Queer Theatre | Gay London | LGBTQ+ Queer London Gui

Contents:

• 1964: THE BIRTH OF GAY THEATER
• WHAT’S WH GAY MEN AND MIL THEATER?
• THE FOTTEN SECRET LANGUAGE OF GAY MEN
• GAY THEATRE: G OUT OR GOG BACK?
• A BRIEF HISTORY OF GAY THEATER, THREE ACTS
• THE 10 BT GAY MILS OF ALL TIME

1964: THE BIRTH OF GAY THEATER

The "secret language" was ed heavily by gays the circ, navy, and theater, and arose out of the need to discs gay matters unr a clever guise, due to homosexual acts beg illegal Bra until the passage of the Sexual Offens Act 1967.

Here's some of the amg slang: Basket - the bulge of male genals through clothFantabulos-wonrfulEf - face (backslang) DollyEf - pretty face Chicken - a young guySome Polari words still exist morn gay slang.

Check out Atlas Obscura pots out, Polari was a great self-performative outlet for Brish gays to not only exprs themselv but also easily intify and n wh fellow memebers of the queer muny. In 1964, spe a social climate of homophobia that pervad Amerin life for the send third of the 20th century, two one-act plays prented Off-Off-Broadway at the Caffe Co revolutnized how gay characters uld be reprented theatrilly.

WHAT’S WH GAY MEN AND MIL THEATER?

Satirized the trial of Osr Wil sympathetilly), the Wilson and Patrick one-acts were unique that both featured gay characters set the prent time who were not only open, but boisteroly fiant. We uldn’t jt log on to the ter or turn on the televisn to fd reprentatns of ourselv, we had to triangulate and hypothize om half-hts and sual pretory remarks by New York wrers about Greenwich Village parti and ffeeho that wh an only half-discerned arty Bohemian environment there might possibly be a ltle more acceptance of homosexuals.

THE FOTTEN SECRET LANGUAGE OF GAY MEN

In tanm wh the work of activist polil groups, which had begun anizg the late 1950s, the wrers at the Caffe Co—wh their wild talents for turng fantasy to theatril realy for their untercultural dienc—metaphorilly gave birth to the ncept of “gay liberatn. (In fact, Doric Wilson, perhaps the first playwright of the “Gay Theater” movement at the Co, was also a pneer of gay polil activism: he participated both the GLF and s scennt, the GAA.

LANFORD WILSON and Robert Patrick were not unaware that their impulse to wre plays about openly gay characters was chartg new terrory, as wns Wilson’s “thor not” to “The Madns of Lady Bright”: “I believe the ia of the play shocked me. Openg on December 6, 1964, only a few months after “The Madns of Lady Bright, ” “The Hnted Host” has as s protagonist one Jay, a wildly funny gay playwright who has recently lost his lover Ed to suici.

Envisng an alternative endg for the tragic queen archetype, the play enacts a crique of homosexual inti by offerg a visn which the stereotypil power dynamic between the gay man and the straight man is verted. By reversg the prumptn of heterosexualy as origal tth, and puttg the “straight man” a posn which he mt expla his “foreign” sexualy to a gay man, the playwright language to unrme the heterosexist perceptn of realy.

GAY THEATRE: G OUT OR GOG BACK?

Patrick’s queer theater ntributed to a nascent sense of “gay liberatn” by promotg visibily, stabilizg normative social nstcts, providg a template for dividual self-empowerment, and exposg opprsn.

An ephemeral utopia for Patrick and his iends, the Co was neverthels a place where numero relatnships were built, and where gay artists uld fd the mararie that affirmed their mon terts, perspectiv, and sexual sir.

