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OverviewofLGBTHistoryontheArtsv2Autosaved.pptxOverview of the History of Gay Theatre in America
It seems almost inconceivable today, with the abundance of openly gay playwrights and gay-themed plays, that less than 50 years ago a drama critic for The New York Times felt the need to call for “social and theatrical convention” to be “widened so that homosexual life may be as freely dramatized as heterosexual life, may be as frankly treated in our drama as in contemporary fiction.”
EARLY GAY PLAYWRIGHTS: Oscar Wilde, Noel Coward, Tennessee Williams, William Inge, and Edward Albee, Lanford Wilson, Robert Patrick. Doric Wilson.
Pansy Craze: By the end of the 1920s much of the public image of gay people was still limited to the various drag balls in Greenwich Village and in Harlem, but the early 1930s saw a new development within a highly commercial context, bringing the gay subculture of the enclaves of Greenwich Village and Harlem onto the mainstream stages of midtown Manhattan in a veritable Pansy Craze from 1930 until the repeal of prohibition in 1933.
Hay’s Code: After the repeal of prohibition, this tolerance waned. Any sympathetic portrayal of gay characters (termed sexual perverts) was prohibited by the Motion Picture Production Code (or Hays Code) from being included in Hollywood films. Performer Ray Bourbon was arrested many times for his act, considered tame by today's standards.
It seems almost inconceivable today, with the abundance of openly gay playwrights and gay-themed plays, that less than 50 years ago a drama critic for The New York Times felt the need to call for “social and theatrical convention” to be “widened so that homosexual life may be as freely dramatized as heterosexual life, may be as frankly treated in our drama as in contemporary fiction.”
EARLY GAY PLAYWRIGHTS: Oscar Wilde, Noel Coward, Tennessee Williams, William Inge, and Edward Albee, Lanford Wilson, Robert Patrick. Doric Wilson.
At the height of the Pansy Craze in the late 1920s, Mae West penned The Drag, a “social problem” play that argued for sympathetic treatment of homosexuals. However, after out-of-town tryout runs, the play received a scandalous reception. Never making it to the Great White Way, The Drag was censored, and West was arrested. Draconian measures from City Hall, including the passage of New York City’s 1927 “padlock bill,” prohibited homosexual subject matter on the Broadway stage. A few years later, the Hays Code of 1934 banned images of homosexuality on the Hollywood screen. Consequently, censorship of gay themes in theater and film was the norm in the U.S. from the 1930s through the 1960s.
Expanding on the concept of the coffeehouse as a forum for beatnik poetry readings, Joe Cino opened his small Cornelia Street café in 1958 with the intention of creating a space where theater artists could develop their individual voices and form a community. The Caffe Cino’s locale rendered it out-of-the-way enough to feel like a private sanctuary and accessible enough for urban audiences to find it.
Inside, the Cino resembled a converted living room decorated for a very festive occasion. Its walls were encrusted with glitter and spangles, strung with flapping photographs, flickering Christmas lights, and twinkling wind chimes, with a shiny jukebox in the corner. Cino wanted his café to be a magic box that would feel like home but simultaneously conjure a sense of child-like fantasy, play, and nostalgia.
IF “GAY THEATER” is defined as being by, for, and about un-closeted gay people, then 2014 arguably marks the 50th anniversary of the genre’s existence.
In 1964, despite a social climate of homophobia that pervaded American life for the second third of the 20th century, two one-act plays presented Off-Off-Broadway at the Caffe Cino revolutionized how gay characters could be represented theatrically.
The plays were Lanford Wilson’s “The Madness of Lady Bright” and Robert Patrick’s “The Haunted Host.”
Mae West penned The Drag, a “social problem” play that argued for sympathetic treatment of homosexuals. However, after out-of-town tryout runs, the play received a scandalous reception.
Never making it to the Great White Way, The Drag was censored, and West was arrested. Draconian measures from City Hall, including the passage of New York City’s 1927 “padlock bill,” prohibited homosexual subject matter on the Broadway stage. Consequently, along with the Hay’s Code, censorship of gay themes in theater and film was the norm in the U.S. from the 1930s through the 1960s.
