My Secret Career 34: Inspired By A Whore

The title of this post is deliberately misleading but also 100% true. 

In 1996, my first big opportunity in New York came when I was cast as Giovanni in John Ford’s still shocking “Tis Pity She’s A Whore”. The production took place in a storefront on Ludlow Street, back when experimental theater had to coexist with crack addicts instead of Starbucks. 

The concept of the production was genius, courtesy of Frank Pisco (RIP). Post-nuclear 1959’s dystopia. Society has retreated underground to bomb shelters. A twisted power structure has resulted. That twisted power structure is embodied in the “love affair” at the heart of the story.

Spoiler alert, but this play was written in 1626 so gimme a break.

In the penultimate scene of the play, my character murders his sister, who is pregnant with my baby. I storm her wedding reception holding her heart triumphantly and saying she will never be anyone else’s to wed. We used a pig heart dunked in Caro syrup and I can honestly say it might be the single most disturbing bit of stage craft I have ever witnessed or been a part of. 

The audience lined the wall right next to me on folding chairs and I saw each person recoil as I passed them. They had cringed when I sang a Tony Bennett song (“Let’s Fall In Love”) to my sister, her in lingerie, me in boxer shorts, but the heart was something else altogether. 

My fingers slid inside of the valves in order to keep hold of it. It was horrific for me to DO and I know it was horrific to witness. There was no proscenium arch to give some distance. There was an actual heart, human or not, gripped by a raving lunatic less than a foot from their seats.

The twisted sexual politics of this play are difficult to comprehend even in modern times. I cannot imagine how beyond-the-pale this piece was when it premiered in 1626.

All I know is an edgy group of amateurs shocked everyone who was brave enough to come to the Lower East Side to see a classical play called “Tis Pity She’s A Whore”.

It inspired the following song, a love song, a song of a love that can never, should never be.

From 1997’s “Beauty Is Ordinary” by Onion, here is Mint Condition.