photo by Austin Ruffer
I’ve been hearing wonderful things about Justin Elizabeth Sayre for many years and now that I finally got around to checking them out, I’m delighted to confirm the rumors are all true. Equal parts erudite and silly, watching the multi-hyphenate artist on stage feels like hanging out with Orson Welles at a 1960s caftan party. Sayre is hosting the 12thAnnual fundraising spectacular Night of a Thousand Judys, featuring Nathan Lee Graham, Nicole Zuraitis, Tammy Faye Starlite, and many more. We chatted about the fundraiser, their show The Meeting, their early career, and the current state of the gay agenda.
Justin Elizabeth Sayre! We’re here to talk about your upcoming show, Night of a Thousand Judys, but let’s backtrack for a moment. How did you get your start in performance?
I’ve always performed, I think, really. I started singing—I was in my first play in preschool, if that makes any sense. I was a boy soprano for a number of years, I sang all the time, and I got into theatre. I came to New York, studied musical theatre at NYU, and then was an actor for a number of years, and at a certain point decided that I wanted to write as well. So, that transitioned into the creation of The Meeting, and that went on to encapsulate, now, four books, writing for television, writing plays, writing solo work—a whole host of other things. So, it’s always been a real part of my life.
Do you feel like your writing stemmed out of a need to create a place for yourself in the performance world?
Certainly. But also because I wanted to see certain things that I wasn’t seeing. I was talking to a friend about a project yesterday, and he said “well, you know, you always write such great parts for other people.” And it is true. I had an experience during a play of mine going up in LA where all these kind of famous gay actors were in it. I remember being backstage and one of them said to everybody, “it’s so rare that we ever got to be in the same room—you’re always kind of ‘the one.’” And it was such a feeling of relief that we all knew each other, we all loved each other, it was such a great thing. That has become a real trademark for me—more a hallmark than a trademark, forgive me—because so much of my work is about creating community, whether onstage or with the audience.
That was so clear to me when I came to The Meeting, I’m embarrassed to say, for the first time. (Stage whispers) She’s a struggling artist also.
Understandable.
But it was just such a delight, and that sense of community was so clear. And now I’m fully obsessed with you and I think everyone else should be, too.
Aw, I appreciate that.
So, is The Meeting back now, or was this a cute little one-off?
We’re doing kind of a quarterly version. So, we’ll be back in the fall, and then the winter. It frees me up. I did it for eight and a half years monthly. And I did those shows even when I was living in LA, so I would come back once a month to do those shows. Which was great, but was also just kind of tiring. Doing a quarterly leaves me open to work on a host of other projects that I am currently working on, and also allows me to check in with an audience, which is nice.
And what of the International Order of Sodomites? Are you still setting the gay agenda, or have we lost the thread? What is happening?
I think we are still setting the agenda. I think we are still kind of dealing with the world. (Laughs) The project was born out of, this dates it obviously, but the project was born in the wake of Prop 8. So, so long ago. I think right now it feels like such a dark time and, in a way, the bringing back of a quarterly Meeting feels like a time to kind of come together and decompress from all that. So, I think the tone of the show has shifted a bit—not completely—but the tone of the show shifts where there’s lightness and heaviness all together. It becomes, in a way, more important now, because I think there’s a foreboding sense of hopelessness. I think what we need now more than anything is hope, so I’m excited to be part of that message of hope.
Tell me about the genesis of Night of a Thousand Judys.
Night of a Thousand Judys grew out of The Meeting. When The Meeting had started, I had said it would be an opportunity to celebrate a different gay icon every month. It typically went by birthdays, and we kind of divide up everybody and we would have people come in and do songs around a theme. But because of the basis of the show being about community, I always wanted to end with a benefit. We would do September through June, and June would be a benefit for Pride.
Judy Garland was born and died in June. She’s the greatest gay icon of them all. All the stars aligned and I thought, well, what would it be like if we did just a Judy Garland concert? I’m a big proponent of reinterpretation, new interpretation kind of art. I think it comes from a long history of being a great jazz fan, where you have ten artists playing the same song. It always sounds different; it’s something new. With that, the discussion was, well, how will you make that show sound different? Or how do you make that show exciting when we’re dealing with—not necessarily limited, she sang a lot of music over her short life. But you totally tell everyone who comes into the show, “this is not about you doing your Judy Garland, this is about you being a part of that, so whatever interesting thing you bring to this music, that’s what we want to hear.” We’re not coming to hear a Judy Garland concert, because such a thing does not exist. We could all stay home and listen to Carnegie Hall. We’re here to live with that legacy. What does that mean for us now? So, it’s been a big guiding star for the show, and that’s always why the show seem so alive and different every year, because you’re seeing artists grappling with what she means to them. And I think that’s very exciting, rather than something kind of static and always kind of seems the same.