Expanding on the concept of the coffeehouse as a forum for beatnik poetry readings, Joe Cino opened his small Cornelia Street café in 1958 with the intention of creating a space where theater artists could develop their individual voices and form a community.
The Caffe Cino’s locale rendered it out-of-the-way enough to feel like a private sanctuary and accessible enough for urban audiences to find it.
Inside, the Cino resembled a converted living room decorated for a very festive occasion. Its walls were encrusted with glitter and spangles, strung with flapping photographs, flickering Christmas lights, and twinkling wind chimes, with a shiny jukebox in the corner. Cino wanted his café to be a magic box that would feel like home but simultaneously conjure a sense of child-like fantasy, play, and nostalgia.
In 1964, despite a social climate of homophobia that pervaded American life for the second third of the 20th century, two one-act plays presented Off-Off-Broadway at the Caffe Cino revolutionized how gay characters could be represented theatrically.
The plays were Lanford Wilson’s “The Madness of Lady Bright” and Robert Patrick’s “The Haunted Host.”
In 1968 a play opened in New York that portrayed gay life onstage in a way it had never been before. In the words of another Times critic, Clive Barnes, it was “by far the frankest treatment of homosexuality I have ever seen on the stage.” Mart Crowley’s The Boys in the Band made theatrical history for gay theater just as Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, had done in the previous decade for African-American drama.
The Boys in the Band played 1,001 performances Off Broadway and was then filmed by William Friedkin with the original cast, marking a cinematic milestone as well. Over the years critics within the gay community have criticized Crowley for presenting stereotyped characters and an excessively negative view of gay life. Yet this play, staged a year before the Stonewall Riots that are often cited as the beginning of the modern gay civil-rights movement, portrays the humor and resilience of the characters as well as their pain.
New York’s gay community had grown weary of the police department targeting gay clubs, a majority of which had already been closed. The crowd on the street watched quietly as Stonewalls employees were arrested, but when three drag queens and a lesbian were forced into the paddy wagon, the crowd began throwing bottles at the police. The protest, however, spilled over into the neighboring streets, and order was not restored until the deployment of New York’s riot police.
The Stonewall Riot was followed
by several days of demonstrations in New York
and was the impetus for the formation of the
Gay Liberation Front as well as other gay, lesbian,
and bisexual civil rights organizations.
It is also regarded by many as history’s
first major protest on behalf of equal rights
for homosexuals.
Disco Culture: is a music genre and subculture that emerged in the mid-1960s and early 1970s from the United States' urban nightlife scene. Disco started as a mixture of music from venues popular with African Americans, Hispanic and Latin Americans, LGBT people (especially African-American and white gay men).
Disco can be seen as a reaction to both the dominance of rock music and the stigmatization of dance music by the counterculture during this period.
By the late 1970s, most major U.S. cities had thriving disco club scenes, and DJs would mix dance records at clubs such as Studio 54in New York City, a venue popular among celebrities.
Discothèque-goers often wore expensive, extravagant and sexy fashions. There was also a thriving sex and drug subculture in the disco scene, particularly for drugs that would enhance the experience of dancing to the loud music and the flashing lights, such as cocaine and Quaaludes, the latter being so common in disco subculture that they were nicknamed "disco biscuits".
Disco clubs were also associated with every kind of sexual freedom promiscuity as a reflection of the sexual revolution of this era in popular history.
Martin Sherman’s Bent opened in London with Ian McKellen in 1979 and then in New York with Richard Gere. Sherman dramatized, in fictional form, the plight of gay men in Nazi Germany who were arrested and sent to concentration camps for their sexual orientation.
Bent not only brought to audiences’ attention tragic historical events of which they may heretofore been unaware.
Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song Trilogy, originally produced in 1978 and 1979 as three separate plays by La MaMa E.T.C., became a one-evening trilogy Off Broadway in 1981 and 1982. It moved to Broadway later in 1982, ran for more than 1,200 performances, and won Tony Awards for Fierstein in both the best play and best actor in a play categories.
