Christian Dante Whe Mak Black Gay History 'My Fair Lady'

Contents:

• NEW WAVE OF BLACK, GAY NARRATIV TAKG BIGGER ROLE ON NYC THEATER SCENE
• WHAT’S NEXT FOR THE GREAT GAY PLAY? EVERYTHG.
• THE 10 BT GAY MILS OF ALL TIME
• A STRANGE LOOP GETS INTO THE MD OF ITS BLACK GAY PROTAGONIST
• BROADWAY'S CHRISTIAN DANTE WHE MAK BLACK GAY HISTORY MY FAIR LADY

NEW WAVE OF BLACK, GAY NARRATIV TAKG BIGGER ROLE ON NYC THEATER SCENE

A new movement is takg centerstage on and off Broadway — and jt time for Pri productns wh Black and gay narrativ are no longer the unrstudi on the New York theater clu the Tony-nomated h mil “A Strange Loop” and baseball-themed play “Take Me Out, ” the 2022 Pulzer Prize-wng “Fat Ham, ” the sightful Off-Broadway dramas “soft” and “what the end will be, ” as well as the Theater Row adaptatn of “B-Boy Blu. "A Strange Loop" Cultural cric E Wilbek, the founr of Native Son, a New York Cy-based nonprof created to spire and empower Black gay and queer men, lls the spate of shows “a new revolutn.

”E Wilbek (Warll Malloy)“The bety of this Black queer theater revolutn is that creat reprentatn of Black gay and queer men as human begs wh full liv, emotnal pth and stori that touch your soul, ” Wilbek said. The thought-provokg story als wh the fallout after a biracial sports superstar out as gay. What the end will be Roundabout at Lra Pels TheatreIn Mansa Ra’s touchg new edy, the faial dynamics of three generatns of gay Black men e to a head when the teenager (Gerald Caar) out to his closeted father (Emerson Brooks) and the recently widowed grandfather (Keh Randolph Smh) — stricken wh stage 4 bone ncer — mov wh them and cis to take his mortaly to his own hands.

Jackson’s Pulzer Prize-wng mil edy foc on a Black gay wrer who works as a Broadway theater her while traversg the ups and downs of datg and workg New York. Jackson, and ’s an tofictnal meta-mil about a Black gay man wrg a mil about a Black gay man wrg a mil about a Black—you get the ia. The other is a pafully timate portra of the artist as fat and queer and “too Black” for the “whe gaytriarchy, ” whose parents will never accept his sexualy.

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

By the end of MJ, we don’t know if Michael’s gay, asexual, or crimally msed up, but his mic transports across generatns.

Usher fled a fay and muny Detro that probably would have driven him to unsafe sex or suici (one song quietly memorializ “Black gay boys who chose to go on back to the Lord”). By the end, the gospel gig has merged to Usher’s shame at his homophobic, Popey-chicken-eatg, drama-havg fay back home, who sg along to a terrifyg gospel number about how “AIDS is God’s punishment.

A Strange Loop is profanely funny and urageoly raw, but on a send viewg (I reviewed s world premiere Off Broadway 2019), ’s also clstrophobilly fixated on the wounds of youth, a howl of rage at gay lookism, whe gatekeepers, and toxic Christiany. As someone who is also a Black, gay, and a mil theatre wrer, I saw myself and my story onstage for the first time. Led by a lossal, virtuoso performance om Larry Owens—not to mentn anchored by an all-Black, all-queer ensemble of multalented, triple-threat featured players—A Strange Loop (now extend through July 28) is a sgular, semal Bildungsroman that sts a subversive, cril third eye on both mastream and her regns of the Black gay Amerin experience that had not been shown before.

THE 10 BT GAY MILS OF ALL TIME

The show follows Usher (Owens), a young, NYU-ted, overweight Black gay man workg as an her at a long-nng Broadway mil and stgglg to wre a mil about a young, NYU-ted, overweight Black gay man workg as an her at a long-nng Broadway mil and stgglg to wre a mil (hence the loop the tle).

A STRANGE LOOP GETS INTO THE MD OF ITS BLACK GAY PROTAGONIST

But he also noticed a third trend: “the amount of gay whe men we have on Broadway this year.

BROADWAY'S CHRISTIAN DANTE WHE MAK BLACK GAY HISTORY MY FAIR LADY

” Namg Angels Ameri, The Boys the Band, and Torch Song, all of which were wrten by whe gay men, O’Hara remarked, “There’s too many whe gay people, particularly whe gay men and their stggle beg whe and gay and male. Though theatre pris self on beg a space for outsts, and most of s preement artists are gay men, their visibily often at the expense of other members of the LGBTQ muny. In the theatre, LGBTQ plays have often centered solely on the experience of gay whe cis-men and (only recently) cis-women, while people of lor war the margs for mastream acclaim.

Whether ’s about the gay civil rights movement (Mart Crowley’s semal The Boys In The Band, Dt Lance Black’s 8), the HIV/AIDS epimic (Larry Kramer’s five The Normal Heart, Tony Khner’s inic Angels Ameri, William Fn’s nrotic Falsettos) or munal hered trma (Moisés Kfman’s triumphant docudrama The Laramie Project, Matthew Lopez’s Broadway-bound The Inherance), gay whe men have domated queer stori, creatg nuanced characters and beg the epicenter of the narrativ of LGBTQ culture. Openly gay Black artists like O’Hara and Gee C.

Love, an HIV-posive gay Black playwright, saw the world premier of his queer perd dramas Sugar Our Wounds and Firefli. In Slave Play, an terracial gay uple unrgo therapy, an effort to rennect.

At the same time, Moore do wonr “how the works might be received if the creators and/or ma actors weren’t Black gay men. The “bury your gays” stereotype is still very much the norm for the plays, cludg some of the on mentned above. In 2017, Pew found that younger, non-whe, and low-e people (lower middle-class people of lor) were more likely to self-intify as LGBTQ than wh, bunkg the myth that Blacks and Latos are overwhelmgly homophobic.

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.

(One of the songs is lled “Exile Gayville. ) 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. 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.