From the go, from the jump, really, I wanted to work with the Ali Forney Center, because I, again, kind of aging the whole thing—I can’t believe that it’s so long ago—but there was a lot of marriage equality work that was happening at the beginning of the show. And while I wanted marriage equality, you know, protested for it, I felt like that was a thing that was getting enough attention, and that homeless kids and homeless youth was not. I felt like that was a much stronger position to be in. It felt like a greater deal of energy could be put into it. I didn’t want to do something that was mainstream or getting all the attention. I wanted to make sure underserviced people were getting due they needed.
I love that, because of course everybody should have the same rights, but at the same time, marriage equality does seem to be the turning point of the mainstreaming of the queer movement that in a way—to me—feels like a wrong turn. Fighting to be normal rather than fighting to be queer.
Yeah. I mean, while I’m glad marriage equality exists, I look at in the wake of it what we’ve accomplished and it’s not been a lot in terms of legislation. We still don’t have an equal rights amendment around employment. We still don’t have any kind of anti-discrimination bills that have been passed. We still don’t have protection of our children within schools. So, it seemed at the time, and it seems now that it’s played out, that it was an issue for a certain group of people—usually people with money, which I don’t object to—but it was a movement that could leave a lot of people out, and I think in some ways we’re seeing the ramifications of that. A lot of people feel left out from that. I think that overall we made the right decision.
Oh, certainly, I wouldn’t say that we never should have gotten this right.
Absolutely.
But to bring it back to Night of a Thousand Judys, what are some of your favorite moments from the show? It’s twelve years, is that right?
Twelve years, yes. We’ve done it in multiple venues but returned to Joe’s Pub, which is always a treat. I love being there, myself. There’s a lot of great moments. I used to do sketches in the show. Kind of like a parody, or I’d take a plot from one of the Judy movies and do a sketch. One year we did The Wizard of Oz and that was very fun. We had Flotilla DeBarge as [Glinda the Good Witch]—it was wonderful. That year, Molly Pope sang Chicago and got a standing ovation in the middle of the show.
She loves a middle of the show standing ovation. It’s her specialty.
Sure, of course. Molly had been my first guest at The Meeting, so it was a kind of a graduation for us. Some other moments I think about—you know, Nathan Lee Graham is a hallmark of the show, and who I think we’ve asked the most and he always comes back and he’s a dear friend. In one of the sketches we had Everett Quinton, who was Charles [Ludlam]’s partner, and Theatre of the Ridiculous came and was a part of it, and was marvelous and such a gift. Michael Feinstein singing, and coming backstage and thanking me for doing the show. We’ve had so many wonderful guests, people that I didn’t know at the time, wonderful new folks. It’s been a real joy and I’m very grateful for it. Those are highlights in my mind, but every year brings its own newness, if you will.
Have you seen an evolution in the audience over that time?
Yes. The audience is always mixed, which I love.
What do you mean by mixed?
I think it’s cross-generational. You would think usually a Judy Garland show would be—oh, there’s going to be a certain kind of group that comes to see this. And yes, we have an older audience. But at the same time, there’s a lot of young people that come and see it. There’s a lot of young people who are looking to her and looking for her, and looking for what these performances mean. That seems to ever grow. I always see younger people and older people. We get a lot of straight people. It doesn’t seem to be just a sole gay event anymore, which I think is great. It’s a nice way to kind of open it up. It’s nice to kind of be able to, in those moments, talk about the issue that’s brought us here tonight, but really talk about politics and the worldview that The Meeting has that for people that wouldn’t typically be there.
Your director, Peter Cook, is one of the darlings of my heart. Talk a little bit about your working relationship.
