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In September, genr-bendg queer performer Mykki Blan exprsed anger at Brney Spears for palisg on her gay fanbase wh her sgle "Work Bch." She tweeted that the song wasn't "gay pri," but rather "gay marketg," a necsary…

Contents:

THE 10 BT GAY MILS OF ALL TIME

Gay-themed Broadway mils have e a long way the past fifty years. The on are the bt. * gay theater kid *

Ratburn and his (unnamed) hband got married a highly anticipated episo of Kids/YouTubeArthur has been a rnerstone of PBS Kids sce 1996, but 2019, the show featured s first gay character...

Ma characters they are not, but we love to see LGBTQ+ fai and, hontly, we didn’t realize how much we were missg gay zebras until Chip and Potato, rated TV-Y, on Ltle Pony: Friendship Is MagicSotaloo is raised by a lbian uple, Aunt Holiday and Auntie KenneyMy Ltle Pony: Friendship Is Magic follows the adventur of unirns, pegasi, and poni throughout Equtria, where they solve problems and, ocsnally, battle the forc of darkns, cludg the Cutie Mark Csars, Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, and Sotaloo. It’s a show about figurg out who you are, and that clus Cys, one of Andi’s bt iends, who out as gay Season years after Cys me out on the show, Joshua Rh, who played Cys on the show, me out on Twter as bisexual.

“When we were greenl I was told by certa Disney learship that I uld NOT reprent any form of bi or gay relatnship on the channel, ” show creator Dana Terrace tweeted 2020. Bis, we’re cludg this bee Legend of Korra absolutely Legend of Korra, rated TV-Y7, on And The Age Of WonrbeastsBenson is an openly gay character on Kipo om the very first episo.

A GAY ADOPTN BE A MIL

The art of creatg “The Kid,” a new mil based on a memoir about a gay uple adoptg a baby, was one of fs and starts. * gay theater kid *

While there are some mor gay characters on the show, ma character Jeff is beg raised by two moms, EJ (voiced by Lea DeLaria) and Sue (voiced by Tig Notaro) one pot the seri had unnamed gay characters kissg (the b is funny, though the edy isn't their kiss). ”Stream Twelve Forever, rated TV-PG, on FayMchell and Cam were among the first proment gay parents a KenneyWhen Morn Fay premiered 2009, Cam and Mchell were among the few gay ma characters on a work s (and, let’s be hont: ’s still not mon). But all is well and, throughout the seri, while their gay inty is sometim a plot pot, more often they’re jt another fay on the the most part, the plotl wrten for Cam and Mchell uld easily be wrten for a straight uple.

Well before he was an actor, sger-songwrer, and ter personaly known for his hilar vios, this jack-of-all-tras was—like so many baby gays—sgg his heart out on stage ont of his classmat. Lately, that’s been changg: Proto-gay kids feature promently  Fun Home and Billy Ellt, and shows about high school now routely clu LGBTQ teens the mix (Mean Girls, Brg It On, Saved) or even the lead (Bare, Zanna, Don’t!, Everybody’s Talkg About Jamie).

Conrad/The New York TimMay 6, 2010WHEN the mil librettist Michael Zam first read “The Kid, ” a 1999 memoir about a gay uple adoptg a baby, he was certa that he wanted to turn to a mil. Zam ma a long-term project, bee he felt would take time — years, turned out — to wrt a succsful show out of this particular the challeng posed by a mil versn of “The Kid, ” which opens Off Broadway on Monday at the New Group at Theater Row, was addg narrative tensn and trigue to a gay adoptn story that was, the memoir, funny and touchg but relatively cint-ee.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF GAY THEATER, THREE ACTS

Aimg to appeal to a wi dience, the creators also wrtled wh how explicly to renr both the graphilly sexual jok the book and the polics of gay adoptn, which the creators — most of them gay men — did not want to shy away om the mil. The character of Dan’s father ultimately seemed dramatilly untertg, so the creators foced on his mother (Jill Eikenberry) and gave her a song, “I Knew, ” which she sooth Dan’s nerv about raisg a child by rellg how she sensed he was gay as a boy and never terfered wh his velopment to a gay man. Songs like “I Knew” also reflected the polics that the creators wanted for the mil: that beg gay was a normal state that should be regard as equal to heterosexualy every way, cludg birth mother, Melissa, and the blogil father, Bacch, meanwhile, were enlarged for the mil to troduce more tensn and trouble-makg.

