GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE June 15, 2007

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The top of the stage

Ten plays that shaped queer theater

by Kaizaad Kotwal

Long before cinema and television began to tell the stories of the LGBT community, theater had been laying out the groundwork that made it possible for a Brokeback Mountain or a Will & Grace to exist.

In fact, long before all the new media options from U-Tube and Logo to other internet and cable outlets-the age-old art of theater has been telling stories of, by and for queer people. It is very common these days to find lists of the most popular or most important films or television shows, film actors or celebrities.

For this season of Pride, it is important to raise the curtain on some of the most important, relevant and aesthetically powerful works of the stage that have not only told the stories of LGBT people, but have celebrated the community and their endurance in the face of all the obstacles thrown their way.

Listed below, alphabetically, are 10 prominent works and their lasting presence within the annals of theatrical history. Some are older works, others are brand new. Yet what they all have in common are three things: an unmitigated commitment to the highest artistic standards; an honesty in storytelling from a queer point of view about our collective humanity-warts, foibles, grace, strength and all; and a deep seated desire to use theater to change the world around us for the better.

While no works from Tennessee Williams, Holly Hughes, Caryl Churchill, Tim Miller or Oscar Wilde have made the list, their works are nonetheless noteworthy for their contributions to queer theater.

Film versions of many of these pieces have been made, and are more readily available than seeing the play itself.

Curbside

Angels in America

This epic two-parter (Millennium Approaches and Perestroika) is not only an important piece of queer theater, but is, without any hyperbole, one of the most important dramas ever written. Tony Kushner weaves an intricate, magical, politically explosive, sexually charged piece about America in the 1980s in the era of Regan, the onset of AIDS and the thirst for a better America.

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The play is littered with historical allusions, surreal illusions and a gut-wrenching scrutiny about religious, political, and cultural hypocrisies in America vis-à-vis the gay population. Yet for all its erudite aspirations, Angels in a hopelessly human, unflinchingly universal play about the last frontier of civil rights in the U.S.

The play is deeply funny and yet brutally tragic-it blends hyperrealism with surrealism, expressionism with existentialism with the deft touch that only a genius like Kushner

can.

Bent

Martin Sherman's 1979 play is necessary at so many levels. It was the first and perhaps only, play to deal with the persecution of homosexuals during the Nazi Holocaustsomething often ignored if not denied, even within Holocaust studies and circles.

Sherman shines the spotlight brightly on the horrible ways in which homosexuals were rounded up and dragged to their deaths and destruction simply for being gay.

The real beauty is that Sherman's subversive writing tells of this historical blight through a doomed love affair between Max and Horst, two inmates in a death camp. The stunning climax will leave you breathless.

The play-based on the real-life chronicles of survivor Hans Heger titled The

AFTERWARDS, I MADE HER GIVE ME HER GROCERY LIST AND TOLD HER TO GO RELAX, WHICH WAS EASIER SAID THAN DONE. I FINALLY GOT HER TO PARK IT IN FRONT OF THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS, WITH HER FEET UP

Ethel Rosenberg glowers over the dying closet case Roy Cohn in the movie version of Angels in America.

Men With the Pink Triangles-brought to prominence Ian McKellan on the West End in London, and Richard Gere on Broadway.

Bent reminds us that even with horrible tragedies like the Holocaust queer folk are still marginalized when their stories are not told, their devastation not acknowledged.

The Children's Hour

Lillian Hellman's way-ahead-of-its-time play tells about the awfully destructive nature of rumors. When a rumor that two teachers are lesbian spreads in a 1930s girls school, lives are ruined. Based on a real-life event from Scotland, Hellman's play is prescient for our times when many such incidents continue to occur. The play was speaking bravely about the ruinous nature of homophobia even back then.

It is also a reminder that like in so many forms of entertainment, lesbian stories are rare since most of the theater seems to focus on the lives of gay men, often white, upperclass ones.

La Cage aux Folles

The original play by Jean Poiret and the musical adaptation by Harvey Fierstein and Jerry Herman both deserve a mention here. The gist here is that gay men do have longterm relationships, as beautiful and as problematic as straight ones, and they can raise children with the same dignity and grace as their heterosexual counterparts. Also born out of the original play was a French film of the same title and its American remake, The Birdcage.

The Laramie Project

Written by Moisés Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theater Project, the

By Robert Kirby

I'VE GOT LOTS OF TIME TO THINK TODAY.... WHICH HISTORICALLY I HAVEN'T SPENT A LOT OF TIME DOING...... LAST NIGHT BRENDAN TOLD ME HE THINKS WE'RE BOTH THE CLASSIC SCARED-OFCOMMITMENT TYPE OF GUYS.....

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