1964: The Birth of Gay Theater - The Gay & Lbian Review

Contents:

• 1964: THE BIRTH OF GAY THEATER
• CHILD STAR STGGLED TO E OUT AFTER PLAYG ‘THE GAY KID’ ‘SCHOOL OF ROCK’
• A BRIEF HISTORY OF GAY THEATER, THREE ACTS
• NEW GAY THEATER HAS MORE LOVE THAN POLICS
• BROADWAY'S GAY STEREOTYP ARE AN INSULT TO THEATER KIDS EVERYWHERE
• MATTHEW LOPEZ'S GAY NEW YORK EPIC THE INHERANCE – PICTUR

1964: THE BIRTH OF GAY THEATER

Degrassi: Next Generatn Seasons 2–7When Degrassi: The Next Generatn premiered s send season, Mar Del Rossi, played by Adamo Ruggiero, found a home and a place Degrassi history wh his role as a gay stunt who practilly went through all durg his time on the gay kids high school were fodr for bullyg, Mar found an dience through an accurate portrayal that allowed him to live a pretty normal teenage life, for Degrassi standards at Degrassi High, he found love Paige's hockey player brother, helped his iends e to terms wh their gay bt iend, and a b of everythg else that wh beg a Degrassi stunt. Degrassi: Next Generatn Seasons 11–14 and Degrassi: Next Class 1–4For the gay kid at Degrassi, life n be tough, but Tristan, played by Lyle Lett, he at least ma his time heart attacks, anorexia, fights wh his BFF, sleepg wh a teacher, and so much more, Tristan ma his mark on the screen and the halls of Degrassi ways so few have before.

CHILD STAR STGGLED TO E OUT AFTER PLAYG ‘THE GAY KID’ ‘SCHOOL OF ROCK’

Degrassi: Next Class 3–4The first gay Mlim character on the show, Rasha, played by Dalia Yegavian, gave the show a morn update while portrayg a young Mlim immigrant tryg to fd herself (like everyone at Degrassi, all the time) end up datg Zoe Rivas, another queer woman of lor, durg her last seasons on the show. In 1964, spe a social climate of homophobia that pervad Amerin life for the send third of the 20th century, two one-act plays prented Off-Off-Broadway at the Caffe Co revolutnized how gay characters uld be reprented theatrilly.

Satirized the trial of Osr Wil sympathetilly), the Wilson and Patrick one-acts were unique that both featured gay characters set the prent time who were not only open, but boisteroly fiant. 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 ffeeho that wh an only half-discerned arty Bohemian environment there might possibly be a ltle more acceptance of homosexuals. In tanm wh the work of activist polil groups, which had begun anizg the late 1950s, the wrers at the Caffe Co—wh their wild talents for turng fantasy to theatril realy for their untercultural dienc—metaphorilly gave birth to the ncept of “gay liberatn.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF GAY THEATER, THREE ACTS

In this way, they ed the stage to shape public disurse, and the muni that rulted n perhaps be scribed as direct precsors of the Gay Liberatn Front and Gay Activist Alliance. (In fact, Doric Wilson, perhaps the first playwright of the “Gay Theater” movement at the Co, was also a pneer of gay polil activism: he participated both the GLF and s scennt, the GAA. LANFORD WILSON and Robert Patrick were not unaware that their impulse to wre plays about openly gay characters was chartg new terrory, as wns Wilson’s “thor not” to “The Madns of Lady Bright”: “I believe the ia of the play shocked me.

Openg on December 6, 1964, only a few months after “The Madns of Lady Bright, ” “The Hnted Host” has as s protagonist one Jay, a wildly funny gay playwright who has recently lost his lover Ed to suici. Envisng an alternative endg for the tragic queen archetype, the play enacts a crique of homosexual inti by offerg a visn which the stereotypil power dynamic between the gay man and the straight man is verted. By reversg the prumptn of heterosexualy as origal tth, and puttg the “straight man” a posn which he mt expla his “foreign” sexualy to a gay man, the playwright language to unrme the heterosexist perceptn of realy.

Patrick’s queer theater ntributed to a nascent sense of “gay liberatn” by promotg visibily, stabilizg normative social nstcts, providg a template for dividual self-empowerment, and exposg opprsn. An ephemeral utopia for Patrick and his iends, the Co was neverthels a place where numero relatnships were built, and where gay artists uld fd the mararie that affirmed their mon terts, perspectiv, and sexual sir.

NEW GAY THEATER HAS MORE LOVE THAN POLICS

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. 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.

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. Frozen, particular, centers around Elsa, who has bee a queer in regardls of the stud's msagg, but Disney champned the apparent homosexualy of Oaken, the Tradg Post owner. Some people still wrongly believe that queerns means more about viant sexual activy than do about healthy sexualy and inty, and they worry that 's dangero for their children to be exposed to gay, lbian, or transgenr characters fictn meant for all or younger dienc.

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

Former child actor Brian Falduto says that he wasn’t able to e out until his senr year of llege bee of the stggl he faced after beg dubbed “the gay kid” om “School of Rock.

“I was so much nial [about my sexualy growg up], ” he said on the “Cooper and Anthony Show, ” “Thk about : I was the fifth gra when this movie me out and I was lled gay, and then someone told me that’s not ol, so I was jt like, ‘Oh, ok, then I’m not gay’. “So by the time I realized I was potentially gay, I was already homophobic towards myself, sentially, ” Falduto, who is now an actor, filmmaker, mician and life ach said. 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.

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.

MATTHEW LOPEZ'S GAY NEW YORK EPIC THE INHERANCE – PICTUR

”) 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. 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. William Friedk’s fahful movie versn, 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.

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 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. 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 was a liberate statement, meant to acknowledge how far the world has e sce 1968.