He loved opera too, which is another mon stereotype about gay men that ntas a good b of hnted Broadway together, we subscribed to opera seri, and we regularly spread a blanket out Central Park to sip Chardonnay and thrill to why? Most of the theater people of his day didn't know how their culture had evolved jt knew that many of them were gay and even transgenr, not that transgenr was a word Lenny knew is that men who liked other men liked the theater.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF GAY THEATER, THREE ACTS

I don't have anythg agast show tun, I jt don't many gay men of my generatn and younger, tradnal gay culture is not somethg I actively we tegrate and normalize, our special cultur are fadg 're the last lks to the old rogu of the travellg theater , those ancient tradns will live on only history books. Gay people may fd solace and fort theatre, but there are other groups who do not, and we should make every effort to change MasculyThe other reason why theatre is sometim labeled as queer, most often by men, is that there are aspects of stagecraft that n ntrary to entrenched ias of masculy.

Vada (“look at”), dolly eek (a pretty face), and chicken (a young guy) are all words om the lexin of Polari, a secret language ed by gay men Bra at a time when homosexualy was illegal. Durg the terim years, when beg openly non-straight brought the risks of social isolatn and crimal prosecutn, Polari provid gay men wh a subtle way to fd one another for pannship and sex. In the late ‘60s, as gay liberatn groups were fightg for regnn and equaly, Polari h mastream Brish pop-culture the form of Julian and Sandy, two flamboyant, not-officially-but-pretty-obvly gay characters on a BBC rad show lled Round the Horne.

Dolan brgs up the pot that gay men shouldn’t have to be “straight-actg” orr to be accepted: “Might not be more fun to embrace a b more mp and actually have fun wh ourselv and wh each other? Here are ten of the plays that have ntributed to LGBTQ+ theatre's rich Drag by Mae WtThe Drag follows Rolly, a gay man who marri a woman to hi his sexualy, and the nsequenc of this.

THE 10 BT GAY MILS OF ALL TIME

Wh a st of exclively gay actors om a Greenwich Village club, the play was a huge fancial succs, but was wily panned by crics and shut down due to obsceny laws and never ma to Broadway as planned.

It is by no means as ntroversial as many plays wh central male gay them, but has to work doubly hard bee of this lack of other lbian storyl on the stage, somethg that is dire need of changg and that Fun Home self uld In Ameri by Tony Khner The exploratn of AIDS 1980s Ameri an epic unrtakg, and Angels Ameri is a suably epic play. Hot on the heels of the Angels Ameri revival, Matthew Lopez asks what is like for the next generatn of young gay men New York, growg up and livg the shadow of the AIDS crisis. Unsurprisgly, there is a large nstuency of directors and wrers who are gay, but currently very few people theatre wh the appete for chroniclg and explorg gay culture and gay theatre is at a crossroads.

Recently there have been some excg iativ, such as the gay playwrg programme and ftival at Greenwich, the Above The Stag venue for gay theatre that reopens a new Vxhall home at Christmas, and of urse Ovalhoe, which has been champng queer voic for 50 the venu and pani, val though they are, replace other, often better fund pani and venu such as the Drill Hall, or Queer up North, who both lost their fundg a number of years ago, brgg to an end a long herage. It's been ls than 50 years sce the crimalisatn of male homosexual sex, and only the years leadg up to crimalisatn did the Lord Chamberla relax the l about the reprentatn of homosexualy on stage, so gay theatre (like all gay culture) is relatively young.

An Off-Broadway play like The Normal Heart short-circus policians, journalists and anyone else that might misreprent the wasn't jt overtly polil work reprentg the 1980s gay muny. It may seem glib to mentn La Cage Aux Foll the same breath as The Normal Heart but arguably did as much, if not more for the reprentatn of the gay La Cage opened on Broadway 1983, the level of fear over the AIDS epimic was overwhelmg – people thought uld be ught om kissg, or om toilet seats, and many refed to see La Cage for fear of ntractg HIV. The show may seem a b mp now, and is, but anyone who don't realise the vlence behd mp has clearly never got on the wrong si of a drag the early 1990s, polil polemic was met by theatril ambn wh Angels In Ameri – a gay play, a state of the natn play, and one of the greatt piec of ntemporary Amerin drama.

It addrsed the polics of AIDS wh a savage theatril poetry unheard of before or the 90s progrsed, however, there was a distct feelg that much of gay theatre was beg miserablist – tragic stori of unhappy dividuals.