Gays and Stages

“I thought when I came to Broadway that it was going to be so glamorous. I used to imagine myself going out of the theater at night, leaving the stage door, and finding stage door persons waiting… Last night when I left the theater: ‘I don’t want no fucking autograph. What the hell is wrong with you? Who are you anyway? I didn’t come in this alley for no autograph. I came in here to pee.'”

— Jane Wagner and Lily Tomlin, Appearing Nightly

“There’s No Business Like Show Business”. “Give My Regards to Broadway”. Listen to the “Lullaby of Old Broadway”. “God, What a Bitch!” One of these things is not like the others. Clearly, that would be the last on the list, which is featured in John Paul Sharp’s 2009 stage production, My Big Phat Gay Musical, not to be confused with Casper Andreas and Fred M. Caruso’s 2009 film Big Gay Musical, which features a large group of gay Broadway performers, along with the song “I Wanna Be a Slut”. As these two numbers evidence, gay musicals usually don’t feature the type of songs with which Ethel Merman used to deafen the back row of the balcony. Still, it’s easy to imagine that one or two of the queens appearing in gay musicals have a picture of Ethel taped to the make-up mirror. Right beside Liza.

Lily and Jane’s observation about the theater life is correct: it isn’t the glamorous life people may imagine it to be while fantasizing themselves taking bows during their fifth curtain-call. It’s tough to get a show noticed, and tougher still if the production prominently features an LGBT storyline. Granted, LGBT characters and themes in theater are more prevalent than can be found in film and on TV, unless you’re watching Bravo, which is a gay man’s paradise, with more bitchy queens than a Miss Continental pageant.

Even so, the past couple of years have seen LGBT theater flourish. For many, that will seem to be an oxymoron. After all, aren’t “gay” and “theater” synonymous? We write many of theater’s hit productions; perform many of theater’s greatest roles; construct more than our fair share of the sets, costumes, and lighting designs; and god knows we fill a high percentage of the good seats in any theatrical production’s audience. By God, We Are Theatre! Regardless, most of the productions that we have helped create and have supported are about straight people and are designed for a straight audience. Despite our proclivity to play it straight, literally and figuratively, both The New York Times and The New York Post featured articles this past year on the depth of gay-themed productions coming to the city this year. Unfortunately, references to LGBT theater usually emphasize the “gay”, with less reference to “transgender” and even fewer references to “lesbian” and “bisexual”.

On Broadway, Geoffrey Nauffts’ Next Fall, a poignant story of gay love and its relationship to religion and life or death decisions, was nominated for a Best Play Tony Award this past year (it lost to John Logan’s Red). Bisexual actor Patrick Breen, who you’ve seen on a bazillion episodes of Law and Order, and straight Patrick Heusinger, who you know as Lord Beaton on Gossip Girl, play an atheist and devout Christian who fall in love:

Meanwhile, Off-Broadway has been buzzing about My Trip Down the Pink Carpet, the one-man show from Leslie Jordan, aka Brother Boy and Beverly Leslie. In the show, produced by the aforementioned Lily and Jane, Jordan recalls what it was like to arrive in Hollywood in the ’80s as a gay man. The show’s site quotes The New York Times, which praised it for its “self-deprecation and spotlight-seeking shamelessness”.

Also playing somewhere in New York recently have been It Must Be Him, a comedy about being gay and aging; My Big Gay Italian Wedding about, not surprisingly, a big gay Italian wedding; A Night in the Tombs, in which transgendered Bianca Liegh describes her night in jail; Ryan O’Connor Eats His Feelings, and some of the scenery;Abraham Lincoln’s Big Gay Dance Party, the tale of an elementary school teacher put on trial for suggesting during the annual Christmas pageant that the 16th president was gay; and Bash’d, the world’s first gay rap opera, at least that I am aware of.

Perhaps the gay-themed production that has received the most press this year is the revival of La Cage Aux Folles, starring Kelsey Grammar and Tony winner Douglas Hodge. In his analysis of the LGBT-friendly musical, Norman Hart argues that the mass acceptance of La Cage was due to the juxtaposition of “almost Victorian application of neo-traditional American family values to the gay lifestyle”. Hart goes on to argue that the song adopted as a gay anthem, “I Am What I Am”, is a generic song that could serve as a battle-cry for any muted group in society. (“The Selling of La Cage aux Folles: How Audiences Were Helped to Read Broadway’s First Gay Musical”, Theatre History News, 2003) Still, regardless of how we may view them in retrospect, the old faves still can draw in the crowds. Angels in America is also enjoying a fairly well-received revival, off-Broadway, with Star Trek‘s Zachary Quinto playing Louis.