Followg several openly gay characters the Mosw puppet theater, the novel terrogat the tense dichotomy between the joy of theater and the hard-edged anger towards queerns Rsian culture. In addn to s vibrant animatn and killer soundtrack, the show ma wav wh s troductn of Benson (Coy Stewart), an openly gay male character (who even the word gay onscreen, a rary kids’ animatn.

They want their children to see gay characters, bisexual characters, trans and nonbary characters, jt as much as they want to see strong female characters and racially diverse on. "05The First Biracial Gay Couple on NickeloonJt before Lln Loud opens his ont door to iend Cly McBri and his parents a 2016 episo of rtoon seri The Loud Hoe, he looks directly at viewers and says, "This is ...

NEW GAY THEATER HAS MORE LOVE THAN POLICS

"12The First Openly Gay Pixar CharacterOnward — about two teen brothers who attempt to e magic to spend a day wh their late father — om 2020 is the first Pixar movie to clu an openly gay character. 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.

BROADWAY'S GAY STEREOTYP ARE AN INSULT TO THEATER KIDS EVERYWHERE

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.

*BEAR-MAGAZINE.COM* GAY THEATER KID

bars</tle><g id="el_oZ84Hna1GC_65hRV2Qwn" class="css-1fxvzwo" data-animator-group="te" data-animator-type="0"><g id="el_oZ84Hna1GC_ILVvi2tqx" class="css-1wnday1" ata-animator-group="te" data-animator-type="2"><g id="el_oZ84Hna1GC"><rect x="34" width="6" height="36" id="el_qw_T_tngXw"></rect></g></g></g><g id="el_mYVjkduhMU_p_9Pm85Ac" class="css-fwki7z" data-animator-group="te" data-animator-type="0"><g id="el_mYVjkduhMU_WxG3R40yd" class="css-t3i5e6" data-animator-group="te" data-animator-type="2"><g id="el_mYVjkduhMU"><rect x="22.67" width="6" height="36" id="el_lf9GrROk6j"></rect></g></g></g><g id="el_o-EuxhgoAw_kYNRGDfcw" class="css-t9te0w" data-animator-group="te" data-animator-type="0"><g id="el_o-EuxhgoAw_3c3bzSjOJ" class="css-1r5375t" ata-animator-group="te" data-animator-type="2"><g id="el_o-EuxhgoAw"><rect x="11.33" width="6" height="36" id="el_-iueO8klO0"></rect></g></g></g><g id="el_F7mSMPhqpC_y_fKcpSxn" class="css-qknaag" data-animator-group="te" data-animator-type="0"><g id="el_F7mSMPhqpC_R6bNB6_Ys" class="css-1vd04" ata-animator-group="te" data-animator-type="2"><g id="el_F7mSMPhqpC"><rect width="6" height="36" id="el_dS5TKNZZ5w"></rect></g></g></g></svg></div><div><div class="css-1t7yl1y">0:00<!-- -->/<!-- -->1:23</div><div class="css-og85jy">-<!-- -->0:00</div></div></div></div></hear><div class="css-uzyn7p"><div class="css-1vxyw"><p class="css-1nng8z9">transcript</p><h2 class="css-9wqu2x">Read T a Poem | Michael Benjam Washgton</h2><h4 class="css-qsd3hm">The actor reads "The Unsung" by Keenan Teddy Smh.</h4></div><dl class="css-p98d0w"><dt class="css-xx7kwh"></dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">For the Old Port built and built aga: I am sure you are different to me. We are k, though; we are both refuge and warmth, petn and hope, nnected by seas. your boats here are plentiful, but your huddled mass are greater; I feel no one sgs the songs of our kd anymore, no one not our role safe passage. Five me if I’ve been too vted, too ialistic about our sisterhood. Perhaps ’s our shared brownns, our shared tis, our shared rilience agast time and the ficklens of men that ma so nnected as if I uld leap om notre dame and scend to wh love, our songs and sorrows guidg me over rooftops and fé smoke plum. Unsung sats, lyg open for the world, if the lost and found won’t buttrs wh honor, we shall always hold each other.</p></dd></dl></div></div></div></div><script type="applitn/ld+json">{"@ntext":","@type":"VioObject","@id":","scriptn":"The actor reads \"The Unsung\" by Keenan Teddy Smh.","url":","name":"Read T a Poem | Michael Benjam Washgton","thumbnailUrl":[",","],"embedUrl":","ntentUrl":","uploadDate":"2018-02-26T05:05:13.000Z","transcript":"For the Old Port built and built aga: I am sure you are different to me. We are k, though; we are both refuge and warmth, petn and hope, nnected by seas. your boats here are plentiful, but your huddled mass are greater; I feel no one sgs the songs of our kd anymore, no one not our role safe passage. Five me if I’ve been too vted, too ialistic about our sisterhood. Perhaps ’s our