Issue 131: Pride in Delhi, David Kuria, the gay mosque, World AIDS Day, Rudy Ray Moore, Freefall, Freaky Boiz, Sarge + more

a news compendium
with a gay bias

OPENING SHOTS

< This week's cover features Shane Jackson, lensed by our friends at Sitron Studio. Look out for the rest of the shoot, exclusively here at kaos, this weekend.

||| Associated Press bans the word "homophobia" - as well as Islamophobia - saying "phobia" inaccurately describes anti-gay hate.

||| On that note, readers of kaos might have noticed that we don't use umbrella acronyms like LGBT (we prefer the simpler, cleaner "gay"). Likewise, we don't refer to gay rights - we talk about gay equality, and marriage equality, not "gay marriage". For some time, we've also used the term "anti-gay hate" in place of the softer "homophobia" - good to see the Associated Press have caught up with us!

||| But kaos favourite Rev Irene Monroe says the AP's decision is discouraging. Is she right?

||| And Patrick Strudwick - editor of Attitude magazine - also thinks "homophobia" and "Islamophobia" are the right words for the job.

US & CANADA NEWS

> Portuguese underwear model Renato Seabra found guilty of castrating and murdering Portuguese fashion journalist Carlos Castro.

< Arizona principal condemned for punishing two boys with "gay hand-holding".

||| Meanwhile, a teacher in Detroit has been suspended for playing Same Love her pupils. Susan Johnson played the pro-marriage equality song to eighth grade performing arts students at Centennial Middle School, after one of her pupils requested it.

||| Prison doctor pleads guilty to sexually abusing male prisoners, tries to commit suicide.

||| Four New Jersey men file lawsuit over Jewish JONAH Center "gay cure" practices.

||| Just what is Hillary Clinton's position on marriage equality?

> US retailer J. Crew profiles gay couple in its Wedding Album for the first time.

||| Morgan Freeman narrates new marriage equality advert.

||| America's secret service, the CIA, has held its first gay recruitment drive.

||| Alleged WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning takes the stand.

< New York and Los Angeles score 100% in gay rights city report. Frankfort, Jefferson City and Montgomery all scored zero in the the Human Rights Campaign list.

||| New York City celebrates day without violent crime.

||| Gay Sandy victims struggle to recover.

> Naked AIDS activists invade the office of the speaker of the US House of Representatives, John Boehner. In pictures.

||| There's more evidence that Abraham Lincoln was gay, apparently.

||| Carnival Cruises bans drag on drag cruise, in case families are offended.

Remembering Harvey Milk on the 34th anniversary of his assasination.

||| CANADA: Explosives discovered in Montreal gay village.

UK NEWS

||| Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell applauds the Leveson Report - the result of an inquiry into British press standards - saying it will help protect gay private lives: "Too many LGBT people are subjected to invasions of privacy, homophobic insinuations and sensationalist, inaccurate reporting. The methods of redress are weak, patchy and often dependent on a person being wealthy enough to take on media corporations."

||| The Leveson Report concludes there is: "disturbing and intrusive reporting of transgender and intersex issues by parts of the press". This includes showing trans people as "deviant" and "deserving of parody" as well as "outing" them.

||| Being gay at school remains difficult for teachers. "While many teachers wish to come out at school so they can be role models for pupils, there are still many issues around homophobic language and even lack of support from colleagues, Stonewall research reveals."

< National Union of Students launch Christmas card campaign calling on Prime Minister David Cameron to move faster on plans to legalise marriage equality.

> UK Independence Party would-be MP Winston McKenzie loses election but still rants over gay adoption, which he likens to the fall of the Roman Empire.

||| Wealthy Oxford students claim they are being "persecuted" for being Conservatives after being called "haters of gays" and "rape apologists".

||| 73-year-old London butler John Crawford is one of the first to apply to have an archaic gay sex conviction - dating back to the 1950s - quashed.

||| Gay Ryanair trolley dolly given community order for stealing duty free products to sell on eBay.

||| Government vows to get tough on sex in prison.

||| SCOTLAND: Man raped in Glasgow's west end.

