Friday, August 8, 2008

Men in dresses


Joe Sears and Jaston Williams pull out their womens' wear for a Tuna return

For 27 years, Joe Sears and Jaston Williams have been playing all the wacky folk of tiny Tuna, Texas - men and women, young and old. Yet it's their female characters - such as Sears' cantankerous, dog-poisoning Aunt Pearl and Williams' gravel-voiced, used-weapons entrepreneur Didi Snavely - who grab the most stage time, get the biggest laughs and have become the series' trademark figures.

"We didn't plan it that way," Sears says. "But from the first show (Greater Tuna, premiered in Austin in 1981), they've taken charge. Maybe it's that we both came from families with fairly dominating women. Maybe it's that every play needs some heart. While we can find it in a few of the men, like Petey Fisk (the town's meek but determined animal advocate), it usually arises more naturally from the women."

"I think it's a Texas thing," Williams says. "For instance, you can talk about all the colorful men there've been in Texas politics - but then you throw in Ann Richards and everyone else pales beside her. We've got a line about how Texas men may be scary but it's really the women who run the show."

Or maybe it's just that — as Milton Berle and Flip Wilson proved to TV audiences years ago — a guy in a dress is funny.

That dictum seems especially true for Sears and Williams. Offstage, in their street clothes, these down-to-earth guys probably wouldn't be pegged as actors. They look more like ranchers or truck drivers. However humorous, their male characters usually hew to that offstage reality, a look that's — well, kind of ordinary. By comparison, the Tuna women are outrageous, outlandish and outspoken, letting the actors paint the roles in bigger, brighter colors.

Williams says it's a blast when he and his co-star take on such bold, outspoken personas as sassy Tastee Kreme waitresses Helen Bedd and Inita Goodwin. "These two are not making enough money to be polite," he says.

"I'd have to admit they (the female characters) are more fun to play," Sears says. "It's the stretch they give us, the chance to exaggerate."

Tuna Does Vegas, the fourth and newest in the series, returns to Galveston's Grand 1894 Opera House tonight and plays through Aug. 24. The pair (who co-write the shows with director Ed Sears) report it has undergone considerable change since its premiere there one year ago.

Sears and Williams are continuing a long-standing theatrical tradition. In the early 20th century, Julian Eltinge's tasteful impersonations were seen as a tribute to womanhood. Stars from Ray Bolger in Where's Charley? to Harvey Fierstein in Torch Song Trilogy to George Hearn in La Cage Aux Folles won Tonys playing heroes/heroines who (either by choice or necessity) spent much of their stage time in women's garb. More recently, Fierstein won again playing a woman (not a man dressed as one) in Hairspray.

The device has long been a favorite in movie comedies, with such standout entries as Tootsie, Mrs. Doubtfire and the classic Some Like It Hot, the ne plus ultra of drag cinema.

Obviously, the Tuna guys appreciate the comic opportunities in such gender-bending.

"My role model is Flip Wilson as Geraldine," Williams says. "That character was so politically incorrect and absolutely brilliant."

With two actors playing some 20 roles between them, two key challenges of costuming the Tuna shows are keeping each character distinct and making the changes possible in just seconds.

Linda Fisher, the New York-based designer who has costumed the series from the start, says she uses a color code to help the audience keep the characters straight. Perpetually hassled homemaker Bertha Bumiller favors lime green (an "acid green" Fisher calls it.) Would-be social lioness and "smut snatcher" Vera Carp wears peach.

The identifying factor can also be a pattern rather than a color: Aunt Pearl in old-fashioned print dresses, OKKK radio host Arles Struvie in plaid shirts, and so forth.

"When I first did the show," Fisher says, "they'd done some work on their own, coming up with clothes that worked for the characters. The original lime green polyester pants suit for Bertha was something that Jaston had found in a thrift store — and he actually fought a woman to get it."

As to facilitating the quick changes, Fisher says "there's no one solution." The techniques vary, but she most often creates systems of layering, so that pieces of costume can be quickly removed to reveal the next change. Transitional passages often find one or both actors just offstage, morphing from one character to the next, while continuing to deliver overlapping dialogue.

Fisher agrees the series' women are the more flamboyant roles, but feels the team keep the menfolk in proper balance.

"What makes it work is that Joe and Jaston play them all sincerely, including the women. They're acting women characters, not men in drag, camping.

Because it's the first of the series to take the Tuna characters beyond their home turf, Vegas is the team's most elaborately costumed outing. There are new, non-Tuna characters, including dueling Elvis Presley impersonators and hotel manager Anna Conda (who, Williams reports, "favors snakeskin muumuus.) Even some Tuna folk get beyond their Texas-tacky fashion roots. Aunt Pearl wins some loot and gets dolled up. Helen and Inita get jobs as showgirls.

Wait till you see those costumes.

Courtesy of The Houston Chronicle

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Yao carrying China flag at Olympics opener again

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BEIJING - Olympic host China has selected Houston Rockets star Yao Ming to be its flag-bearer at the opening ceremony. Again. Yao first carried the flag at the 2004 Games in Athens. As China's highest profile athlete, he had long been a front runner to receive the honor for a second time.

