The steamy, seamy world of lesbian pulp fiction–one whose heyday, in the ’50s and early ’60s, is long gone–both reflected and challenged an American culture riddled with repression. Named after the cheap paper stock on which they were printed, the pulps were the unique product of an era before print was outweighed by television and the Internet, an era when possessing a lesbian newsletter or frequenting a gay bar could mean jail time.
Now About Face Theatre revisits that time–with a 21st Century spin–in “Pulp” at Victory Gardens Theater. Set in a bar filled with “booze, broads and drag kings,” playwright Patricia Kane brings a comedic touch to a genre known for melodrama and tragedy. “Some of the pulps are written very well, by some really terrific authors, like Patricia Highsmith and Ann Bannon,” Kane observes. “But you know, there are a lot that aren’t. A little goes a long way.”
Kane first discovered the complex, contradictory world of lesbian pulp five years ago, when she strolled through the aisles of Unabridged Bookstore on Broadway and came across Jaye Zimet’s “Strange Sisters: The Art of Lesbian Pulp Fiction.” (In the genre’s prime, the alliterative “Strange Sisters” was the title of at least four different lesbian pulps. In current times, the popular phrase is the domain name of the online lesbian pulp artwork archive, www.strangesisters.com.)
Leafing through the pages, Kane felt the pulps’ allure. “They’re fascinating in a lot of different ways: They’re really beautiful; they’re fun; they’re sexy; they’re campy,” she says. “Then I read a bit about what a part of our history they are. … It was a good starting place for something to happen.”
Even as Kane felt the sprouting of inspiration for a play, others were reimagining the genre in other ways. About Face will recognize the gamut of these creative interpretations at its Pulp Literary Festival. On three consecutive nights starting Wednesday, free post-show events will shine different lights on the odd girls out.
The novels have become “a very provocative and useful way to teach the complexity of the 1950s,” says historian John D’Emilio, director of Gender and Women’s Studies at UIC, who will discuss pulp cover art with the audience Feb. 13. While the covers were “titillating and daring,” the prose inside typically presented the women as “sinful, criminal and sick,” D’Emilio explains. “So the novel is accomplishing more than one thing at a time. It’s upholding cultural values, and it’s providing lesbians with some kind of cultural image or possibility–even one that’s tragic. Knowing you’re tragic is better than thinking you don’t exist.”
Sally Alatalo, a faculty member at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago who will perform Thursday at the festival, approaches pulp from a different perspective. As the founder of Sara Ranchouse Publishing, Alatalo frequently designs performances to accompany the release of a book. “I appear in character; that’s my shtick,” she says.
Alatalo also toys with all kinds of pulp–westerns, romances, detective stories–in her artwork. “I’ve been de- and re-constructing pulp for 10 years,” she says. In one grand project, Alatalo cut apart and reassembled the books of a Harlequin romance series, each with 188 pages. The pulps “were manufactured to be identical,” she explains. “I recollated the pages so each book is still in the right sequence, but each page is from a different book. They’re so scripted in terms of when the climax and the denouement has to occur, the story would still read, even though the characters and the places changed.”
Kane’s spin on the genre won’t be quite so predictable. When “Pulp” appeared in a staged reading at the MCA last year, the playwright didn’t know who might attend. As it turns out, “there was a wonderful mix” in the audience, Kane says. “I was surprised and extremely pleased that a lot of the straight folks really took to the show.”
Still, Kane admits she’s not writing to the heterosexual majority, but for the women once referred to as strange sisters: “There aren’t a whole lot of lesbian plays out there,” she says. “Part of the reason I started playwriting is because I would like to see more lesbian shows. So I’m hoping that we’ll get a lot of the girls in the audience.”
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`Pulp’
When: Through March 20
Where: Victory Gardens Theater, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave.
Price: $25-$28; 773-871-3000, www.aboutfacetheatre.com