EUROPE NEWS

||| Half of EU believe gay hate is history.

< FRANCE: Why I want to open a gay-friendly mosque in Paris, by Ludovic-Mohamed Zahed. "Being gay and a feminist is not incompatible with Islam. An inclusive place of worship would give hope back to many."

||| FRANCE: Opposition politician Nicolas Dhuicq warns marriage equality will "cause terrorism" and provoke psychosis. And the children of gays are would-be terrorists, he added for good measure.

> GERMANY: Berlin launches Europe's biggest gay, multi-generational sheltered house.

||| RUSSIA: National gag on "homosexual propaganda" to become law...

...Meanwhile, Venice, Milan and Turin cut symbolic ties with St Petersburg over its anti-gay laws.

||| The UN Human Rights Committee has passed a landmark ruling saying the Russian law against "homosexual propaganda" is discriminatory, violates the basic right for freedom of expression and unconstitutional.

||| ITALY: More than half of gay Italians fear getting older, are pessimistic about the future.

< TURKEY: The 2013 David Kato Vision and Voice Award has been awarded to Ali Erol, the country's leading gay activist.

||| TURKEY: New regulations list murder and being gay as expulsion reasons from army.

LATIN AMERICA NEWS

||| ARGENTINA: Congress passes bill that could ban clinics from asking blood donors their sexual orientation.

> TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO: Jamaican gay activist Maurice Tomlinson challenging the archipelagic state's entry ban on gays in an international court.

||| JAMAICA: Read Maurice Tomlinson's open letter to Jamaica minister of justice about repealing the country's anti-gay law.

AFRICA NEWS

< KENYA: David Kuria announces withdrawal from the race to become a Senator in 2013. Kuria was running as an openly gay Senator for Kiambu County.

||| UGANDA: Activist Kasha Jacqueline says death penalty still in anti-gay bill.

||| UGANDA: America's Family Research Council blatantly lies about supporting the anti-gay bill.

||| UGANDA: Half a million people urge Citibank and Barclays - both of whom have a presence in the country - to condemn the anti-gay bill.

||| UGANDA: Germany announces three year suspension of aid to Uganda.

> SOUTH AFRICA: Wendelinus Hamutenya - Mr Gay Namibia 2011 - suspended after domestic violence claims.

||| LIBYA: Militia to execute twelve men for allegedly being gay.

ASIA NEWS

< INDIA: Hundreds join colourful Delhi Queer Pride parade.

||| Delhi Queer Pride, an impressive show of solidarity.

||| Delhi Queer Pride, in pictures. More images here.

||| INDIA: Why I walk the Queer Pride every year.

THE BIG PICTURE: Gandhi of the subway carriage.

||| VIETNAM: 800 celebrate sexual diversity in Ho Chi Minh City.

||| CHINA: Gay job advert deleted after sparking anger; blogger complained gays "taking our boyfriends and jobs".

> TAIWAN: Taipei court hears marriage equality case; Nelson Chen and Kao Chih-wei are fighting to have their relationship legally recognised.

||| SINGAPORE: Couple sue to end Singapore's 377A sodomy law. Gary Lim and Kenneth Chee object to being branded criminals, despite the government saying the law is not to be enforced proactively.

||| SINGAPORE: Why there's no such thing as eternal rest on the overcrowded island.

||| MALAYSIA: Datin Seri Paduka Rosmah Mansor, the wife of the Malaysian Prime Minister, has blamed HIV on gay people, and declared: "you have to nip it [homosexuality] in the bud".

||| NEW ZEALAND: MP asks gay couple "who would be the wife" during select committee into legalising same-sex marriage.

||| AUSTRALIA: Thousands march for marriage equality.

BOOKS, ART & PHOTOGRAPHY

< This £212million creation is to be the biggest sculpture in history.