shared brownns, our shared tis, our shared rilience agast time and the ficklens of men that ma so nnected as if I uld leap om notre dame and scend to wh love, our songs and sorrows guidg me over rooftops and fé smoke plum. Unsung sats, lyg open for the world, if the lost and found won’t buttrs wh honor, we shall always hold each other.","duratn":"PT1M23.709S"}</script></div><div class="css-1cueeje" style="paddg-bottom:56.25%;transn:opacy 300ms ease--out"><div class="css-1ihorw"><img src=" alt="Vio player loadg"/></div><div class="css-ew1078"><div class="css-ptry2i"><div></div><div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><figptn class="css-1ifea e1maroi60"><span class="css-1p4ky1 e13ogyst0">The actor reads "The Unsung" by Keenan Teddy Smh.</span><span class="css-cch8ym"><span class="css-1dv1kvn">Cred</span><span class="css-f4bmw8 e1z0qqy90"><span class="css-1ly73wi e1tej78p0">Cred...</span><span>Brendan Stumpf</span></span></span></figptn></figure></div><div class="css-s99gbd StoryBodyCompannColumn"><div class="css-53u6y8"><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">There’s an irony this, as the same quali that ma those classics classic also ma them, their origal ns, almost impossible to stage. No one wanted to touch “The Boys the Band” at first: no producers, no theater owners, no actors. When Luckbill, then 33, agreed to play Hank — the “straightt” of the gay men, who’d left his wife and children — his agent said he might as well bid goodbye to his reer. She was, md you, the play’s agent too, a lbian herself. But so heavy and lgerg was the perfume of gayns g off the project that even a heterosexual actor like Luckbill was thought to be mtg theatril suici to book . Mostly out of iendship for Crowley, a llege chum, he did.</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">Luckbill went on to have a very full reer onstage and on screen — and so, to everyone’s surprise, did “The Boys the Band.” As the sixth-row prence of Jackie and Groucho suggts, crossed over to mastream awarens and even found succs, nng for 1,001 performanc. William Friedk’s fahful <a class="css-yywogo" href=" tle="">movie versn</a>, released 1970 and starrg the entire stage st, turned to a touchstone of gay style and sufferg for gays and straights well beyond New York. As such, is whout doubt the first play the Amerin gay male theatril non.</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">I wre that admirg many of s spirual forebears, om Tennsee Williams’s “The Glass Menagerie” 1945 to Robert Anrson’s “Tea and Sympathy” 1953 to the early works of Doric Wilson, Lanford Wilson, Robert Patrick and many others who helped spark an efflorcence of downtown gay drama centered at Caffe Co, wh s makhift k-crate stage, startg 1958.</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">But while buildg on those — and, Crowley says, on Arthur Lrents’s screenplay for Aled Hchck’s 1948 film, “Rope,” which two gay men murr a classmate for sport — “The Boys the Band” has had the more nsequential gay trajectory. If you doubt , look at the nam volved the 50th-anniversary revival: Jim Parsons plays the party’s host, Michael; Matt Bomer is Donald, Michael’s ambivalent ex; Zachary Quto is Harold, the “ugly pockmarked Jew fairy” birthday boy; and Andrew Rannells is Larry, one half of the play’s only tablished (if iffy) uple. They and the rt of the starry st are succsful, openly gay men, as are the producers, Ryan Murphy and David Stone, and the director, Joe Mantello.</p></div><asi class="css-ew4tgv" aria-label="pann lumn"></asi></div><div></div><div class="css-s99gbd StoryBodyCompannColumn"><div class="css-53u6y8"><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">This was a liberate statement, meant to acknowledge how far the world has e sce 1968. “The guys that are the leads,” Murphy says, “are the first generatn of <a class="css-yywogo" href=" tle="">gay actors</a> who said, ‘We’re gog to live thentic liv and hope and pray our reers rema on track’ — and they have. I fd that profound.”