Joan Lipkin and "Some of My Best Friends Are" cast members in 1989. Courtesy of the Missouri History Museum.
Joan Lipkin
In the fall of 1989, a new musical revue titled Some of My Best Friends Are premiered at St. Marcus Church. Written, directed, and produced by local playwright Joan Lipkin, with music and lyrics by Tom Clear, Some of My Best Friends Are was a groundbreaking piece of theater. It followed a young couple, Frank and Sheila, as they tried to make their way through a bigoted gay world in various sketches and musical numbers, such as "There's a Judge in My Bedroom" and "Hoosier Boy." The play sold out every performance of its run and was voted Best Play of the Year by Riverfront Times readers. Now, for one night only, the cast and crew will reunite to perform, share memories, and speak with the audience about this landmark moment in local LGBTQ+ culture.
On October 20, the Missouri History Museum's Thursday Nights at The Museum will host Some of My Best Friends Are: A Musical Reunion. The night will begin with a happy hour featuring performances from local choral groups, and representatives from Black Pride, Metro Trans Umbrella Group, PFLAG, the St. Louis Queer+ Support Helpline, and other organizations will be tabling in the Grand Hall. The party will then move to Lee Auditorium for scenes and songs from Some of My Best Friends Are. Most of the original cast, including Kate Durbin, Bill Ebbesmeyer, Terry Meddows, Steve Milloy, Mary Schnitzler, and Christy Simmons will be on hand. Larry Pressgrove is returning to music direct, and Lipkin will emcee the evening.
Ahead of the big reunion, we caught up with Lipkin to talk about Some of My Best Friends Are, its legacy, and why now is the time to celebrate.
For those who aren't familiar with this show and its history, can you tell me a little bit about the original production and what inspired that work?
I began conceiving the show as a response to the 20th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, to look at the experiences LGBTQ+ people in that moment, but also to bring people together in a joyful way around that kind of content, which hadn't happened in the theater here before. Culturally, it was before Ellen; it was before Will and Grace, which did much to shift public opinion. The AIDS crisis was in full swing, and many of us had friends and loved ones who were ill or dying. We used to throw condoms at the curtain call with stickers that read, “All of our best friends practice safer sex.” So it's sort of against that backdrop that I conceived this. Then there were some other issues that were really prevalent in terms of discrimination against LGBTQ+ people. So putting together the show itself was joyful, but trying to put it together was a heavy lift. I dealt with actually a lot of homophobia when I was even trying to first produce it.
Tell me about the initial response to the show. It sold out consistently and was named the best play of the year by the Riverfront Times, but I imagine it wasn’t all roses all the time.
Yes, of course. It was 1989, before marriage equality was the law of the land. Instead, there was a sexual misconduct law that made intimate relations between two people of the same gender illegal and punishable by a large fine, and up to a year in jail. Now, thankfully this ended. But there was a real atmosphere of fear at the time. When I was first trying to raise money and cast the show, nobody wanted to advertise initially. I would call people and they would hang up on me. Then I was trying to cast it, and a lot of people were afraid to be in the show for fear of being outed, or also for just being perceived as gay, because not everybody who wound up be in the show was actually gay. A lot of people were, but not everybody. So the stakes were high. I actually turned these mishaps into our opening number, “No Billing,” where people come out behind masks and sort of fight for who can have the lowest billing. But we did open, and we were an immediate hit and sold out every performance. Then we started getting invites to all the parties, which was wonderful. I knew that the show would be well-received if I could get it off the ground. I thought that it was the right moment for it. Tom Clear, who wrote the music and the lyrics, his work was brilliant. And we had such a sparkling cast. So I thought that if we could get it up and going, we would do well. But it just took off the runway. I could barely keep up with it. Back then, we didn't have a consistent ticketing system. I had an answering machine on my phone in my apartment, and people would call to make reservations. We would be trying to call back several hundred people every week to confirm. It was very DIY, but it was thrilling. I never got tired of watching the show. It filled me with delight and or seeing what it meant to people in the audience.
What were those early audiences like?
