Gay Theatre & Dance - Actors, Directors, Shows |

Contents:

• THE ULTIMATE LGBTIQ+ TRAVEL GUI TO NEW YORK CY: OM QUEER HISTORY TO THE BT GAY BARS
• THE BT GAY HOOK-UP SPOTS NYC
• QUIETLY, A BAWDY GAY BEAN GO DARK
• WHAT’S NEXT FOR THE GREAT GAY PLAY? EVERYTHG.
• 1964: THE BIRTH OF GAY THEATER
• NEW YORK’S 2ND STAGE THEATER OFFERS LOTS OF GAY OPTNS
• CATEGORY: GAY
• A BRIEF HISTORY OF GAY THEATER, THREE ACTS
• TAG: GAY THEATER

THE ULTIMATE LGBTIQ+ TRAVEL GUI TO NEW YORK CY: OM QUEER HISTORY TO THE BT GAY BARS

Hell’s Kchen and Chelsea offer the most “tradnal” gay bars and clubs, where visors n check out venu wh hunky shirtls bartenrs, a mostly-gay-male clientele, and thumpg hs gog late to the night.

It’s a fun and totally ridiculo experience that’s like a gay Coyote Ugly llid wh a down-home honky-tonk, but the fact that Flamg Saddl don’t take self serly is exactly why ’s such a fun bar to go to, offerg an unpretent experience that’s pecially good for anyone visg a gay bar for the first time.

THE BT GAY HOOK-UP SPOTS NYC

Other mils wh queer them clu Come From Away, which clus the te story of Kev Tuerff and his partner, both of whom bee strand Newfoundland wh hundreds of others durg the 9/11 attacks, and The Book of Mormon, which often mocks relig bigotry agast gay people. Wh storeonts that are cked out rabow flags and a sassy, ice-cream-lickg unirn, Big Gay Ice Cream knows how to create a scene.

QUIETLY, A BAWDY GAY BEAN GO DARK

One of the most important facilators of muny for LGBTIQ+ New Yorkers is The Lbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgenr Communy Center, referred to by lols simply as “The Center”. “Cisg” Central Park is also very real, and if you're g om somewhere that don't have much of a gay muny, thgs like this might e as a b of a culture shock.

A nversn of a former retail space, The Eros 1 Theatre was opened 1969, one of several gay male porn cemas operatg the Tim Square area the mid-1970’s. New York|Quietly, a Bawdy Gay Bean Go Dark ADVERTISEMENTNEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: TIMES SQUAREApril 24, 2005Most of the pestrians who stream past the buildg at 201 Wt 46th Street, on Broadway, do not notice that s tenant has moved out. "The sign, so most that the letter G mt stand for the word gay, is a ftg symbol of a 30-year-old salute to immosty, the cy's last survivg all-male burlque hoe and the only remag strip theater where performers danced pletely the sign don't illumate is the lore that set the Gaiety apart om other clubs: the mastream attentn attracted after photos of Madonna and some of the club's dancers were clud her 1992 book, "Sex"; the chet of visors like John Waters, Andy Warhol and Shirley MacLae; and the club's unrivaled abily to survive, spe the strict zong laws stuted durg the Giuliani admistratn, thanks to a lotn jt outsi a rtricted Gaiety's bread and butter was tourists, along wh the ocsnal woman or bridal party, and a re group of lol men who showed up for any of s five shows, seven days a week.

For most of s history, the theater also featured gay members of the flock wnsed the Gaiety's fal show a few weeks ago -- the first public mentn of the closg had appeared on several Web s only that morng -- but most did not know until was too late.

WHAT’S NEXT FOR THE GREAT GAY PLAY? EVERYTHG.

The two gay magaz where ads for the Gaiety ran for years did not hear om Denise Rozis, the owner, until a few days after the club shut s Rozis cled to discs the suatn, as did the former owner, the Kenh Rubste fay. "' KATHRYN BELGIORNOA versn of this article appears prt on, Sectn 14, Page 5 of the Natnal edn wh the headle: NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: TIMES SQUARE; Quietly, a Bawdy Gay Bean Go Dark. AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTCric’s NotebookIn recent shows, ias of gayns are expandg, bg and disappearg all at WisemanI don’t know whether was bee my parents were jt generally open-md, or bee they had a specific, kdly yet mortifyg agenda, but one of the first Broadway plays they took me to, June of 1977, was way too gay for fort.

The first phas of the gay play, ccial their moment, which broadly speakg enpassed the send half of the 20th century, are over. Some, like “A Strange Loop” and “Fat Ham, ” dramatize how the experience of racism amplifi that of homophobia, and vice fy expectatns by makg sexual orientatn a distctly sendary ncern among characters who “happen to be” gay or lbian, as “A Case for the Existence of God” and “At the Weddg.

