Gay-themed Broadway mils have e a long way the past fifty years. The on are the bt.
Contents:
- THE 10 BT GAY MILS OF ALL TIME
- STAGE GAY
- HOW A GROUP OF GAY MALE BALLET DANCERS IS RETHKG MASCULY
- GAY USA
- A BRIEF HISTORY OF GAY THEATER, THREE ACTS
THE 10 BT GAY MILS OF ALL TIME
* gay stage *
Through an examatn of stage-gay, the notor practice of queer performativy on stage by straight performers the emo mic subculture, I vtigate how a rtrictive notn of “tth” discsns of queerbag n actually close off the very possibili of transformatn and open-end nfiguratns of sexualy that Alexanr Doty’s formulatn of queerns promised. When nsirg emo bands’ tentns performg stage-gay, we should look to explic statements ma by band members about s purpose: not to take them as transparent statements of fact, but as performative elements the Butlerian/Fouuldian sense, which be wh other visual and dible statements to nstct a disurse of queerns. We should also take to acunt the soc-cultural ntexts which stage-gay first me to public note: two boys kissg onstage at a hard rock ftival 2002 is an entirely different statement than the same gture ma a queer-iendly club 2020.
Readg 2006), to shouts of “faggots”: those of who were old enough to attend hardre and rock shows the early-mid 2000s will rell when there was nothg particularly remarkable about this vilent subcultural homophobia.
”17 The thor has wrten before that gay jok are a hallmark of queerbag, and this is te, but typilly the humor operat the other way around: iends are mistaken for a uple, and humor is generated by their awkward rponse (see pecially the BBC’s Sherlock and the CW’s Supernatural). Havg attend the ncerts of all three bands over a perd of nearly fifteen years, I thk is safe to say that recent years, the stage-gay has been toned down, possibly bee is rather ls strikg a statement mid-sized arenas 2020 than hardre and alternative rock clubs 2004. And ed, there were good-fah personal risks volved stage-gay: wearg a homema T-shirt readg “homophobia is gay” to a hardre club show the early 2000s, as MCR’s rhythm guarist Frank Iero once did, urted a real risk of retributn both sal and physil vlence.
STAGE GAY
How Gay and LGBTQ Plays have changed over the s. * gay stage *
This kd of ratifitn of fan practice om the subjects volved—as opposed to Way’s prev assertn that stage-gay was not tend to be ed “for” fanfic—do not make stage-gay any more or ls real, but grants a kd of license or thorizatn to queer fan practice, rultg a eer space of play.
” The feature si clarifi that while he isn’t actually gay, he fds the ephet people have ed as an sult agast him for most of his life to be ftg enough: “There is a sense of self-empowerment or repturg who you are by people llg you ‘fag’, and beg like, ‘Yeah, I am a fag. ”45 I suppose one sense, this uld be taken as an extreme act of queerbag by the edors of the magaze themselv, choosg that pull-quote as a tle page to prompt magaze sal: but aga, that requir rcg queerns to an intarian rigidy that, as Nord wr, may actually strengthen the heteronormative amework: as though all feme men mt be gay, all mascule girls mt be trans, and everyone needs to abi by the New Rul of Genr. After all, if we n neatly ci what kds of queer activy unt as gay, and which don’t—somethg Ward’s stunts seem entirely nvced of their judgements — is much easier to mata the boundari of normal and abnormal and assign dividuals to those box.
HOW A GROUP OF GAY MALE BALLET DANCERS IS RETHKG MASCULY
As Ward puts , To the extent that sexual ntact between straight whe men is ever acknowledged, the cultural narrativ that circulate around the practic typilly suggt that they are not gay their intarian nsequenc, but are stead about buildg heterosexual men, strengtheng hetero-mascule bonds, and strengtheng the bonds of whe manhood particular…In particular, I am gog to argue that when straight whe men approach homosexual sex the ‘right’ way—when they make a show of endurg , imposg , and repudiatg —dog so functns to bolster not only their heterosexualy, but also their masculy and whens. Men have sex wh men acrdg to all sorts of “hetero-mascule scripts, ” such as adventure, male bondg, hazg, huiatn, and natnal secury that “functn to displace or mask homosexual attachments—even the ntext of homosexual sex. More promently than the queerns of terracial homoeroticism, we should nsir the fact that stage-gay the early 2000s effectively functned to dispt Ward's heteromascule scripts—the heteromascule script of the hardre ftival, a privileged se of heteronormative male bondg, was ostentatly queered by a bunch of “fags” wh electric guars takg pri of place on the stage.
