by William S. Dean
(09/05/07)
Born in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1894, the boy was a sickly child, plagued with a variety of diseases including rickets, rheumatic fever, and typhoid fever. His parents, like many Americans at the time, were extremely conservative Christians. Alfred Kinsey's father imposed strict religious rules on the household. Sunday was a day for prayer and not much else. Young Alfred found any social relationships with girls outlawed. Of course, knowledge of anything remotely sexual, such as masturbation, was forbidden.
Yet Alfred Kinsey would go on to shake the American puritanical attitude to its foundation by exposing himself and his interview subjects to an intense scrutiny about their sexual habits, desires, and behavior. Today -- despite continuing controversy -- Kinsey is considered the father of "sexology," a catch-all term for the scientific study of sexuality.
Fifty one years since his death in August 1956, Kinsey's life and work continues to spark the creative energies of writers today and one such is award-winning playwright and actor, Mike Folie. Folie's play, Alfred Kinsey: A Love Story opens September 10 off-Broadway at the Michael Weller Theatre, 311 West 43rd Street, New York.
Clean Sheets interviews Mr. Folie to get some insight into the complex nature of the man and his importance to our continuing understanding of what makes us such puzzling sexual beings.
Clean Sheets (CS): People still seem to be conflicted about the significance of Kinsey and his sexuality studies. Do you think there are still relevant issues about him 50 years after his death?
Mike Folie: Absolutely. Kinsey continues to spark strong emotions on both sides of the contemporary cultural divide. There is still today an avid Kinsey critic named Dr. Judith Reisman (she has a Ph.D. in Communications) who has made it her life's work to discredit Kinsey, which she tries to do at every opportunity. On the other hand, I think there are some in the sexual liberation movement who would like to claim Kinsey as a champion of complete sexual openness when he was actually quite conservative in his personal behavior (at least publicly) and very secretive about his own activities. He's a contradictory figure, larger than life and fascinating, which is why I was drawn to him.
CS: What kind of research did you do before writing the play and what were the major themes you wanted to explore with it?
Mike Folie: Alfred Kinsey: A Love Story was commissioned by retired Broadway and film producer George W. George. His many Broadway productions include Dylan with Alec Guinness, a play he also commissioned, and Any Wednesday with Sandy Dennis. He also produced the film My Dinner with Andre. George gave me a biography of Kinsey called Kinsey: A Biography: Sex: The Measure of All Things, by Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy. I learned much about Kinsey's real life from this book, which is very well researched. I also viewed a PBS documentary about Kinsey and did a good deal of Internet research. My play is a highly theatrical and fictionalized account of Kinsey's life -- the events in the play are either made up entirely or fictionalized versions of things that might have happened -- but most if not all of the bare facts in the play about his life are true.
Thematically, I was interested in the question of whether or not it is truly possible for human beings to study their own sexual natures with cold, scientific objectivity. Kinsey tried to observe and report on human sexual activity in the same way a scientist might study any other animal. Was he successful at this? Or did his own human emotions get in the way? And what effect might that have had on his results? I'm not sure of the answers to these questions, but they are the questions I was most interested in exploring.
CS: According to some historians and social researchers, Kinsey "blew the lid off" much of society's smug and priggish attitudes about what is "perverted" and what's "normal." By dramatizing Kinsey's work and life do you hope to show audiences that much of that "old school" Puritanism is still prevalent today?
Mike Folie: American society's tolerance for dealing with sex in an open and frank manner doesn't run in a straight line from the "Puritanical" to the more liberal. The post World War I generation of the 1920s and '30s was much more sexually liberated than the later generation that lived through the Eisenhower years of the 1950s. The period stretching from the late 1960s to the early '70s was a very sexually liberating time. But then things seemed to swing back again in the '80s and '90 as a result of AIDS, the rise of the religious right and increasing dominance in Washington of reactionary politicians. Sex makes us vulnerable. It reminds us that we are animals and not always fully in control of nature or ourselves. The erotic, as Camille Paglia points out, is where raw nature and human society intersect. I don't think human beings will ever be completely comfortable in their own bodies, at least not as long as we live in societies.
CS: Of course the standard "good" critic's response to any play is "I laughed. I cried. I applauded." Are there laughs in your play? Are there elements that might move us to tears?
Mike Folie: Most of my plays are comedies and I can't seem to help writing laugh lines -- even when I don't intend to. Kinsey isn't a comedy, but there is humor in it and the play has always gotten some good laughs when it's been read in front of an audience. I think any play about sex would have to have a certain amount of humor in it. Sex is inherently funny -- that's why there are so many jokes that take off from sexual situations.
As far as being moved to tears, Kinsey was a tragic figure. He died believing himself to be a failure, that his work had not accomplished anything. If he'd only lived ten more years into the late '60s he would have seen how wrong he was. But even more than that, he was a big man, a towering, obsessed and obsessive individual, on a crusade to save the world, and he inadvertently hurt some of the people around him because of that. I explore some of that in the play.
CS: Since the play is noted as "a love story," who is it that you feel Kinsey was in love with? Himself? The idea of sex? The sheer kinkiness of some of his "explorations"?
Mike Folie: There's a lot of love in the play. Kinsey is very much in love with his wife, Mac, and with his assistant, John Sanders (a composite figure not based on any one real person). But Kinsey is also undone by love. He tries to ignore love in his research, dismissing it as a confounding factor that cannot be quantified. He tries to ignore love in his own life, pretending that his own emotions are not influencing his research. And I think love has its revenge on him. Love is his undoing.
CS: What did -- if anything -- the work on the play reveal to you as writer about sexuality and sexual pleasures?
Mike Folie: It showed me that love and sex are two entirely different things. They often overlap, but are in no way really dependent upon each other. You can have great love without sex, and you can have great sex without love. But I think love trumps sex in the long-term, because it lasts longer, and because ultimately we care more about the few people we really love than about the many people we may potentially enjoy sex with.
Visit Mike Folie's Web site for more information.
For more information about the play, Alfred Kinsey: A Love Story, visit alfredkinseytheplay on MySpace.
