October 15th, 1997 to October 21st, 1997

Bonaventure Resident to Sing at Opera Benefit for PWA's

by Dave Anderson

Mark Townsend is a dynamic, articulate 32-year-old resident of Bonaventure House, a residence for people living with AIDS. Not quite two years ago Mark, who had been pursuing a successful career as an actor and singer, was so weak that he couldn't even talk on the phone. Today he is in rehearsals for a new performance piece at the Black Ensemble Theatre, and he will be the first Bonaventure resident to perform at their annual Jubilate fundraiser on Oct. 19. Mark shares the stage with opera superstars Samuel Ramey and Suzanne Mentzer and with the Windy City Slickers, who will back him up in a piece created especially for the gala. Outlines talked with Mark about his first and now his second careers.

Outlines: How did you get started singing and acting?

Mark Townsend: I started taking music seriously, well, the story is typical, really, because it started in church when I was 10 or 11 years old, and that's when I discovered that I had a voice. Very much the gospel-type thing, though my interests were a little wider. I wasn't the typical gospel voice, but it was appreciated nonetheless. I think they considered me a balladeer of sorts. About the same time that I discovered what my voice could do for me I discovered acting, which was in high school.

Outlines: Where did you study?

MT: I was accepted on a full scholarship to the Chicago Academy of Performing Arts. It was the first time as a young aspiring artist that I could mingle with others who were seriously intent on being serious divas of the opera, or serious pianists, or serious actors. My first year out of high school, I landed my first professional role, at the Goodman Theatre. I thought, Well, wow! I can do this thing now! I was the youngest person they had cast in a show called The Road; I was 19 at the time. The director said, "You're very young, but I can see something in you." That was some serious inspiration and motivation for me.

Outlines: So your career took off from there?

MT: Well, no, actually! I took a 360-degree turn and did something no one expected me to do: I joined the military. I wanted to be all that I can be and I joined the army. There was sort of an incentive for me: it was an opportunity to travel abroad and live in Europe for three years. I was really kind of fascinated by the whole idea of army as well, the whole structure and uniformity and type of discipline. It was a life-altering experience. It taught me a discipline I'd never known before, and it taught me a type of respect for people that I didn't know before.

Outlines: Did you perform while you were in the army?

MT: I was able to be a part of a French production of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. I spoke enough French that they thought I would fit into the cast. I'd sing in the pubs: a little Broadway, some contemporary ballads, love songs, a little r&b. I'd go boating down the rivers in Italy with beautiful bridges cascading over us, having a good time with the rest of the chaps and singing, and before you'd know it, there'd be people lining the bridges looking down to see where the music was coming from.

Outlines: When did you come back to Chicago to pursue your career?

MT: I came back to Chicago about '90 intending to get my career back into gear and laying down a foundation. It wasn't long after I started hitting the pavement that I found my first professional engagement with the Black Ensemble Theatre. That's still a relationship that's very dear to me because they've continued to ask me back and the artistic director there, Jackie Taylor, has been an incredible positive force in both my personal life and my career. I performed in most of the professional houses in Chicago and in lots of regional theater.

Outlines: How did your illness interfere with your career?

MT: I moved to New York to pursue acting, but it wasn't long after I got there that I was diagnosed with full-blown AIDS. I came home during the Christmas holiday of '95 and got too sick to go back. By February of '96 it was apparent to most people around me that I probably wasn't going to make it. At one point, too weak to do much besides watch a little TV, a friend sent me a video. Out on stage pops this incredible thunderball of energy, this dynamic, finger-snapping, toe-tapping guy who was holding the audience in the palm of his hand. And I realized it was me. I was stunned and I was shocked. I had lost almost total identity of the guy I used to be. I found myself wondering if it would ever come back. But with the new protease combination drug therapy, by April or May [of 1996], I was walking, I was talking, I was singing a little bit again.

Outlines: What are your future plans?

MT: Now I'm concentrating more on solo recording, to do things as a solo recording artist. I'm working on a new two-person show for the Black Ensemble Theatre called "And Still We Sing." It's my opportunity to say I'm back, that after all the devastation and trauma in my life in the last seven years that I can still sing. It's a testimonial for me, a celebration through music. Getting through the rough times, finding a light at the end of the tunnel.

If there's anything I really want to touch on, it's how grateful and how moved I am for the opportunity to be a part of the Jubilate event. Last year I didn't know, sitting in the audience, if I would be strong enough or, quite frankly, if I'd be around to see the next one. For me to be strong enough and well enough not only to go but also to participate has left me kind of overwhelmed. It's a gigantic opportunity for a testimonial for me, the best way I know how, through music, through song, as a performer. I'm back, I'm alive, I'm well.

Bonaventure's Jubilate will be held on Sunday, October 19 at 7 p.m. in the Simpson Theatre in the Field Museum. Call (773) 327-9921, ext. 60 for tickets.

'Peter Grimes' at the Lyric

by Dave Anderson

Lyric Opera, as part of its 10-year celebration of contemporary and American opera, is currently presenting Peter Grimes, the first masterwork by the eminent gay English composer Benjamin Britten (the first ever to be made a lord). The opera tells the story of a lonely fisherman who is suspected by his fellow villagers of murdering a workhouse boy apprenticed to him. Ellen Orford, a widowed schoolteacher who loves Peter, tries to help him with his latest apprentice, but when the boy accidentally slips and falls over a cliff, Peter realizes the futility of his fight against society and takes his boat out and drowns himself.

Clarion-voiced and bearish Canadian tenor Ben Heppner assumes the vocally and dramatically difficult role of Peter. Chicagoan Emily Magee's moving portrayal of Ellen is one of the highlights of the evening. Lyric has assembled a top-notch supporting cast, but the real stars of the evening are the chorus and orchestra. The finest parts of Britten's score are written for the gossiping, conventional-minded villagers, and for the orchestra in the famous "sea interludes," which are often performed as an independent suite. If we needed any evidence that the Lyric chorus and orchestra are second to none, this production gives it in spades.

Peter Grimes is often pointed to as the first of Britten's operas with a homoerotic theme, the relationship between Peter and his apprentice. (Britten of course capped off his operatic career with an adaptation of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice.) It seems more fair to say that this is the first of Britten's operas that center around male relationships, especially between "good" or innocent boys and "evil" men who try to corrupt them. In his later operas, the ghost Quint tempts the young Miles in The Turn of the Screw, and the morally opposed Claggart and Vere struggle for the soul of the beautiful Billy Budd.

But Peter Grimes contains other themes pertinent to Britten's life and the lives of many gays and lesbians. One that Britten clearly identified with is the individual who is different, or estranged from society and its conventions.

Another one all too often overlooked in the opera is a sense of responsibility or belonging to one's native land or soil and the common human yearning to have a place to call home, both a comfortable domicile with one's family and a place in the larger community among friends and loved ones. "Do you call that home?!" the villagers mock Peter, referring to his little handbuilt hut.

The late gay novelist and poet Paul Monette once wrote, "Home is the place you get to, not the place you come from." Home, a peaceful golden harbor, is what Peter yearns for and what the villagers ultimately deny him. In Peter Grimes Britten challenged society of 50 years ago with the same question we pose society today: Does our individuality and longing for Home really make us so different?

Peter Grimes is playing at Lyric Opera through Nov. 7.

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