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Donnie Horn, founder and executive director of Portland-based theater company Triangle Productions, earned a Lucille Lortel Award nomination for Make Me Gorgeous! The nod for the prestigious award, which is seen as the off-Broadway equivalent of a Tony Award, came April 4.
Written, directed and produced by Horn, Make Me Gorgeous! focuses on the story of sensational midcentury LGBTQ+ trailblazer Kate Marlowe, and is Horn’s first off-Broadway show.
“It’s just weird to have the first show out of the gate in New York be a big hit and get an award nomination,” Horn says. “I think what happened here is that people embraced the story of Kenneth Marlowe and what he did with his life.”
Horn adapted Make Me Gorgeous! from Marlowe’s 1964 autobiography, Mr. Madam. Marlowe, who was born in 1926, transitioned in the ’70s, though Horn focuses on Marlowe’s pre-transition life. Make Me Gorgeous! spans Marlowe’s ample careers as an Army veteran, Christian missionary, celebrity hairstylist, drag queen, and prostitution madam throughout the 1940s into the ’60s. Horn refers to Marlowe’s name and pronouns interchangeably.
“To me, it’s not Kenneth or Kate, it is them,” Horn said. “I think what he was going through, and in the time period there weren’t a lot of transsexual people who were out there identifying as that. I couldn’t hit the nail on the head and say ‘This is definite,’ especially when someone is on a journey in the past.”
Triangle Productions originally staged the play under the name Mr. Madam in 2022. Wade McCollum, a former Portland actor renowned for his Broadway roles, originated the role of Kenneth Marlowe. Darius Rose, best known as drag artist and RuPaul’s Drag Race alumnus Jackie Cox, played Marlowe in New York in 2023.
Horn, who has written and produced more than 22 plays, shifted careers from commercial trucker to playwright when he started Triangle Productions 34 years ago. He sees his Lortel Award nomination as validating recognition of his talent, and a rare win for Oregonian playwrights, no matter the outcome at the award ceremony on May 5.
“It validates that my company started for a reason, and I am now known as a playwright, which is something I’ve always wanted.” Horn says. “I’m almost 70, so having this happen is cool in a respect that I get to see it happen before I die. I have another 20 years left, so I’ve done my job that I was given to do, to have one of the oldest LGBTQ+ identifying theaters in America here, where I could tell stories, have people look at their lives and say ‘If they could do it, I can do it too.’”