AVC: What kind of role does a director kind of serve in a process like this, with it being a one-person show? Was it kind of like you were writing and he was the editor?
MB: I’ve never, ever had a relationship like this and it’s been so transformative. I basically knew that I couldn’t do this on my own. I knew that I needed a director. And so I asked around and asked a mutual friend, John Early, a wonderful comedian, for recommendations, and he said Sam. So, at that point, I had maybe spent a year interviewing people who knew Frank, and immersing myself in his work, and I had some bookmarks or tent poles that I knew about the show. I could feel like, oh, this monologue of Frank’s and this song, and at some point I will start as me or start as him. And then I took all that rawness to Sam. And he’s been really with me shaping it every single step of the way since. I would bring him material. He would say what he thought works and didn’t work and, and he made me rehearse in front of him alone, which is something that I never do as a solo performer. I’m just kind of like, I’ll figure it out on stage.
So having to do it so many times with someone who’s heard the lines so many times was kind of like good boot camp for me because it really reveals what actually works and what’s a six. He’s always like, “That’s a six. Can we aim higher than a six joke?” He’s been with me at every single step. The show is really a product of our collaboration.
AVC: You’ve worked in a bunch of different mediums. Was it pretty immediate to you when you found this story that it was going to be a theatrical show or was there more of a process to finding the medium for Frank Maya?
MB: That’s a really good question. You know when you, like, fall in love, or you get obsessed with somebody, and you’re like, “Oh my God, we’re gonna get married, and then we’re gonna, like, move to France and start a lavender oil business”? I think that kind of happened at the beginning. I was like, okay, I have to make a movie, and I have to make a play, and I have to write a book. And then you have to have that annoying thing called patience. This is what one of Frank’s friends, David Kale, said to me. You wade into the material. You sort of slowly wade in and you let the material reveal, “What does this show want?” instead of “What do I want from the show?” And so very clearly, very soon it was like, okay, this is a solo performer, so I’m going to do a solo performance. And so it slowly starts to reveal itself. And I knew I wanted to have some of his material, but I also knew that I didn’t want it to feel, like, from the past. Like I’m telling you about a party you weren’t at. So I knew I really wanted it to be for you, for the person in the room right now. That was what I knew. And then the rest of it kind of filled in.
AVC: The show’s thesis seems to come toward the end of the show when you’re telling Frank’s story about a date, and it slowly morphs from you telling it to Frank telling it. And then you say Frank was telling the story while there was effectively a genocide going on. All these people were dying from AIDS and the government was letting it happend. You have both of those things as part of the show. Was that tension between those two things something you found along the way or was that closer to the beginning? A lot of the show is this very political, very serious element, combined with what’s objectively really, really funny.
MB: Yes, I think you hit it on the head. Because this was not a person who was, like, at the barricades, getting arrested at the CDC. And it’s one of the things I find really kind of endearing to him, that he wasn’t, and that no one is, a perfect person or a saint. It’s too much pressure to put on our queer ancestors, if we are to be so bold, to make them have to be saints who were these perfect political beings. And in fact when he died, his friends called his memorial service his canonization service, making a kind of joke about how people who died of AIDS would then become these kinds of saints, even though they were just regular, shitty people like you and I. And I just thought, how freeing is that? How beautiful is that, to not have to turn us into just useful beings? You know, like, I believe we should all be engaged in confronting the genocides that we’re currently witnessing, particularly Israel’s genocide of the people of Gaza. And I think it only helps us to acknowledge and welcome how human and self-centered we are at the same time. That helps us, it doesn’t hurt us.
AVC: You’re very politically outspoken, and I would say probably more than Frank was.
MB: Well, he was in his way. Being out was a very political act for him. But like that quote I say from Eileen Miles: Frank was trying to make the world safe for Frank. I just love that mix. Because most of us are thinking about ourselves pretty constantly. And most of us are trying not to acknowledge our own ambition. I would say he was not not political. He was making an intervention his way. But yeah, he wasn’t at the barricades.
AVC: On that note, you play a kind of narcissistic character. You confront that very head on. I’m curious how you found that kind of tone.
MB: That’s definitely my on-stage persona that I’ve been working with for many years. This kind of turned up, slightly delusional narcissistic character that’s kind of trying to do good and deeply out for themselves and can’t totally see it. And those are all parts of me, you know? The Morgan character on stage is like a character that I’ve been performing on stage for many years. I’m somewhat allergic to overly reverential things that disavow the ego of the maker and the power of the maker. Like, it’s not fair that he’s not alive and I’m alive. That’s asymmetrical, that’s the power relationship. He should be alive to perform his own work. I’m trying to do this in a way that I feel is moving with love and respect and collaboration, but there’s a power dynamic, and that should be acknowledged. And not just acknowledged, but worked with. There’s like electricity that you can use and plug into.