</p><div class="css-79elbk" data-ttid="photoviewer-wrapper"><div class="css-z3e15g" data-ttid="photoviewer-wrapper-hidn"></div><div data-ttid="photoviewer-children" class="css-1a48zt4 e11si9ry5"><figure class="img-sz-small css-nss59b e1g7ppur0" aria-label="media" role="group"><div class="css-zgakxe erfvjey0"><span class="css-1ly73wi e1tej78p0">Image</span><div class="css-nwd8t8" data-ttid="lazy-image"><div data-ttid="lazyimage-ntaer" style="height:247.46666666666667px"></div></div></div><figptn class="css-1ybnr6m ewdxa0s0"><span aria-hidn="te" class="css-1p4ky1 e13ogyst0">A still om the set of William Friedk’s 1970 film versn of “The Boys the Band,” which starred the entire theatril st.</span><span class="css-f4bmw8 e1z0qqy90"><span class="css-1ly73wi e1tej78p0">Cred...</span><span><span aria-hidn="false">Mptv Imag</span></span></span></figptn></figure></div></div><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">Crowley uld never have predicted that. In 1968 he sent his play to a world that, however much might lgh at his gay zgers, seemed likely to rema forever and fundamentally hostile. Mantello pots out the startlg paradox that all the gay members of the origal pany felt pelled to stay the closet “even though they were a groundbreakg play about gay men.”</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">But the way the world se gay people and the way gay people see themselv have changed so much, and of late so fast, that plays om even jt a few years ago n seem like Ken Burns documentari. In one sense, then, the classic gay plays are tnal: remdg a placent generatn of the stggl and tragedi (and fabulons) that unrlie the glossy image of rapid progrs. The normalizatn of gayns that has most ways been a boon has also shnk the historil eye to, well, another peephole. Further progrs, much need, requir a fuller view. And who’s to say the momento chang of the last 50 years n’t be swiftly undone?</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">“The Boys the Band” helped ce those chang, allowg for s reappearance now as a triumph of liberatn stead of an embarrassment to the liberators. The mistake the play’s many gay crics have ma is thkg that transformative art should be a form of boosterism. Rather, transformative art is needlg, Cassandra-like, tellg unfortable tths you ignore at your peril. “The Boys the Band,” once seen, uldn’t be unseen. “The people who cricize the play have the luxury to do so <em class="css-2fg4z9 e1gzwzxm0">bee</em> of the play,” Mantello says.</p></div><asi class="css-ew4tgv" aria-label="pann lumn"></asi></div><div></div><div class="css-s99gbd StoryBodyCompannColumn"><div class="css-53u6y8"><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">Ined, part of the reason “The Boys the Band” so clearly marks the start of the non is the way was swallowed up almost stantly by what helped to spawn. In the aftermath of the Stonewall rts of 1969, while the play still ran, s portrayal of gay male life me to be seen as unterrevolutnary, which was exactly backward, if unrstandable light of the rebrandg unrway. The characters’ promiscuo, boa-flgg, “Oh, Mary”-spoutg, drown-your-troubl--a-vodka-bottle histrnics were distctly off-msage durg the years when gay men were tryg to cultivate lawmakers and police wh their new imag as activists or pillars of the muny, not of Sodom. Even Albee, who Crowley spects vted secretly the origal productn, once tarred the play as “a highly skillful work that I spised” bee “did ser damage to a burgeong gay rpectabily movement.”</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">Were there not nelli at Stonewall? In any se, when rpectabily me, me at an awful price. AIDS, which drove the last nail the play’s reputatnal ff, also killed off most of s st. Between 1984 and 1993, five of the gay men the origal productn, as well as the director, Robert Moore, and the producer, Richard Barr, died of the disease.</p></div><asi class="css-ew4tgv" aria-label="pann lumn"></asi></div><div><div class="css-79elbk" data-ttid="photoviewer-wrapper"><div class="css-z3e15g" data-ttid="photoviewer-wrapper-hidn"></div><div data-ttid="photoviewer-children" class="css-1a48zt4 e11si9ry5"><figure class="img-sz-full css-1kwayi3 e1g7ppur0" aria-label="media" role="group"><div class="css-1xdhyk6 erfvjey0"><span class="css-1ly73wi e1tej78p0">Image</span><div class="css-nwd8t8" data-ttid="lazy-image"><div data-ttid="lazyimage-ntaer" style="height:257.77777777777777px"></div></div></div><figptn class="css-o5l7z4 ewdxa0s0"><span aria-hidn="te" class="css-1p4ky1 e13ogyst0">From left: Rannells. Watks. Actor ZACHARY QUINTO a Salvatore Ferragamo at, price on requt. Actor MATT BOMER a Sat Lrent by Anthony Vacrello jacket, $4,890, <a href="></a>, Ermenegildo Zegna polo, $565, (212) 421-4488, and Mr P. pants, $250, <a href="></a>. Actor CHARLIE CARVER a vtage Lee jacket, Office Générale T-shirt, $117, and Simon Miller jeans, $375, <a href="></a>.