Meet Abe Rybeck, a playwright and consultant best known for founding The Theater Offensive, New England’s largest and longest running LGBTQ performance group. We recently caught up with this alum of the 2014-2015 Chief Executive Program to hear about the inspiring projects he’s up to now and the ways he continues to challenge the status quo.
What are you working on right now, Abe?
My work will always be hugely important to me (something I know I share with y’all). But let me say this: I founded The Theater Offensive in my 20s, in the early desperate depths of the 1980s AIDS crisis. I worked as if my life (and many others) depended on it for over 30 years, trying to build my own capacity, a team, an organization, a community, a movement. Now in my sixties, I have a fresh relationship with my work. My highest priority every day is to be fully, richly human. My work –however critical it is– has to fit into that.
In Summer of 2019 I started consulting on Non-profit Leadership, Succession Planning, Community Support, Diversity/Equity/Inclusion, Cultural Impact, and Strategic Planning.
My longest contract is with BAGLY (Boston Alliance of Gay Lesbian, Bisexual, and Trangender Youth). BAGLY has been around so long that I was actually a member of it as a youth myself! Forty years later, I’m helping BAGLY’s founding Executive Director prepare for the next phases of its growth. To prepare for eventual leadership succession, I am helping shore up BAGLY’s community support, business practices, and program development.
BAGLY is already the largest queer-youth-run community organization in the nation. This month they will reopen their newly expanded 10,000 sq. ft. drop-in center that serves thousands of youth each year. Recent growth includes a groundbreaking new program to address queer homelessness, as well as a new clinic that includes sexual and behavioral health services.
I’m also super proud to have worked as Executive Producer on the excellent short documentary film Beirut Dreams in Color.
Mashrou’ Leila is the Arab world’s most popular indie rock band — with an openly gay lead singer. But their fame comes with a price. A rising tide of extremist Christian and Islamist voices in the region target the group and have instigated brutal government crackdowns on Mashrou’ Leila fans. The resulting imprisonment of over 100 fans has devastated the queer community in the region and produced truly harrowing repercussions. The defiant power of these artists and activists is an inspiration to us, as the U.S. faces our own right-wing religious crackdown.
You can celebrate Pride Month by seeing the U.S. premiere of Beirut Dreams in Color at the Tribeca Film Festival June 17!
It will also be available soon for streaming through The Guardian (UK) on June 23!
Last year, I consulted to produce the feature documentary film No Straight Lines: The Rise of Queer Comics
No Straight Lines tells the story of five scrappy, diverse, and pioneering cartoonists who created the genre of queer cartoons in the 1970s, depicting everything from the AIDS crisis, coming out, and same-sex marriage, to themes of race, gender, and disability. Their funny, smart, profound work provides an uncensored window into LGBTQ lives from the 1970s onward, beginning at a time in which there was no other genuine queer storytelling in popular culture. Equally engaging are their personal journeys, as they, against all odds, helped build a queer comics underground that has been able to grow and evolve in remarkable ways.
Since its premiere at Tribeca in June 2021, No Straight Lines has been a huge critical and popular hit at over 100 film festivals around the world. Check it out when it plays near you! I’m also thrilled to share that you’ll be able to see No Straight Lines when PBS broadcasts it nationally on Independent Lens in January 2023!
I am trying to spend the largest portion of my work time on my own writing and creating for the theater. Here are the main projects I’m working on:
- Blame It on the Big Banana – is a musical-comedy about a troupe of trashy radical drag queens who go on a 1989 cultural exchange to the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua. Fast forward to how their drag-show adventure impacts the Sandinista’s brutal crackdown on the 2018 Nicaraguan youth uprising. I am collaborating with a phenomenal collective of young queer and genderqueer Nicaraguan artists on this provocatively hilarious project that interrogates patriarchy and imperialism.
- Bombshell – follows the relationship between stage and screen star Judy Holliday (who created the ditzy blonde as we know it) and her first lover, New York policewoman Yetta Cohn. The show critiques the power of Love by looking at how they survived Judy’s appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee and Hollywood’s anti-communist blacklisting.
- The Triadelphia Trilogy (Three plays about growing up Queer and Jewish in the hills of West Virginia). These three plays are all inspired by my experiences growing up. My sister Blanche now runs our family farm in Triadelphia, West Virginia by herself. I still go home to help out on the farm every month or so.
