Influential LGBTQ Playwrights  - The Gay & Lbian Review

Contents:

• DID YOU CATCH ASTEROID CY’S NOD TO A GREAT GAY PLAYWRIGHT?
• GAYS ON BROADWAY BY ETHAN MORDN REVIEW – STAGE WHISPERS
• PNEERG GAY PLAYWRIGHT ROBERT PATRICK DI AT 85
• THE 10 BT GAY MILS OF ALL TIME
• #RIP: “GODFATHER OF GAY THEATER”, PLAYWRIGHT ROBERT PATRICK
• HOW A 1960S OPENLY-GAY PLAYWRIGHT MET THE BEATL, AND HIS UNTIMELY END
• ROBERT PATRICK, EARLY AND PROLIFIC PLAYWRIGHT OF GAY LIFE, DI AT 85
• TERRENCE MCNALLY, TONY-WNG PLAYWRIGHT OF GAY LIFE, DI AT 81
• DC REVIVG HANNA-BARBERA’S ‘SNAGGLEPS’ AS GAY PLAYWRIGHT

DID YOU CATCH ASTEROID CY’S NOD TO A GREAT GAY PLAYWRIGHT?

Inspired by Howards End (1910), wrten by EM Forster — who appears the play as the closeted gu-que character Man — Lopez draws heavily upon his own experience of gay life New York Cy. Sherman’s Pulzer Prize nomated play Bent, produced first 1978 at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, is wily regard as the play that sparked more rearch to the treatment of homosexuals Nazi Germany durg World War II.

In 1993, he received the Pulzer Prize for his play Angels Ameri: A Gay Fantasia on Natnal Them which was later ma to a film starrg Meryl Streep, Al Paco, Patrick Wilson, Mary-Louise Parker, and Emma Thompson.

But when we do meet Earp some early scen, we learn jt enough about him to unrstand exactly who he’s moled after: the famo gay playwright Tennsee Williams.

GAYS ON BROADWAY BY ETHAN MORDN REVIEW – STAGE WHISPERS

Experimentg wh femy the safety of the home — even somethg as mcule as selectg girl characters vio gam and livg virly through her abily to kick ass — seems to be a shared gay experience for many of . It feels remiscent of the adoratn that gay fans hold toward old Hollywood beti like Joan Crawford and Judy Garland, or the pageant-style exaggeratns of femy that unrpned so much of early drag culture.

Barbie has been the subject of the same gay diva worship over the years, and Gerwig’s film promently featurg LGBTQ+ actors feels like a nod to that history.

Part of Barbie’s gay appeal might be that, spe beg plastic and unmalleable, she n transform herself to anythg: doctor, lawyer, judge, journalist, and vet, or whatever Mattel thks will sell the most dolls. ) As the world’s most famo doll, she has been st as both an aspiratnal hero and a rctive villa — the gay world, this polarizg dualy often turns women to ins.

PNEERG GAY PLAYWRIGHT ROBERT PATRICK DI AT 85

Now, I feel proud of my ltle gay self for havg the urage to play wh those fabulo dolls — and of my parents for buyg me the toys I wanted, not the on I was supposed to like. It may seem strange given theatre’s reputatn for sexual licence, but the 20th century, gay men and lbians on Broadway had to spend most of their reers the closet.

It begs at the turn of the 20th century and culmat wh Tori and Lisa Kron’s mil Fun Home and the 2019 Broadway productn of The Inherance, Matthew Lopez’s six-and-a-half-hour gay revamp of Howards End (pendg on your viewpot, eher eply movg or Howards Endls)’s srcely the first survey of s kd. Only on rare and trigugly dangero ocsns did homosexualy make to the text nversatnally through 120 years 218 pag means there’s ltle time for staed argument.

Dpe the latter’s openns about his sexualy and the reputatn of his plays, Mordn pots out: “Williams’ outwardly gay characters are ually off-stage or ad. ” And he also floats the ia that Noël Coward – the man he argu first ed the word gay the ntemporary sense onstage a lyric for his operetta Bter Sweet – was wrg a d gay relatnship when he brought a threateng first love back to a marriage Blhe dismissive and far om balanced, Mordn is strong on barely remembered wrers like lyricist-librettist John Latouche.

THE 10 BT GAY MILS OF ALL TIME

And he’s ft about John Van Dten, once famo for turng Christopher Isherwood’s Berl stori to I Am a Camera which begat Cabaret, but who also wrote the cunng closet drama Bell, Book and Candle, ostensibly about wch livg 1950 Greenwich Village but whose real subject is clearly lbians and gay his groundbreakg 1981 book The Celluloid Closet, Vo Rso wrote that even until the 1960s, as far as Amerin cema was ncerned, “homosexualy was still somethg you did the dark or Europe, preferably both”. ”Patrick eventually wrote hundreds of plays, and he “renred gay (and straight) life wh tic w, an open heart and fizzy mp, ” the Tim reports. Among the more notable on were Kennedy’s Children, about post-1960s disillnment, which end up on Broadway 1975 after productns off-Broadway and London; T-Shirts, an exploratn of gay male culture; and Blue Is for Boys, set a llege dorm rerved for gay stunts.

