Five years into their relationship, Clair and Susie have a problem: Clair wants a baby, Susie is against it. Susie’s sister, technologically-obsessed Renee, is looking for marriage and motherhood. The three women encounter unexpected alliances among themselves as well as long-standing tensions. Clair’s best friend Adam stirs things up further. And Susie’s dead Jewish mother and grandmother appear, still nagging her but also giving her a chance to come to terms with her own homophobia.

Publications:
Smith & Kraus’ Best Women’s Stage Monologues of 2000.

Awards:

• Semi-finalist, The London Borough of Newham’s 2002 LESBIAN AND GAY Stage Play Competition (one of 12 semi-finalists out of 140 submissions worldwide.)
• Semi-finalist and staged reading, Playwrights’ Circle’s National Playwriting Festival, 2001
• Finalist, Pittsburgh New Play Festival, 2000
• Semi-Finalist, Moondance New Play Competition, 2000

Spare set evoking a kitchen, bedroom/living room. Subtle changes to these to signify a shift to another character’s kitchen, bedroom/living room.

Contact me for a copy of the script.

Sample of Be My Baby!

Photo of rehearsal for Love Creek Production's performance of Michele Forsten's Winning? at The John Houseman Studio Theatre Too, New York City.

A One Act. Comedy/Drama. 3 women. Length: 15 minutes.

Susie’s dead grandmother and mother visit her one day to check up on her. Still to this day, they want to run her life. The game continues.

Spare set including a card table, cards and three chairs.

Productions

• 2008-StageQ’s Queer Shorts Playfest, Madison, WI (eight performances)
• 2006-Brewster Theater Company, Brewster, NY (3 performances)
• 2002-Playwrights Theatre of NJ in Madison, NJ (staged reading)
• 2000-Love Creek Productions, New York City (three workshop performances)
• 1999-Luna Sea Women’s Performance Project, San Francisco (four performances)

Publications:

• Harrington Lesbian Fiction Quarterly – Summer 2000
• Smith & Kraus’ Best Stage Scenes of 2000
  
  

Contact me for a copy of the script »

by Michele Forsten

Productions:

A chance meeting between a Jewish lesbian and a woman she suspects of
being a Nazi is not what it appears to be.

Two women (one in her thirties/forties; one in her seventies):
Eva – 30s/40s. An intense New York City playwright, she is about to
attend a staged reading of one of her plays and is nervous about it. Casually
but smartly dressed.

Helga – late 60s/early 70s. Immigrated to the U.S. some years ago but still speaks with an accent. Kindly, matronly looking.

Spare set evoking the lobby of a theatre, with two small circular café tables with one chair at each.

Place: Medium-sized U.S. city

Time: Now

Productions & Awards:
2003 – finalist, Sonoma County Rep’s New Drama Works Scripts Festival
2002 – HER-rah! A Celebration of International Women’s Day by the International Centre for Women Playwrights, Epiphany Theatre, New York City (staged reading)

Contact me for a copy of the script »

Sample of Ersatz Egg Salad

Dr. Bronte and her Receptionist run a typically unenlightened doctor’s office that does not make homosexual patients feel welcome. When they accidentally start attracting more queer patients, particularly lesbians, they get a remedy for their homophobia.

Five women (3 in their late 20s/30s, and two middle-aged). However, one actress can play the part of the three patients.

Spare set evoking the receptionist’s area of a doctor’s office. Cllipboard on counter.

Productions:
2005-Benefit performance for the Lesbian Cancer Initiative, NYC
2005 2004-Boston Slam and Provincetown Slam, Another Country Productions
2001-Love Creek Productions, New York City (three workshop performances)

Rehearsal of the Provincetown production, summer 2004. And, the cast with director Patrick Falco (center).

NYC benefit performance, 2005.

Contact me for a copy of the script »
Sample of Dinosaur Doc

Family lore has it that when I was 4 years old, I used to be my grandfather Misha’s little nurse — I knew exactly which pills to give him and when. We lived in the same building, and I’ve been told I spent a lot of time with him. My only personal memory of that time is of standing across the street from a hospital and seeing the faint image of someone at a window high up in the building waving to me. “That’s grandpa!” my mother said to me. And I waved and waved until the person disappeared.

A fat, jovial man who loved eating smoked fish and herring and anything my grandma cooked, my grandpa had grown gaunt with advanced heart disease. He died when I was in kindergarten. I was kept out of school the day of his funeral but not taken to it — one of many of my family’s decisions that I now see as misguided.

