by MK Scott
David Rothenberg is a bonafide legend. Still active at 91, he hosts a podcast and has just released a new book. Manhattan Mayhem is the latest work from this legendary activist and author.
A must-read for anyone who loves New York or feels its rhythm coursing through their veins, Manhattan Mayhem showcases Rothenberg’s signature wit and wisdom. A mensch with a big mouth, a big heart, and big ideas, Rothenberg shares 18 captivating stories that capture the mood and heartbeat of the world’s most electrifying city. With heartbreak, humor, and hope, he reflects on friendships, faith, family, and fortune through his personal urban fables.
When I connected with Rothenberg via Zoom, I was amazed at how sharp his mind remained, showing no signs of retirement. I mentioned I was in Seattle, and he noted that he was old friends with George Freeman, the former owner of The Monastery and head of the Universal Life Church. Rothenberg added that he first met Freeman while he was still in prison. I didn’t ask which time.
Here are the highlights from our interview.
On His Book, Manhattan Mayhem
“It’s a collection of stories I wrote during the pandemic. These were ideas that had been kicking around in my head for years, and suddenly I had the time to put them down. They’re reflective of my work in the theater, my experiences with the Fortune Society, and even my childhood and life.
I say in the book that there’s a lot of fact in the fiction. Life is filled with little dramatic tales. Some of these stories, I think, are funny. I’ve read them all—I do a radio program, and I started reading them on the air. That’s when I decided to turn them into a book.
My agent told me there was no market for these stories, so I was going to call it Stories for Which There Is No Market. But as I read them on the air, people kept calling in, asking for copies, saying, ‘I’d buy a copy!’ And that’s how Manhattan Mayhem came to be.”
One Example: Manhattan Marriage, Manhattan Style
“It’s based on a couple I knew—social powerhouses in New York. I fictionalized it, but they were both very prominent people. They were deeply involved in social action and participation.
They were also wealthy—not titled, but TITLED, coming from distinguished family backgrounds. The husband became very involved with our organization, and I suddenly realized he was having a relationship with my assistant, a young man. Meanwhile, his wife was having a relationship with an actor.
It was all sub rosa—a fascinating dynamic because, outside the bedroom, they had a wonderful relationship and friendship. And I thought, well, there’s a lot of that. Certainly, if you work in theater, you see it often. Plenty of female stars had husbands who were managers and were obviously gay. It worked for them.
I always remember Jason Alexander from Seinfeld saying he loves theater, ballet, and opera—that he’s ‘gay except for the sex.’ You can have deep friendships with someone, marry them, and not be sexually compatible.
So, I called it Manhattan Marriage, Manhattan Style.
The Uninvited
One of the toughest stories in the book, which emanated from Fortune Society, is The Uninvited. It’s based on a true story, though I changed details for obvious reasons.
A woman in her forties contacted me. I remembered her as a little girl—her father and I had been very close at Fortune Society. He went back into ‘the life,’ ended up testifying against the Mafia, and was placed in a witness protection program.
When I met his daughter decades later, I learned what it was like growing up in that situation—five kids and their mother, constantly moving, unable to have friends, unable to tell anyone who they really were. It was harrowing. This woman ran away and built a life, but her siblings were either in prison or addicted to drugs. And my friend—their father—died having destroyed the very family he had tried to protect.
People in witness protection are drilled never to talk about it. The only reason she reached out to me was that, as a child, she remembered playing in my office and my close friendship with her father. I asked if she had ever sought therapy. She said, ‘I can’t. I can’t trust anybody.’
‘What about a priest?’ I asked.
‘No, I can’t trust anybody.’
‘But you came to me,’ I said.
She replied, ‘You were there at the beginning. I don’t have to explain it to you. I don’t have to justify my father. You knew him.’”
On Coming Out
“I was 39 when I came out. I choreographed it carefully because I was the director of a nonprofit working with formerly incarcerated people—tough guys. It wasn’t an environment where you expected someone in my position to be openly gay.
For six years, I had been telling men to be honest about their pasts, to put a face on the formerly incarcerated and create public change. Meanwhile, the gay movement was happening, and I was deeply closeted.
Eventually, I got tired of lying. I decided to take control of my narrative instead of being outed. So, I called Jean Kennedy at The David Susskind Show and suggested a program—not about activists, but about professionals living double lives.
She loved the idea. ‘Do you know anyone?’ she asked.
I said, ‘You’re talking to one.’
