The Good Men Project

Review by Joseph Crowley

Monday, November 16, 2009–remember this date in theater history: It was the night The Good Men Project came to New York City.

No, this wasn’t a Broadway production or even an experimental downtown company’s show. Rather, the writers’ space the Tank  had a book reading like no previous book reading. It was a night of high-voltage emotions, an intense, riveting 90-minute event. The occasional humor was welcomed by the audience, whose emotions were nearly wrung out by the readings of the two writers onstage. Yet the readings also energized the audience, just as a perfect concerto or saddest blues number can do to the listener. Imagine Pavorotti in his prime or Billie Holliday at her most broken and you’ll have an idea of what occurred at the Tank last night. And look on The Good Men Project website to see when you can catch the next public reading. Theater this excellent must be staged frequently. Nothing currently on the New York stage compares.

What is The Good Men Project? It is the book that is changing America. It is making people rethink lifelong concepts of what it means to be a man.

Last night’s reading (followed by another NYC appearance tonight at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Center) made clear that The Good Men Project is not just the most thought-provoking book of the season (it is) and not only a great 54-minute documentary(available on DVD at www.goodmenproject.org), but that it may have many more dimensions to it in the future. More on that later.

Coeditors James Houghton, Larry Bean, and Tom Matlack gathered 31 essays from a variety of men, each recounting a moment in his life that changed him forever. The book contains a cast of characters who would be unlikely to gather at the same social event. These men include a gangbanger, a CFO, a gay Asian playwright, a recovering drug addict trying to make sense of the drug overdose death of his son, and a man coming to terms with the death of his wife after a 35-year relationship (the moving Silence, Joe D’Arrigo’s beautiful, spare piece, just six pages in length but nearly overpowering in its beauty and emotion).

Last night’s event–to call it simply a book reading is to undermine the power of the evening–was beautifully staged: Two of the book’s contributors sat at desks, each with a bottle of water, as Matlack made a few opening remarks then stepped away to let them read. The simplicity of the staging added to the power of the evening’s material.

Julio Medina was a gangbanger who spent twelve years in Sing Sing. His essay speaks of the pride of the Latino culture, his experiences growing up in the South Bronx (“There were no attorneys or doctors, but there were drug dealers and pimps.”), and how the man must always lead (“Even after I went to prison, my family worshipped me. They treated me like I was a political prisoner or something.”). His transformative moment is, perhaps, the most spellbinding in the book–so effective because it arrives after he recounts years of the horrors that are day-to-day goings-on in our prisons. Medina has an abundance of natural, unaffected presence and charisma; this man could rule Broadway and the silver screen if he chose to.

Houghton, one of the book’s coeditors, was last night’s other reader. He has a completely different background from Medina’s. Born into wealth, he worked as a business manager for Corning, Inc. (where his father was CEO) and was a venture capitalist. His youthful yearnings to be accepted by his classmates (“Even at a young age, I felt the tension between my intense pride in the company and in my family and a great longing to be anonymous.”) led to rebellious urges. (He decided to attend Brown rather than Harvard, where three previous generations had attended; he ultimately backed down from this urge and went to Harvard.) His story traces his breaking away from the family business–with the support of his wife (Behind every great man …). Houghton’s story mirrors every man’s urge to be accepted by his father and to be his own man.

Joel Schwartzberg, another of the book’s contributing writers, did a fine job asking smart questions of the authors and fielding enthusiastic audience members’ questions.

Ah, but what is a man? And what is a “good” man? Read The Good Men Project and you will be surprised. You may even realize you are married to one, or have one for a dad or brother. You might even see a good man reflected in your mirror. Houghton has it right: When asked what a good man is, he responded, “It is the man asking the question.”

No, last night’s reading of The Good Men Project at the Tank didn’t contain a Daniel Craig-Hugh Jackman pairing or a crashing chandelier. It had humanity at its most painful and at its most beautiful, life-affirming moments. To see these two outwardly opposite men recount  journeys not all that different from the other’s (discovering–then living–their ideals of manhood) is to see manhood at its greatest.

Last night’s event was some of the most effective theater I’ve seen in a forty-year love affair with the legitimate stage. One suggestion for those behind The Good Men Project: This must be transformed into a Broadway play. Think a male version of The Vagina Monologues, with rotating casts of professional actors (okay, maybe there’s room for Craig and Jackman in the cast). It would make the most profound evening in the theater.

In the meantime, get to THE GOOD MEN’S PROJECT website and, no matter where you live across the country, request, beg ,or plead for an evening of The Good Men Project to be booked into your hometown. Whether rural or urban, your neighborhood–your home life–can only be improved by spending an evening with a few of these good men.

Joseph Crowley is a Boston-based freelance journalist. He has contributed to, among other publications, edge/boston. He regularly reviews films and theater for coloroffilm.com.