I met with Farrow Stephenson earlier this week to discuss his new one-man show, Bitches and Squalls: An Intimate Night with Farrow, which will be premiering on Tuesday, November 24 at B Mac’s French Quarter Bar & Courtyard, with Princess Stephaney as a special guest performer. Stephenson has co-owned Mona Lisa Restaurant on Royal Street with his husband, Tom Moore, since 2005. Earlier this year, he began writing a blog on Substack, and has been publishing new material nearly every day.
JM: Hi, Farrow! Thank you for taking the time to speaker with me. How did your one-man show come about?
FS: Well, I decided to force myself to write something every day on Substack during hurricane season, as a diary of what it’s like to be in New Orleans where we have cones of uncertainty and boil water advisories and all that sort of thing. Now I’m not complaining, but there haven’t been any storms. So, I started talking about my walks with my dog, Ed, and the thoughts and recollections I had as we walked. I put a sign in the window at the restaurant for people to read it. And people started reading them, and they would say to me: “Whenever I read it, I hear it in your voice.” So, I thought, you know what? I could do a public reading, and raise funds for charity. And I’ve had the right people around me who helped find a venue, and now it’s happening.
JM: What made you decide to pick NOAGE as the recipient of the proceeds of this show?
FS: Well, I’m 66, and probably in about 40 years, I’ll be an elderly person, and then I might need some support. Just kidding! I feel like the older gay community is often overlooked, you know what I mean? I think there’s a lot of loneliness and I really want to try and do something about that.
JM: We certainly appreciate your support! I have a question about your blog. How do you discipline yourself to keep up with writing every day?
FS: You know, that’s a very good question. I’m putting it on Substack. I’m fortunate enough to have some people who, if they don’t get it in their inbox by 10 o’clock in the morning, will reach out to say: “I can’t have my coffee this morning without finding out what’s going on with you and Ed!” I know people are reading it and expecting it. If you’re writing something, and you think just one person is reading it, you’ve got to put it out there. I get up in the morning at 6:00, Ed and I take our walk, and then I just sit down and tell myself, “Something is going to be on this page before I get up.” I’ve been trying to write for 40 years, and finally decided I have to start doing this, or I’ll be on my deathbed saying, “I should have put that in the writing!” So, I just do it.
JM: Last year, there was a brief time when the future of Mona Lisa was in Question. You had such a groundswell of public support. What was that experience like?
FS: We got a text from the realtor that had sold the building, and she said, “you’ve got 60 days to get out.” At work that night, I was telling people at the restaurant about it. On the way home I saw these two guys that were regular customers, and I told them about it, and they said, “we’re gonna do something about this.” And I’m like, “so am I. I’m gonna go home and open a bottle of wine.” The next day, they sent me a graphic of what they were calling the “Night of a Thousand Mona Lisas,” and they said, “Are you okay with this?” And I said, “Does anybody care about this enough?” And they said, “We already have 75 people that have signed up to attend the protest.” It was really incredible, and it just grew and grew, and the online community was so, let’s just say, assertive. And the woman who thought she was getting the restaurant, it didn’t take very long for her to realize that if she opened up a new place, nobody was gonna go there. She backed off within about a week. But this being New Orleans, all our supporters decided to just turn the protest into a street party. It was really fantastic to get that public support.
JM: Speaking of public support, your one-man show has sold out almost a month in advance! That doesn’t happen very often. Do you think you might do something like this again?
FS: I think I would really like to, to be honest. There are so many people who have come up to me at the restaurant saying they missed the chance to get tickets. So yeah, I would like to do it again.
JM: Thank you again for your time, Farrow. See you at the show!
