Writing his own ticket - gay actor/dramatist David Marshall Grant's new play `Snakebit'

David Marshall Grant talks about the road from acting in Angels in America to writing his new play, Snakebit

"It's not a bad thing to say about yourself that you were the first guy to be in bed with another guy on television. That's good. That's important," says gay actor David Marshall Grant, referring to the gay character Russell, whom he portrayed on the long-minting hit TV series thirtysomething.

Grant, 43, has been has been doing this type of important work for almost 20 years. His first paying job, right out of the Yale School of Drama, was playing Richard Gem's ill-fated lover, Rudy, in the 1980 Broadway production of Martin Sherman's landmark gay Holocaust tragedy, Bent. A decade later Grant earned a Tony Award nomination for his role as closeted gay Mormon Joe Pitt in Tony Kushner's gels in America. Still, Grant is not the type of actor who gets pestered for his autograph. Celebrity has eluded him--not that he's losing sleep over it.

"At this point I would much prefer to be a successful writer than a movie star," says the performer-turned-playwright, whose comic drama Snakebit opens off Broadway at the Century Center for the Performing Arts on March 1. "When you're a writer you write five hours a day. You get to go have dinner, go see friends, go to movies. You're always home. Being a movie star, you're constantly on location, and you're working 12-to 16-hour days. Everybody wants to talk to you. Everybody wants information. Everybody wants time. It is a nightmare job."

Snakebit--the second of three plays Grant has written but the first to be produced--exposes the fears and desires of three long-time friends: a newly single gay time friends: a newly single gay man in Los Angeles and the husband and wife who pay him a visit from the Big Apple. While some may be eager to categorize Snakebit as gay, its author remains cautious about such labels.

"It's very important to write honestly about what interests you," lie says. "If you're gay, part of what is interesting about you and what will interest you is going to be affected by that reality. One of the characters in Snakebit is gay. However', I don't look at it as a gay play. I see it as a play about relationships, about human beings who are stuck and need to understand ways of unchaining themselves and taking steps forward."

In his own career as an actor, Grant has felt the frustration of being stuck. Pigeonholed because of his body of work and his openness about his sexuality, he isn't often given the chance to stretch before the footlights.

"I'm on the Gay List," he says flatly. "When they go to cast a gay part, they come to me. I have a friend who's a fat Italian, and he's on the Fat Italian List. I know a girl who's Puerto Rican. She's on the Puerto Rican List. They don't let the Puerto Rican play the fat Italian. They don't let the fat Italian play the gay guy. They don't let the gay guy play the fat Italian. This business is so limited in its perception of people. An actor is always typecast. It's a universal problem."

Writing, Grant says, has given him the tools to challenge these stereotypes. "To have a feeling that you've been limited by who you are, as if they know anything about you or what your potential is, has always been very disturbing to me," he says. "When I write I express my outrage at that limitation. People are complicated and capable of many, many things. All you know is that I'm gay. Or all you know is that I'm straight. You really don't know anything about me."

Vaillancourt is a freelance writer living in New York City.

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