Talking to photographer West Phillips.

||| How comic writer Darren G. Davis came to terms with his HIV status by creating an island full of monsters.

||| The Best LGBT Books of 2012: 87 authors select their favourites.

||| Talking to Joshua Martino about his novel Fontana, which deals with the outing of a gay New York baseball player.

||| Review: Penetralia, by Richard Foerster. "Despite their ostensibly grim subject matter, these poems are remarkably alive in their rigorous intelligence and sensual linguistic play."

< Review: Perking The Pansies, by Jack Scott. "Truly a Turkish delight... I can't wait for the sequel."

||| Simon & Schuster steps into self-publishing.

||| Bad Sex Awards 2012: The worst sex scenes of the year.

> Vintage Pelican paperback covers, in pictures.

STAGE

||| Rock and Doris and Elizabeth - the BBC Radio 4 Rock Hudson play - is to get a stage reading to raise money for HIV charity Terrence Higgins Trust.

< Review: Boy Meets Boy... "might not be to everybody’s taste, but there is an unfailing sense of optimism about this show that makes it one of the most pertinent revivals of the year." The Independent's review is here.

> Review: Hero. "Although the play is well done, it never proves much more than that denial of one's sexuality leads to depression."

< Review: A Clockwork Orange... "isn't for the faint hearted, or easily offended."

||| Review: Straight. "Fresh-minted dialogue... and a quartet of terrific performances, ensure this is one of the most entertaining evenings currently available in London – even if the movie scenario extends credibility way too far."

CINEMA

||| Enjoy The Wizard Of Oz with a live orchestral score.

> World AIDS Day: An essential guide to HIV/AIDS-related cinema. Right, the devastating Longtime Companion (1989)...

...And why that picture is the Best Movie Ever. Longtime Companion was no.9 on the kaos Top 30 Gay Films of all time.

< Why ParaNorman featured the first gay character in an animated film.

||| Gay cinema get the nod amongst Independent Spirit Awards nominations.

||| Talking to Patrik-Ian Polk about The Skinny, Blackbird, and Logo.

> Jared Leto on starving himself for his Dallas Buyers Club turn as a super skinny HIV trans.

||| Daniel Radcliffe's gay film.

||| Marvel movie director James Gunn condemned for anti-gay blog; Gunn is set to direct Guardians of the Galaxy, which sets up the sequel to The Avengers.

||| The rise of the new gay villains.

> This is student filmmaker Henna Saeed, who has won the Emerging Talent award for her documentary Outcasts, about gay life in Pakistan.

||| When it comes to Hollywood, Asians remain invisible...

...But Bollywood is "starting to promote positive gay characters".

< Blaxploitation era icon Rudy Ray Moore outed in new documentary.

||| Review: Yossi. "You never feel you're being delivered a sermon, just a simple story that highlights the difficulties of being gay in Israel, or anywhere for that matter."

> Review: Bad Boy Street.

||| Review: Magic Mike. "It may have its flaws, but there's a surprisingly complex film trying to get out of Magic Mike. It never quite emerges, with characters sometimes being unclear and the ending a little abrupt, but it's interesting nonetheless. Plus the copious stripping scenes are certain to keep a lot of people entertained, whether they like the plot or not."

||| Review: Hitchcock. A "lightweight dramedy about the Hitchcock marriage."

TV

> Don't miss our exclusive interview with David Summers, creator of sizzling new drama Skin Deep the Series.

...And why attacks on Skin Deep the Series exploit the bigotry within the black gay community.

||| Kevin Clash, until recently the voice of Sesame Street's Elmo, is facing a third lawsuit. The latest accuser claims he was 16 when he met Clash on gay chat line. Meanwhile, here's the first accuser, Sheldon Stephens.


Right-wing mouthpiece the Daily Mail revels in revealing lurid details of the accusations.

||| New sitcom Malibu County is full of gay stuff and star Reba McEntire wouldn't have it any other way.

||| Actors who badmouthed their own shows.

||| Talking to Dynasty legend Joan Collins.

||| Dallas to go on without JR.