The criteria ... is that the bearer should be a skilled sportsman, with excellent sporting ethics and a positive public image," China's deputy chef de mission Cui Dalin said at a news conference on Thursday.
"There are many in the Chinese delegation who fill the bill. What to do? After careful consideration, the delegation decided that the flag bearer for the Chinese delegation should be Yao Ming," Cui said.

Since leaving for the NBA in 2002, Yao has loyally returned for national team duties, anchoring the team in major tournaments and taking China to eighth in the last Olympics. That has helped make him a household name in his homeland, earning him millions of dollars annually in endorsements and placing him consistently near the top on lists of the most popular and marketable celebrities. Exempted as hosts from qualifying, China is fielding its largest ever Olympic team; 639 athletes competing in all 28 sports. The team is slightly older than that of four years ago, with an average age of 24.4. Among them, 73 percent are Olympic first-timers, while 165 competed previously in Athens and 37 in Sydney. Three athletes: 10 meter diving champion Guo Jingjing, shooter Tan Zongliang and men's basketball veteran Li Nan, are three-time Olympians. While China is believed to be aiming to top the medal tallies for the first time, Cui said organizers had never set a target, although he noted Chinese athletes had been steadily improving their results.
"A lot of other countries have also been improving this Olympic cycle," Cui said.

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A date with 8s - considered favorable in Chinese culture - could bring you prosperity

Toss aside Lucky 7. This year, look for good fortune to land on the 8s: 8/8/08. Today.
The source of the day's numerical hope is China, where the word 8 sounds a lot like the word for prosperity, said Nine-Min Cheng, community-outreach director of Houston's Chinese Community Center and principal of its language school.Many natives of China - or those inspired by the culture - are drawn to 8. They seek it out for phone numbers, license plates, e-mail addresses, names and special events as a sign portending luck or prosperity in their lives and endeavors.

Take the Olympics. They start today at 8 p.m. Beijing time, according to the games' official Web site. Or 888 Chinese Restaurant, which has three locations including a new one in Clear Lake called 888 Bistro.
"The number in China is a very super lucky number," said Jin Xiu Zheng, manager of the restaurant near Gulfgate Mall.

"We wish luck for all the people, for the customers, for us, for the business."

Hoi Fung, owner of Fung's Kitchen, said he has an 8 in his address, his license plate, his phone number, his fax number and in his bank accounts.

"It is some sort of phenomenon," said Thomas Poung Au, of the Asia Society Texas Center's advisory board.

"It's almost like it's better to believe that it works than not believe it," he added with a laugh. "I don't think everyone takes it too seriously, but they do it in case it actually works."

Even Au points to a couple of significant 8s in his life. He married in 1978 and started his international marketing firm in Houston, Poung Au Design, in 1988. He is retired now.

The association of 8 and luck stems from Cantonese tradition, Cheng said, though some say the verbal association is also in Mandarin. But it now spans China, Au said.

"Everybody from the south, from Hong Kong to Shanghai to Beijing, believes the number 8 is a lucky number," he said. "It's universal."

Its universality has extended all the way to the capital of looking-for-luck, Las Vegas.

"We are anticipating that 8/8/08 is going to be a very popular day for visitation to Las Vegas," said Alicia Malone, public relations manager for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. As a rule, any date with repeating numbers usually plays well in Vegas, she said.

Businesses in the city are hoping to cash in. Salons are offering reduced rates of $88 for services, and at least one hotel will feature Chinese lion dances in the casino. The Stratosphere Casino Hotel and Tower is hosting a mass wedding at 8:08 p.m. for 88 couples at a cost of $8.88 each.

Even outside Sin City, Super 8 Motel is getting in on the good-luck action by offering 800 rooms daily for 8 days for $8.88 after 8 p.m. today.

Prosperity may come to gamblers with the number 8. But the association is not necessarily with games of chance but for a personal lucky number chosen because it is an anniversary date or the jersey number of a favorite sports star, said Aaron Smith of Casino Event, a Houston-based company that hosts parties.

"Seven is definitely the big one," Smith said. "That is the come-out roll (in craps). People try to hit 7 or 11. But there is really nothing to 8."

When it comes to weddings, the number 8 is no 7.

Last year, 7/7/07 was a winning combination, especially for couples heading to the altar. The Knot, a wedding Web site company, had 70,000 couples registered on knot.com and weddingchannel.com, company spokeswoman Melissa Bauer said.

By comparison, about 22,000 registered users plan to marry today. Bauer said that is many more than the 5,000 who sign up to say 'I do' on a typical Friday in August.

At David's Bridal, which has more than 280 stores throughout the country, today is expected to be the sixth-most-popular wedding date of the year, company spokeswoman Cindi Freeburn said. Nearly 8,000 brides have chosen a dress from a David's store to wear today, 150 of them from stores in the Houston area.

The most popular wedding date of the year for David's customers was June 7, also known as 6/7/08. That day drew about 15,000 customers to the stores, "proving the theory of an interest in numerical significance," Freeburn said.

David's customer 25-year-old Emily Binion and her fiance, Daniel Clay, are among the couples getting married today. The choice was a coincidence, Binion said. But once she started writing out those 8s on forms, she realized they had made a lucky choice.

"It was a cool date," Binion said. "It is easy to remember, so it is lucky for my fiance."

Courtesy of The Houston Chronicle

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