Thirty-five years later I sat in the National Archives in Manhattan, searching for evidence of his life. Bleary-eyed from scrolling through microfiche of the 1920 federal census, I perked up when my grandpa Misha’s name jumped out at me. The excitement turned into perplexity when I noticed that an “S” clearly appeared in the box for his marital status; I had his marriage certificate to prove that he had been married to my grandma for about eight years by then. It is true that in 1920, my grandma and her infant daughter Rose were not in the United States. They had traveled back to my grandma’s shtetl in what is now Belarus in 1914 and got stuck there during the First World War. They didn’t return home until 1920 or 1921.

The census data showed that my grandpa Misha lived with his sister Sonya and her family. Their marital status boxes were all accurate. My aunt thinks the census taker just made a mistake on my grandpa’s entry. I, being more paranoid, think that the lie was told to cover up that my grandmother was in the newly formed Soviet Union. My partner speculates that anger or despair over his abandonment by my grandmother fueled his response. Maybe there was a prolonged silence from overseas and it was thought that my grandmother and aunt had perished. Maybe the census taker just made a mistake … or maybe not.

Questions remain with nobody left to answer them, but that “S” still lingers on as a historical record; its significance all too apparent for documents I have filled out throughout my own life. I’ve checked off “single” on health insurance claim forms, job applications, new patient forms at doctors’ offices, and other official documents. Legally, I am single. But for the most of the past 23 years I’ve been in committed relationships. Perpetuating the half-lie/half-truth affects me in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.

Some years ago, for instance, when a gynecologist asked me if I was sexually active, I blurted out, “No, I’m a Lesbian,” and turned red with the realization of my own homophobia when she didn’t miss a beat and said, “Ohhh-kay, but are you sexually active?” I was so ashamed by what I had said, I wished I could make myself invisible. And, in a way, I had.

Slowly, over the past two decades, I have made the effort to become more visible as a Lesbian, participating in marches on Washington, the Gay Games, and New York City’s annual Heritage of Pride march. My partner and I signed up to be domestic partners and a few years ago participated in a commitment ceremony on board a Lesbian cruise to Alaska. Rainbow chatzkes tastefully decorate my office and my partner’s photo sits on my desk.

At times, though, the ancient, reflexive protectiveness kicks in. When a work colleague I don’t know well asks me to identify the woman in the photo, I say, “She’s my sister, in a manner of speaking,” and change the subject. Participating in the shipboard commitment ceremony and signing the domestic partnership certificate were not real meaningful to me.

I know it must seem hypocritical–on the one hand I’m complaining that my intimate relationships are not taken seriously and, on the other, I’m a chief perpetrator of that perception. I suspect that years of not receiving the official recognition that heterosexual married couples take for granted have taken their toll.

On the “gay marriage” issue, I am clear that I personally don’t want to get “married” but think it’s fine if other queers do. What I want is the same rights that married people have and a universally used designation of “life partner” (LP) under “marital status.” Being in a partnership, as opposed to a marriage, seems to be less about possessing someone and more about being on equal footing. Besides, those of us who came of age before the CD era and bought records know that LP also stands for “long-playing,” which is an apt way to describe my pattern of intimate relationships. It is certainly more descriptive and accurate than the Census’s designation of “unmarried partner.”

I began doing genealogical research some years ago, partly hoping that fleshing out more of my grandparents’ lives would strengthen my sense of self and give me a firmer foundation from which to venture forth into the world. Instead, it’s the omissions and innuendo I have bonded with.

My branch of the family tree is ending with my sister and me. But if a distant descendent were to someday ferret out information about me — from the day I was born in 1954 to the foreseeable future — one “fact” would show up over and over on my official papers. It’s the same “fact” that appeared in my grandpa’s 1920 census listing: the “S” for “Single.” I cheer the encouraging development in Vermont and I hope in my lifetime I will see a few “LPs” next to my name for posterity.

© Michele Forsten 2009

Download the New York Daily News clip of this essay.

Forsten (left) with fellow NLGJA award winner Laura Kiritsy.

She has been heard on WNYC-FM’s “All Things Considered” and seen on Logo TV.

Her short plays, “Winning?” and “Dinosaur Doc” have been performed in New York City, Provincetown, Boston, San Francisco Brewster, NY, and Madison, WI. “Winning?” was published in Smith & Kraus’ Best Stage Scenes of 2000 and in the Harrington Lesbian Fiction Quarterly (Volume I, Number 2).

A full-length play, “Be My Baby!” was a semi-finalist in Playwrights’ Circle’s National New Play Festival in Palm Springs (CA), where it received a staged reading. The play was also a finalist in the Pittsburgh New Play Festival and a semi-finalist in the Moondance International Festival Stage Play Competition and in the London Borough of Newham’s Lesbian & Gay Stage Play Competition. A monologue from “Be My Baby!” was published in Smith & Kraus’ Best Women’s Stage Monologues of 2000.