When a (male) love tert enters the picture, and they sg Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl” as a duet, you feel somethg new has happened, as ntroversy melts to a blissful cloud of nonbary bubble is the equalizg, homogenizg fluence of pop culture at work — an fluence that some queer people unrstandably mistst. Jackson’s “A Strange Loop” go further, makg the cross-pollatn of inty the prime source of s nflict, as the ma character nonts both the homophobia of his Black fay and the racism of his queer one. ) Its body, race and orientatn issu are left a kd of stalemate that suggts what might happen if a foundatnal gay play like “The Boys the Band” (which had only one Black character) were multiplied fun hoe mirrors ad fum.

1964: THE BIRTH OF GAY THEATER

That the Hamlet figure, lled Juicy, is Black and gay, wh an termtent csh on a Laert-like iend, suggts that the queer theme will domate, yet don’t; “Fat Ham” is really a play about Black masculy and, even more broadly, the vlent herance all men mt renounce. ” Beltran portrays a gay Black man hopg to adopt the young girl he’s been Klwich/The New York TimMy other favore queer plays of the past year likewise offer no bands; their gay characters (there are still far too few lbian on) operate as if their gayns were mostly ternal and pletely irrelevant. Hunter’s heartbreakg “A Case for the Existence of God, ” that turns out to be an illn, as a gay Black man, after fosterg a ltle girl for more than three years, fds his plan to adopt her undone at the last mute.

If there are subtle ways which their sexual inti affect their character or behavr, they were too subtle for me; miss a le or two and you may not even know that gayns is a part of their makp at mak sense plays about cris that threaten to oblerate a person entirely: genr, race, orientatn and all. Francis, the closeted llege stunt “Gemi, ” probably did; if he lived through AIDS, I expect he achieved full five-star gay privilege, plete wh marriage, children and Crate & Barrel chee boards. ) What about the gay characters who, lackg whe sk, almost never appeared on mercial stag those supposed great gay play s?

IF “GAY THEATER” is fed as beg by, for, and about uncloseted gay people, then 2014 arguably marks the 50th anniversary of the genre’s existence. 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.

NEW YORK’S 2ND STAGE THEATER OFFERS LOTS OF GAY OPTNS

Produced a readg of “Hnted Host” 2008 an eveng honorg Robert Patrick for his ntributn to gay theater over the past five s. At the height of the Pansy Craze the late 1920s, Mae Wt penned The Drag, a “social problem” play that argued for sympathetic treatment of homosexuals.

Dranian measur om Cy Hall, cludg the passage of New York Cy’s 1927 “padlock bill, ” prohibed homosexual subject matter on the Broadway stage. 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. Beatniks, homosexuals, and alienated artists like Patrick were flockg to the Village om all over the untry the late ‘50s.

He emphasized the reprsed liv that most gay people led ral Ameri durg those years, and the extent to which most reprentatns offered were negative on:.

CATEGORY: GAY

People more remote parts of the untry were vaguely aware of the gay culture New York Cy, but an extremely negative way.

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 Co fulfilled the dream of a Bohemian enclave, and at the same time startled wh s undreamed-of possibily of gay aterny as well. 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 this way, they ed the stage to shape public disurse, and the muni that rulted n perhaps be scribed as direct precsors of the Gay Liberatn Front and Gay Activist Alliance. (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.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF GAY THEATER, THREE ACTS

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.

TAG: GAY THEATER

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. On a si note, over the past few years, Palm Sprgs has been the statn several gay New York plays, which mak one wonr if ’s the lotn gay New York snowbirds go while the straights flock to Florida.

In wrg , Crowley had liberately taken up the challenge tossed down by the theater cric Stanley Kffmann, who a 1966 New York Tim say headled “Homosexual Drama and Its Disguis” asked why that era’s most famo gay playwrights — meang Edward Albee, Tennsee Williams and William Inge — didn’t wre about themselv and leave straights alone. Nor do homosexuals suffer om an “emotnal-psychologil illns, ” as he sually mentns — for this was an era which such public slurs were chic and permissible, pecially the guise of lerary cricism. ”) Still, there was no nyg that ank plays about gay male life had never reached the mastream, never perated the circl which Kffmanns and Roths and social Crowley wrote the bt and funnit and gayt play he uld, about ne gay men (or maybe eight and a half) at a birthday party.

Though some of the men fse the ambient homophobia of the time better than others, almost all of them suffer om the self-hatred that seemed then, and maybe now, to filtrate even the bt-fend personaly. It is also an acknowledgment of a larger urgency about the reprentatn of gay men popular entertament: a moment that, the theater at least, is both sprgboard and logy. At a time when many of the classic gay plays are returng to the Broadway stage — “Boys the Band, ” “Angels Ameri” and “Torch Song Trilogy” among them — almost no new on are on the horizon to jo them.