Erik is still waiting for the visiting New York producer who is attracted by good reviews and word of mouth to stop by and see a work he would like to take to Broadway. It happens.
Meanwhile, Erik has written a movie — with his writing partner, Jessica Scott — due out on cable TV this fall and is working on two more movie projects.
Eight years of skill and persistence have finally wedged a foot in the door of a heartbreaking business, and no heat wave last Saturday was going to put off my seeing his latest creation.
The play is a coming out, of sorts, for Erik, who is gay. Seven years ago, his mother asked him to write her a letter for Christmas. He did, and she calls it “the greatest gift I will ever receive.” It read, in part: “There’s a conversation that you’ve been trying to have with me for a long time. I’ve been a brick wall of silence. I’m sorry for that. Every time you’ve tried to start this conversation, I’ve been afraid to continue it … So here goes. I’m going to begin it now. I love you. I’m gay. Let’s talk.”
“He Asked for It” is written from the sensitivities of that place, from, as his director Neil Weiss put it, “the desperate need to carve out an identity, the constant search for acceptance; the dark impulse to seek revenge for the random unfairness of life.”
It was impossible, as I left the theater, not to connect these ideas and themes with the inundation of media coverage this past week of the California Supreme Court’s ruling legalizing same-sex marriage — thereby setting right one of the random unfairnesses of life.
