Steve Bull once raced agast time to try to save the memoirs of one of Mae's gay rights pneers. His trip led him down memory lane.
Contents:
- A BRIEF HISTORY OF GAY THEATER, THREE ACTS
- 1964: THE BIRTH OF GAY THEATER
- GAY THEATRE: G OUT OR GOG BACK?
- RACG TO PRERVE THE HISTORY OF MAE’S 1ST GAY RIGHTS ANIZATN
A BRIEF HISTORY OF GAY THEATER, THREE ACTS
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. * gay theatre history *
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.
1964: THE BIRTH OF GAY THEATER
<p>Gay wrg is at a crossroads, says <strong>Thomas Htt</strong> – we've yet to produce a voice to match those who me before</p> * gay theatre history *
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.
GAY THEATRE: G OUT OR GOG BACK?
<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> * gay theatre history *
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.
RACG TO PRERVE THE HISTORY OF MAE’S 1ST GAY RIGHTS ANIZATN
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. 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 .
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.