Title: 'Can I Be Frank?' Takes on the Life of Frank Maya

[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart, where we return to the SoHo Playhouse with another show called Can I Be Frank? Frank refers to Frank Maya, a writer, comic provocateur, singer, and storyteller who was about to hit the big time when he died of a heart-related failure due to AIDS. He was just 45. It happened almost 30 years ago on August 10th, 1995. The story was in The New York Times, Section B, Page 8.

It mentions his performances at places like P.S. 122, his stage rants, and "he was one of the first openly gay male comics to gain a foothold in mainstream stand-up comedy." It was a short blurb. However, Maya's talents was much bigger and sadly forgotten except for a few people, including my guest Morgan Bassichis. Frank spoke to Morgan's soul, which you can see in this 70-minute one-person show.

We learn about Frank, what was important to him, but there's another show going on too, one where we get to see Morgan working through a few things as an artist, getting their staging right, showing what it's like to be your own prop person, and making sure the audience comes to appreciate Frank Maya, to appreciate Morgan too. The show just opened to strong reviews. One said, "Bassichis delivers an evening of highbrow comedy that won't soon be lost to the archives." Can I Be Frank? is running at SoHo Playhouse until September 13th, and Morgan joins me in studio. It's really nice to meet you.

Morgan Bassichis: Thank you so much for having me.

Alison Stewart: When did you first hear Frank Maya?

Morgan Bassichis: Oh, wow, okay. Well, I remember exactly. It was January in 2023. I tell this story in the show. I just happened to meet his brother actually, and it sort of began this obsession that this show is really the culmination of.

Alison Stewart: You went to the YouTube?

[laughter]

Morgan Bassichis: I went to the YouTube, as we do, and I was so grateful to find all these videos, who I later found out was one of Frank's exes, had digitized, and whose name is Neil Greenberg, who's a figure in the show and is an amazing choreographer, an amazing person, who has really welcomed me into his life and into Frank's life, and today is actually 30 years since Frank died, today,-

Alison Stewart: Oh my gosh.

Morgan Bassichis: -so I'm very honored to get to talk about him and do this show and meet with you today.

Alison Stewart: Thank you. What was the purpose of Frank's work, of his comedy? When you think about it, after watching all those videos, what was the purpose?

Morgan Bassichis: Oh, wow. Well, I think there's this desire to be seen, and there's this desire to delight others and to be delighted in that I think so many of us can relate to. I think he had that compulsion to make people laugh and to be alone on stage, which is a particular kind of compulsion, a pathology that I share too. He joked that he was trying to make the world safe for him and that he was using his own story to get his story out there and I think to make more space for all of us.

Alison Stewart: What was something that the rest of us don't know about Frank, that you know about Frank after watching all the video and doing all the research?

Morgan Bassichis: Oh, wow.

Alison Stewart: Or maybe somebody has told you about it.

Morgan Bassichis: "Maybe somebody has told me." I've so many good stories. Well, the thing I love that I actually don't talk about in the show, he was an amazing visual artist. He painted the backdrop in the show, this big life preserver. He made all these incredible paintings almost in a style of cartoon. A lot of them are in the archive at Visual AIDS, an organization that honors and tends to the work of artists living with HIV and AIDS and also who we lost to the crisis.

Alison Stewart: It's weird because everything I read about him, and I went online, and I went into the archives, they all have this line about the first openly gay comedian. Right?

Morgan Bassichis: Yes.

Alison Stewart: It seems almost silly, right?

Morgan Bassichis: Totally.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Really for the youngins or for people out there, you really need to think about it. Why was it such a big deal?

Morgan Bassichis: Right. It's such a good--, and I appreciate-- It's almost like a joke to have to be the first openly gay something.

Alison Stewart: Honestly.

Morgan Bassichis: Yes, exactly. Like I'm the first openly gay person to get whatever [unintelligible 00:04:27].

Alison Stewart: [laughs]

Morgan Bassichis: It was 1987, and there's a literal national gay panic going on. We're in this particularly terrifying moment of the AIDS crisis in which gay people are being totally vilified. Comedy is really like, especially at that point, a real bastion for white supremacy and homophobia and transphobia. It was a really big deal for any comedian who's not a straight white man to be getting that mic. It was a huge deal for him to get to do that and to be on national television that same year and to get to tell his story and be revealing. We take that for granted now, we're like, "Oh, yes, of course every comedian is gay," like "Is there a gay person who's not a comedian?" Yes, we're indebted to him.

