| re: Tennessee Williams and Edward Albee were gay | |
| Posted by: Thom915 12:46 am EDT 07/04/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Tennessee Williams and Edward Albee were gay - AC126748 12:38 pm EDT 07/03/18 | |
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| I participated in an all male reading of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf back in about 1971 or 1972 in an academic setting. No, we didn't have Albee's permission and it is doubtful he ever know of the event so limited was it in audience. Frankly it doesn't work. There is some camp value in seeing Martha and George bicker and flirt with the younger couple especially Nick but the plot doesn't really make sense and if the relationships do well they make an equal amount of sense for male/female couples. Albee and Williams wrote about male and female couples because that was the world they viewed and commented upon. Each of them did to varying degrees of success write about homosexual characters in some of their works and did pave the way for later writers to deal with more complex LGBTQ characters and themes. Stonewall had less to do with theaters growing interest in these characters than did the basic sexual revolution that occured throughout the sixties (and even early fifties) Before Stonewall, there were many gay characters in plays done at Cafe Cino by writers such as Doric Wilson and especially Terrance McNally. McNally was twice represented on Broadway by plays which had gay characters "And Things That Go Bump In the Night" and one part of the trilogy of "Morning, Noon and Night" These were produced before the events which occured at the Stonewall in 1969. Additionally, the riots at the Stonewall were not the first uprising of homosexuals against repressive tactics of police and government officials. An earlier famous one took place in San Francisco at Compton's Cafeteria. Stonewall became famous because it was observed annually by the march which still takes place. It's effect was not immediate. Those early marches were comparatively sparse affairs covered for their novelty value as much as for any social and political perceived clout. Persistence quickly paid off after about the fourth year when the March switched from an uptown trek to a downtown March ending at Washington Square for a rally. That rally was controversial because a highlight was an appearance by the young but already becoming famous entertainer Bette Midler. people objected to her being on the stage because she herself was not gay. She quickly won the crowd over though telling them to focus not on fighting among themselves but to square off against the real enemy, the small and narrow minded members of government and the police. (The police in those early years were at best very professional but often very hostile. A huge change happened in the eighties.) As has been pointed out in this thread, many off and off off Broadway shows thrived even before the Stonewall riots. I remember Geese at the Players Theater (Act One was about two lesbians who appeared topless at one point and Act Two about gay men who appeared fully nude. That started five months before Stonewall. And Puppy Dog Tails opened about five months after, too soon to be really affected by the incidents in the Village. Of course, there was The Boys in the Band(1968) and Fortune and Men's Eyes(1967). Not really positive examples of gay life, they were both huge hits and attracted much more media attention than the bar riots. Stonewall and the many subsequent events gave playwrights such as Terrence McNally and Paula Vogel the freedom to have their works produced for a more mainstream audience than the Cafe Cino or the many other off off Broadway LGBTQ theater groups would permit but likely they would have written substantially the same works anyway. it just would have taken them more time to make their breakthrough. | |
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