11th quarterly oral history event returns this week to the Rose Room
SISTERS | The Dallas Sisters have become one of the largest houses outside San Francisco. Sister Polly von Acocker explains its history at the next Outrageous Oral. (David Taffet/Dallas Voice)
Planning an Outrageous Oral presentation can be a challenge for a speaker.
Pam Curry, one of presenters at the next oral history project organized by The Dallas Way spent a week frantically deciding what she’d include in her presentation.
“Until today, I thought I knew,” she said. “I was just going to tell my story.”
She quickly learned, however, “just telling her story” in the 10 to 15 minutes allocated for each speaker isn’t as easy as it sounded. As she poured through her own history, she said she learned some things about herself that she hadn’t realized before.
Created to collect the history of the LGBT community in North Texas, The Dallas Way and its Outrageous Oral project work in conjunction with the University of North Texas. Next week’s presentation is the organization’s 11th quarterly event, and draws a growing crowd of LGBT history buffs to the Rose Room.
The storytellers are mostly long-time members of the LGBT community who share their inspiring, humorous and emotional experiences with an audience determined to let this rich past not be forgotten.
Bruce Monroe, one of The Dallas Way’s founders, said his group is collecting oral histories two ways. The first is through interviews. Some people aren’t comfortable making a presentation in public, but willingly sit down in front of a camera for interviews that may last an hour or two.
Others make shorter presentations that are part of an evening of LGBT history at The Rose Room. Most of the presentations are about 15 minutes. And that’s part of Curry’s dilemma.
Speakers want to engage their audience while presenting an honest picture of their piece of the LGBT community’s history.
Curry said she began writing her story, which she called a roller coaster ride that would include everything from a Muppet to a suicide attempt.
She said she always thought of herself as a health and disability activist who happened to be trans, but as she began writing, she discovered something about herself. She’s a trans activist who happens to have a passion for health and disability issues.
“I evolved in writing this,” she said.
Bruce Jaster, a former Outrageous Oral presenter who now organizes the program, said this installment of the quarterly program reaches deeper into the community to illustrate just how diverse Dallas’ LGBT community is. In addition to Curry, the speakers are Alpha Thomas, Sister Polly von Acocker and Master Z.
Thomas, an African-American lesbian, is committed to young people’s acceptance of themselves, especially among LGBT youth. Master Z has been active in BDSM and leather events for more than a dozen years. He is a frequent presenter on the master/slave and leather lifestyle. Sister Polly von Acocker is a member of the playfully activist Dallas branch of the San Francisco-based Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.
Sister Polly, also known as Paul Pizzo, said he’ll be talking about how the Dallas house of sisters formed and what they do for the community.
“We’re a service organization that’s all about fun without guilt,” he said. “I will be in full regalia, or as we call it, I’ll be in face.”
Getting into face used to take up to three hours, “and there were many makeup mistakes,” he said.
He said when the sisters first came to Dallas, he sometimes felt more like Ronald McDonald walking around The Strip. Now he’s more confident about his presentation and he’s in full face within 90 minutes.
While he hasn’t decided which stories he’ll tell at Outrageous Oral, he promised a mix of funny and touching. He said sometimes just talking to someone at an event makes a difference in someone’s life.
The stories are recorded on video and made available later on the organization’s website. University of North Texas is also including the videos as part of its collection of North Texas LGBT history.
The Rose Room inside S4, 3911 Cedar Springs Road. June 26 at 7 p.m. TheDallasWay.org. Free.
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition June 20, 2014.
