

It's happened again.

I was at the gym, ruminating on the plight of gay Ugandans while  going rather aggro on a pair of unsuspecting dumbbells, when it occurred to me: I'd just turned thirty-nine the day before. I'd marked the occasion by shearing my blue mohawk to a brutal looking crew cut. I had, once again, become a character in one of my plays.

Now it's not that odd that I should have a few things in common with the fictional Roderick. When I wrote The Jamb, I imagined that role for myself. Chances are that I will never play it. That's fine. Especially now that I've actually become am an increasingly regimented and generally self-righteous quasi-activist with an ego-driven need to save everyone but himself...in real life.

Roderick is way too judgmental. He's addicted to anger and to turning bad boys into pet projects. He has no patience for your processes.

But he's also driven and disciplined. He's passionate. He's doing his best to turn all his perversions and peccadilloes into something useful. He is fiercely loyal. Roderick's motivation to change is an unflagging faith in the power of love.

I like my crew cut. It suits my soldier mood. In this last year of my thirties I am getting down to business and kicking some ass. Fast. Clean. Strong.

Yeah I have become one of characters yet again. Thank G-d this one's sober.

Anyway, it's high time I had a damn website so here it is.

JSB

By the way, you can see someone else in the role of Roderick when The Jamb opens at Eclectic Company Theatre in January 2010.