Lodestar Quarterly

Issue 8 • Winter 2003 • Featured Lodestar Writer • Drama

Now She Dances!

Doric Wilson

for Richard Barr, Joe Cino, and Charles Loubier

Introduction

Shortly after The Importance of Being Earnest premiered in 1895, Oscar Wilde brought legal proceedings for slander against the Marquis of Queenberry. This determination to establish his heterosexuality before the bench caused the public scandal which led to his degrading second trial and imprisonment.

Operating on three main levels, Now She Dances! is a metaphor for this trial, blending characters from Wilde's Salome and Earnest with a postmodernist America. The denizens of Herod's decayed and corrupt court discover themselves constrained in the lace and frippery of a polite Victorian comedy of manners where they sit in judgment on a contemporary stand-in for Wilde.

The proceedings of this play are ruled over by Moloch, a deity who demanded of parents that their children be burnt in sacrifice.

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Table of Contents:   Now She Dances!

Doric Wilson was one of the first playwrights at New York City's legendary Caffé Cino and a pioneer of the Off-Off-Broadway movement, writing, directing, producing and designing over a hundred productions. He was a founding member of Circle Repertory Theater and the Barr/Wilder/Albee Playwright's Unit, a participant in all three nights of the Stonewall Riot, and was active in the early days of New York's gay liberation movement as a member of Gay Activist Alliance and as a "star" bartender and manager of the post-Stonewall gay bar scene, where he opened such landmark institutions as The Spike, TY's, and Brothers & Sisters Cabaret. His plays can also be read at www.doricwilson.com.

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