”51 She not that while she might ocsnally e the terms gay and queer terchangeably, she has tried to rerve her of queer “for stanc which I am scribg what some might ll ‘the gay left, ’ or the movement to rist gay assiatn and celebrate sexual and genr non-normativy. In an odd sense, says Ward, queerns has the stanc been “taken up by straights, ” as “gay inty is [creasgly] tethered to love and blogy…monogamo same-sex love and the gay and lbian fai prumed to ultimately rult om this love.
GAY USA
”54 In Ward’s schema, makp wearg straight boys, makg out at a hardre ftival over their phallic guars would certaly qualify as much queerer than two gay men gettg married the suburbs: “In sum, while the field of queer erotics has narrowed wh this turn to homonormative love, the field of hetero-erotics is ever expandg. ”61 This partly scrib the personas of, at the very least, Gerard Way, Pete Wentz, Ryan Ross and Brendon Urie, all of whom are equently perceived as gay: though given that they are all public performers who make liberate referenc to glam-rock, mp and new romanticism wh their wardrobe choic, there is probably more of a public tentn that overlaps to Category 2, the social jtice straight queer. At this stage, Heasley not, the boys aren’t actually dog anythg: they don’t speak up agast sexism or homophobia, and they don’t draw attentn to their non-normative stat: “They wear their baseball ps, play their vio gam, and do not take risks.
The play, often dismissed by mastream crics but hailed as "funny, sexy, and important" by the gay prs, ran for 140 performanc off-Broadway, then toured to eight ci over ne months, and returned to Broadway starrg the legendary adult film star Casey Donovan the lead role. Dpe s unprecented succs and acclaim, the play was not officially published until wh the but publitn of the script of the play, this edn clus a foreword by Jordan Schildcrout tled "Tubstrip and The Erotic Theatre of Gay Liberatn", which exam the signifince of the play as one of a wave of erotic gay plays (most of them fotten or lost) that emerged between 1969 and 1974. He went on to have a major reer gay male pornography, directg numero award-wng films between 1989 and 2007, such as More of a Man, Flh & Blood, Dream Team, and Schildcrout is Associate Profsor of Theatre & Performance at SUNY Purchase.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF GAY THEATER, THREE ACTS
At the Dis, Tommy Joe Ratliff and Adam Lambert durg the latter's Glam Natn tour, My Chemil Romance, Katy Perry's I Kissed a Girl, Way says he's pullg out the stage gay to challenge people's homophobia, but I thk he jt lik to make teenage girls aonvas Augt 1, 2010Flag.
Shortly after “Not Our Fate” premiered, Jt Peck, Cy Ballet’s rint choreographer, further challenged ballet’s genr norms when he adapted the woman’s role the pas ux at the heart of his 2017 “The Tim Are Racg, ” pairg Stanley wh Daniel Applebm, a 32-year-old gay soloist wh the you didn’t know much about classil ballet, you might thk ’s an obv home for queer artists and narrativ, but ’s more plited than that: Ballet, of urse, has always had gay dancers and choreographers and homoeroticism, but ’s an artistic disciple shaped by tradn. Masc Femme Butch KweenThere’s a hashtag for everythg on Instagram; when you type #gayballet, you will e across men tights and trag shorts, and eventually you might fd Jam Whi, most likely bare-chted wh a large scratch tattooed on his ribs. ReprentHarper Watters, 26, is many thgs: acclaimed Hoton Ballet soloist; son of two former llege profsors; host of a backstage chat show lled “The Pre Show” on his YouTube channel; a black gay man om New Hampshire now livg Texas; a lean, ventive artist who danc wh the eedom that om knowg who you are; a vourer of pop culture.
Drsed as a swan hunter, Watters talks to the mera a butch tone and says he and Stark are about to go out and do “boy thgs” like scg women and fightg, but then they lgh and return to their natural voic — distctly, unapologetilly gay — and clarify, “a different kd of boy thg.