Bay Street Presents Special Engagement Of 'Absolute Brightness'

The Ryder Farm is a unique place, James Lecesne mused over the phone last month, a strong upstate wind creating scene-setting static on the line.

One hour north from his familiar streets of New York City, the 130 acres in Brewster are home to a rotating summer residency of writers, actors, musicians, dancers and visual artists who find solace and inspiration in the land, the lake and the 12-acre working organic farm there.

Almost exactly two years ago, Mr. Lecesne was in the very same place for the very same residency—but in a much different frame of mind. He was writing the first half-hour of “The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey,” a one-man play based on the semi-eponymous novella he penned in 2008 about a gay 14-year-old boy who goes missing.

His residency culminated in an informal sharing. To say it went well would be an understatement, he said.

“I couldn’t believe the reaction. ...” he recalled. “Duncan Sheik, the musician, was here for that presentation and he came up to me afterward and said, ‘I’m going to write you some music for this.’ And I said, ‘Well, it’s not a musical …’ And he said, ‘No, I know. I’m going to write music for in between things.’ And, oh God, yes, I took him up on that. It set the whole atmosphere for the play.”

“The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey,” starring Mr. Lecesne as nine characters, will make a six-performance stop starting Monday, July 18, at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor as part of its countrywide tour, which could be exactly what the nation needs right now, he said.

“I did it this past Friday at the 92nd Street Y. It was an amazing, amazing experience because they very generously opened it up to the public on a pay-what-you-want basis,” he said. “Just in light of everything that’s happened this last week, with the shooting in Orlando, this show took on an opportunity for people to come together and think about diversity and inclusion, and also some of the amazing gifts that people who are different bring to a community.”

It is a sentiment he wishes existed when he was a child growing up in a small bedroom community in New Jersey—a place he left as soon as he could, he said with a laugh.

He left to pursue the life he went on to live, he clarified. “I suppose I grew up when it was just a very different time—in terms of being gay, certainly. In those days, you could stay below the radar. That was the best survival tool and not as easy to do for somebody as,” he paused, his smile practically audible through the phone, “excited as I was to be alive.”

When he was 15, he discovered the theater—and it became his lifeline, he said.

“That was the thing I knew I wanted to do with the rest of my life, the thing I decided I would do some way or another,” he said. “I just had to find my way. As we know, young people are incredibly resourceful.

“You just never know, really, how unusual your life is going to be. That’s the part that’s so amazing. You have a much more standard version of your life when you’re young. You don’t know what’s going to happen.”

One day in 1990, Mr. Lecesne was listening to a story on NPR and heard a deeply troubling statistic: one third of all teen suicides were attributable to homosexuality. “It was insane to me, it just seemed crazy. It was the big secret,” he said. “I was living in New York City in the ’90s in a period in the middle of a plague. There was a whole generation of people dying around me—my friends, my colleagues. And then there was this other generation killing themselves.”

He wrote a little story called “Trevor,” which became part of his solo show “Word of Mouth.” It tackled the moment a child shifts from exuberance to self-consciousness. It is a moment everyone knows, he said.

The story would inspire the founding of The Trevor Project, the only national suicide prevention and crisis intervention line for LGBT and questioning youth, and it would be made into a 15-minute film and screened on HBO.

He never dreamed it would win an Academy Award, but it did, for Best Live Action Short Film.

“It’s funny. I woke up last night, in the middle of the night, and had this moment of, ‘Oh my God, this has really happened.’ And it just becomes a part of the story of your life,” he said. “Every once in a while, I become so overwhelmed by the mystery of it all, when things like that happen. You have to bow down in front of the mystery of your life and go, ‘Wow, that was amazing.’

“What Trevor taught me was how powerful a story is, what it can do in the world. Originally, that story was 10 minutes long—not even. And then a story that compact, but that true, could go out into the world and create such change. It’s just a miracle that it’s still happening. It’s still saving lives.”

When The Trevor Project launched on August 11, 1998—in conjunction with the HBO screening—it received more than 1,500 calls that night. These days, it answers 45,000 calls per year. They came pouring in on June 12 after the Orlando nightclub shooting that left 49 dead and 53 wounded.

“At the Trevor Project, when something like this happens, it’s all hands on deck. All these young people, they’re terrified, they’re scared for their safety, they don’t understand. It’s not like they have lived with it their whole lives. For them, it’s a brand new world. And suddenly, something like this happens and they’re introduced to a world we grew up with.”

But 50 years ago, it was unthinkable that the gay rights movement would have gained as much traction as it his in just the past 20, Mr. Lecesne pointed out. From great evil comes great good, he said, which is a common theme in most of his work.

“It’s my belief. It’s also my hope. How else can we live?” he posed. “It’s one of the things one of the characters in the play says. She thinks the purpose of evil is to get people to stand up and be better. And without evil, they’d never find the courage to come forward and do the right thing.

“At the 92nd Street Y on Friday, there was a talkback after the show. It was emotional and people want to talk about this stuff,” he continued. “Somebody asked me, ‘Well, what do we do?’ And I was like, ‘You don’t need me to tell you what to do. You know what to do. Just do it.’ I think we all know the thing that our conscience is calling us to do in the face of evil. We have to find the courage to stand up and do it.”

“The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey,” written by and starring James Lecesne, will open on Monday, July 18, at 8 p.m. at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor. Performances will continue through Sunday, July 24. No show Tuesday. For showtimes and ticket prices, visit baystreet.org or call 631-725-9500.