Terry Baum’s ‘Lesbo Solo: My Gay History Play’ @ The Marsh Berkeley

Terry Baum, the author and star of “Lesbo Solo: My Gay History Play,” currently at the Marsh Berkeley, studied theater in high school and college.  But she got her start much earlier, in first grade, when her class was performing the song “How Much is That Doggie in the Window?” for the PTA. Another little girl was supposed to belt out the song, but that wasn’t how it went.
 “Right before she went on, the little girl got panicked and the teacher said, ‘Does anybody else know the lyrics? She couldn't do it. She threw up on her organdy pinafore,” Baum says. “Then I went out there and sang with all the passion of my heart, and it was a great success, and I’ve never stopped since.”

Baum describes herself as a homophobic teenager. When asked why, she says it’s because lesbians were always depicted as the worst of the worst.  Her boyfriend in college had a pornographic book that was an example.

“It was about this woman, and she degenerated and degenerated, and she became a drug addict, and then she became a thief,” she said. “Finally, she hit bottom: she was a lesbian. That was worse than being a drug addict to be a lesbian. So, all these things had a big impact.”

The play at The Marsh is all about experiences she’s had and the times she’s lived through, Baum said.

“I’m 78 now, so I came of age a long time ago, graduated college in 1969 and didn’t come out until I was 30,” she said. “I did have all those negative of images of a lesbian. So, it’s my experience of being in certain historic moments. Lesbians are so far from being represented in terms of our impact and our presence.”

Baum is interested in history, and her last play, “HICK: A Love Story - the Romance of Lenora Hickok & Eleanor Roosevelt,” is a historical one, telling the story of the first woman reporter to have a byline in the New York Times, who covered Eleanor Roosevelt during her husband’s presidential campaign and for the four-month period between his election and inauguration. Roosevelt wrote her 2,336 letters over 30 years that document their relationship.

Two in one
Even in this play, the story of two people, Baum performed solo.

“I’m an exhibitionist and extrovert, and I originally performed solo for the first time, I think, in 1983 because I was trying to make enough money to stop being a temporary secretary, and I couldn’t figure out how to do that doing plays with a lot of people in them,” she said. “I discovered I enjoyed it, and one of the wonderful benefits is that I can keep doing the play as long as I get bookings, and therefore, I can keep rewriting the play, and I’m a big, big fan of rewriting. I’m always about perfecting things.”

Baum studied directing at Columbia University and at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She says this was a way to be she more in control. She couldn’t always count on someone throwing up in their pinafore so she’d get a role. After she graduated in 1969, she began to write plays. 

‘Feminism moved me into writing,” she said. “Once I became a feminist, there was no longer anything I wanted to direct in the whole dramatic repertoire.”

Baum, a founding member of the Bay Area’s Lilith Women’s Theatre, first performed “Lesbo Solo” at the San Francisco Fringe Festival in 2024, where it won Best of Fringe. She’s thrilled to be back on the stage.

“All live performance brings people together in community, which is very special, but theater can be done on the small level or on the big level,” she said. “It can be done with very little resources, as I’m doing, and it can be done with just one person telling the story. It has so many different possibilities on that primal level of people in the room listening to a story.”

Terry Baum's ‘Lesbo Solo: My Gay History Play,’ at The Marsh Berkeley Cabaret, $20-$100, 5pm Sundays thru Oct. 12, 2120 Allston Way, Berkeley. www.themarsh.org