When Thelma Dickinson and Louise Sawyer drive their T-Bird off the edge of the Grand Canyon at the end of that 1991 movie “Thelma & Louise,” they die. Right?
Not necessarily. In a show seven years in the making by EllaRose Chary and Brandon James Gwinn, “T” and “L” live on inside a queer punk-rock musical in which they, and a live band, are searching for identity and happiness.
Chary and Gwinn’s “TL;DR: Thelma Louise; Dyke Remix” is making its world premiere this week at Diversionary Theatre, under the direction of Sherri Eden Barber. It’s a co-production with Moxie Theatre.
“TL;DR:”, says Chary, explores the question “What is a queer happy ending?”
“The first song,” she said, “is ‘Why Do Strong Female Characters Always Have To Die?’ You have these strong women and the end for them is death. Can’t we have something different?”
The show’s creators say that this musical grew out of a prompt to turn “a definitive ending into a queer beginning.”
In Ridley Scott’s 1991 buddy film, Arkansas friends Thelma (played by Geena Davis) and Louise (Susan Sarandon) go on a road trip to escape their dreary lives. But a series of unexpected encounters with violent and domineering men, set the women off on a freewheeling crime spree until they’re eventually cornered by police near the edge of the Grand Canyon. They must decide whether to give up and go to jail or go out together, in the style of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
The musical’s lengthy development history includes a reading and workshop at The Tank NYC, a residency at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Connecticut and the National Alliance of Musical Theater’s (NAMT) Festival of New Musicals in New York in 2021. Then-Diversionary Artistic Director Matt Morrow was Chary and Gwinn’s advisor at NAMT, and he expressed his interest in bringing the new musical to San Diego.
Given the production restrictions of the early pandemic years, the timing was problematic.
“We wondered,” recalled Gwinn, “if this show was even going to be a show anymore.”
Yet here “TL;DR:” is three years later, at Diversionary, now led by Executive Director Jenny Case and Interim Artistic Director Stephen Brotebeck.
To over-explain this show would be to spoil the fun of it. Let’s just say that the dual protagonists, as well as the live Kickbass Band, are all part of a music-fueled odyssey.
“The main conflict is not whether T and L get together,” said Gwinn. “It’s what does the band want, how does the band exist in this world? They want a queer happy ending. The band is trying to figure out what that means. And T and L are trying to figure that out for themselves as well as trying to be a part of this queer community.”
The cast includes Sara Porkalob, who has been with the show practically from the start of its development process, and who drew raves from Diversionary audiences with her one-person show, “Dragon Mama,” last fall.
“She’s just a genius and a great collaborator and so much fun to work with,” said Chary. “She really gets this material. She understands what we’re trying to do with this piece.”
Porkalob recalled her parents not letting her watch “Thelma & Louise” when she was young, and it wasn’t until her undergraduate years that she saw it for the first time. In re-watching the film for this production she reflected on “the lack of options that were available to women at that time — the option to have happy, independent, emotionally safe lives. I was like ‘Damn, they really HAVE to drive off a cliff.’”
Seeing the movie again with the kiss at the end “was like it totally made sense to me that they loved each other, and it was something more (than a friendship). I sort of assumed from a young age that everybody is a little bit gay.”
Porkalob echoes the feelings of Chary and Gwinn when considering what “TL;DR:” has to impart to audiences: “There’s no one right way to be queer. In fact, the power of the queer experience is being able to choose your reality in a way that is empowering, fulfilling and sexy.”
‘TL;DR: Thelma Louise; Dyke Remix’
When: Previews, today through Friday. Opens Saturday and runs through June 9. 7 p.m. Thursdays; 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays
Where: Diversionary Theatre, 4545 Park Blvd., University Heights
Tickets: $26.50-$71.50
Phone: (619) 220-0097
Online: diversionary.org
Coddon is a freelance writer.
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