</span><span class="css-f4bmw8 e1z0qqy90"><span class="css-1ly73wi e1tej78p0">Cred...</span><span><span aria-hidn="false">Photograph by Inez and Voodh. Styled by Jay Massacret</span></span></span></figptn></figure></div></div></div><div class="css-s99gbd StoryBodyCompannColumn"><div class="css-53u6y8"><h3 class="css-emk09r e1gnsphs0" id="lk-4af067d1"><span>Act II. The Canon</span></h3><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">AND YET AIDS, wh s gdy ironi, would create the ndns that turned a “rpectabily movement” to a civil rights revolutn. It would also create the ndns that produced — even necsated — most of the disputably nonil gay plays that succeed “The Boys the Band.” Bee both the disease and the revolutn were centered New York, the untry’s theatril pal, mak sense that those plays are all set the cy. And bee I’m wrg about plays that have shaped gay male life, ’s not surprisg that all the playwrights I name are gay men.</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">It hardly needs argug that one of them is Tony Khner, whose play “Angels Ameri: A Gay Fantasia on Natnal Them,” <a class="css-yywogo" href=" tle="">opened on Broadway</a> 1993. A revival, starrg Nathan Lane and Andrew Garfield, opens on March 25 — but unlike “The Boys the Band,” “Angels” never really went away, never suffered a Siberian holiday of polil retn. Perhaps that’s bee Khner, puttg so much to , ensured would always have somethg to put out. If you don’t like the story of fahls Louis leavg his lover, Prr, who velops AIDS, there’s the one about the closeted lawyer (and Tmp fixer) Roy Cohn, nyg the disease outright. Or perhaps you prefer somethg more aerontil? There’s one of those tle angels for that, bearg a cryptic missn for mankd. Pl a heroic drag queen, a dg-addled wife, rabbis, Mormons and Ethel Rosenberg.</p></div><asi class="css-ew4tgv" aria-label="pann lumn"></asi></div><div></div><div class="css-s99gbd StoryBodyCompannColumn"><div class="css-53u6y8"><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">It’s what I ll a goulash work, though Khner prefers the term lasagna: a dish that almost melts the borrs of form s qut for sublimy. It is also, s more timate scen, so funny and argumentative, so vatic, so sharp and so unncerned wh gay rpectabily that you n see a straight le leadg back to “The Boys the Band.” Both plays, after all, are about closet s and fily and gay men takg re of one another — or not.</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">I retract the “straight le,” though; more aptly, ’s a bent one, passg through other nonil plays, each ntributg an element of style or stagecraft along the way. In the 25 years between “The Boys the Band” and “Angels Ameri” there are two, or possibly three, by my acuntg. The two are Harvey Fierste’s “Torch Song Trilogy,” a llectn of three related one-act plays first seen on Broadway 1982, and Larry Kramer’s “<a class="css-yywogo" href=" tle="">The Normal Heart</a>,” om 1985. The third is Pl Rudnick’s “<a class="css-yywogo" href=" tle="">Jefey</a>,” which — a 1992 replay of Crowley’s 1968 experience — uld not at first fd a producer, a theater or a st.</p></div><asi class="css-ew4tgv" aria-label="pann lumn"></asi></div><div><figure class="sizeMedium css-sx232s" aria-label="media" role="group" data-ttid="VioBlock"><div class="css-1xb94ky"><span class="css-1dv1kvn">Vio</span><div><div class="css-n27z15" style="paddg-bottom:56.25%"><div class="css-mm3pwi"><div class="css-1g7y0i5 e1drnplw0"><button tabx="100" class="css-1rtlxy" type="button" aria-label="close"><svg width="60" height="60" viewBox="0 0 60 60" fill="none"><circle cx="30" cy="30" r="30" fill="whe" fill-opacy="0.9"></circle><path fill-le="evenodd" clip-le="evenodd" d="M38.4844 20.1006L39.8986 21.5148L21.5138 39.8996L20.0996 38.4854L38.4844 20.1006Z" fill="black"></path><path fill-le="evenodd" clip-le="evenodd" d="M21.5156 20.1006L20.1014 21.5148L38.4862 39.8996L39.9004 