Playing It 'Straight' Paul Stroili's solo show gives his heterosexuality a twist.
April 09, 2008
By Anna Bengel

When Paul Stroili was a child, he used his Fisher-Price toolbox as a planter. He hid copies of Wine Spectator magazine in his room, to the dismay of his snooping German-American mother, who hoped to find a Penthouse or Playboy. He watched Baywatch for Pamela Anderson's cheekbones, decorated his imaginary house with furniture from the Sears catalogue, and struck out at tee-ball. Now, years later, all these quirks and embarrassments are the raw material of Stroili's autobiographical one-man show Straight Up With a Twist, in which he plays a range of zany characters from his family and past. Through their eyes, he recalls his struggle to find his emotional and sexual identity through adolescence and adulthood.

As Stroili sees it, the 1970s women's movement not only ushered in images of empowered, go-getting females, but of more sensitive, feminized males. Fashions tended toward the androgynous: wide pants, ties, and belts; explosions of pastels and feathers. "Women were wanting guys to be more sensitive," he recalls, "but the other wave was that real men don't eat quiche. There were all of these conflicting signals for guys who grew up during that period."

This is not to say that Stroili questioned his heterosexuality. He did, however, question many of his pursuits and preferences, from French cheeses to shopping to designer vodkas. As he became a grown man with myriad interests and talents, he realized that few of them were of a sort that would be well-received or even understood by many people in society. Today, Stroili might be labeled metrosexual. But Queer Eye for the Straight Guy was years away when he decided, 10 years ago, to create a show based on his feeling like a heterosexual anomaly. "I really did feel that I wasn't represented anywhere," he says. "Every husband was a knuckle-dragging couch potato and the wife tolerated him like a child. Not all guys are like this."

Stroili was born in Greenwich, Conn. While his Bronx-born mother loved gimlets and Virginia Slims, his Italian-American father — who easily related to Stroili's sports-loving, macho brother — couldn't make heads or tails of his 6-foot-2, 125-pound, acne-covered, braces-wearing other son. Stroili can't remember when or why he wanted to be an actor; it was simply an inherent need, and he majored in acting and directing at SUNY New Paltz. After graduation, he moved to Chicago because it wasn't as large or cutthroat a city as New York or Los Angeles.

In his mid-20s, Stroili met his wife, Monica Kaiser, a social scientist and researcher. In Straight Up he describes them as well-matched due to their eccentricities: He's obsessive-compulsive; she's a neat freak. After eight years in Chicago, they relocated to L.A., where he landed roles on Malcolm in the Middle, Brother's Keeper, and The Untouchables and in the films Cold Justice and The Real Whatever. Stroili says he got the idea for Straight Up after helping Kaiser select the perfect wedding dress (they've been together since 1990 and got married in 2004), and she expressed her gratitude by exclaiming, "You're like a gay friend I can have sex with!"

"I want the audience to have an appreciation of the folly of society's obsession with labels," Stroili explains. "To recognize how ridiculous our culture is and the constant insistence you have to stamp a label on everyone's forehead in order to define them. The show is less about gay versus straight and more about coping with the misfits that every family has. The whole thing hinges on family."

Indeed, Stroili plays his mother, father, maternal grandmother, and brother in the show, among other characters. When he first performed it in 1999 at the Grove Theater Center in Southern California, it was part of a dark-night series, playing only Monday and Tuesday nights, and often just to friends and family. He initially feared that audiences would see the show as self-indulgent — theatre as therapy. But he was convinced that the piece's deeper issues, such as self-esteem, rejection, and reconciling one's inner identity with one's public persona, would resonate with both men and women. Straight Up ended up being nominated for a 2006 Ovation Award for best solo performance.

What makes the show doubly interesting is that several scenes are barely scripted. That's because, Stroili says, he reads the audience at each performance and adjusts the show's humor and seriousness as needed, drawing out what's poignant in a simple telephone conversation if he senses the audience is more rapt by Straight Up's quieter, moving moments or scanning the audience to see which jokes generate the most laughter. "It's the one benefit of doing something for so long," he says. "You're really free to explore."

Stroili says that as long as the material and the concept stay fresh to him, he'll continue performing the show, although he does have other TV and writing projects on the side. And while he misses the camaraderie that comes with performing with other actors, he's grateful for the chance to challenge himself, to be daring and alone on stage. "You get the bravery," he says. "You build up your sense of confidence on stage so much, you're really able to be vulnerable."

Straight Up With a Twist is in an open-ended run at the Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal St., NYC. Tickets: (212) 239-6200 or www.telecharge.com.