AVC: Is the amount of research you did for this typical of how you normally work? It sounds like you did quite a lot of digging.
MB: The biggest digging was just talking to loved ones and friends and family and collaborators and hearing their take. So mostly my understanding of him is through the loved ones that I talked to. I talked to maybe about 30 people and just asked, like, “What do you remember of him?” And “Why is he important to you? What jokes of his do you still think about? What songs do you still think about?” And then studying his material and really just trying to become a student of his shows.
Each show that I do is so different. I don’t really have one way, but a lot of stuff that I make is often with people’s archives and history and interviews and oral history and then letting all that stuff bubble through the show and trying to make it funny and entertaining and not lecture-y. It’s probably emblematic of my process in some ways.
AVC: Queer history and uplifting it has been part of your work for a long time.
MB: Yeah, and I would say even more than… I mean, queer history for sure, but radical history. I spent maybe like five years working helping to bring The Faggots And Their Friends back into circulation [Ed. note: Bassichis wrote the introduction to the book’s 2019 reissue] and do this oral history around these really radical queers, who are now in their 80s, who were had really progressive ideas about gender and assimilation and marriage and the military that for people, at least of my generation, we maybe could trick ourselves into thinking that we invented all that. Like, we’re the first people who invented, like, genderfuck and gender fluidity. No, these are people decades ago doing that. So there’s a kind of humility when you look at history. You are forced to encounter that you were not the first. But that also is really empowering because it means we’re not alone. And that we have rivers of people behind us who are cheering us on to do our work in this time that we’re alive.
So that’s really important to me, but also for me as a Jewish anti-Zionist, so is uncovering and lifting up the histories of Jews who rejected Zionism and always supported multiracial solidarity with Palestinians—by the way, most of whom were queer, and most of whom were lesbians, and most of whom were women. So it’s a deep overlap. Once you dig in any radical history, you find queer, trans people. I find that act really important for us in this scary moment in history to remember that we are not the first and we’re not alone and we’re backed by lots of people.
AVC: Have you felt, in moving from the art world to the theater world, a difference of opinion in being so outspokenly anti-Zionist and political?
MB: You know, one of the other things that Sam and I share is a commitment to things being funny first and foremost. And I think that enables me to get in a lot of things that maybe somebody at the outset wouldn’t say they want to encounter. I think humor can be this amazing kind of Trojan Horse, where you’re like, “I’m having a good time, and I’m now laughing at these things that, if it was said in a different way, I probably wouldn’t laugh at it or probably have my hackles up about it.” So that’s always been my strategy, even when I was a kid. I feel like that’s a very queer strategy. If you can make ’em laugh, you can say some uncomfortable things.
I think people overstate… I think sometimes artists use the fear of backlash as a cover for their own cowardice. And it’s like, well, people are being bombed. So what if somebody calls you this thing, or whatever? I think we have to right-size the potential backlash. And realize that people, I think, actually want to normalize solidarity. People are hungry for community spaces where they don’t have to leave out parts of themselves, and they get to be like, “Yeah, let’s not have Palestine be this unspeakable thing, and let’s not pretend we’re not witnessing a genocide.” So I’ve experienced less, like, bad and more people being like, “Oh, I’m really happy we get to have all this in the same room together.”
AVC: I’m really glad to hear that. Somewhat related to that, you kind of joke in the show, ‘If a major streaming service wants to pick this up…’ Do you think what you have now you could film and put on a major streaming service?
MB: Drew, I would love to. [Laughs] I think it would be really cool.
AVC: Going into the Soho Playhouse you see posters for Fleabag and Just For Us and Nanette and everything. Is there any plan to move this to the next thing?
MB: You know, if there are, I don’t know about them yet. But that doesn’t mean they’re not happening. I would love whatever iteration this project wants to be next, and if anyone’s listening, I’ll give you my social security number.
AVC: What would be the main thing you’d want an audience to leave Can I Be Frank? with?
MB: I want audiences to leave feeling like it’s okay that we’re deeply imperfect. It’s okay. I just imagine every generation faced with its own crisis feels inadequate for that crisis. We’re in a long line of people who felt inadequate and felt like we didn’t have what it takes to confront the monsters of our time and survive the apocalypses. At least what I get when I plug into Frank’s work, is a feeling of we’re just in a long arc of imperfect people surviving and trying our best to change the world.
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