Alison Stewart: Frank used to do these rants, but they used to be about all kinds of topics. I have one here. It makes me laugh. It's [unintelligible 00:05:32]. It's from 1987. It's from La Mama, and it's about corporations convincing us not to cook anymore. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Morgan Bassichis: Yes, yes, yes.

Alison Stewart: All right, let's listen to Frank Maya.

[clip plays]

[applause]

Frank Maya: Get those grandmas. Kill those grandmas. Kill, kill, kill those grandmas. Get those grandmas. Kill those grandmas. Kill, kill, kill those grandmas, all those grandmas out there still trying to make those chocolate chip cookies at home. Find them and kill them. That's what the interoffice memo from Duncan Hines said. All those housewives out there still trying to make your own cake from scratch, we know you're out there. We're going to find you. We're going to get you. We're sick of you old fats cooking at home. How dare you? We're looking for young kids, young American kids, who drink NutraSweet, who have no idea whatsoever what homemade tastes like.

Audience Member: Oh my God.

[applause]

Alison Stewart: I'm going to clap as well.

[Alison claps]

Morgan Bassichis: Yes, yes, that was amazing.

Alison Stewart: In the office, "Kill those grandmas, kill those grandmas." When you watched his performance, what did you look for in his performance that you knew that you would then use in your performance?

Morgan Bassichis: I'm so happy you just played his voice and you just played-- It still thrills me to hear him. I was looking for the-- He has so many monologues which, as you said, he called rants. Then he has all these songs. In 1987, the show you just played from, he was really making this transition from kind of downtown performance art, like La Mama, P.S. 122, the Kitchen, over to, a few years later, trying to be a stand-up comic.

In those years, he's really developing his comedic style, and you can kind of hear him discovering his way. I just try to hone in on some monologues or some rants that really resonated with me. I picked some songs of his that we really loved, and with my incredible director, Sam Pinkleton, we just kind of wove the show together around some of his major set pieces in the show, and then my persona constantly interrupting, getting in the way, and almost battling for space.

Alison Stewart: That's my next section. My first section is Frank. My next section is Morgan.

Morgan Bassichis: Okay, here we go.

Alison Stewart: The character Morgan we meet on stage, is it you? Is it a heightened version of you? Who's Morgan that we meet?

Morgan Bassichis: I know I need to get back into therapy to figure it out. I think it's like a persona, definitely a heightened persona, kind of delusional, narcissistic, maybe well intentioned, but certainly powerless over their own ambition. Yes, that's the character that I've been working with for many years.

Alison Stewart: Morgan on stage is going through a few things. We get to watch. What is he going through as a performer?

Morgan Bassichis: Well, I think this struggle, if you can call it a struggle, of sharing space. You know what I mean?

Alison Stewart: Yes.

Morgan Bassichis: Which I think for solo performers is a thing, and I think I would say for many of us, we live in a culture, a collective condition of narcissism. Like there is such a profound investment in the self and a refusal to kind of feel our interconnectedness and our interdependence. There's so many social conditions that want that for us, that I think it is a struggle to push past our own narcissism and to push past our own selfhood and individuality. Really, that's the struggle of the show, is for the Morgan character to move beyond the sense of being an individual and being an original and acknowledging that we're all deeply derivative and constituted by one another.

Alison Stewart: He is often seen screaming to a woman named Gloria.

Morgan Bassichis: That's right.

Alison Stewart: She's a director or a stage manager. Who is Gloria and what is her role?

Morgan Bassichis: Oh my God. Well, yes, Morgan is constantly screaming to Gloria Gomez, who's our incredible stage manager, who we worked with at La Mama, where we first staged the show last year, which is where Frank performed this piece in 1987. Gloria is an amazing person and she's become kind of like the foil for the Morgan character who is barely keeping it together. Yes, I think Gloria is the true star of the show.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] Now, can you explain to people, you said you performed this before at La Mama, and some of it is what Frank said literally. Other parts of it are your imagination.

Morgan Bassichis: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Can you explain how that is divided in the show?

Morgan Bassichis: Okay. Frank performed this piece called Frank Maya Talks at La Mama on East Fourth Street, a legendary venue where everybody has passed through and continues to. I start the show with one of his monologues from that show. Then it's a series of interruptions and trying to-- I keep returning to Frank's work and also kind of imagining my work in his style. I do some things in the style of him, some sort of things that he did. Then eventually in the show, I think what's exciting is you start to get a little confused where's my work and where's his.