> The best holiday episodes of '90s TV shows.

||| Gays of our lives: All the latest gay soap developments from around the world, with Anthony D. Langford.

||| Review: Yes, Prime Minister. The "six-part remake bravely sets about absorbing the changes that have occurred in British society since 1980."

< Dinah Sheridan, the actress who played Chancellor Flavia in Doctor Who's 20th-anniversary story The Five Doctorsis dead. She was 92.

||| Watch episode 1 of new webseries Freefall, from director Lamont Pierre.


MUSIC

||| Ricky Martin joins The Voice Australia.

> JLS open up about opening up.

< Justin Bieber's overalls cause international Twitter incident...

...Justin was sans overalls when he performed at Madison Square. Tongues back in, twink lovers.

||| Chris Brown fights with girl on Twitter, throws his toys out of the pram, quits Twitter.

Feast your eyes on the cover art for LL Cool J's forthcoming thirteenth studio album, Authentic Hip-Hop...

...And here's the Freaky Boiz Unleashed. The gay hip-hop duo drop their debut later this month:


||| More praise for Boody & LE1F's Liquid EP.

||| Watch football players' "gay kiss orgy" in the music video for UK band Hot Chip, and Same Love, by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis.


SKIN

||| World AIDS Day: In remembrance. Gay Porn Times has a roll call of the 100 or so friends, performers, co-workers and others we've lost to AIDS.

< DawgPound star Sarge announces his retirement - to marry longtime girlfriend.

||| My very gay night at very straight strip clubs.

< So, just where in the hell is Marc Williams? (Anyone?)

> Marcus Mojo AND Brady Jensen? OH. MY. GOD.

||| Have you ever jerked off to Zeb Atlas?

||| Bareback porn star Juan Steel pitches up on Judge Judy.

||| Mason Wyler is back on Twitter, and The Sword serves up the best of his deliciously OTT filth... My favourite? "Where can I get some fresh cum for my hole to eat tonight?"

||| Awesome gay porn bitching, featuring Jeff Stryker, The Sword, and Diesel Washington. You'll die laughing.

< Yes, of course, it's Skyball. What else?

||| The Rihanna gay porn debut no one asked for.

SPORT

||| OutSports' list of athletes who posted anti-gay tweets in the past year - named and shamed.

> Port Talbot footballer Daniel Thomas fined, suspended for anti-gay Tom Daley tweet. Thomas' vile Tweet read, "If there is any consolation for finishing fourth at least Daley and Waterfield can go and bum each other #teamHIV."

< Liverpool football player Suso in gay Twitter slur...

...But "gay footballers would be accepted", says former England player Gareth Southgate. The problem would be the fans, not team-mates, he added.

||| Sexy Managers, the spoof calendar showing football managers in suggestive gay poses. Scary.

||| Cleveland Browns NFL player Ricky "Tank" Carder sorry for "faggot" tweet.

> Gay football player Vince Pryor writes to Tank Carder: Saying "faggot" keeps athletes in closet.

< This is Scorpio Sky, the wrestler who loves to throw the word "faggot" around, but won't say "nigger".

||| Meet Moustafa Ismail, the man with the world's biggest biceps:


< Olympic champion - and kaos favourite - Anthony Joshua has his eye on Rio.

> And here's fellow Olympian Louis Smith soaking wet and shirtless. Just because.

||| Watch Warwick Rowing's Brokeback Boathouse video, and raise money for Ben Cohen's StandUp Foundation to fight the bullying of gay youth.

BODY & MIND

||| Why it's time the US changed archaic sex laws.

||| So a nice coat of wet throat can kill you now. Great.

||| World AIDS Day: How AIDS ends.

||| World AIDS Day: Lambda Legal calls for end of HIV criminalisation laws in US states.

