Gays on Broadway

Gays on Broadway PDF Author: Ethan Mordden
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190063122
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
A fascinating look at the gay and lesbian influence on the American stage by an internationally-recognized authority on the topic From the genteel female impersonators of the 1910s to the raucous drag queens of La Cage Aux Folles, from the men of The Normal Heart to the women of Fun Home, and from Eva Le Gallienne and Tallulah Bankhead to Tennessee Williams and Nathan Lane, Gays On Broadway deftly chronicles the plays and people that brought gay culture to Broadway. Writing with his customary verve and wit, author Ethan Mordden follows the steady liberation of gay themes on the American stage. The story begins in the early twentieth century, when gay characters were virtually banned from productions. The 1920s saw a flurry of plays closed on moral grounds as well as the Wales Padlock Act, which forbade representation of "sex degeneracy". While authorities made consistent attempts to shutter the movement, the public remained curious, and after a few decades of war making, a truce broke out when The Boys In the Band became a national smash hit. From this point on, gay theatre proved simply too popular to abolish. With this change, theatre was graced with a host of unforgettable characters - from thrill killers to historical figures to drag performers, as well as professional gays (such as the defiantly effeminate window dresser in Kiss of the Spider Woman), closeted gays, and those run-of-the-mill citizens who don't reside entirely within the colorful nonconformist identity (such as the two male lovers in the dinner-theatre comedy Norman, Is That You?). Spoken plays and musicals, playwrights, directors, and actors all played their part in popularizing the gay movement through art. Gays on Broadway is an essential chronological review of the long journey to bring the culture of gay men and women onto the American stage.

Gays on Broadway

Gays on Broadway PDF Author: Ethan Mordden
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190063122
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Get Book Here

Book Description
A fascinating look at the gay and lesbian influence on the American stage by an internationally-recognized authority on the topic From the genteel female impersonators of the 1910s to the raucous drag queens of La Cage Aux Folles, from the men of The Normal Heart to the women of Fun Home, and from Eva Le Gallienne and Tallulah Bankhead to Tennessee Williams and Nathan Lane, Gays On Broadway deftly chronicles the plays and people that brought gay culture to Broadway. Writing with his customary verve and wit, author Ethan Mordden follows the steady liberation of gay themes on the American stage. The story begins in the early twentieth century, when gay characters were virtually banned from productions. The 1920s saw a flurry of plays closed on moral grounds as well as the Wales Padlock Act, which forbade representation of "sex degeneracy". While authorities made consistent attempts to shutter the movement, the public remained curious, and after a few decades of war making, a truce broke out when The Boys In the Band became a national smash hit. From this point on, gay theatre proved simply too popular to abolish. With this change, theatre was graced with a host of unforgettable characters - from thrill killers to historical figures to drag performers, as well as professional gays (such as the defiantly effeminate window dresser in Kiss of the Spider Woman), closeted gays, and those run-of-the-mill citizens who don't reside entirely within the colorful nonconformist identity (such as the two male lovers in the dinner-theatre comedy Norman, Is That You?). Spoken plays and musicals, playwrights, directors, and actors all played their part in popularizing the gay movement through art. Gays on Broadway is an essential chronological review of the long journey to bring the culture of gay men and women onto the American stage.

Gays on Broadway

Gays on Broadway PDF Author: Ethan Mordden
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190063106
Category : American drama
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
"This is a chronological review of both the plays and the people that brought the world of homosexuals, bisexuals, transexuals, metrosexuals, and the sexually fluid to the American stage. The plays--which take in a few foreign imports--treat strong gay content (e. g., The Boys in the Band or The Killing of sister George), or minor gay content (Season In the Sun, The Nervous Set), or even a phrase in passing (as in New Faces of 1956's joke about Rome's piazza Di Spagna, so niche that perhaps fifty people got it during the show's six-month run). I have included as well plays that portray gay through dog whistles (such as Bell, Book and Candle, in which the witches are really gay people) and even plays whose sense of parody or outright camp (such as Little Mary Sunshine or Johnny Guitar) are at least gay-adjacent. As for the people in the book--writers, actors, creatives-- I have included profiles of some who, though gay, had little interest in portraying gay lives--Edward Albee, for example, even as his influence not as a writer about gay but rather as a writer who is gay was extremely broad, so conclusive that he takes pride of place at the end of this volume. These so to say pre-Stonewall eminences--actor-manager Eva Le Gallienne is another one--are as much a part of the chronicle as such overtly gay-in-content writers as Terrence McNally"--