38.4854L21.5156 20.1006Z" fill="black"></path></svg></button><div class="css-rdbib0 e1drnplw1"></div><div class="css-18ow4sz e1drnplw2"><div aria-labelledby="modal-tle" role="regn"><hear class="css-1bzlfz"><div class="css-mln36k" id="modal-tle">transcript</div><button type="button" class="css-1igvuto"><div class="css-f40pzg"></div><span>Back</span></button><div class="css-f6lhej" data-ttid="transcript-playback-ntrols"><div class="css-1ialerq"><button tabx="99" type="button" class="css-1t9gw" aria-label="play"><svg xmlns=" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none"><path fill-le="evenodd" clip-le="evenodd" d="M8 13.7683V6L14.5 9.88415L8 13.7683Z" fill="var(--lor-ntent-sendary,#363636)"></path><circle cx="10" cy="10" r="9.25" stroke="var(--lor-stroke-primary,#121212)" stroke-width="1.5"></circle></svg></button><div class="css-1701swk"><svg xmlns=" viewBox="0 0 40 36" id="el_0kpS9qL_S"><tle>bars</tle><g id="el_oZ84Hna1GC_65hRV2Qwn" class="css-1fxvzwo" data-animator-group="te" data-animator-type="0"><g id="el_oZ84Hna1GC_ILVvi2tqx" class="css-1wnday1" ata-animator-group="te" data-animator-type="2"><g id="el_oZ84Hna1GC"><rect x="34" width="6" height="36" id="el_qw_T_tngXw"></rect></g></g></g><g id="el_mYVjkduhMU_p_9Pm85Ac" class="css-fwki7z" data-animator-group="te" data-animator-type="0"><g id="el_mYVjkduhMU_WxG3R40yd" class="css-t3i5e6" data-animator-group="te" data-animator-type="2"><g id="el_mYVjkduhMU"><rect x="22.67" width="6" height="36" id="el_lf9GrROk6j"></rect></g></g></g><g id="el_o-EuxhgoAw_kYNRGDfcw" class="css-t9te0w" data-animator-group="te" data-animator-type="0"><g id="el_o-EuxhgoAw_3c3bzSjOJ" class="css-1r5375t" ata-animator-group="te" data-animator-type="2"><g id="el_o-EuxhgoAw"><rect x="11.33" width="6" height="36" id="el_-iueO8klO0"></rect></g></g></g><g id="el_F7mSMPhqpC_y_fKcpSxn" class="css-qknaag" data-animator-group="te" data-animator-type="0"><g id="el_F7mSMPhqpC_R6bNB6_Ys" class="css-1vd04" ata-animator-group="te" data-animator-type="2"><g id="el_F7mSMPhqpC"><rect width="6" height="36" id="el_dS5TKNZZ5w"></rect></g></g></g></svg></div><div><div class="css-1t7yl1y">0:00<!-- -->/<!-- -->0:56</div><div class="css-og85jy">-<!-- -->0:00</div></div></div></div></hear><div class="css-uzyn7p"><div class="css-1vxyw"><p class="css-1nng8z9">transcript</p><h2 class="css-9wqu2x">Read T a Poem | Joe Mantello</h2><h4 class="css-qsd3hm">The director reads "Morng Scene" by Jamon Fzpatrick.</h4></div><dl class="css-p98d0w"><dt class="css-xx7kwh"></dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Oppose him at this table aga and through the wdows the cy glterg, surreal as a sle mol, the cy miature – only mov a real way, bee is real. One of the wdows is open, some nstctn down on the street dron like a distant vacuum. It’s warm for January. Still his apartment has that dreamlike qualy of feelg like home though I know ’s not. Not me anymore – but how many people get to vis the past whout hurtg anythg? To e back and drk the same ffee om the same never-que-clean cup.</p></dd></dl></div></div></div></div><script type="applitn/ld+json">{"@ntext":","@type":"VioObject","@id":","scriptn":"The director reads \"Morng Scene\" by Jamon Fzpatrick.","url":","name":"Read T a Poem | Joe Mantello","thumbnailUrl":[",","],"embedUrl":","ntentUrl":","uploadDate":"2018-02-26T05:05:19.000Z","transcript":"Oppose him at this table aga and through the wdows the cy glterg, surreal as a sle mol, the cy miature – only mov a real way, bee is real. One of the wdows is open, some nstctn down on the street dron like a distant vacuum. It’s warm for January. Still his apartment has that dreamlike qualy of feelg like home though I know ’s not. Not me anymore – but how many people get to vis the past whout hurtg anythg? To e back and drk the same ffee om the same never-que-clean cup.","duratn":"PT56.682S"}</script></div><div class="css-1cueeje" style="paddg-bottom:56.25%;transn:opacy 300ms ease--out"><div class="css-1ihorw"><img src=" alt="Vio player loadg"/></div><div class="css-ew1078"><div class="css-ptry2i"><div></div><div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><figptn class="css-1ifea e1maroi60"><span class="css-1p4ky1 e13ogyst0">The director reads "Morng Scene" by Jamon Fzpatrick.