< World AIDS Day: The White House dresses for the occasion.

||| World AIDS Day: Watch the Terrence Higgins Trust new HIV awareness video, designed to combat the lack of knowledge of HIV among young people.


||| World AIDS Day: In the UK, HIV diagnoses have soared to an all-time high amongst gay men; nearly a quarter of them don't know they're infected.

||| World AIDS Day: UK government failing gay men on HIV.

||| World AIDS Day: Hillary Clinton's plan for an "AIDS-free generation" by 2016.

||| World Aids Day: Dating when you're HIV positive. "For all the medical advances in treating and preventing transmission of the HIV virus, a normal love life for those with a positive diagnosis remains elusive."

||| World AIDS Day: Gay community challenged to design new HIV campaign for Soho's 56 Dean Street clinic in London.

> World AIDS Day: Ricky Martin marks the event, talks Obama's gay support and life after coming out.

< World AIDS Day: kaos showed its support.

||| Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline loses appeal against "gay sex addict" ruling.

||| Is internet dating killing romance?

||| So, about facesitting...

||| I get turned on by being humiliated by other men, having them laugh at my small penis and spanking me.

||| Smoking rots the brain.

||| Grapefruit and pills mix warning.

||| Aspirin reduces the risk of developing liver cancer or dying from chronic liver disease by around 50 per cent - even if only taken monthly - boffins find.

OUR PLANET, AND BEYOND

Is this the end? "We'd seen it before: the Piazza San Marco in Venice submerged by the acqua alta; New Orleans underwater in the aftermath of Katrina; the wreckage-strewn beaches of Indonesia left behind by the tsunami of 2004. We just hadn’t seen it here. (Last summer’s Hurricane Irene did a lot of damage on the East Coast, but New York City was spared the worst.) 'Fear death by water,' T. S. Eliot intoned in The Waste Land. We do now."

||| Antarctica, Greenland ice definitely melting into sea, and speeding up.

||| So, should New York City officials be planning for a future tsunami?

Animal pictures of the week. Left, an "angry lioness launches herself at a male - but ends up sitting on his head, looking like a lion hat. She pounced at the male when he tried to discipline her cubs, but misjudged the distance".

||| Nearly 600 rhinos have been killed in South Africa so far this year.

||| Germany moves to ban bestiality. "We see animals as partners and not as a means of gratification. We don't force them to do anything. Animals are much easier to understand than women," Mr Kiok from the Zoophile Engagement for Tolerance and Information group protested.

> National Geographic Photo Contest 2012, in pictures.

THE LAB

||| Microsoft in trouble as sales of Windows PCs plummet.

< Flexible phones will be out by 2013.

||| Get a 3D action figure - of yourself.

PARTING SHOTS

Justin Bieber will take one in every color. Yes, it's Yoko Ono's new men's fashion line.

||| Ask.com reveals the most popular questions of 2012.

||| The tragic stories of the lottery's unluckiest winners.

||| Awesome! Watch a University of Central Florida student strip to try and silence anti-gay preacher.

||| And finally, meet Martin's boyfriend! And Davey Wavey has some advice for the porn industry...


ISSUE 131
25 November - 1 December 2012

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© 2012

Skin Deep the Series

kaos talks exclusively to Skin Deep the Series creator David Summers.

||| Let's kick off with "Skin Deep the Series" - what's it all about?

In a nut shell, the shows about six gay men, three black, three white who struggle with their experiences and understanding of race culture and sexuality while living in Atlanta, the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement. Since Atlanta's gay population is primarily from the Black and White communities, and since that is where the majority of racial tension have been historically, we begin there. The other cultures which are very important will be introduced as the show progresses.

||| What was the inspiration for the show?

This has been a process of steps and experiences over the past fifteen years of living in ATL, and my personal experiences of the last twenty-five years or so. But if you want something specific, I can say it was due to an observation when we travelled. "We," meaning my husband Chuck and I. It became apparent we would see more interracial gay couples as we travelled to other cities than we see living here. So I wondered, with a city the size of ATL and the large gay population of black and white guys, why were there so few. So I pondered the thought. I discussed it with others, and the more I talked the more thoughts and feelings began to flow. I found there was a lot of emotion about the subject that everyone seemed to be afraid to discuss on record. So I wanted to find a way to generate an open discussion on why the gay community is so segregated, but especially here in the ATL.