Before going on air, I gathered six key people from Fortune—four men, two women, all formerly incarcerated—and told them:
- I’m gay.
- I’m going on national television to talk about it.
- Here’s my letter of resignation.
There was a long pause. Then Kenny Jackson, a tough Brooklyn kid, said, ‘What are you going to wear on TV?’
I was stunned. ‘What kind of question is that?’
‘Look how you dress! Get something nicer. We’re proud of you.’
Then Mel Rivers, another formerly incarcerated man, asked, ‘Why would you resign?’
I told him I didn’t want to hurt the organization.
And he gave me the most sophisticated political response I’d ever heard: ‘You’ve stood by us for six years. Give us a chance to stand by you.’
So, I pulled back the letter. Kenny said, ‘We have a lot of work to do. Can we get back to that now?’
That was it. I went on television, got a thousand letters—999 of them positive. The New York Times put me in their ‘People’ column, right between Hubert Humphrey’s gallbladder surgery and Marshal Tito’s birthday.
Meanwhile, The New York Post ran the headline: Prison Advocate Says I’m Homo.
But life went on. And I did it on my terms. I simply said: This is who I am. I am a gay American.“
That was a very powerful.
On Bringing Fortune and Men’s EyesOff-Broadway in 1967
I’ll tell you something—John Herbert, who wrote the play, was the boy who got gang-raped his first night in jail [where he stayed for six months].
He wrote the play 20 years after it happened. I visited him in Toronto, and he said, “I want to take you someplace.” We went to this real seedy joint, and a drag queen got up and started belting out a song.
I said, “John, that’s Queenie, isn’t it?”
He said, “That’s, uh, Randy. We did time together. He’s the one who saved me.”
And then we met afterwards. So, I met the real Queenie, which was kind of fascinating—his boyfriend was a gangster.
On Rape Culture in Prison
You know, when I read the play, it wasn’t until I saw the reviews that I realized people were calling it a play about homosexuality. I never thought of it that way. To me, it was about a kid who goes in, gets raped, and how the system molds him. By the end of the play—or the movie—he’s ready to get back at everyone.
Sex is a point of power in prison, but that’s not about homosexuality—it’s about using sex as a tool of power. The critics who truly understood the play really loved it and talked about that.
For example, Norman Nadel in The World-Telegram & Sun wrote, “Unless you’re obsessed with viewing sodomy, there’s no reason to see this.” He obviously missed the whole point.
Meanwhile, Jerry Talmer in The New York Post compared it to De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves, saying it was about boys being destroyed by the system. It’s fascinating what critics bring to a piece—I never thought of it as being about homosexuality. I saw it as an indictment of the prison system, which allows sexual power to destroy kids.
When I was still working, I did several articles on rape in prison and participated in panels with men who were ostensibly heterosexual but had sex while incarcerated. It depends on the environment. I believe it happens much more in Southern prisons now. I’ve heard stories from Georgia, but I’ll tell you—if there are enough programs and opportunities for inmates, there’s less violence. And rape is an act of violence, not sexual desire.
Where inmates have chances to confront why they’re there and build a future, there’s less violence. I’ve run groups with teenagers at Fortune Society, and one day we had a discussion about violence.
I asked them, “You read in the papers—it’s about gangs, it’s about this or that. What do you think the real cause is?”
After a long talk, the general consensus was that it relieved boredom.
I said, “Do you know what demographics are? You all come from the same demographic as the kids we’re talking about—same racial breakdown, same ages. So how come we don’t have violence here?”
One kid shouted, “Who has time?”
Oh God. In those three words, you could build a platform for social change. These kids in my group had individual counseling, classrooms, field trips. We took them to theater, to art museums, gave them family counseling, helped them navigate their relationships. It was a full load.
We went to court, trying to convince judges and DAs to send kids to us instead of jail—because they’d only get worse in there. It was tough, but enough DAs and judges took the gamble. Now, alternative sentencing is common—at least in New York.
Prison is an unnatural environment. You put 800 or 900 men together, and the power dynamics emerge.
Sometimes, it’s not sexual. Have you seen Sing Sing? Powerful movie. It shows some of the same dynamics.
And there’s always a need for protection—especially for those perceived as weak. If someone is convicted of pedophilia, they have a very rough time because their peers become judge and jury all over again.
Some inmates end up in solitary for protection.
Our prison system? We have to go back to the drawing board. Conceptually, it’s a disaster.