Alison Stewart: What changed as you were working on this project? Because it started as one thing and it's what it is today, might be different than it is next year. I'm curious, what was the biggest change from the beginning of it?

Morgan Bassichis: Okay. Wow. Well, I think I just have continued to discover stuff in his work. Every time I return to his stuff, I'm like, "Oh my God, I'm getting his work on a deeper level." I think Sam Pinkleton, my director, said this thing in the beginning that was so helpful to me. He was like, "First and foremost, we have to make an entertaining night of theater. It's wonderful.

This is about a person that people should know about. It's wonderful that you have messages about how the government is continuing to decide that certain populations are disposable. First and foremost, we have to make a really entertaining night of theater." That has been such a useful compass to keep sharpening as we've done it over the past year, to keep honing and sort of paring down and finding what-- making sure every single word and every single gesture is necessary. That's been a delightful process.

Alison Stewart: Well, Sam Pickleton was sitting right there three weeks ago.

Morgan Bassichis: Right here? Oh my God.

Alison Stewart: Josh Sharp was sitting right there.

Morgan Bassichis: Oh my God. My ancestors.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: We asked them a little bit about working with you.

Morgan Bassichis: Oh my God.

[clip plays]

Sam Pinkleton: I am working with an incredible, incredible genius comedian, activist, hero called Morgan Bassichis, who is making a show called Can I Be Frank? That is kind of a conversation with dance with a comedian called Frank Maya, who died of AIDS. He was a comedian who was just on the precipice of mainstream success when he died of AIDS. Morgan has made this hilarious show that is an excavation of Frank's material, and there's nothing like it. We're doing it at SoHo Playhouse, and it starts previews next week.

Alison Stewart: All right. He said activist in the beginning.

Morgan Bassichis: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Do you consider yourself an activist?

Morgan Bassichis: Well, yes. I mean, yes. It's kind of inextricable, my artistic and political commitments. Certainly, like so many people, I wake up thinking about the horror in Gaza every single day. Like so many other people, feel like it is my responsibility to do every single thing I can to stop our government's complicity in the genocide that Israel is carrying out in Gaza. That comes out of a long-standing commitment for me, both inside of Jewish communities and inside of all of our communities, to organize us against racism and against war and into solidarity movements.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Morgan Bassichis. He's starring in a one-person show called Can I Be Frank? It's a meditation on the work of comic Frank Maya, who died in the mid-1990s. I want to talk to you a little bit about stagecraft, a little bit about how Sam was helpful to you. Okay, he said you had to put on an entertaining show. What did that mean to you when he said "entertaining show," first of all?

Morgan Bassichis: It's a great question. My biological father, Sam Pinkleton, what did he mean when he said that?

Alison Stewart: [chuckles]

Morgan Bassichis: I think he's like, you have to earn-- you got to earn the gravity, you got to earn the sincerity, you have to earn the message. I really agree with him. I think there's something about really balancing the gravity and the levity and making sure that the humor is carried throughout that makes the message of it so much more digestible and metabolizable, and it's Mary Poppins, it's Spoonful of Sugar.

Alison Stewart: Yes. You are constantly wrapping yourself in a mic cord, the longest mic cord I have ever seen anyone ever use.

Morgan Bassichis: Thank you. That's an honor, to be recognized. Thank you.

Alison Stewart: What's the deal with the mic cord?

Morgan Bassichis: Oh my God. Thank you for asking. No one has asked yet. Well, we discovered in rehearsal, because we'd always use a cordless mic. Then we were like, "Oh my God, this cord just presents all these kind of choreographic opportunities." Also, to me, it also represents this kind of inter-- this kind of umbilical cord, this kind of across generations that is like the microphone cord for so many of us queers of, like, we are passing down the mic, and we need to get on stage, and we have this need that we don't even totally understand where it comes from, to get on stage and try to make people laugh. It just carries through so many generations.

Alison Stewart: Well, it's interesting because when I watched one of the past Frank Maya, he had one of the long cords, and I was like, "Oh, is it that?" But then at the same time, when you're on stage, like, you don't really know what to do with it. It's wrapped five times around your arm. You've got a woman in the audience, you ask her to hold the cord. It was one of those things that was funny and you're not sure why.

Morgan Bassichis: Totally. I appreciate you naming it. Yes, cordeography.

Alison Stewart: Cordeography, excellent. The staging of the show is interesting. You used the same life preserver that Frank used in his program. First of all, why did you choose to use that?