A book was too limiting, a movie didn't allow for proper and lengthy character development, a documentary was out of the question because people didn't want to express their personal feelings on film, and I was not going to create another reality show were people just behave badlyand make fools of themselves. So I thought a scripted TV series was probably the best route to go. I had conversation with some friends in the business who confirmed my thoughts. I then began a development process for ideas, characters, storyline etc. I decided to started with focus groups. My feeling was that I must get the absolute truth from the people who attended, therefore it must be in a comfortable environment. So I decided to hold three separate groups. One with black and white guys who were comfortable with dating outside their race, one with only black guys and one with only white guys. I did not attend the all black group, being a white guy I would have been an obstacle to the truth.

And so it began. I received fantastic information that helped format the show. characters and story line. I continued to interview anyone who wished to be interviewed. My total is now about 150 or so.

||| That's incredible. So your series really is "about something" - a contrast to the sort of gay scripted series we've seen in the past. Is Atlanta really that polarised, compared to other major US cities?

Yes this is really about something. And I will be recreating major events that occurred here in the city that will be very controversial, but true.

And yes the city really is that polarized. I am not saying that this doesn't exist in other cities, I am not that misinformed or naive. But in comparison, yes. Especially for the size of the city.

And I have interviewed men who moved here or visit often from other cities and they can't believe it, the energy or consciousness of the city. "You can just feel it", they say. This is from guys who have attractions for men outside their own race.

||| That's intriguing. The view from the UK is that interracial relationships in the US are really frowned upon, and there's a very vocal section of the black gay community that's actively opposed to them - something that's really apparent online, with the dialogue on sites like BGCLive and Rod 2.0. What are your thoughts on that?

I would agree. I have seen and heard comments and felt the energy from the black and white community. But the show is not about picking sides, far from it. This is merely showing the lives of six men who have different interpretations of attractions and how they live those attractions out. We are then lead down a path of challenges, successes, and failures in love and acceptance of others.

I hope to generate conversation between members of our community to open doors of understanding. There are so many untruths out there, and I hope to clear them up.

I on the other side of that, I will be showing that even though there are men who may frown upon interracial dating/sex/relationships. There are a good number of men who do it in secret.

I have been the "experiment" of a few black guys myself. Things like, "I've never been with a white guy before, wanna check it out" or "Oh and by the way, don't tell anybody we messed around". Those sort of comments. I never took offense to them. It sort of turned me on to be some guys first. But I also know there are a good proportion of white guys who fantasize or secretly play with guys outside their race.

There are fears of friends turning on them, or being pigeon holed into thinking that if you date one guy outside your race then that means you don't like guys who are within your race. To me, and hot man is a hot man is a hot man! Using skin tone to determine who you speak to or play with or date is a question I plan to propose in the show. And that goes for black guys who only date with other black guys who are light skin as an example.

||| That's a great point -  there's one particular celebrity in the black gay community who's had some success with his screen work, where he only depicts black-on-black relationships. But he also dates white men, "on the down low..." That's the kind of hypocrisy that's mind-boggling - the racial separatists who condemn interracial relationships, whilst putting light-skin and mixed race peeps on a pedestal. One of the refreshing things in the "SDTS" trailer - the way you flipped the convention of the white guy experimenting with being with a black guy.

What sort of reaction have you had to the trailer so far?

Very very very positive. 97% of the comments are great. People really are hungry for a gay drama. and this is ground breaking in so many ways. Casting is balanced, story's are real, men are masculine, breaking stereotypes. However some stereotypes are hard to avoid if you want to keepthe show real.

||| It's been a long time coming. Were you a fan of shows like "Queer As Folk" and "Noah's Arc"?