I used to joke that we should have a frequent flier club because, so that people could hole punch. We had a lot of people come back and watch it repeatedly. They would come and fall in love with the show, and then they would bring somebody back with them, sometimes a family member, and this might be a way that they would come out. But it wasn't just gay people who came. There were all kinds of people. It was tremendous. We closed because somebody else had booked the space at the St. Marcus, which we basically built up. There were so many things about it that I just loved. We started out with these little cabaret tables that had those little votives, and then I went, “No, this feels like a fire hazard.” Then we took the cabaret tables out so we could get more chairs in.
Tell me a bit about the folks who worked with you on this show.
I had met Tom Clear through a friend, and he just seemed like a really smart, interesting person. And they told me that he wrote music. So there I was, sitting with him at Blueberry Hill, and I had barely met him. And I said, “I've got this wild idea. Do you wanna write the music?” And he said, “Sure, why not?” And that is so not the way people do things these days—asking somebody to partner in a very deliberate, intense way with you when you don't know them. But it was a moment and I just felt very open to new possibilities. I just knew that this was something that I really, really wanted to do…The work, I would say, was by turns both poignant and funny. It was all of that. There was a kind of joy about being in the space together and about how the actors felt. The actors fell in love with the show, and they fell in love with each other. And some of them became best friends. We've been talking lately about what went on backstage versus what went on at the front of the house. They had their whole own world going on backstage. Some of it I only found out about much later, and I'm glad that I didn't. Laughs.
What was it like when this show ended? It was such a moment, and you haven't been involved in directing or producing it since.
Everybody was exhausted. And then this young woman who had booked the space [after us], she really wanted to put her play up. But then the cast missed the show. They said, “We'll produce it, Joan.” And I thought, Oh my goodness. There's a lot that goes into producing that people don't necessarily know…I just knew how to do it more, even though I was a baby producer. I was such a baby that I didn't know that I probably should have said to this woman who had booked the after us, “Is there any possibility we can help you find another space?” Or I should have said to the church, “Is there any way that we can come back?” Because I think we could have run for months and months. In fact, I know we could have, to the extent that one knows anything. But it would've been helpful for us to have a break because, as I said, once it took off, it was wild. It would've been helpful if I could have figured out more ticketing and how to manage all that. The systems weren't in place, you know?
You talked a bit about the cost and the DIY-ness of it all being easier to do at the time, but some things, like infrastructure and communication, are certainly easier these days.
Yes, some things are easier in terms of infrastructure, but I have been asked over the years, many times, if I would just remount this. I've always hesitated, because when something has such a clarion moment and a lot of people have memories of it, the questions become, “Do you have a replacement cast? Do you see if a lot of the same cast is still available?” And I was always asking myself, “Does the material still feel fresh? Does it still feel relevant?” Because public understanding and appreciation for LGBTQ+ identity has changed a lot. So I've thought about it, but I also worked on other things….I went on and worked on many other things, but there's a part of me that wishes that I understood the field more back then and what potential really looked like. I was much younger, and it's not as if I had anyone mentoring me. Now I think I might've made other choices to figure out how to continue.
Do you wonder what would have happened if you’d continued the show?
Hindsight is really rough, and so it's not a good place to live. So we will not stay there. But it's interesting to think about it. I think what's really important is to think about what [Some of My Best Friends Are] offers still. It really was a game changer politically and culturally. I think that we helped draw attention to the sexual misconduct law. I know that we did. We collected 4,000 names on a petition, and we sang about it. And in that sense, we institutionalized it. I did a lot of television and radio, and that gave me opportunities to amplify these issues, to normalize LGBTQ+ identity, to call into question homophobia and discrimination. I think what we did was important. And the joy that we brought to so many people, the actors, the audiences…I think it's really important to recognize what we did, even if we didn't take it to perhaps its fullest capacity. I'm not so much interested in nostalgia. I think that nostalgia can be unproductive and sometimes an even dangerous road to go down. Because things were not necessarily good back then. We had a production that we loved, but there's been a lot of change that's really important. And now there are new concerns. I think that doing a piece like [the musical reunion show] is useful to look at how some things have changed. We're not doing [the show] fully. We're doing it more like a cabaret with selected scenes and songs and conversation with the cast and also with the audience.
Tell me about some of those changes and new concerns.
