Peter Paige on GROSS INDECENCY, radio acting and directing SEX CRIME PANIC

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Peter Paige shows off his radio acting at the LATW.

There are some actors who just float from role to role playing what audiences are used to seeing and never stretching their wings in the slightest. Then there are actors like Peter Paige, who not only continue to take on new acting challenges but also stretch their creative muscles to include directing and writing as well as being an effective activist. This month, the always compelling Paige is appearing in the L.A. Theatre Works’ production of Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde as Wilde’s lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. The twist in this production? The Moises Kaufman play is unfolding in front of microphones and recorded for radio but, as Paige told me last week, performing for radio is no walk in the park for any actor.

Jim Halterman: First, what can you tell me about L.A. Theatre Works?

Peter Paige: L.A. Theatre Works does something very specific – they do radio plays, which is a great, great things for actors living in LA who have theater experience and who miss performing on stage and love the great plays but can’t commit to being out of town for three to six months doing a regional or going to New York for a year.  It’s great when you’re trying to work in the camera world to get back to your roots.  You’re in for a very intense week, rehearse for three days, you put it up for five nights and then you walk away.  It works really, really well and they choose beautiful material and it’s recorded so it’s there for posterity.

JH: How did you first get involved with them?

PP: They approached me a few years ago to do a play called Bunbury so I did that and loved it and this will be my fourth one with them.  It’s a great weeklong diversion.

Peter Paige flashing a smile at an HRC event

JH: Are they done in front of an audience or recorded in a studio with only the actors?

PP: They mostly do them in front of an audience but every once in awhile they’ll do one just in a recording studio.  We did Arcadia recently that way, which was an amazing experience, but as a rule they’re done in front of an audience, which is really fun.  It’s a little bit terrifying in that you only have three days to work; it’s kind of like working on a reality show.

JH: Is the process more difficult that doing work in front of a camera?  At least you don’t have to worry about wardrobe so much, right?

PP: You don’t have to worry about your appearance, which is great, but there is an audience there so you don’t want to look like a total schlub.  There’s also this very specific skill of communicating through the microphone and how you use sound in such a way that people listening hear and see you differently.  How you embody all that emotion, all that history and all the circumstances just through your voice.  It’s a very specific challenge but it’s really, really fun.

JH: Since you have a few productions under your belt are you more used to it or is it still a little scary?

PP: It’s always scary.  I think most actors will tell you the work is scary especially when there’s a live audience involved but I’m getting better at it.  I’m certainly enjoying it.

JH: You’re doing Gross Indecency in a few weeks there.  Tell me about that.

PP: It’s a very smart play written by Moises Kaufman, who wrote The Laramie Project, and what he does is he takes actual people’s actual words and he uses those in pieces and excerpts and retells the stories from their very mouths.  It’s a very, very specific way of creating theater and nobody does it better that Moises Kaufman.  Gross Indecency is the story of the trials of Oscar Wilde and it’s really amazing just hearing the historical documents and diaries and writings and how Moises has constructed them and how moving it is and how very funny and very heartbreaking they are.

You've come a long way, Peter Paige!

JH: I’m guessing there are a lot of parallels to what’s going on in the world today, right?

PP: You certainly can draw them.  Oscar Wilde was one of the first great gay activists.  He stood up long before anyone was doing this.  They accused him of being gay and all he had to say, all he had to do was say ‘Oh, I’m not that silly’ and it would all go away but he said ‘No, you’re right’ and all hell broke loose.  It’s a pretty amazing choice in a man’s life and he went to jail and rotted there.  It was horrible.

JH: And you have a new project called Sex, Crime, Panic written by David A. Lee and Daniel Vaillancourt that was recently announced in the trades.  You’re directing!

PP: I am!  I’m very excited about it.  It’s turned into a really special project and over the last few months we’ve really been able to have it come together and it’s so beautiful and I think it’s going to be a really special movie.

JH: How did your involvement come about?

PP: I was involved early on and then [Lee and Vaillancourt] came on board and did copious amounts of research and interviews and met with the people who were still alive.  It’s all based on a non-fiction book of a true story.  They wrote a first draft and then the producers brought me on board to help bring a more narrative vision to the film.  Anytime you’re doing historical drama it’s a tricky thing.  It’s like ‘Well, this happened then this happened then this happened then this happened’ and that’s great but that doesn’t make a movie.  You have to figure out how to balance the actual facts with an emotional narrative that an audience can grab onto and be compelling and exciting to them for two hours and that’s when I think I was useful.  I was able to read through what they’d compiled and say ‘Here’s where we start and this is where we end.’ It’s really coming together and becoming something quite powerful.  It’s a true story set in 1955, Sioux City, Iowa, where they had a child abduction murder.  They couldn’t find the killer and the town was working itself into a frenzy; total hysteria breaking out.  In order to mollify everyone they put a law on the books to round up all the sex deviants but the only sex deviants they knew were gay men so they ended up throwing up a bunch of gay men into an insane asylum for the crime of sodomizing and killing a young girl and the killer was never found.  It’s just an amazing account of the horrors that we are culpable for not so very long ago.

JH: Are you only directing or is there a role in the film for you, too?

PP: I’m pretty sure I’m only directing.  It’s a big movie and it’s going to take a lot of focus and I don’t want to do any injustices but we’ll see what happens.  I might try a tiny role but there are great parts for actors in here.

JH: What else is on your plate, assuming there’s room on it?

PP: I don’t think I have anything else acting-wise coming up and my writing partner and I are out hustling work and we’re waiting to hear back on a pilot that we were just out pitching.  The reality show that I helped create, Fly Girls, premieres on the CW in January.  Lots of good stuff going on!

Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde is performed from November 18-22 at the L.A. Theatre Works (go to www.latw.org for tickets).  In addition to the nationally syndicated weekly radio broadcast series, which airs every Saturday, the LATW productions can be found in over 8,500 libraries across the country and can be streamed on demand at www.latw.org.

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Tagged as: Gross Indecency, Jim Halterman, LA Theatre Works, Oscar Wilde, Peter Paige, Queer as Folk, Sex Crime Panic