There’s Off-Broadway and then there’s Off-off Broadway

Fortunately for LGBT theater, there’s Off-Broadway, Off-off Broadway, and regional theater companies, where countless LGBT shows have first gotten noticed, although not always in a positive way. Let’s be honest; LGBT theaters have produced some real stinkers, half-conceived concepts that highlight catty dialogue in the place of true plot development and witty but purposeful dialogue. To those guilty of such offenses, let me remind that Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf has been done. Just making all the characters gay men or lesbians doesn’t improve it.

Still, when gay theatre hits, it can provide a great evening out that doesn’t involve a disco beat and mojitos. It can also be eye-opening, such as The Pride, which tells the stories of relationships as they might have played out in 1958 as compared with 2008. Also thought-provoking is Marc Wolf’s Another American: Asking and Telling, in which Wolfe relies on interviews with service men and women, gay and straight, as well as judges and politicians to craft his play. The subsequent one man show was featured on both Fox News and CNN.

The plethora of LGBT productions is a welcome development, but I imagine that about now, lesbian readers are thinking, “Why is he just discussing productions about gay men?” (Hey, I mentioned transgender Bianca Leigh). OK, you’re right, no lesbian productions have been discussed thus far, simply because theatre focused on the lesbian experience has yet to be celebrated in the same manner as gay theatre. That doesn’t mean that lesbian artists aren’t out there working. Last year, Curve featured an article on ten new lesbian-themed plays, including Hedda Gabler, which refashions Ibsen’s classic as a lesbian drama, and The Lieutenant Nun, about “Catalina de Erauso, a 17th century nun who dressed as a man, seduced women and joined the Spanish Army.”

Although lesbians have done well individually in the theatre, from acting great Cherry Jones to legendary lighting designer Tharon Musser, plays and musicals about lesbians haven’t hit Off-Broadway or Broadway with much frequency and must therefore count on regional LGBT theatres to be produced (one exception being this season’s Looped, with Valerie Harper as Tallulah Bankhead). Many lesbian-themed plays premiere at women’s theater festivals, as well as LGBT theaters. However, one festival focuses solely on the lesbian experience. This coming June 2011, the Women’s Theater Project in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, will present “Girl Play – The Third Annual Lesbian Play Festival”, presented in conjunction with the Pride Center. According to the festival’s website, the plays were selected from 100 submissions, coming from around the globe.

Back in December 1998, Lambda Book Report asked the question “Has Lesbian Theater Come of Age?” The answer, unfortunately, is still “no”. Yet, in true “hell, no” lesbian fashion, lesbian theater will not sit quietly against the wall while the fags and fag hags dance. Not to be outdone by the boys, this past year saw the premiere of The Lesbian Love Octagon, self-described as “a musical for anyone who has ever loved wimmin’s bookstores, cats or tofu” which, frankly, describes the tree-hugging, hippy straight man who used to be my neighbor. Written by Kimberlea Kressal, with some assistance from Will Larche, the musical was a critic’s pick by Time Out New York. Among its songs is “Building a Butch”:

As lesbian plays and musicals gain wider audiences, the number of LGBT productions that become part of popular culture will increase, as well. Although we statistically are a larger part of the theater community than we are, say, the construction industry, we haven’t always been able to get our story out. Today, that’s changing, but as with all things regarding the LGBT community, it’s coming slowly. Film adaptations of gay plays generally aren’t successful outside the LGBT community, and few gay plays get rotated into regional, mainstream theater’s playlist. To be honest, I was a little surprised when the Jewish Community Center here in Louisville, Kentucky, put on a production of La Cage. Apparently, it was quite good.

While it may be easy to fault mainstream theater for not featuring more LGBT productions emerging out of the innumerable LGBT regional theaters, the reality is that mainstream theater must accommodate a multitude of genres. It’s doubtful that many of the families that traveled to New York to see Mary Poppins also took in Next Fall. Big family musicals fill seats, even if they are “gay” in theme, such as La Cage, while serious dramas depend on the intelligentsia for enough audience to stay open for any length.

However, the bottom line is the same, regardless whether a play is LGBT or straight in nature. Quality is what will get you noticed. For each successful LGBT production, hundreds of trite, predictable pieces of bad theater are written by men and women hell-bent on being the next Terrence McNally or Jane Chambers (who wrote soap operas by day and plays by night), just as multitudes of straight individuals write dribble thinking they are Sam Shepard or Wendy Wasserstein. Fortunately, as societies grow more accepting of LGBT individuals, more plays and musicals featuring our lives, aches, pains, and joys will be seen, as straight people grow to accept “gay and lesbian” drama/comedy as human drama/comedy. Besides, who can put on a show better than a bunch of queens and dykes?

Cheers, Queers to Glenn Lawrence Burke, the first and only pro baseball player to be openly out to his teammates and club owners. See Cynthia Fuchs review of a new documentary about Burke here on PopMatters.

Here’s Mud in Your Eye to those African countries in which movements to execute homosexuals are gaining momentum. Not to step into your business, but if you start executing all the so-called “sinners” in your countries, then you won’t have anyone left. Of course, the same applies for Western and Eastern countries.