The Los Angeles Times called the show “a traditional American musical: a heartwarming tale of misfits who create a community by putting on a show.” But the big difference with the new stage musical Shooting Star is that the misfits are aspiring performers in the gay porn industry, and the “show” they put on is, well, a lot of gay porn.
But the play, which opens in Los Angeles this weekend, will likely not be lacking in verisimilitude, given that the creator and author of Shooting Star is popular veteran gay performer Hans Berlin—who for his debut as a playwright has temporarily reverted to his given name, crediting his work to Florian Klein. The author says that he hopes the show will take audiences inside the personal lives of porn performers.
While the show is subtitled A Revealing New Musical, and Berlin is best known for his obviously “revealing” performances in such titles as Heavy Load, San Francisco Meat Packers and Working Class Stiff, he does not appear on stage in his show. The musical will be “sexy,” he says, and in fact includes some nudity, but the porn star turned librettist says that he was more interested in portraying the inner lives of his characters, than their on-screen personas.
“We’re not giving the audience something they think they would hear in a show about porn—that we’re all bad people and we all have a drug addiction, and we do porn because we were pushed into it,” Berlin/Klein told the gay site The Sword. “It’s not that at all. It’s a show about human beings. We’re showing the human side of porn, we’re showing that we’re all just people.”
It was just under one year ago that Berlin, as AVN.com reported at the time, staged a showcase version of Shooting Star for theater industry professionals and investors. AVN also interviewed Berlin here.
Now Shooting Star is ready for the footlights of live theater, opening May 31 at Hudson Mainstage Theatre in Hollywood. Showtimes are 8 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, with a 3 p.m. matinee-only show on Sundays, through June 30. The $35 tickets for the show can be purchased by calling (323) 960-7787 or visiting the On Stage 411 site.