One of the things that I think has changed is that we have much more of a public understanding of sexual expression. We understand that being transgender or non-binary are authentic identities and experiences. We didn't even have language to say these things back then. We called it, "Some of My Best Friends Are: A gay and lesbian musical revue for people of all preferences." We don't even have the "B" in there; we didn’t have the "T." But then we said “of all preferences,” and that was our welcome sign and our sort of our indication to people who are not gay to come.
These are things that are really important, but at the same time, with these changes and this progress comes backlash. In Missouri, someone can still be fired, denied housing, or kicked out of a restaurant for being gay or transgender or perceived as such. The Missouri Nondiscrimination Act keeps coming up and keeps getting turned down. The last time I checked, there were nearly 250 anti-LGBTQ+ bills that were filed in 2022 alone, mostly against trans people…I always think that it's like a giant game of Mother May I? One step forward and then maybe one and a half back. For several years prior to the pandemic, I did volunteer work in Eastern Europe in Belgrade, [Serbia,] and I worked with the Civil Rights Defenders and Belgrade Pride. We ran a series of what we called The Queer Café. There were intentional conversations that I facilitated, and then I turned it into a docudrama about the lives of the people who came to these cafés. And we performed it in Belgrade. Then I also adapted it in Sarajevo and also did it for radio. That was very interesting to me, because I was doing it basically on I think the 30th anniversary of Some of my Best Friends Are. And I felt like I was participating in a civil rights movement that was at a different point in its development when I was working in Eastern Europe. I loved the work that I did with these very beautiful, brave, funny, bold people. Some of My Best Friends Are had a particularly U.S. focus, and the situation LGBTQ+ people is much worse around the globe. So it's also, I think, significant to look at where things are in the U.S. in relation to where things are in other places—Afghanistan, Poland, Hungary, Russia. Things are better here, but they're not good. It's good to come together to put something up to talk about what it was, to talk about what needs yet to be done, and to celebrate milestones.
Why is now the time to reintroduce folks to Some of My Friends Are?
Initially I was going to try to produce this a couple of years ago, really more on the anniversary, but then the pandemic hit. But now seems like a fine time. October is National LGBTQ History Month. It was started by Missouri resident and educator Rodney Wilson, and he loves this show. He used to drive up when he was a student and bring fellow classmates. And the Missouri History Museum is also opening a major exhibit called Gateway to Pride in 2024. The historical and cultural relevance of Some of My Best Friends Are will be featured in that. And we were part of the soft launch that they did online right. So you might say that our October event is an appetizer of sorts. But the other thing is that, with the reunion, you want to do it while most of the cast is available, healthy, and excited. So this just seems like the time.
Staging this at the Missouri History Museum and being recognized by that institution seems like a particularly poignant moment for this show’s legacy.
I have worked with the Missouri History Museum for a really long time on other projects. Our DisAbility Project performed there many times. I also did versions of coming out stories with Playback Now St. Louis. I really appreciate the Missouri History Museum. To me, it's one of the most inclusive cultural institutions we have. And we've had, in recent years, tremendous leadership. It's really important that cultural institutions step up and support marginalized communities…There's an atmosphere of anxiety that has been propagated over the past several years, and so I feel that when we come together in joyful ways to celebrate culture and achievement, it's a staking of identity. It's a claim to identity.
Can you tell me a bit about the reunion itself and the programming you have planned?
There's going to be tabling by a number of community organizations, and then CHARIS: The St. Louis Women’s Chorus and Black Tulip Chorale are also going to do some singing. Then our part of the program, in the theater, is 6:30-8 p.m. The whole event is free, and it's first come, first served. I want to encourage everybody to come, and I think it's great if they can come in the earlier part of the evening, because then they can hear some great music by other people.
What do you think it was that made this show so significant in its moment? Why is it worth celebrating?
We were doing things on so many levels, culturally, politically, socially. And I've always said that real change comes about through multiple threads, through the legislative, through the interpersonal, and through the cultural. And we were operating on all of those threads. That's one of the reasons why I think it was so significant. But the other thing is the quality of the material. The stuff was not didactic. It was really funny and very poignant. Just to see yourself reflected for the first time on stage is really something…Seeing yourself recognized and reflected on stage is really powerful. It's also important to me to acknowledge that this is something that we created together. I mean, if I didn't have the right cast and if I didn't have people who loved the show and loved each other, it would not have taken off the way it did. People could feel the infectious joy that they had being on stage and being with each other.