A contemporary comedy about a gay man’s relationship with his lover, ex-lover, mother, friends, and adopted son, the play touched on such topics as gender identity, coming out, gay bashing, and gay parenting well before these issues were being discussed and analyzed the way they are today.
When Fierstein’s Safe Sex—opened in 1987, the gay community had been galvanized by the AIDS Pandemic that was causing widespread devastation through its ranks.
Just as AIDS transformed the gay community as a whole, it transformed gay playwriting as well, becoming an almost unavoidable source of subject matter.
The irony that AIDS made the gay community more visible than it had ever been before was not lost on one of Fierstein’s characters in Safe Sex: “Now they know who we are. ... We’ve found our voices. We know who we are. They know who we are. And they know that we care what they think. And all because of a disease. A virus. A virus that you don’t get because you’re Gay, just because you’re human. We were Gay. Now we’re human.”
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Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart, the longest-running production ever presented at The Public Theater, is suffused with anger and outrage at the lack of response to the crisis by the medical establishment, politicians, society as a whole, and the gay community itself.
Based on Kramer’s own experiences as an early gay activist and founding member of Gay Men’s Heath Crisis (G.M.H.C.), it is part polemic, part call-to-arms, and part love story—The Normal Heart pulled no punches in confronting its audiences with the enormity of AIDS and its devastation of the gay community.
McNally's other plays include 1994's Love! Valour! Compassion!, which examines the relationships of eight gay men; it won McNally his second Tony Award.
With Kiss of the Spider Woman (based on the novel by Manuel Puig) in 1992, McNally returned to the musical stage, collaborating with Kander and Ebb on a script which explores the complex relationship between two men jailed together in a Latin American prison.
1997 saw the world premiere of Corpus Christi, a modern-day retelling of the story of Jesus' birth, ministry, and death in which both he and his disciples are portrayed as homosexual. The play was initially canceled because of death threats against the board members of the Manhattan Theatre Club, which was to produce the play.
When the play opened, the theatre was besieged by almost 2,000 protesters, furious at what they considered blasphemy. Subsequent to a 1999 opening of Corpus Christi in London, a group called the "Defenders of the Messenger Jesus" issued a fatwa sentencing McNally to death.
In 2008, the play was revived in New York City at Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre. Reviewing this production for The New York Times, Jason Zinoman wrote that "without the noise of controversy, the play can finally be heard. Staged with admirable delicacy... the work seems more personal than political, a coming-of-age story wrapped in religious sentiment."
No Play had a more profound and lasting impact than Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, the first part of which, Millennium Approaches, was given its New York premiere in 1992 at Juilliard when Kushner was a playwright-in-residence at the School.
Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for drama and two successive Tony Awards for
Millennium Approaches and Perestroika,
it was later filmed by Mike Nichols for HBO. Subtitled: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes.
Angels in America mixes historical and fictional characters, humor and heartbreak, to dramatize not only the effect that AIDS had on gay Americans but how they are inextricably bound into the fabric of American life.
Don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) was the official United States policy on military service by gays, bisexuals, and lesbians, instituted by the Clinton Administration on February 28, 1994.
The policy prohibited military personnel from discriminating against or harassing closeted homosexual or bisexual service members or applicants, while barring openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual persons from military service.
The policy prohibited people who "demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts" from serving in the armed forces of the United States, because their presence "would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability".
The act prohibited any homosexual or bisexual person from disclosing their sexual orientation or from speaking about any homosexual relationships, including marriages or other familial attributes, while serving in the United States armed forces.
The act specified that service members who disclose that they are homosexual or engage in homosexual conduct should be separated (discharged)".
The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) enacted September 21, 1996, was a United States federal law that, prior to being ruled unconstitutional, defined marriage for federal purposes as the union of one man and one woman, and allowed states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages granted under the laws of other states.