Morgan Bassichis: I knew right away when I saw the video of his work, that I wanted to recreate that very simple set that he had, which was his backdrop of this life preserver. I asked my dear friend Eli Harrison to recreate it. They meticulously recreated it, which I think was just-- its own kind of beautiful gesture of honoring, to recreate what somebody else made. I think the symbol means something to him, and also it can mean a lot of different things to a lot of people.

It's this kind of very open-ended, I think, thing that people can make their own meaning off of. He also was making-- He made merch. He made buttons, he made T-shirts. That was his logo. He was kind of getting his logo out in the world, so we wanted to honor it that way.

Alison Stewart: What does the preserver mean to you?

Morgan Bassichis: Oh, to me. To me, it means we just have to keep throwing each other lifelines. Like that's our work in this world as crisis after crisis and nightmare after nightmare, the way through it is to throw each other life preservers. Like if we're only focused on ourselves, we're cooked. To me, the meaning I make of it is like, is that that's our work, is to constantly keep throwing each other life preservers.

Alison Stewart: In the show, you sing.

Morgan Bassichis: Yes.

Alison Stewart: You've got a beautiful voice, by the way.

Morgan Bassichis: Oh, thank you.

Alison Stewart: When did you decide there would be singing in the show?

Morgan Bassichis: Oh, I always knew because he was singing in his shows and the music was so amazing. I thought, "Oh my God, I can't--" That was part of the eerie thing of discovering his work, was like, these jokes feel very familiar. The songs, which are kind of these neurotic pop songs. He has a song called God is Busy, he has a song called Too Nervous, that also really resonates with the kind of songs I make. I have a song about seltzer, you know what I mean? That is tied to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement. I knew right away I had to do some of his songs.

Alison Stewart: What do you hope people will talk about after they see the show, they leave, they go out, they have a drink. What do you hope they talk about?

Morgan Bassichis: Well, I hope they'll go and do research and go and look at more videos of Frank.

Alison Stewart: You mentioned-- I'm sorry to interrupt you.

Morgan Bassichis: No, please.

Alison Stewart: You mentioned a series of people whose writings that we could read.

Morgan Bassichis: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Would you name them really quickly so if somebody wants to go Google them?

Morgan Bassichis: Oh, yes. At the end of the show?

Alison Stewart: Yes

Morgan Bassichis: Okay.

Alison Stewart: If you can remember.

Morgan Bassichis: Yes. Well, some of the artists I name in the show, I name like Ron Vodder and Cookie Mueller and Chloe Dzubilo and Reza Abda and Frederick Weston and Ray Navarro and Charles Ludlam. Then I end the show talking about an activist and a writer who's so important to me and so many people named Douglas Crimp, who was a member of ACT UP and who wrote a very important essay called Mourning and Militancy that has been a guide for so many of us. I encourage people to read that essay.

Alison Stewart: It's funny because the serious part of the show but it's funny, but it's serious but it's funny. I asked my previous guests the same thing. How did you decide on the balance?

Morgan Bassichis: I almost think about it like a musical instrument that you want to keep taut, like between the humor-- between the gravity and the levity so that you can play it. You know what I mean?

Alison Stewart: Yes.

Morgan Bassichis: At any time, I'm trying to keep both of those, that chord kind of taut. I like the feeling of constantly zigzagging the audience back and forth to remind us that we don't need to take ourselves that seriously and we can really care about something.

Alison Stewart: With only a few more minutes, I'm curious, why do you think it's essential to keep the conversation about the AIDS crisis going 50 years after it?

Morgan Bassichis: Yes,-

Alison Stewart: Why is that important?

Morgan Bassichis: -this is such an important question. Because the AIDS crisis, as my friend and hero Gregg Bordowitz says, is still beginning. The AIDS crisis is not over. In fact, right now we are seeing billions of dollars in cuts to HIV research, to vaccine research both in the US and around the world, while the US is sending billions to arm genocide. This crisis is not over.

The attack on public health in this country is terrifying. The attack on LGBT people, on queer and trans people, the scrubbing of HIV and AIDS from federal websites and data. This crisis is just beginning. Our responsibility is to make sure to honor those we have lost and to continue their fight and to continue the struggle for a future where everybody has quality health care and a society that values life over profit.

Alison Stewart: The name of the show is Can I Be Frank? A meditation on the work of comic Frank Maya. I have been speaking with performer Morgan Bassichis. Morgan, thank you for coming to the studio. We really appreciate your time.

Morgan Bassichis: Thank you so much for having me.