</span><span class="css-cch8ym"><span class="css-1dv1kvn">Cred</span><span class="css-f4bmw8 e1z0qqy90"><span class="css-1ly73wi e1tej78p0">Cred...</span><span>Brendan Stumpf</span></span></span></figptn></figure></div><div class="css-s99gbd StoryBodyCompannColumn"><div class="css-53u6y8"><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">What mak “Jefey” jt a possible third? It’s a edy, and edi, short of Shakpeare’s or Wil’s, are unstable. Over time, they seem to pose more easily than dramas, revealg off flavors. Te, “Jefey” is not an ordary edy; ’s a edy about AIDS, and a romantic edy at that — a genre that shouldn’t have been possible, and wasn’t until Rudnick cid was need. “Comedy is often the only feasible antidote to a pletely jtifiable, but not very entertag hopelsns,” he once wrote. “Sometim, a wisecrack is a weapon.”</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">So “Jefey,” which ran for two years Off Broadway and was ma to a movie 1995, is crafted like a drama, squeezg patible thgs together a small space and forcg them to lli. But bee Rudnick’s characters — an terr rator, a bartenr, a chos boy “Cats” — are profsnally amg, so is the rult. Jefey himself is a gay ter-waer his 30s who, rather than worry about what is safe, cis to rema celibate forever. Everyone around him is horrified at this “one real blasphemy — the refal of joy,” even as one of his iends is dyg. “How dare you give up sex,” says a prit, “when there are children Europe who n’t get a date!”</p></div><asi class="css-ew4tgv" aria-label="pann lumn"></asi></div><div></div><div class="css-s99gbd StoryBodyCompannColumn"><div class="css-53u6y8"><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">“Jefey” is full of merriment but you always unrstand that the domtic problems faced by upl straight romantic edi have here been raised to an existential plane. “If you want edi to be really funny you have to have the biggt possible obstacl,” Rudnick says. “And that’s what AIDS hand me and everyone else.”</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">In a way, then, “Jefey” is the verse of Kramer’s “The Normal Heart” and a ccial unterweight to . When “The Normal Heart” opened at the Public Theater jt four years after the first reports of what would soon be lled AIDS, felt ls like a play than like war reportg. Kramer was nothg if not embedd; this was his own story, lightly fictnalized the character of Ned Weeks and happeng real time. Emphasizg that, the set sign by Eugene Lee and Keh Raywood featured on the theater’s walls a nng list of the nam of the ad, along wh the mountg ath toll, subtotaled by state.</p><div class="css-79elbk" data-ttid="photoviewer-wrapper"><div class="css-z3e15g" data-ttid="photoviewer-wrapper-hidn"></div><div data-ttid="photoviewer-children" class="css-1a48zt4 e11si9ry5"><figure class="img-sz-small css-nss59b e1g7ppur0" aria-label="media" role="group"><div class="css-zgakxe erfvjey0"><span class="css-1ly73wi e1tej78p0">Image</span><div class="css-nwd8t8" data-ttid="lazy-image"><div data-ttid="lazyimage-ntaer" style="height:311.9111111111111px"></div></div></div><figptn class="css-1ybnr6m ewdxa0s0"><span aria-hidn="te" class="css-1p4ky1 e13ogyst0">Actors on stage at Theater Four New York cir 1969.</span><span class="css-f4bmw8 e1z0qqy90"><span class="css-1ly73wi e1tej78p0">Cred...</span><span><span aria-hidn="false">Photo by Martha Swope / the New York Public Library</span></span></span></figptn></figure></div></div><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">The actn largely tracks Kramer’s fur battle to get the ernment, the medil tablishment and gay men themselv to pay attentn to the disaster that was jt begng to engulf them. But Kramer was also battlg the gay theatril tradn, which he saw, even before AIDS, as petty, artificial and sufficiently polil. (He cricized “The Boys the Band” for s “ternalized homophobia.”) “The Normal Heart” is a fierce rrective to those perceived flts, but ’s not merely the rant some people remember. The story of Ned’s public efforts is mirrored his private effort to save his lover, Felix, a closeted New York Tim wrer dyg of AIDS. The play ends wh their “marriage” at Felix’s athbed — a marriage quot bee wouldn’t have been legal New York for another quarter century.