Until Section 3 of the Act was struck down in 2013 (United States v. Windsor), DOMA, in conjunction with other statutes, had barred same-sex married couples from being recognized as "spouses" for purposes of federal laws, effectively barring them from receiving federal marriage benefits.
DOMA's passage did not prevent individual states from recognizing same-sex marriage, but it imposed constraints on the benefits received by all legally married same-sex couples
Ellen Lee DeGeneres is an American comedian, television host, actress, writer, producer, and LGBT activist. She starred in the popular sitcom Ellen from 1994 to 1998 and has hosted her syndicated TV talk show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, since 2003.
She starred in two television sitcoms, Ellen from 1994 to 1998, and The Ellen Show from 2001 to 2002. During the fourth season of Ellen in 1997, she came out as a lesbian in an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Her character, Ellen Morgan, also came out to a therapist played by Winfrey, and the series went on to explore various LGBT issues, including the coming-out process.
This made her the first openly lesbian actress to play an openly lesbian character on television.
Will & Grace is an American sitcom Set in New York City. the show focuses on the friendship between best friends Will Truman a gay lawyer, and Grace Adler a straight interior designer.
During its original run Will & Grace was one of the most successful television series with gay principal characters.
Despite initial criticism for its stereotypical portrayal of homosexual characters, it went on to become a staple of NBC's Must See TV Thursday night lineup and was met with continued critical acclaim.
Since the final episode aired, the sitcom has been credited with helping and improving public opinion of the LGBT community, with former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden commenting that the show "probably did more to educate the American public" on LGBT issues "than almost anything anybody has ever done so far".
In 2014, the Smithsonian Institution added an LGBT history collection to their museum which included items from Will & Grace. The curator Dwight Blocker Bowers stated that the sitcom used "comedy to familiarize a mainstream audience with gay culture" in a way that was "daring and broke ground" in American media.
Matthew Shepard: was an American student at the University of Wyoming who was beaten, tortured, and left to die near Laramie on the night of October 6, 1998. He died six days later from severe head injuries.
Perpetrators Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson were arrested shortly after the attack and charged with first-degree murder following Shepard's death. Significant media coverage was given to the killing and to what role Shepard's sexual orientation played as a motive in the commission of the crime.
McKinney's girlfriend told police that he had been motivated by anti-gay sentiment but later recanted her statement, saying that she had lied because she thought it would help him. Both McKinney and Henderson were convicted of the murder, and each received two consecutive life sentences.
Shepard's murder brought national and international attention to hate crime legislation at the state and federal levels.
In October 2009, the United States Congress passed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act (commonly the "Matthew Shepard Act" or "Shepard/Byrd Act" for short), and on October 28, 2009, President Barack Obama signed the legislation into law
Matthew Shepard's life, death, trial, and its aftermath have inspired numerous works, including documentary and narrative films and television shows, stage plays (such as The Laramie Project), and musical and written works. Additionally, NBA player Jason Collins wore the jersey number "98" in honor of Shepard during his 2012–13 season with the Boston Celtics and the Washington Wizards, and would come out as gay following the season.
The movement to obtain civil marriage rights and benefits for same-sex couples in the United States began in the 1970s but remained unsuccessful for over forty years.
On May 17, 2004, Massachusetts became the first U.S. state and the sixth jurisdiction in the world to legalize same-sex marriage following the Supreme Judicial Court's decision six months earlier.
Before nationwide legalization, same-sex marriage became legal in 36 states; 24 states by court order, 9 by legislative action, and 3 by referendum. Some states had legalized same-sex marriage by more than one of the three actions.
On June 26, 2015 the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that states must license and recognize same-sex marriages. Consequently, same-sex marriage is legal in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, U.S. Virgin Islands and Northern Mariana Islands.
List of TV Series and Characters from 1970 – Today
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dramatic_television_series_with_LGBT_characters
Comprehensive List of Films with LGBT Themes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LGBT-related_films
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Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes
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C
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Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead
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Elegies for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens
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G
Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde
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I
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Jagdszenen aus Niederbayern (play)
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M
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The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me
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Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme
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R
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