Jerker, or The Helping Hand: A Pornographic Elegy with Redeeming Social Value and a Hymn to the Queer Men of San Francisco in Twenty Telephone Calls, Many of Them Dirty (commonly known simply as Jerker) is a 1986 one-act play by Robert Chesley.
The two-character play traces the relationship that develops between a disabled Vietnam veteran, J. R., and a businessman, Bert, two gay men in the beginning years of the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s, when a diagnosis of AIDS meant an early death from complications of the disease. Although they “meet” only through a series of telephone calls, they grow from being phone sex buddies to caring friends. The play varies from erotic to emotionally charged moments. “Jerker” can be seen as referring to masturbation and to “tear jerker”
Chesley wrote the play because he believed it was “important to remove the stigma against sex that AIDS has created, and … to remove the stigma against gay men’‘. Naturally, when it opened in NY it was at the center of an obscenity controversy shortly after its premiere. It did fare much better in London when it was performed in London at the Gate Theatre in 1990 under the direction of future multi-Tony/Oliver Award winner Stephen Daldry
Come August 1st, Jerker will finally have its Cape Cod premiere at the Provincetown Theater, starring Joe MacDougall and Stephen Walker and directed by David Drake
Jerker August 1st to September 1st Provincetown Theater
