"The minute a man puts on a dress, something very theatrical
happens. It's funny." So says visual artist David Rohn in explaining
his latest creation: the pilot episode for the very theatrical Adora
Adora, a television sitcom he wrote, directed, and in which he has a
minor acting role. The actual star of the show is Rohn's significant
other, Danilo de La Torre, a.k.a. Adora the drag queen, along with cohorts
Taffy Lynn and Damien Devine.
A first-time scriptwriter, Rohn hopes to use TV, which he calls "the
preeminent medium of our culture," to reach a wide audience and
to highlight the dragsters he considers more than a bunch of eccentric
guys who like to play dressup. "Drag culture is an art form,"
he argues. "That's a more accepted idea now than it used to be.
I thought there was so much talent out there that wasn't getting much
play. And the whole drag thing is so visual."
Getting the visual part on tape wasn't as easy as it seemed. In early
1996 Rohn devised a script for an episode and attempted to shoot it.
He spent $300 of his own money; the entire cast worked for free. Owing
to a lack of funds and some technical snags, the resulting footage was
distilled into an eleven-minute trailer, which starred Adora and included
another drag queen, Marvella, and DJ JoJo Odyssey. Screened before a
standing-room-only crowd at a 1996 Alliance for Media Arts benefit,
the short film was a colorful comic romp about Adora buying a new dress.
Though not quite a full-length episode, the eleven-minute segment was
not a total loss. Rohn submitted it to the Dade Human Rights Foundation
(an organization that supports gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender
causes) and scored a $2500 grant. The money allowed him to enlist the
aid of the Alliance and to produce the 30-minute pilot, which will premiere
Thursday at the Alliance Cinema.
Shot in and around Miami Beach, the pilot is more sumptuous visually
and more tangled in plot than the trailer. It revolves around the love
troubles of Daphne, Adora's best friend (played by Taffy Lynn) who is,
according to Rohn, "between husbands and between careers."
Adora's maid Domina (played by Damien Devine) gives Daphne a love potion
so she can seduce her unresponsive boyfriend. Of course Adora gets her
hands on the brew and slips a few drops to her husband, Teddy Behr,
portrayed by Rohn.
Fluffy as it may sound, the episode is not all outrageous antics, too
much makeup, and glamorous gowns. Under the latex lies subtext. "What
it's really about is people trying to manipulate other people,"
explains Rohn, a former teenage TV junkie who cites as influences the
movies of flamboyant Spanish director Pedro Almodovar and episodes of
I Love Lucy and the Dick Van Dyke Show. "Lucy is timeless,"
he says. "The way she interacts with people, the way she communicates,
the comic aspects of what everyone goes through. Dick Van Dyke is also
about the trouble people have communicating and how they iron it out
together with their mates and their friends. And Almodovar really covers
contemporary culture well."
Even in these relatively enlightened times, a show about a zany drag
queen may be a hard sell compared to anything about nearly any happily
married straight couple, but Rohn is undeterred. He and his crew hope
to produce more episodes of Adora Adora if they can find the funds.
But don't expect the fledgling auteur to become a prima donna anytime
soon. "I'm not a director," Rohn says modestly. "I don't
have directing experience, and I didn't go to director's school. Having
written the script, I had a clear idea of what I wanted, but it's hard
to feel like I can order people around when I'm not paying them!"
-- Nina Korman
The pilot episode of Adora Adora will air at 10:00 p.m. Thursday, July
2, at the Alliance Cinema, 927 Lincoln Rd, Miami Beach.