Gender-Bending Musical in the Upper Peninsula

Our niece is graduating from High School. The call came from the family matriarch to appear for the graduation. The gay uncles found out the niece is appearing in "High School Musical" the weekend before graduation. The gay uncles said they'd rather see the musical than the graduation. All parties were fine by that decision. Reminds me of the "Gay? Fine By Me" t-shirts. So her two gay uncles packed up the car and the dog and headed out for the weekend.

Sounds pleasant. The downside is the brother teaches at Michigan Tech. The drive is at least ten hours from Ann Arbor (in southeast Michigan) to Hancock, MI. Hancock is located on the Keewenaw Peninsula of the Upper Peninsula. The Keewenaw is the bit of land that juts into Lake Superior. You would need a boat to go further north.

The trip is 540 miles entirely within Michigan. To put that in perspective, a trip to Washington, DC would take us through Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and the District of Columbia...and it is ten miles shorter.

Our friend Mike loaned us a Garmin for the trip. Garmin is a GPS system. It works remarkably well. It has me worried. I believe my main function in our relationship is getting us from one place to another. Garmin does this better than me, and does a multimedia presentation as well. How can I compete with that?

Garmin was flawless until we reached our final destination. It kept trying to send us to a non-existent road. We found out later the road used to exist. We are all too familiar with this phenomonen. The Ann Arbor Homoplex (\aut\ BAR, Common Language, Washtenaw Rainbow Action Project, and SH\aut\ Cabaret and Gallery) is located on Braun Court. Every online and satellite map believes Braun Court is a real street that can handle traffic, and that it goes from Fourth Avenue to Main Street. It does not. Braun Court stops at an alley halfway to Main Street. We get calls on a regular basis from people cruising up and down Main Street looking to turn on to Braun Court.

At last we find our hotel and head out to the highlight of the weekend. Our niece is appearing in a production of "High School Musical".

A little background.

Being a Disney nut, I have certainly heard of High School Musical. Zac Efron and the show are almost as big as Hannah Montana right now. But I really knew nothing about the show. I was in a car with a few Theater nuts about a week ago and asked them about the show.

Nut #1: "Wild Dogs could not drag me to that show"

Nut #2: "Its like Grease without the music, lyrics, choreography or story"

I explained I was heading to the Upper Peninsula to see my niece in one of the featured male roles in the show. "That", they both agreed, "would be worth seeing".

So off we went to see the Copper Country Intermediate School District, All-School Gender-bending production of High School Musical.

What can I say about the production? The main reason our niece was playing a male role was lack of male talent, not because the director was trying to make a statement about gender. She is athletic (National Junior Olympics), deep voice, tall, sinewy, and musically talented. And she was fabulous (of course). There were several other strong performances. There were also several budding homosexuals who 'sold' their roles, regardless of their talent. And finally, there were a bunch of kids who did not know they were supposed to play to the audience and could barely carry a tune.

In other words, it was like thousands of other high school productions. So much for the northwoods gender-bending high school musical.

Searching for any signs of gay or queer culture is difficult in the Upper Peninsula. The only gay bar is a (very straight) bar called "The Gay Bar" in the village of Gay, MI. For gay culture we had to settle for a couple of great antique stores. From the safety of Ann Arbor it is easy to forget how far the gay civil rights movements has to go.

But even more dispiriting than the lack of gay culture was that on our drive home we drove through snow between L'Anse, MI and Marquette, MI. This should not be happening in late May.