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.

GAYS ON BROADWAY BY ETHAN MORDN REVIEW – STAGE WHISPERS

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. 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.

PNEERG GAY PLAYWRIGHT ROBERT PATRICK DI AT 85

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.

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.

THE 10 BT GAY MILS OF ALL TIME

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.

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

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.

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

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”.

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

”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. 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 ›.

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

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.

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.

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

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.