The Torch Song Trilogy

The Torch Song Trilogy PDF Author: Harvey Fierstein
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Out on Stage

Out on Stage PDF Author: Alan Sinfield
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300081022
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
This intriguing, authoritative book tracks stage representations of lesbians and gay men from Oscar Wilde to the present day and examines scores of British and American plays and playwrights, including works by Wilde, Maugham, Coward, Hellman, O'Neill, Le Roi Jones, and Joe Orton.

How To Be Gay

How To Be Gay PDF Author: David M. Halperin
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674070860
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 421

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Book Description
No one raises an eyebrow if you suggest that a guy who arranges his furniture just so, rolls his eyes in exaggerated disbelief, likes techno music or show tunes, and knows all of Bette Davis's best lines by heart might, just possibly, be gay. But if you assert that male homosexuality is a cultural practice, expressive of a unique subjectivity and a distinctive relation to mainstream society, people will immediately protest. Such an idea, they will say, is just a stereotype-ridiculously simplistic, politically irresponsible, and morally suspect. The world acknowledges gay male culture as a fact but denies it as a truth. David Halperin, a pioneer of LGBTQ studies, dares to suggest that gayness is a specific way of being that gay men must learn from one another in order to become who they are. Inspired by the notorious undergraduate course of the same title that Halperin taught at the University of Michigan, provoking cries of outrage from both the right-wing media and the gay press, How To Be Gay traces gay men's cultural difference to the social meaning of style. Far from being deterred by stereotypes, Halperin concludes that the genius of gay culture resides in some of its most despised features: its aestheticism, snobbery, melodrama, adoration of glamour, caricatures of women, and obsession with mothers. The insights, impertinence, and unfazed critical intelligence displayed by gay culture, Halperin argues, have much to offer the heterosexual mainstream.

The Flower Drum Song

The Flower Drum Song PDF Author: C. Y. Lee
Publisher: Penguin Books
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
Originally published in 1957, one of the first novels of the Chinese-American experience is now back in print to tie in with the Broadway revival.

Mothers and Sons

Mothers and Sons PDF Author: Terrence McNally
Publisher: Dramatists Play Service Inc
ISBN: 0822231832
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 48

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Book Description
At turns funny and powerful, MOTHERS AND SONS portrays a woman who pays an unexpected visit to the New York apartment of her late son's partner, who is now married to another man and has a young son. Challenged to face how society has changed around her, generations collide as she revisits the past and begins to see the life her son might have led.

Bent

Bent PDF Author: Martin Sherman
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
ISBN: 9781557833365
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 84

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Book Description
(Applause Books). Martin Sherman's worldwide hit play Bent took London by storm in 1979 when it was first performed by the Royal Court Theatre, with Ian McKellen as Max (a character written with the actor in mind). The play itself caused an uproar. "It educated the world," Sherman explains. "People knew about how the Third Reich treated Jews and, to some extent, gypsies and political prisoners. But very little had come out about their treatment of homosexuals." Gays were arrested and interned at work camps prior to the genocide of Jews, gypsies, and handicapped, and continued to be imprisoned even after the fall of the Third Reich and liberation of the camps. The play Bent highlights the reason why - a largely ignored German law, Paragraph 175, making homosexuality a criminal offense, which Hitler reactivated and strengthened during his rise to power.

One Year on Broadway

One Year on Broadway PDF Author: Kathryn McKendry
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781735610016
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Have you ever been so touched by a story that it changed your life? One Year on Broadway is the unlikely true story of two musical theater fans whose lives were forever changed by seeing a touring production of Once on This Island in 1992. What they saw that night was a version of their own story played out on the stage and it gave them the courage to fight for their own forbidden love. Twenty-five years later, by some strange twist of fate, they were led back to the Island where they ignored conventional wisdom, took a leap of faith, and became co-producers of the Tony Award winning Broadway Revival of Once on This Island. This is their love letter to the musical that gave them more than they ever could have imagined

Stagestruck

Stagestruck PDF Author: Sarah Schulman
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822322641
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
Stagestruck: theater, AIDS, and the marketing of gay America.