- The Good Judge – is a comic-thriller-tragedy based on the case of Bob Barritt. I was preparing for my bar mitzvah when Bob, a 20-year-old white christian, moved in with our family for a year. He confided in me and introduced me to classic films. He respected my father, hated my mother, became obsessed with my sister, …and turned out to be a serial killer.
- A Picnic in the Maw of the Mountaineer – recounts my mother’s 60th birthday celebration, after being released from a mental hospital. For decades she’d been writing fascinating plays that had never been put onstage. At her surprise party my family performed them for her. My mother Sivia Rybeck started working with me on this play before she died in 2019.
- Hello Goodbye Peace – looks at the profound love between my widely adored and respected Dad and his devoted dog. The problem is that the dog, named Shalom, is a vicious killer who terrorizes everyone for miles around. What happens when the relationships that are meant to protect us actually thrust us into peril?
- Pure PolyESTHER: a biblical burlesque – is a queer retelling of the biblical Book of Esther as a coming out story. This sexy musical was the biggest ticket-seller in the history of The Theater Offensive. Esther is made Queen of Persia without anyone knowing she’s Jewish. When the King decides to slaughter every Jew, she must decide whether to stay closeted to save her bloodline or come out and face the genocide. Sounds fun, right? I’m currently updating the Book and Lyrics to better fit current poitics. Music is by John Thomas and myself.
- A Street Theater Named Desire – dramatizes the story of the eponymous troupe, which I founded and directed. From 1989 to 2012 A Street Theater Named Desire performed AIDS activist sketches in places where gay men cruise, sometimes with audiences exceeding 250 cruisers. The acts range from choreopoems and invisible theater to drag extravaganzas and live safe sex shows.
- Grand Old Fag – is a collectively created piece about becoming an old gay man. My collaborators and I hope to start work on it in 2023.
What are you most proud of in doing this work?
There is so much that I have felt proud of in this work. One of the biggest is simply getting good at making important contributions as a “civilian” when I don’t have power or position in an organization.
I have always felt proud of creating cultural impact and creating a sense of community belonging. That continues in this work.
As I shuttle between three places I’m lucky to feel at home (Cambridge MA, Triadelphia WV, and Montezuma, Costa Rica) I feel Increasingly proud of the ability to exist in different bubbles and sometimes the ability to burst them.
Another point of pride is my sharpened listening skills. I think I’m better than ever at really hearing what is going on for the folks I’m working with.
I am also very proud of letting go of the things I *don’t* do anymore: I’m nobody’s boss but my own. I don’t depend on my public persona to gain a sense of self.
Perhaps my greatest moments of pride are watching the folks I work with thrive. It feels great to help that happen while helping myself thrive as a human being at the same time.
What’s the biggest challenge facing your work?
In my consulting, the biggest challenge is working on my own, especially during Covid. While I have come to appreciate the solitude, I was always so accustomed to working within a team that it made for an awkward transition. So many of the things I’m not that good at were hidden because others around me were great at them. Now I’m so exposed!
In my writing for the theater, it’s been challenging to adjust to the power dynamic of my new positionless position. Of course, I knew this would happen. It was a lot easier to talk with producers of new theater work when I was one myself!
How has your NAS experience assisted this project/your work?
I really appreciate the many ways in which my NAS experience resonates for me now. First, NAS really helped me picture ways The Theater Offensive would thrive without me, and imagine this new chapter in my own life. It helped me feel less afraid of change and more excited about it.
NAS helped expand my perspective to look more at systems, patterns, and “how things work” instead of only seeing the specifics of my own situation.
I really loved experiencing such enormous variety of great leaders and seeing the myriad styles that all ended up having special value. Learning how leaders and organizations make change really opened my mind…and really humbled me!
Likewise, through the NAS community I increased the value I put on both learning best practices and also on breaking the rules.
It may sound trite to some, but I think the truest thing for me is that NAS assisted my work by exposing me to each of the other community members in depth. Hearing the richness of each person’s story remains a profound gift.
How can the NAS community learn more about the work you do?
Hmmm. Anybody want to help me build a stronger professional presence? I really haven’t prioritized it.
In the meantime, I eagerly welcome people who reach out to me person-to-person for any reason. Here are some ways I hope you do that:
Email: AbeRybeck@gmail.com
Cell Phone: +1.617.407.7788
Facebook / Direct Message: Abe Rybeck