She has been an advocate and spokesperson for a relatively invisible group of people living with cancer — lesbians. She appeared in the books Lives Inspired: Portraits of Breast Cancer Survivors (2009), The Breast Cancer Survivor’s Fitness Plan (2007) and NYC LGBT Center publications. She and her spouse appeared in Calendar for the Cure (2008). She told her story to 200 women at the NYC LGBT Center’s first “C Word: Lesbians Coming Together Around Cancer.” In 2004, she co-founded and served as co-director (through 2006) of the New York City Lesbian Cancer Support Consortium, which is now a listserv.   (Members of the consortium as of 2006)

Also in 2004, she received the Sarah Pettit Memorial Award for Excellence in LGBT Media, second place, from the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association, for a series of articles on breast cancer.

Co-producer of the 1993 award-winning documentary “Homoteens,” she grew up (debatable) in Coney Island, Brooklyn, and went on to earn an MA in media studies from The New School for Social Research and a BA in English from City College of New York (CCNY).

She is director of communications for New York City College of Technology in Brooklyn, NY.

News

• View Michele’s membership drive video for the NYC LGBT Community Center. »
• New York Daily News: Read Michele’s guest column on same-sex marriage. »
• LOGO TV: See Michele talk about breast cancer screening on a nationwide cable news program. »
• All Things Considered: Listen to Michele on WNYC public radio talking about the lesbian cancer group she co-facilitates. »
• 2004 Sarah Pettit Memorial Award for Excellence in LGBT Media, sponsored by The National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association, recognized Michele as second-place winner. »
• Co-Founder, New York City Lesbian Cancer Support Consortium. »

I heeded the siren’s song as often as possible, plunking down a quarter for a ticket and then crossing the ride’s slippery dark floor to hop into an empty car. Once seated, I floored the accelerator pedal in anticipation of the earsplitting starting bell. At the sound, the cars — attached to overhead electrical lines like the old trolleys — showered down sparks and emitted z-z-z sounds reminiscent of insects flying into a light bulb as they jolted to life. Completely rimmed by thick rubber bumpers, the cars seemed as safe as armored tanks. Even so, whiplash was a possibility, but who thought about that?

Why was it so thrilling to crash into other cars or be bumped by them? Part of the appeal was in doing something you couldn’t do in real life: only adults drove and they did everything in their power to avoid collisions. (Of course, this was way before SUVs gave people the idea they could drive like idiots and live.) More important, this activity was an acceptable way to express aggression. Got a bad grade on a school test? Had a fight with your mother? Collide head-on with another vehicle and spin out of control. Laugh yourself silly and forget your problems.

Early experiences leave lasting impressions, but I wasn’t to discover for years how this seemingly harmless diversion had taken its toll. Since my family didn’t own a car, I learned to drive during the ten lessons I took over a five-week period with Al, a cigar-chomping instructor at the now-defunct Inwood Auto School. “Didn’t you notice that little girl crossing the street with her mother? I was waiting to see if you were going to stop. Jesus!” Al cried, after he had stopped the car with his brake during lesson number two. Miraculously, I passed the road test on the first try and became a licensed driver just before graduating from college.

For two decades, driving was an activity I did only under duress and with great anxiety. I chalked up my reluctance to inexperience and to being a New Yorker who had public transportation in her blood. The real source of the anxiety, however, became clear when a car became part of my family. Actually, the indoor parking space came first. My life partner bought a beat-up Toyota to use when she took a job for six months in another city. Before leaving town, she put her name on a waiting list at a neighborhood garage in case she decided to keep the car. A few months after returning and getting rid of the dying Corolla, she received word that a garage space had become available–for $150 a month.

One hundred and fifty dollars a month for indoor parking in Manhattan? So what if we didn’t have a car? We’d be fools if we didn’t get one! (We applied similar logic to furniture rendered redundant in our tiny Upper West Side apartment after the built-ins were installed. Extra furniture? Time to buy a condo in the Catskills.) We leased a Honda Accord to see whether jaunts to shopping malls in Jersey and weekends in “the country” at a B&B might improve the quality of our lives. At the very least, we’d have something to put in the garage space.

And here’s when the demons surfaced. Behind the wheel, I expected vehicles to sideswipe me on the right and left and crash into me from behind. I could practically feel the impact of these imaginings. I envisioned the car and me mashed and mangled together like trash in a compactor. The sense of impending doom was the worst when on the 96th Street entrance ramp to the West Side Highway. Driving at a snail’s pace, I couldn’t time when to move into the lane and would come to a complete stop, setting off a furor of honking from behind that paralyzed me further.

After the umpteenth time I pictured the car in front of me stopping short and going into reverse just to cream me, I realized that maybe my childhood driving experiences in Coney Island might be coming back to haunt me. But what to do?

