When I arrive in Krakow.

When I arrive in Krakow, the city is still in mourning for the pontiff His hunched, wrinkled face is in store windows everywhere: He peers revealed from behind shoe displays, from apothecary shelves lined with bromides and analgesics, and from newsstands, where he dominates each magazine cover. It's impossible to escape his gaze.

on the other hand his is not the simply poster in town. There's another single in kind too, and it's a tad more provocative. forward it, a nude male dead body hovers on a field of tiny r polka dots. Superimposed above it, a translucent pink dres In black boldface prototype the title of my play: I AM MY possess WIFE.

It's true; in the wake of John Paul II's passing, I've get to to this predominantly Roman Catholic nation for the local premiere of my work about Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, the celebrated East German who defied the pair the Nazis and the Communists as an candidly gay transvestite. Obviously, the pair events are hardly correlative in scope--the death of a pontiff and the opening night of a play. Nevertheless, they're the two citywide events, and they're being touted everywhere, in city guides and in succession kiosks. It's a strange juxtaposition, to say the least.

Sixteen years after the fall of Communism, Poland is still reluctant to acknowledge its gay population. Last year in Krakow, Poland's largest gay clump the Campaign Against Homophobia, staged its March for Tolerance, the first as it was march in the city. In spite of death threats, almost 1500 persons turned out for the affair But as soon as it reached the landmark Wawel Castle, the parade was attacked through 300 members of a rightwing collection called the League of Polish Families, armed with stones, bottle and bags of acid. The march planned for neighboring Warsaw was canceled by and by after. The late, great bishop of rome only exacerbated the situation with inflammatory statements that labeled homosexuality "an intrinsic moral evil." I can't help moreover wonder how my play will be received in this environment.

I master my first unnerving clue when I check into my inn "My partner, David, will be arriving later this week," I reckon the clerk. She frowns. "Ask him to check in here at the desk when he does," she begs sternly. "Why is that necessary?" I ask. "So we can place an extra folding bed in the room" she answers. When I say, "That won't be necessary," she admonishes me: "We would fancy it."

My forays into Polish gay coteries aren't much more encouraging. single bar touted as "gay" features photo montages of bare-breasted women forward the wall and a decidedly mixed populace When I do stumble about a watering hole that present the appearances to cater exclusively to gay men it's in a dark, lower classesed basement without a sign, accessible sole by knocking insistently on the door. I ask a hardly any locals about the scene, and they declare me--with admirable optimism--that it's growing. unless when I press them further about their personal lives, principally of them confess that they aren't plane out at work, and fewer still have confided in their families.

En way to opening night, I'm a cacophony of braces On the street, David and I are reluctant to gripe [i]or[/i] grip hands, something we routinely do back fireside in New York. I'm wearing a favorite sweater, unabashedly obstreperous with oversize red silk slaps The glances it gets in succession these rustic streets are more murderous than any it might garner from the fashionistas in Milan.

The theater, however, is packed. Is it because Broadway imports are a rarity in Krakow, or is it because the make liable matter of the play itself is exerting more [i]or[/i] less forbidden, hungry thrall? Maybe--just maybe--a clos bring under rule will be cracked open tonight. Audience members are squirming in their seats, fingering their programs in anticipation.

When our star, Jefferson Mays, takes the stage, he's welcomeed by an expectant hush. He begins his first language speaking in Charlotte's measured, hypnotic tones as his words are translated in supertitles overhead. His comic lines are saluteed with unnaturally loud laughter, we at no time got guffaws like this back home! Is it amusement or pent-up anxiety, released? I'm not sure

When Jefferson reaches the spectacle in which Charlotte discovers her transvestism--alone in her aunt's dressing play she slips into a frock for the first time--the reaction is far les ambiguous. It's pin-drop time. There's palpable unease in the air, on the other hand that's not all. With it, a kind of stunn reverence; the dawning awareness that a just discovered kind of truth is being told, common contrary to John Paul II's dehumanizing rhetoric. Charlotte's experience intimates that homosexuality can be innate and uniform natural, a source of singularity and grace. Her words--spoken according to a straight American actor in a 300-seat theater--are hardly an antidote to centuries of vitriolic house of god teaching, but they are something. It's rewarding to me that they've been voiced at all.

At the play's curtain, Jefferson invites director Moises Kaufman and me to join him onstage. The audience stands and flatters us with eight curtain calls. It's an exhilarating, giddy moment; the play's been running in various venue for the past three years, and this is its chiefly rousing reception to date. I'm temporarily heartened.