John McGivern has two voices, one high and whiny and self-consciously fey, the other lower, more grounded and sensible.
One of the hardest truths they had to face was that McGivern is gay. “When people would ask, my mother used to say, ‘John is a bachelor.’ And that was it. Now she says, ‘He’s a professional homosexual.’”
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McGivern, who is 42 and has been out for nearly 15 years, grew up as the middle child in a typical working-class Irish-Catholic family in Milwaukee. “My father was a bricklayer. He was kind of macho. My mother was a mother. She was kind of macho as well.”
McGivern became disenchanted with the church, though his sexual orientation had less to do with it than his political views and rebellious spirit. “I was always questioning the laws,” he says. The breaking point came when he was assigned to help organize a right-to-life rally in the Detroit area. “It was like, you know what? I’m not. I can’t. I kicked up my heels and left the church.”
Earning Equity wages 52 weeks a year in a play that looked like it would run into the next millennium, McGivern prospered. But offstage, he was losing control.
Four years ago, director Matt Callahan persuaded McGivern to collect his stories as a one-man show for Bailiwick Repertory’s Pride Performance Series. The show was so well received that McGivern revived it for a short run at the Organic Greenhouse. Then, taking a leave of absence from Shear Madness, he began performing it around the country.
