By Antoine Craigwell

(New York, NY) - Former Broadway actor, Cornelius Jones, Jr., who after six years with the Lion King, is making a comeback with his solo-autobiographical play, Flag Boy.

For Jones, the play is an affirmation of his identity as a Black gay man. It is two stories: a young boy's journey toward acceptance of himself and his sexuality, and about a flag - a gay flag, a country's flag and the symbolism that goes with flags - the sense of identity and pride.

 

 
 
Flag Boy will be performed on July 14, at the Eagle Theater, located at 347 West 36th Street, ground floor, New York, NY, and is part of the Midtown International Art Festival. It is directed by Josh Ian. A second show will be on Sunday, July 27, at 12:45 p.m., and a third show on Friday, August 1, at 6 p.m. Tickets are $18.00.

Recalling, a vignette in the play, a life experience from which the title was born, Jones says that when he was in the ninth grade, about 13 or 14-years old and around 1991 to 1992, he wanted to be in the auxiliary team of his school's marching band - whose members were the pompom girls, majorettes, flag girls and rifle boys. Jones became a rifle boy. But, it was the band director, Mrs. Martin, who made every one in the auxiliary team learn to handle flags.

 
 
 
For him, it was as if his band director had foreseen the future. To Jones, as a teenager, being a rifle boy was not only his way of maintaining his masculinity by military association, but it was a way to try to stop the name calling, which had started and which would have intensified if he was the only boy in the company of the flag girls.

"I knew I was gay, but by hiding behind a rifle, I knew I wouldn't have to deal with the issues associated with being gay. I just didn't want to go through the turmoil of having to deal with being gay," says Jones.

To him, the psychology of twirling a rifle made him feel more like a man, more socially accepted, instead of throwing a flag.

"But now when I look back," he says, "the entire squad of rifle boys was in fact gay."

Ten years ago, while Jones was in college - he attended Syracuse University for a year and completed his bachelor's of fine arts in theater at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA, - he had his wake up call. He recalled hearing a young girl recount in a spoken word piece of her priority, taking care of her father who was dying of AIDS.

 
 
 
"This transformed me and I went out and got tested. Flag Boy is a story that tells people that they are not victims of circumstance. For me, writing this story, this play, is a way for me to get back to that little boy in side, for me to see where it was that I began to internalize homophobia," he says.

Today, Jones says, as an adult, he has been able to process the feelings of being a flag boy much more than when he was a budding teen.

In the play, Jones admits, the most risqué scene is when he describes his involvement with Danny, his first boy friend, when they both attended Duke Ellington High School of the Arts in Washington, D.C. It tells of how they met, when he was evicted from the house where he was living in the Washington, DC area, and to a vignette of what happened in a gay club.

Jones says that today, too, a flag boy would likely ask questions such as: how does one wear their pride, one's personal pride - whether their gayness, color or ethnicity, culture, or just the swagger or switch in one's walk? It's all in how a person wears their pride, he says. Does a person wear their pride across their chest, on their finger, around their neck, or on their head? Or, does a person wear their pride hidden inside their heart?

 
 
 
Flag Boy is not exclusively gay, because in the show he brings up universal issues about overcoming adversities and acknowledging who it is that is staring back in the mirror. A heterosexual person seeing the play, Jones insists, would likely see how Black gay men deal with the many issues of growing up.

"I once had this straight white girl who came to see one of my shows and she was able to identify with the feeling of being an outcast, being teased because of her size. She could relate to having, at the time when I had an attraction to another boy, an attraction to another girl," he says.

While Jones says that this girl told him how she experimented when she was young, he points out that there are many moments in the show where a person does not have to be gay to identify with it.

He says that themes common to both heterosexuals and homosexuals run throughout his show, such as when he reveals his HIV positive status, the death of his father and the attendant emotional crises of loosing a loved one, and a number of health scares.

"The loss of a loved one coming together with a HIV positive diagnosis, are places where everyone connects," he adds.

 
 
 
Jones says that these two major issues in his life have forced him to be resolute in his pursuit of affirmation and identification.

"A flag boy doesn't give up. Way back, it is the little boy in me who keeps me going on. He helps me to be proud of who I am. I believe if I loose that inner child, then who am I? To me that is what keeps me," Jones says.

When he has completed his stage run, Jones plans to return to the workshop mode, at New York University's Gallant School for Individual Art Study, to rewrite and redevelop Flag Boy into a two-act play