Why I Enjoy Old Gay Plays

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Playwrights

A theatre fan comes out about his love for vintage LGBTQ characters

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What does it mean to be gay? Boy, does that sound passé. But what did it mean decades ago, and what did it look like? Well, it often wasn’t very pretty. But I suppose my ongoing fascination with yesteryear’s often outdated, sometimes ominous representations of queer folk is a byproduct of coming of age at a time when LGBTQ characters in popular culture were scarce or, worse, scary. So my personal search to find them isn’t tied to nostalgia or a pride in learning the history of my forbears. It’s more akin to looking at the “fertilizer” from which a movement sprang.

I was the kid who secretly stayed up late to watch a midnight broadcast of Fortune and Men’s Eyes with the volume turned low. I was the pimply adolescent surreptitiously digging through the reject bins at Blockbuster Video looking for a used VHS copy of Norman…Is That You?. I was the young man whose mind was blown to find out that The Naked Civil Servant on PBS was based on a real story about a real human being. Growing up outside D.C., I didn’t get to the theatre that often and the homoerotic feelings triggered by seeing Your Arms Too Short to Box With God were not given much space for expression at home. My parents didn’t even take me to the touring production of A Chorus Line, despite how often I listened to that cast recording. Perhaps they were worried about that coming-out monologue.

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Also tough to write off as strictly period pieces were Mart Crowley’s artfully bitchy The Boys in the Band (1968) and Williams’ poetically lonely Small Craft Warnings (1972). As someone who has spent more than his fair share of time stinking drunk in East Village gay dives, I’m all too well acquainted with similarly catty quips and sad monologues in unscripted form. I’m sure I’ve improvised a few variations of my own. But old queer theatre gets truly interesting for me when it veers into a reactionary rage. Think Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story (1958), Valerie Solanas’ Up Your Ass (1967), and Amiri Baraka’s The Toilet (1967) — all shows electrified by an inner fury that’s traveled the distance of time and shows no sign of expiring. These plays remind me that there’s a long-standing pushback to institutional oppression.

As for old gay love stories, they’ve proven much harder to find. Yet as early as the late ’50s, gay-friendly enlightenment had at least come into play. Last year, The Pearl Theatre’s lovely resurrection of Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste of Honey (1958) charmed the hell out of me with its warmly conceived portrait of a gay best friend. Meanwhile Phoenix Theatre Ensemble’s perversely enjoyable take on Joe Orton’s Entertaining Mr. Sloane (1964) this past spring was a deliciously wicked satire of closeted respectability.

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Drew Pisarra‘s theatre experiences range from ventriloquist (Singularly Grotesque) to librettist (The World Is Round), choreographer (Ladies’ Voices) to master of ceremonies (White Wines). Follow him on Twitter at @mistermysterio. Follow TDF at @TDFNYC.

Top image: Charles Ludlam and Everett Quinton in Irma Vep. 

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DREW PISARRA