#RIP: “GODFATHER OF GAY THEATER”, PLAYWRIGHT ROBERT PATRICK

Survivors clu a sister, Angela Patrice Your Se ArticlRelightg Harvey Fierste's Legendary 'Torch' 40 Years Later ›Harvey Fierste as Bella Abzug on Audible Is as Prcient as Ever ›Harvey Fierste Worked Wh Warhol Before Makg Broadway History ›How Harvey Fierste Has Always Led the Way for Queer Visibily ›Theater | ›Stonewall Opera, Chic Theater Hotel, and Bob The Drag Queen ›Stephen Sondheim, Mil Theater Legend, Dead at 91 ›Oped Why Gay Men Love The Theater ›. It’s a gay romance, enpassg nearly half a century and begng when Nate, a middle-class kid om New Jersey (like Rudnick himself) who dreams of beg an actor or playwright or “simply someone who’d ll other people ‘darlg, ’” meets the patrician, relsly handsome Farrell 1973, durg their first days at Yale. (Nate, settlg Manhattan’s Wt Village after llege, is dazzled to fd his first gay gym, filled wh “mcular men heavg and gntg and argug venomoly about opera.

” Richard Greenberg’s Tony-wng 2003 play, “Take Me Out, ” about a baseball player who out as gay, had a Tony-wng revival on Broadway last year.

T-Shirts was first produced 1979, starrg porn star Jack Wrangler, and was later chosen as the openg piece the anthology Gay Plays: A First Des om ’88 are seven one-act plays givg a humoro and emotnal history of gay life AmeriTemple Slave, a novel about the early days of Off-Off-Broadway and gay theatre.

HOW A 1960S OPENLY-GAY PLAYWRIGHT MET THE BEATL, AND HIS UNTIMELY END

In 2010, he produced a DVD of his lecture Caffe Co: Birthplace of Gay March 2014, he gave a solo performance about his reer entled, What Don’t Kill Me Mak a Great Story Later, which featured acpella rendns of many of his origal songs. Although the very ncept of gay liberatn was unborn for most ‘media monsters’ like me, a few novels found on paperback shelv provcial dgstor, pl ually rogatory cracks about effemate or nrotic gay men and butch or pretent Lbians tossed to stori or movi about Greenwich Village, did ht that along wh creative eedom (and sensive, tellectual pany), the Village might offer some relief om the csant fear of regnn, disvery, and punishment that gayns brought to outlanr verts.

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 ffee-ho that wh an only half-discerned arty Bohemian environment there might possibly be a ltle more acceptance of homosexuals. 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. As an avid and unrelentg supporter of gay rights throughout her life, Mae Wt ma wav wh The Drag 1927, which she wrote unr pen name Jane Mast.

ROBERT PATRICK, EARLY AND PROLIFIC PLAYWRIGHT OF GAY LIFE, DI AT 85

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.

TERRENCE MCNALLY, TONY-WNG PLAYWRIGHT OF GAY LIFE, DI AT 81

Max (played by Ian McKellen the origal n at the Royal Court) is a gay man Berl the 1930s, taken to Dach wh his boyiend Rudy after the Night of Long Kniv. 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.

Penned by Tarell Alv McCraney (whose tobgraphil play beme spiratn for the Osr wng Moonlight) this 2008 play talks about what means to be black and to be gay. It remas jt as pertent today, alg wh the stggl that arise om the batn of misogyny and homophobia that are far om beg stamped out today’s society.

Far om beg terrified of his queerns beg “found out” as a young man, he openly flnted his gayns durg a time when the anti-sodomy laws that sent Osr Wil to jail 1895 were still firmly place. Many of his characters are gay or bisexual, and when asked about his sexualy by jt about anyone—cludg the prs—he was hont about his orientatn. Halliwell’s obssn is wh his own pa and failure: Orton’s is wh the ia that he n outn homophobia by beg even more of a flamg asshole than the straight people are.

DC REVIVG HANNA-BARBERA’S ‘SNAGGLEPS’ AS GAY PLAYWRIGHT

Both Halliwell and Orton were doomed not bee they were gay, or bee the culture was tolerant, but bee they were almost too able to digt the kchen-sk drama imperativ of the culture that ma them. Not even after the Beatl enlisted Orton to wre them a new movie script for “Up Agast It, ” a movie that would for once acknowledge and play wh the foursom’ herent homoeroticism (they were sick of “the old Richard Lter sh”, acrdg to Orton.

His plays have been veloped and seen at the Ojai Playwrights Conference, the Obie Award-wng The Fire This Time Ftival, The 24-Hour Plays: Natnals, the Obie Award-wng Harlem 9’s 48 Hours… Harlem at The Natnal Black Theatre, HomeBase Theatre Collective, The Movement Theater Company, The New School’s 2015 AoFuturism Conference, and The Tenth Magaze, llaboratn wh the Llie-Lohman Mm of Gay and Lbian Art.

His first of hundreds of plays, performed there 1964, is a tone of gay Patrick wrote hundreds of plays as well as untls songs, poems and short stori, a memoir and at least one LoganRobert Patrick, a wildly prolific playwright who renred gay (and straight) life wh tic w, an open heart and fizzy mp, and whose 1964 play, “The Hnted Host, ” beme a touchstone of early gay theater, died on April 23 at his home Los Angel. ”Its signifince was regnized hdsight as an early example of a work wh a gay person as the hero, and wh them that were universal: love, grief, self-rpect. Shewey, his review for The Soho News, scribed as a ic romp about the gay generatn gap as well as “a schematic attack on the valu of the gay male world, chargg that money, youth and bety have bee as terchangeable as, well, T-shirts.