The modern penitentiary system was created by the Quakers—it comes from the word penance. Their idea was that if people sat in solitude long enough, they would atone for their crimes and emerge reformed.
They forgot one thing: the guards.
Prisons are filled with human beings unequipped to deal with people’s problems.
When AIDS Entered Prison
I started getting letters from inmates saying that people inside were being identified as having AIDS. In the early days, it was labeled a “gay disease,” but drug users were contracting it in the same numbers. They just didn’t have a press corps or a Larry Kramer to advocate for them.
So, I called Marty Horn, who was the deputy commissioner of New York State at the time, and I said, “You’re going to have real problems. There’s a lot of fear, and inmates aren’t getting any information.”
He asked, “What can we do?”
I said, “The only game in town is the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC). We need to start educating people to reduce irrational fear.”
He said, “Great.”
So I went to GMHC, got literature, and sent it to Marty. Three days later, he called me and said, “The wardens won’t let it in because the word gay is on it.”
Wow.
So I went back to GMHC and said, “Can you print versions without the word gay? Just use ‘GMHC’?”
They did, and that’s what got in.
Sometimes, instead of fighting the system, you have to find a way around it.
On Alvin Ailey
Alvin was my first friend in the theater.
He was a chorus boy in Jamaica. I had just gotten out of the army and landed a job in a New York press office. I was the lowest guy on the totem pole, and the office was handling the summer tour of Jamaica.
Abby Lincoln was replacing Lena Horne in the lead role, and she and her co-star were doing a photoshoot. I was sent over—not to do anything, just to be the office’s representative.
I was told to meet the director, and this imposing African-American guy walks up.
I said, “I’m David from the press office.”
He said, “Oh, hi. I’m Alvin Ailey. I’m the director.”
He had been in the chorus of Jamaica but convinced them to let him direct the summer tour.
At the shoot, I noticed he was setting up shots, so I said, “Alvin, I was the editor of my college paper. Don’t leave too much space between them—newspapers use two- and three-column pictures. If there’s too much space, they won’t print it.”
He said, “That’s great to know. I didn’t realize that.”
Afterward, he said, “Let’s grab a bite to eat.”
We did, and from that moment on, we became friends. It was the late ’50s, and the theater community was tight-knit.
Later, Alvin took acting jobs while building his dance company. He was in My Rightful Name with Joan Hackett and Robert Duvall.
I saw the play and afterward said, “Alvin, who is Joan Hackett? She’s great.”
That night, the three of us went out. We closed every joint in town.
For a year, we were inseparable. It was a little like Jules and Jim—three young people, full of ambition and humor, making sure we were part of each other’s lives.
When I started the Fortune Society, the first two people I called were Alvin and Joan. They were always there for me.
Even when Alvin’s company took off, he always set aside ten tickets for Fortune Society. Hundreds of formerly incarcerated men and women saw dance because of him.
One of the running jokes at Fortune Society was:
“When you get out of prison in New York, they give you $40, a bologna sandwich, and two tickets to Alvin Ailey.”
‘Manhattan Mayhem’ will be officially released April 2.
Prior to ‘Manhattan Mayhem’, Rothenberg authored Fortune In My Eyes: A Memoir of Broadway Glamour, Social Justice, and Political Passion. (Applause Theatre Books, 2012), and co-authored and directed an off-Broadway play The Castle, which continues to be performed in prisons, colleges, and with civic groups. Upcoming performances of The Castle will take place March 23 at Ethical Culture Society, 2 W. 64th Street, NYC; April 4, at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women, Bedford Hills, NY; and May 26, at the Alternative To Violence Project 50th Anniversary Commemoration at Manhattan University, Purchase, NY.
His one man play, Namedropping, also played off-Broadway and Rothenberg continues to perform the work around NYC. This spring, David will present Namedropping at Theater 555 (555 W. 42nd Street, NYC) on Sunday, April 27 at 6PM, a benefit for the New York Civil Liberties Union.
David is also a subject of Broadway, Bars and Fortune, a 40-minute documentary film from Dr. Shuvendu Sen and Professor Karl Bardosh of NYU’s Tisch School of Arts. A social take on the relevance of art and theater in transforming lives of people with trauma, this documentary is a story of four formerly incarcerated-turned actors under the philosophy and mission of David Rothenberg. The film will premiere May 19, 2025 at the Cannes Film Festival, and will be screened at the Indian Consulate New York City and other Consulates, globally.
