Evolutn of Contemporary Gay Theater | The Juilliard School

Contents:

• A BRIEF HISTORY OF GAY THEATER, THREE ACTS
• 1964: THE BIRTH OF GAY THEATER
• A BRIEF HISTORY OF LBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENR SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
• HOW GAY CULTURE BLOSSOMED DURG THE ROARG TWENTI

A BRIEF HISTORY OF GAY THEATER, THREE ACTS

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. ”) 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.

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.

1964: THE BIRTH OF GAY THEATER

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. And bee I’m wrg about plays that have shaped gay male life, ’s not surprisg that all the playwrights I name are gay hardly needs argug that one of them is Tony Khner, whose play “Angels Ameri: A Gay Fantasia on Natnal Them, ” opened on Broadway 1993. 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 by Martha Swope / the New York Public LibraryThe 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.

An ventory of my tongue yields nothg that looks like my mother the remblance stops at the mouth She is fluent a language I am only ever ugly she falls asleep ont of the tv her show muted I wonr if her dreams I n speakThe actor reads "Translatn" by Julian the efficy of the nonil gay plays did not pend, or pend only, on gay dienc. Like other margalized groups — Jews of an earlier generatn who objected to the tenement soap operas of Clifford Ots; blacks who found Uncle Tomism Lorrae Hansberry’s “A Rais the Sun” — many gays saw betrayal hont, let alone exaggerated, portras.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF LBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENR SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

“Jefey, ” too, may be theater huntg; a recent readg starrg Urie and Rsell Tovey was part an experiment to see how lands eper reason this material holds up spe beg so tied to s tim is that gayns, even now, do not operate as other mory inti do.

Or to put more gaily, you are what we Murphy, such tellectual workarounds are unnecsary; he fds “The Boys the Band” forward-thkg whether or not you nsir that was wrten a time when “you uld lerally be arrted” for beg gay. But issu like the are a b baggy for great drama, and plays that qutn the homonormative movement (like Drew Droege’s hilar 2016 anti-marriage screed “Bright Colors and Bold Patterns”) seem sted for a short shelf life.

HOW GAY CULTURE BLOSSOMED DURG THE ROARG TWENTI

” If “The Inherance” hews to the Forsterian theme of nostalgia for a purposeful past, as s tle suggts may, would be a very apt gay play for this particular among new works I’ve actually seen, the only gay — or, rather, queer — theater piece that ris to the level of those I’ve beatified is Taylor Mac’s “A 24-De History of Popular Mic, ” which premiered as a plete work at St. 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. 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. 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.