I watched them, but I recognized that there was much more that could be done. The shows had their purpose and were successful, in addition paved the way for others. So I must give them props for that. Now to be clear when I say that SDTS is a culmination of Noah's Arc, and Queer as Folk, I refer to that for casting only. Not for style or story line. The movie Crash obviously is the portrayal of the race and culture element and also the fact that none of the characters know one another, just like in SDTS. The characters live different lives in different universes.

I wanted to get away from the same formula of four, five or six friends who all hang together, eat together, call each other all the damn time, and sometimes sleep together. Each main character has their own core of relationships but they are all supporting roles.

And they will come and go throughout the series.

||| In other words, just like real life, rather than an artificial bubble world.

Getting back to reaction, there was a pretty unpleasant article about "SDTS" on The 360 Experiment. How did you feel about that?

It was a copycat post. The blogger just cut and pasted from another gossip blogger whose purpose was to bring down one of the actors. Nothing in the article was correct. It was gossip only. I asked the blogger from 360 to do a legitimate interview with me but of course I never heard from him. I guess that would have been too much work, its so much easier to cut and paste falsehoods. That's why I appreciate you so much. Thank you for the proper interview.

||| Ah, the joys of internet trolls, huh?

What's it going to take to get "SDTS" into production?

I am currently beginning negotiations with a company in Hollywood, as well as one in NY who has interest to to take it on. This is great news, but still a long way to go.

||| That's fantastic. Tell us a little about the man behind "SDTS"?

Me? Little ol me?

||| But of course!

I'm 55, so there is a lot to tell. I can tell you that Skin Deep The Series just didn't come out of thin air. I have twenty-five years experience in theatre and had my own company for seventeen years, wrote ten other productions and had audience totals close to if not over one million people during that seventeen years. But ask me some questions, I hate talking about myself.

||| Okay, tell us about your previous work.

Company was also called ARCH Productions (Artists Raising the consciousness of Humanity). But I organized as a Not for Profit. I was primarily working with youth who needed extra attention. Very very talented kids who were misguided or hurt in life and were acting out, badly in some cases. So I took those kids and put them through a very powerful self observation, acting, rehearsal process that compelled them to look at themselves and take responsibility for their actions. Kids did not come out the same as when they started.

One of the most powerful steps to the program was it was kids teaching kids about behavior, and the kids on stage, the actors were the ones who usually were the perpetrators. I know that I worked kids who killed. They never admitted it, but I just knew. I saw their power, brilliance, talent and potential and turned it into something healing and transformational.

In 1994, ARCH received recognition from the Presidents Council on the Humanities as one of the top 100 companies in the country. This was under Bill Clinton.

||| That's amazing, truly inspirational - and a real life story worthy of adaptation itself! What happened to ARCH?

Well. I got burnt out. After seventeen years, I needed to find something that was going to pay better, less hours, and not as much stress. As much as I loved it, it was time to move on. So I sold it to another organization who wanted to carry on the work, but they failed and were out of biz in a year.

It pointed out to me and, gave me pride to know that not many people could do what it took to keep ARCH afloat. I was honored to have had the opportunity to serve the community in which I lived, and to have been touched by the lives of some many young people.

||| David to finish off, would you like to tell us a little about you and your husband, who you mentioned earlier?

I am in love with this man. I don't want to sound co dependent, but I couldn't do anything without him. We spend twenty-two hours a day together. Not many people can do that, and we've been together for going on thirteen years. Married in Montreal five years ago, just had our anniversary. He is bright, humble, loving, accepting, supportive, sexy, gorgeous, and other attributes you will have to use your imagination on.

||| That's beautiful, and a great foundation to build "SDTS" on!

He also was crucial in my writing process. I would write a scene and he would critic it, spell check it etc. He was/is a very big part of my life and of this show. He just doesn't like to do interviews. He will be part of the production team when its picked up.

||| David, thank you so much for talking to kaos today. I for one can't wait for a full series of a "Skin Deep the Series".

Thank you so much for the opportunity.


||| Skin Deep the Series - Official Site.

||| Visit Skin Deep the Series on Facebook.

||| Watch the trailer:

 
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