</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">“The Normal Heart” is nonil not jt for s anger and prcience, though the should be enough to nonize Kramer. The play saved liv, srg s dienc to realy a way that the vague public-health rmatn of the time utterly failed to do. It also reamed the way we would forever look at gay men and gay theater. That did not mean abjurg love as a subject, but rather ennoblg while unrstandg s limatns. Hence the tle, taken om a passage Aun’s poem “September 1, 1939” about the “error bred the bone / Of each woman and each man.” That error is much adlier than mere disease. It is the impossible cravg of the “normal heart”: “Not universal love / But to be loved alone.”</p></div><asi class="css-ew4tgv" aria-label="pann lumn"></asi></div><div></div><div class="css-s99gbd StoryBodyCompannColumn"><div class="css-53u6y8"><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">Aun, a poet, shows the driv as divergent; Kramer, a dramatist, looks at how they nverge. For him as for most playwrights, the njot them of society and self — twed an embrace that is timate yet suffotg — are the basis of all great theater. Whout the “self” part, a play is rarely engagg. Whout the “society” part, is (no matter how engagg) nsequential.</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">That’s why my non starts when do. For gay playwrights wrg before 1960, the lk between self and society was severed by homophobia: The self uld not engage openly wh society, or not, at least, <em class="css-2fg4z9 e1gzwzxm0"> ont of</em> society. Which don’t mean there were no great plays wh gay characters by gay playwrights: Look aga at “The Glass Menagerie.” Tom — as the performanc by Quto and Mantello the two most recent Broadway revivals make pla — n only be unrstood as a furtive homosexual. But Tom’s crypto-proto-gayns don’t make “The Glass Menagerie” a gay play; ’s merely a great one.</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">Turns out those celebri slummg at “The Boys the Band” mattered. Jt as whe bons vivants had been cultivatg (some might say appropriatg) black Harlem for generatns, the straights and A-listers headg to Theater Four their limos helped rry the news, like a vis, back wh them. I don’t mean to be snarky; this was not always a cultural safari, a hunt for the most exotic new trophi. Some me to learn, to be changed. And yet one of the thgs “The Boys the Band” (and the other plays I’m wrg about) did was to show nongay dienc jt how gay their liv already were. Their sufferg, their hubris, their sens of humor were more faiar than not. Who, after all, had been dog their hair?</p></div><asi class="css-ew4tgv" aria-label="pann lumn"></asi></div><div><figure class="sizeMedium css-sx232s" aria-label="media" role="group" data-ttid="VioBlock"><div class="css-1xb94ky"><span class="css-1dv1kvn">Vio</span><div><div class="css-n27z15" style="paddg-bottom:56.25%"><div class="css-mm3pwi"><div class="css-1g7y0i5 e1drnplw0"><button tabx="100" class="css-1rtlxy" type="button" aria-label="close"><svg width="60" height="60" viewBox="0 0 60 60" fill="none"><circle cx="30" cy="30" r="30" fill="whe" fill-opacy="0.9"></circle><path fill-le="evenodd" clip-le="evenodd" d="M38.4844 20.1006L39.8986 21.5148L21.5138 39.8996L20.0996 38.4854L38.4844 20.1006Z" fill="black"></path><path fill-le="evenodd" clip-le="evenodd" d="M21.5156 20.1006L20.1014 21.5148L38.4862 39.8996L39.9004 38.4854L21.5156 20.1006Z" fill="black"></path></svg></button><div class="css-rdbib0 e1drnplw1"></div><div class="css-18ow4sz e1drnplw2"><div aria-labelledby="modal-tle" role="regn"><hear class="css-1bzlfz"><div class="css-mln36k" id="modal-tle">transcript</div><button type="button" class="css-1igvuto"><div class="css-f40pzg"></div><span>Back</span></button><div class="css-f6lhej" data-ttid="transcript-playback-ntrols"><div class="css-1ialerq"><button tabx="99" type="button" class="css-1t9gw" aria-label="play"><svg xmlns=" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none"><path fill-le="evenodd" clip-le="evenodd" d="M8 13.7683V6L14.5 9.88415L8 13.7683Z" fill="var(--lor-ntent-sendary,#363636)"></path><circle cx="10" cy="10" r="9.25" stroke="var(--lor-stroke-primary,#121212)" stroke-width="1.5"></circle></svg></button><div class="css-1701swk"><svg xmlns=" viewBox="0 0 40 36" id="el_0kpS9qL_S"><tle>bars .

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