Fortunately, in-line skating saved me from burning my license. I started skating shortly after we leased the car. Disoriented at first by the speed of the skates, I was cautious. The four-

wheeled, metal skates I had as a kid never went that fast! From the get-go, though, I excelled at braking and had sharp reflexes, avoiding collisions with skaters who teetered and often fell in my path. Going downhill in a blur of speed became one of my favorite pastimes.

Some of that skating self-assurance began spilling over into my driving. One day, as I smoothly eased my way onto the West Side Highway, I knew I had conquered my phobia and was actually enjoying my time behind the wheel. What a relief!

It would appear that I lived happily ever after, doesn’t it? There was only one problem –  almost as soon as I progressed to driving as aggressively as a New York cabbie, I began having trouble skating.  Specifically, I became afraid of going downhill and would come to a complete stop, inching my way forward until the road was flat or on an incline. Skating was no longer fun, as I imagined losing control, falling, smashing my face while skaters who didn’t know how to brake piled on top of me, breaking the rest of my bones. Sound familiar?

Even though skating was my favorite leisure activity (and conditioned my legs beautifully), I will never try to overcome my fear. That would be stupid — I need to be able to drive the car to my condo in the country to visit all the furniture I should have gotten rid of years ago.

###

Download shorter New York Daily News version.

The eight of us sitting around the large round table in the restaurant are as boisterous as any group of women can be. But the unique roll call we perform before even looking at the menu sets us apart.

“OK, OK, how many breasts do we have here tonight?” one of us invariably asks with a chuckle. “One, zero, zero, two, one, one and three quarters, two, zero,” we obediently shout out in turn. “Seven and three quarters real breasts among the eight of us,” I declare, never in my wildest dreams having suspected that I would use my math skills for this computation.

“How many ovaries?” another asks. It turns out: fewer than last month. Those of us with estrogen-positive breast cancer or one of the breast cancer genes have opted to have our ovaries removed to hopefully increase our chances of survival.

Welcome to the group none of us wanted to join yet are glad we found — lesbians with cancer, which meets at the local LGBT community center on Thursday evenings.

Some issues we grapple with are specific to women who partner with women. Whether to come out to doctors and medical staff, or instances of homophobia related to our disease, for example. When I took sick leave to recover from surgery to reconstruct both breasts, a supervisor said to his secretary, “Why is she having the surgery? She’s a lesbian. It’s not like she needs to use them or anything, not like a real woman would.”

Other topics are generic to any cancer support group — things that would freak out or be misunderstood by family and friends. Fear of dying, anger stirred up by a life-threatening diagnosis, the frustration of dealing with people who make insensitive remarks about our health, living with the uncertainty of having a disease for which there is no cure, to name a few.

Only one of us, Ann, who had stage zero cancer, can be sure she won’t die from it. But the cancer did kill her long-term relationship of 22 years.

“I was the one who did all the food shopping, the carrying and the cooking, and who gave our two kids their baths. My partner resented having to take on these tasks during my long recovery,” explains Ann, who had complications from breast reconstruction. “At the time I really needed her, she withdrew emotionally and sexually. Our relationship was never the same. I eventually moved out.”

Ann’s story exposes a myth I had about lesbian couples. Since women are socialized to be nurturers, I assumed lesbians stand by their partners during a health crisis like cancer—the way mine did. But it doesn’t always work out that way.

“My partner of 16 years took me to my doctors’ appointments and treatments but started an affair as chemo was winding down,” says Emily, who’s in her mid 30s. She had a double mastectomy with no reconstruction. “We went to couples counseling and decided to break up. I’m happy to say I am now involved with a wonderful new woman.”

Emily’s experience shattered another myth of mine: that women who’ve recently finished chemo are not interested in dating or sex. Ditto for those with advanced cancer. However, despite body image issues exacerbated by mastectomies, lumpectomies, hysterectomies, and other “ectomies,” most of us want somebody special in our lives.

“Hey, I’d like to find me a girlfriend,” says Jackie, a spry lesbian in her late 40s whose metastasized cancer is behaving itself. Looking for love is a hopeful activity, one with a foot in the present and another in the future — however near- or long-term it might be.

Getting breast cancer used to be my worst nightmare (my mother died from it at 46). After I was diagnosed at 47, that fear was replaced by the thought of it spreading. I take comfort in seeing how my group members, especially those with advanced cancer, are living their lives. There’s an acute appreciation of life in general and friendship in particular that rarely deserts us. That’s why, even after a particularly emotional meeting, during which the box of tissues makes its rounds, we can still uproariously laugh at dinner about our missing or maimed body parts.

We know the things that matter — our spirits and our hearts — are still in place and are whole.

Download The Advocate clip of this essay.