Peter is the great captain of our ship, you know. While I often get to be the figurehead and get a lot of the applause, Peter really runs the show. He’s such an affable and nice person. I think you need a great cheerleader in that way for that day, and Peter handles it with aplomb and just absolute calm amid the chaos of getting fifteen Broadway downtown performers and a band and me and dancers and the whole bit together, and getting us all through a soundcheck that lasts three hours. There’s so many moving pieces and he really juggles them with such grace and it’s a wonder to see. It’s funny, because I get asked to talk about the show the most, but I often feel like I have the least to do. I kind of show up and I do my bit and I introduce everyone and get through, but really there’s so many people that make the show happen who I’m very grateful for, and Peter’s certainly one of them
You’re awarding your inaugural Judy Icon Award to Justin Vivian Bond, who is someone you’ve always idolized. Tell me about what the award means to you, and how you feel Justin embodies that spirit.
Well, you know, Judy is an icon, and I think that word gets tossed around a lot but is very seldom thought about with seriousness. What does it mean to be an icon? What does it mean to break ground and be in a class of one’s own? Vivian, to me, is that and always has been. When I saw her as Kiki DuRane with Kenny Mellman in Kiki and Herb years ago, it blew my mind of what queer performance could be, what cabaret could be. I’d come from a very strict musical theatre “this is what performance is supposed to look like” world. It was stifling. And all of a sudden I was seeing this kind of drag clown brilliance happening hat was touching and real and raw and just invigorating, and I thought “oh my God, that’s it, that’s everything.” And then the evolution out of that, returning to that, she is someone who continually pushes the envelope and continually makes her own path. I don’t think there’s anyone like her. Besides having an enormous belief and certainly an admiration for her talent, I am also someone who sees the grace with which she wields it. She is, as she steps into a new decade, she is someone who has been there and continues to be there, and continues to be a fan of so many people and encourage so many people, and interested and engaged. And yet, in her own dazzling way, is just getting started in doing new exciting things on her own path. She’s an artist that I not only emulate, but I certainly think of her in terms of longevity and her own maverick sense of what she can be and what she is, which I think is ever evolving and I can’t wait for the next iteration to see what happens. I think that’s a real icon. You want to be there to see what happens. It’s why, when you look at someone like Judy Garland, we always have debates even with pictures and things. I’m a big early ‘60s—that’s the Judy to me. That is her. The short hair and the skinny dress. That’s her to me. That is prime. And yet, people are talking about when she was in her 20s or The Wizard of Oz. There’s all these moments that seem so crystalized around what her talent was, but when you look at the breadth of it she’s this ever-evolving artist. I think Vivian, for me, is someone who exemplifies that.
What’s next for you?
After Judys I’m developing a podcast project, a scripted podcast that I’m working on. I’m also taking some time to work on some plays that we’ll be bringing back in the fall. Retreating for the summer to work through a lot of things. In the fall in New York I’m doing two plays, and in Los Angeles we’re doing a short kind of benefit revival of a play of mine called Lottie Platchett Took a Hatchet, which we did last year. And then in December through the LA LGBT Center we’re doing a big concert of a show that I wrote as a joke for my friends. I’m kind of delighted with it. It’s a Corky St. Clair Christ-a-cular, which is a sequel to Waiting for Guffman.
Oh my God! (Laughing)
Yeah. It’s one of those projects where I’m, like, I’m very proud of myself.
You should be.
But I’m also, like, do you think Tennessee Williams was like “I’m gonna write…” (Pretends to type.) But anyway. I had an idea for my friends and they were like, “If you don’t write that I will never forgive you.” And I was like, “all right, all right.” So I sat down and wrote it. We’re doing some development stuff for the summer, but I’m very excited about it. Those are the things that are kind of in the ether right now.
Is there anything I didn’t ask you that you wish I had?
I think the only thing that I would say in quick summation is that—and I said this to somebody else—I think so often in a career in the arts, certainly you get into this kind of myopic sense of what you have to do and what your art is about. And I am prey to that as everyone is, certainly. But what is nice, for me, about this concert is it is a real chance to make it not about me. It’s not about me. It’s about getting people into the seats so that we raise money for this organization. It’s about getting the best singers who want to live in this world and do this for the love of what they do and the love of this icon. It’s become, over the last twelve years, a really nice check-in about “why do you do this, why are you still involved in this” on an artistic level and also on a personal level, a deep personal level, “oh, this is why you got into this, this is why you wanted it to be about something else, you wanted it to be about reaching out to people in a different way.” I think, for me, on a deeply personal level, more so than anything else, Judys has become a moment of real reflection of how the art you make impacts the world and impacts the people around you.
Night of a Thousand Judys is playing at Joe’s Pub on Monday, June 3rd at 7pm. Tickets can be purchased HERE. Anyone who cannot attend the event can still donate to help The Ali Forney Center HERE.