The new kid on the theatrical block, gay and lesbian themed-theater found its mainstream legs through a large-scale tragedy. The AIDS crisis provoked mainstream media to shine an unrelenting light on gay men's health and sexual practices, while the gay community,... [more]

The new kid on the theatrical block, gay and lesbian themed-theater found its mainstream legs through a large-scale tragedy. The AIDS crisis provoked mainstream media to shine an unrelenting light on gay men's health and sexual practices, while the gay community, reeling with its own grief and terror, responded with eloquent works of theatrical art. Larry Kramer's "The Normal Heart" (1986) opened the floodgates; Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize-winning 'Gay Fantasia, Angels in America" (1993), has established the genre as profound, relevant, and here to stay. With playwrights such as Terrence McNally, Manuel Puig, and Harvey Fierstein scripting mainstream works about homosexual lives and loves, the stigma attached to gay references seem almost a dim memory, though the impact of mainstream homophobia is still a powerful force. The days of veiled allusions to unmentionable practices are mercifully past (think Lillian Hellman's "A Children's Hour"), but the complacency surrounding the presence of a comic gay character in a mainstream play doesn't mitigate the ramifications of its jester -- as opposed to full-dimensional human -- role. Alternative queer theater, cutting its teeth in the 1980s New York performance art scene, emerged from the storefronts and garages where its pioneers broke down archaic acting conventions and publicly explored their sexuality. This movement has launched the careers of solo performers such as Holly Hughes and David Roman, among many others. On a grassroots level, innumerable gay and lesbian (and bisexual and transgender) theatrical companies, acting troupes, and playhouses the world over reenact and redefine their experiences in a homophobic world. [show less]