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.
Contents:
1964: THE BIRTH OF GAY THEATER
Why am I so drawn to characters that are gay… * is bad end theater gay *
You will be hard-prsed to fd anyone who works theatre who hasn’t heard the words ‘theatre is gay’ at some pot durg their reer. 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. Obvly, to label perceived non-mascule tras as ‘gay’ or ‘queer’ is and of self a misnomer.
The fire uld also have be a metaphor as they were "put unr fire" for beg gay and were separated om eachother. Queer theatre is the accepted generic term for the gay theatre movement: one that embrac both men and women, that vers plays, mils, baret and jt about everythg else, and which has been gog strong Bra and Ameri for well over 40 years. In the opprsive 1950s, where every play had to be approved by the lord chamberla before uld be performed public, Brish dramatists were necsarily oblique their prentatn of gay issu.
<p><strong>Michael Billgton: </strong>The gay and lbian theatre movement has changed radilly sce the opprsive days of the 1950s, but uld more wrers rise to the challenge of ntemporary issu?</p> * is bad end theater gay *
But dramatists at the time were obliged to work : when the hero of Emlyn Williams's superlative Acla (1950) is acced of havg sex wh an unrage girl Rotherhhe, I tomatilly assume Williams was really talkg about 's been hearteng to see gay wrers explog the eedom that me wh the aboln of censorship and the relaxatn of the law. The 1970s saw the emergence of Gay Sweatshop Bra, found 1975, and the Gay Theatre Alliance Ameri, which burst to life not long after. And Bra over the last 20 years wrers such as Bryony Lavery, Phyllis Nagy (who is Amerin by birth), Kev Elyot, Alexi Kaye Campbell, Samuel Adamson, Mark Ravenhill and many others have all alt openly and explicly wh gay what is there to pla about an era when plays cludg Ravenhill's Mother Clap's Molly Hoe and Alan Bent's The Hab of Art occupy the stag of London's Natnal Theatre, when mils such as La Cage x Foll be prof wh preachg sexual tolerance and when specialised ftivals, offerg gay plays to primarily gay dienc, ntue to thrive?
It's also a ltle-noticed fact that when Gregory Doran assum ntrol of the Royal Shakpeare Company 2013 two of our big natnal pani will, for the first time ever, be n by gay I would like to see, however, are more plays on the Khner-Ravenhill mol which al wh sexualy a wir polil ntext. More recently, Alexi Kaye Campbell's The Fah Mache (2011) aired the heated divisns the Anglin church towards homosexualy. And I'd have thought the ranro schism between old and young Tori towards gay marriage would be a rich subject for drama.
Novelists om Jam Baldw to Alan Hollghurst and Philip Hensher have shown that gay wrers are as well-placed as anyone to plot the urse of polil and cultural change. I jt wish more gay dramatists would rise to the challenge, so eagerly grasped by fictn wrers, of relatg personal dilemmas to public read: Not In Front of the Audience: homosexualy on stage by Nicholas Jongh (2002) Le of Bety by Alan Hollghurst (2004), for the nnectn mak between sexualy and the state of the natn.