Call John Michael a standup comic, performance artist or monologist — whatever makes you comfortable
(’cuz it’ll still make him uncomfortable)
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WORK THAT WAND | Entertaining audiences with a one-man show about Harry Potter getting AIDS is just some of the sleight-of-hand John Michael hopes to work. (Photo courtesy Chuck Marcelo)
ARNOLD WAYNE JONES | Life+Style Editor
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ORDER OF THE PENIX
Magnolia Lounge, 1121 First Ave. in Fair Park. Through April 13. Nouveau47.com.
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When John Michael Colgin’s parents kicked him out of the house, his life changed forever.
You might think you’ve heard the story before: Gay youth is rejected by his family after coming out. You haven’t.
“I wish I could say it was for being gay,” John Michael (who goes professionally, like Cher, without his last name), “but it’s because I’m messy. They are very supportive of my sexuality.”
He ended up living at the ilume in a friend’s unused apartment, then working down the block at TapeLenders. “I started to have the time of my life — partying, drinking, meeting cute boys and giving more customer service than is required of my job, let’s say,” he explains. But then a customer triggered an idea for a performance piece. And that has been his focus for the past few months.
John Michael is no stranger to performance pieces. Depending on who he’s talking to, he describes himself alternatively as a monologist (to journalists), performance artist (to the IRS) or standup comedian (to cute boys). Whatever he calls it, though, it’s the same thing: Taking his life and turning it into his art.
John Michael’s first two shows — The A-Gays of Stillwater, Okla. and Would You Like Guys with That? — explored his coming-out process (“coming out as an asshole,” he admits), but his latest — John Michael and the Order of the Penix — is about some more grown-up subject matter: Partying, safe-sex and HIV.
The title (a play on one of the Harry Potter books) puts John Michael bouncing back and forth between Dallas and Hogwarts, where a “Muggle disease” (AIDS) is ravaging the ranks of wizardry, including Harry himself. Only John Michael can stop it, helped along by Neville Longbottom and Luna Lovegood (“the most sexually ambiguous characters in Harry Potter,” he explains). Along the way, he appears at GayBingo, the Nelson-Tebedo Clinic, S4 and other Dallas landmarks.
The routine (it’s not written down, but an outline he performs nightly, with tweaks and changes as the mood fits him) is an ambitious one for the 24-year-old, and that’s how he likes it.
“I like to put myself in environments that aren’t always easy and comfortable,” John Michael says. But perhaps no environment is more uncomfortable than the chair across from a reporter writing down everything he says.
John Michael, quoting the old saw about the therapeutic nature of performing to exorcise his demons, admits that talking about his work is more difficult than doing it.
“The reason I do the show is I can’t get that much clearer explaining it myself,” he says. “It’s a wonderful feeling when I walk into the lobby after the show where I don’t have to explain myself. The biggest truth I ever find is on the stage.”
All of this springs up from his love of storytelling. John Michael is a fan of monologists like Spaulding Gray and Mike Daisy and even Louis C.K., who find humor in their personal stories while also baring themselves in warts-and-all ways. Indeed, the storytelling has become so pervasive, he admits he sometimes isn’t sure whether he’s doing something just to do it, or because he senses it might make a good piece down the road.
But what he is sure about is the passion with which he’s approaching the current show. While working at TapeLenders, John Michael was surprised by the differences between generations. “Someone who came in to buy lube, I would often up-sell them asking, ‘Do you need condoms?’ The older guys usually said something like, ‘Thanks for reminding me.’ But the younger guys — the guys my age — who just say, ‘No thanks — don’t need those.’ My generation has lost their stories, or are not listening … or a mix of both.”
The parallels between the older wizards of Harry Potter telling stories about Voldemort and gay men who have lived through the height of the AIDS crisis resonated with John Michael. He has, though, experienced some blow-back.
“When I told this older guy I was doing a play where Harry Potter had AIDS, he looked at me like, ‘You don’t have the right to talk about AIDS when you haven’t really lived through it,’” he says. But John Michael insists he’s not making light of the disease; rather, he’s trying to reach an audience that needs to learn about it.
He’s not sure he wants everyone to see the show, however. His parents won’t be coming to this one — while they are supportive of his career, there are limits. (“I loved every bit of it,” his father told him after one performance, “except the fellatio scene.”) And there’s one other category of fan he’d like to exclude.
“I would never want someone I would like to date to come see my show!” he says. There’s honesty, and then there’s TMI.
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition March 29, 2013,