Femme follies

We all know lesbian breakups are the stuff of drama, but Los Angeles theater director Sue Hamilton had in mind something even more theatrical. Back in 2001, Hamilton, the producing artistic director for the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center's theater program, was directing a comic lesbian play called The Break-Up Notebook. "On the second night of the run I said to [playwright] Patricia Cotter, 'What if we turned this into a musical.' She laughed really hard, and I said, 'That's the response I want.'"

Now Hamilton will be looking for laughter from a larger lesbian audience as she premieres The Break-Up Notebook: The Lesbian Musical, running through January 15 at the Hudson Backstage in Hollywood. With book by Cotter and music and lyrics by Lori Scarlett, the musical Notebook takes us on the emotional roller coaster of love with one 33-year-old Angelena named Helen Hill. "When we meet her at the top of the play, she's just been dumped on her ass," Hamilton begins. "We follow her through Match.com dates, blind dates, basically trying to find the woman of her dreams. And when she thinks she finds the woman of her dreams, of course we in the audience know, She's not for you!"

Hamilton says the evening's all in fun. "It's certainly not a poor-me project. We're laughing at the lead character because we've all been in her position before. We've all gone to those lengths. And I think we're doing a nice job of really making fun of it while celebrating lesbian life."

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