Will The Real J.T. LeRoy Please Stand Up? April 11, 2007

Cabaret Company's newest play Will the Real J.T. LeRoy Please Stand Up? opens at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre April 12th and runs Thursday to Sunday until April 22nd. Written and directed by Sky Gilbert, the show is inspired by the real life J.T. LeRoy literary hoax that duped literary critics and sparked debates on the issues of the nature of gender, truth and art.



Jeremiah "Terminator" LeRoy was the name used by the much-acclaimed author of Sarah and The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, both published in 1999. Claiming to be born October 31, 1980 in West Virginia, J.T. LeRoy was celebrated as a young male-to-female Transgendered person who overcame a sordid past of homelessness, abuse and prostitution to become a literary phenomenon. 



The J.T. LeRoy scandal first broke in a 2005 article in New York Magazine that suggesting that the then famous J.T. LeRoy was a persona created by failed musician and author Laura Albert and her partner Geoffrey Knoop. Albert has since confirmed that she was the writer and mastermind behind the J.T. LeRoy books and was responsible for paying Geoffrey Knoop's teenaged niece to dress up as J.T. LeRoy for rare public appearances. 

Unlike the James Frey memoir scandal, Laura Albert always presented J.T. LeRoy's work as fiction.

The issue that caused public backlash was born from the fact that the success and support of the J.T. LeRoy novels was due to the highly publicized personal life of J.T. LeRoy that Albert had completely fabricated. It was through Albert's lies and appropriation that J.T LeRoy become a beloved icon to many people, and garnered public support of celebrities such as Marilyn Manson, Susan Dey, Courtney Love, Winona Ryder, Susan Sarandon and Tatum O'Neal.



Sky Gilbert's fictional play is a wildly comic and deeply serious meditation on several important issues such as the definition of male and female?...Is writing for another gender appropriation?...Which is more important fact or fiction?...And what after all is truth? Gilbert's play does not offer answers to these complicated issues but instead presents a thoughtful yet provocative argument about the nature of gender and art. 



Will the Real J.T. LeRoy Please Stand Up? stars Ryan Kelly as the Real J.T. LeRoy and Suzanne Bennett as the writer whom he confronts. Amber Ebert plays the teenager who poses as J.T. LeRoy and Ellen Ray-Hennessy, in a special cameo appearance, will portray Tatum O'Neil. Sets and lights are by Steve Lucas and costumes by Sheree Tams. 



Official Website: http://www.buddiesinbadtimestheatre.com