JERKER, performance, 2022
A collaboration between artists Maxe Crandall and Emmett Ramstad, this performance is a semi-staged reading of Robert Chesley’s 1986 play Jerker, or The Helping Hand: A Pornographic Elegy with Redeeming Social Value and a Hymn to the Queer Men of San Francisco in Twenty Phone Calls, Many of Them Dirty. Jerker tells the story of two strangers who develop an erotic fraternal relationship through phone sex. As the two characters get each other off, they demonstrate the power of sexual fantasy in processing the grief, rage, and loneliness of living in pandemic.
This performance is Inspired by their obsession with Robert Chesley’s archive at the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco and supported by a Eureka Commission from Onassis USA. Their national tour is organized to provide free performances at archives and queer/trans spaces while allowing them to conduct ongoing research on a performance installation focused on “corresponding intimacies,” a term they use to describe deep bonds people create through experimental relations.
65 min semi-staged reading followed by 25 min discussion.
Content Warning: graphic sexual description, kinky/BDSM scenarios, death, AIDS
Playwright: Robert Chesley
Co-creators and performers: Maxe Crandall and Emmett Ramstad
Guest Performers: Diana Cage, Charles Ryan Long, Chandler Daily, Abdul-Aliy A. Muhammad, Aldrin Valdez, Stephen Ira, and more.
Venues: Leather Archives and Museum, Chicago, June 4, 2022; Quatrefoil Library, Minneapolis, June 8, 2022; William Way LGBT Community Center, Philadelphia August 16th; Inferno, New York City, August 20th; Theater Rhinoceros, San Francisco, November 8th.
Recording: Montez Press Radio
Readings of Jerker are given courtesy of Victor Bumbalo of the Robert Chesley Foundation, Broadway Play Publishing Inc., and through funding support from the Eureka Commission from Onassis Foundation USA.
Photo credits: Ivan Bujan, Maxe Crandall,
This performance is Inspired by their obsession with Robert Chesley’s archive at the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco and supported by a Eureka Commission from Onassis USA. Their national tour is organized to provide free performances at archives and queer/trans spaces while allowing them to conduct ongoing research on a performance installation focused on “corresponding intimacies,” a term they use to describe deep bonds people create through experimental relations.
65 min semi-staged reading followed by 25 min discussion.
Content Warning: graphic sexual description, kinky/BDSM scenarios, death, AIDS
Playwright: Robert Chesley
Co-creators and performers: Maxe Crandall and Emmett Ramstad
Guest Performers: Diana Cage, Charles Ryan Long, Chandler Daily, Abdul-Aliy A. Muhammad, Aldrin Valdez, Stephen Ira, and more.
Venues: Leather Archives and Museum, Chicago, June 4, 2022; Quatrefoil Library, Minneapolis, June 8, 2022; William Way LGBT Community Center, Philadelphia August 16th; Inferno, New York City, August 20th; Theater Rhinoceros, San Francisco, November 8th.
Recording: Montez Press Radio
Readings of Jerker are given courtesy of Victor Bumbalo of the Robert Chesley Foundation, Broadway Play Publishing Inc., and through funding support from the Eureka Commission from Onassis Foundation USA.
Photo credits: Ivan Bujan, Maxe Crandall,