Almost a decade ago, as his play Love! Valour! Compassion! was making its Los Angeles debut, Terrence McNally said, in a Los Angeles Times article, there was no longer such a thing as "gay theatre." What exactly did he mean? At that time, in the mid-1990s, countless gay-themed plays were opening in Los Angeles, led by a steady stream of works dealing with AIDS. There were also countless exploitative nudie-boy comedies--sniggering descendants of the mindless heterosexual sex farces. McNally's point was that in a diverse artistic environment, maintaining a distinct category for plays incorporating gay subject matter was no longer necessary. He was, perhaps, premature in his vision of a homogenous culture in which audiences embraced equally characters of various sexual persuasions. Yet his words seem much closer to the truth today.
In two previous Back Stage West articles ("Gay Players," 12/10/98, and "Gay Theatre Grows Up," 12/7/00), we wrote about the huge number of gay-themed plays being staged in Los Angeles and vicinity, surveying what was out there and how it was being received. The 2000 article reported that this sub-genre had greatly matured during the two years between articles. Four and a half years later, that maturation process has progressed in leaps and bounds. There are fewer specifically gay-themed plays--a healthy process of natural selection has occurred--and the quality is generally more consistent.
Four men, each with a stake in L.A. gay theatre, share their viewpoints with us, as we continue to check the pulse of the culture.
Jim Talbot, longtime chairman for the theatre screening division of the L.A. chapter of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), monitors quantity and subject matter in local stage offerings that include lesbian, gay, bisexual, transvestite, or transgendered characters. As with the GLAAD divisions that examine film and television content, Talbot's group looks at portrayals of LGBT characters, hoping to find multidimensional depictions rather than characters who are "good" or "bad." The group strives to promote the presentation of gays as well-rounded humans rather than stereotypes. According to Talbot, the total number of L.A. plays screened by his committee last year was 123, down 20 from 2003. If the patterns of the first half of this year continue, he believes the total will be down even further for 2005. He seeks out every L.A. production that has even a miniscule amount of gay content, and his volunteer members check out the fare.
Of his current list of plays, Talbot notes the many revivals on his list--such as Cabaret and Bent. Last year revivals amounted to 13 percent of the plays the group screened. The committee considers revivals for award nominations but seeks to honor only those that give a "cutting-edge" interpretation; he cites Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake as an example. Of the plays screened for 2004, Talbot notes that 16 percent were lesbian plays and 11 percent to 12 percent involved bisexuals. Plays with transgender characters were at 6 percent last year, and Talbot expects that to rise to 8 percent this year; Hedwig and the Angry Inch is the prime example of this group. Talbot observes, "Lots of the new plays have lesbians, gays, and bisexuals interacting. Our graphs show that the scope of sexual experiences in these plays is expanding; the plays are looking at the whole spectrum. There are also more plays that include both gay and straight characters, an overlap of cultures that reflects current realities in our society."
Talbot feels the overall quality continues to improve--fewer shoddy offerings, and more professionalism in low-budget productions. If one defines gay theatre as plays pitched primarily to gay audiences, he believes the demographics for such shows are dominated by gay men older than 50. "The younger guys prefer to go to clubs, not theatre," he says, "unless it is something like Pinafore." He is referring to Mark Savage's 2001 smash-hit musical, which played at the Celebration Theatre. The show parlayed a rollicking Gilbert and Sullivan spoof, set in an all-gay Navy, into a trenchant satire on the U.S. military's "don't-ask, don't tell" policy and discrimination within the gay community--the "butch" guys looking down on the "fems." The production netted honors from virtually every L.A. awards group.
Talbot says there are far fewer sleazy gay comedies in recent years. At one point, scantily clad stars of gay male porn, with little or no acting experience, were being regularly cast in what amounted to soft-porn stage shows. Beyond this, many comedies existed for the sole purpose of scattering seamy double-entendres and getting the male characters out of their pants, in a burlesque tradition. The nadir was reached a few years ago with a play about a leering uncle and his underage nephew that tried to present their unsavory flirtations as comical. The producers didn't seem to understand why the houses were empty, or why the few patrons who showed up weren't laughing. The play swiftly closed, even before the scathing reviews came out.
Ronnie Larsen (Making Porn) and his producer Caryn Horwitz have built their own cottage industry, traveling from city to city with Larsen's titillating gay plays. The good news is that in his most recent efforts he's making a clear effort to move beyond lowbrow humor into incisive satires of the urban gay experience, although sex is still a key ingredient.
In 1998 and '99, the Celebration Theatre hit pay dirt with Robert Schrock's long-running revue Naked Boys Singing, which most critics agreed was a jolly and respectable lark, not at all prurient schlock. Observers acknowledged, however, that the full-frontal nudity and sexual humor were the main reason enough tickets were sold to save the Celebration during a difficult economic period. The show moved to New York and enjoyed a long Off-Broadway run.
Talbot finds the overall gay theatre scene to be vastly different from a decade ago. He says when he first joined GLAAD, his group had only 12 plays to screen. He calls the progress over the years a "quantum leap," the quality more significant than the quantity. "The diversity of the gay culture, and the culture as a whole, is better reflected," he says. "There is not so much of a separate gay culture. What we used to think of as gay sensibility has changed, and straight people can relate to it."
Those queried agree the healthiest development for plays with gay characters or themes is twofold. First, plays with substantial gay characters and themes--Richard Greenberg's Take Me Out, Jon Robin Baitz's The Paris Letter, and Doug Wright's I Am My Own Wife--are increasingly finding a way into mainstream theatres, playing to more diverse audiences. Second, as in film and on TV, it isn't uncommon to find gays and lesbians as leading or supporting characters in stories that don't revolve around gay-related issues. They come across as an integral part of society--as McNally hoped and predicted.
But does Los Angeles still need theatre groups that identify themselves as gay-focused? The granddaddy is the respected and heavily awarded 23-year-old Celebration, now under the supervision of Artistic Director Michael Matthews, a recent Chicago transplant. Another long-lived group is the Lily Tomlin Jane Wagner Cultural Arts Program, at the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center. Suffering from funding cutbacks over the past few years, the center occasionally offers gay-interest fare, primarily through Sue Hamilton's Lesbians in Theatre series. Hamilton achieved success recently with her revival of Jane Chambers' watershed ensemble drama Last Summer at Bluefish Cove. The Ivy Theatre, a local company devoted to lesbian-oriented fare, was prolific from 1998 to 2001 but is currently inactive, though not officially disbanded. Another company producing lesbian plays, from a Latina point of view, is producer-director-writer-actor Odalys Nanin's Macha Theatre, founded in 2002.
Dennis Nollette, the Celebration's board president, believes gay theatre is still necessary, though he asserts that the mission has evolved. "I think gay theatre is more mature than it has ever been," he says. "The Stonewall generation fought like hell to keep gay identity from being trampled under. Though it took a long time, now they've won the fight. The younger generation doesn't know what it used to be like. In the beginning the Celebration was such a statement--just the fact that it even existed, saying, 'We're here, we're here, we're here.' We are beyond that now, and life goes on. The concerns of the gay community are different."
Agreeing with Nollette is Bill Kaiser, a longtime supporter of gay theatre. He runs the Purple Circuit website (www.buddybuddy.com/pc.html) and hotline, reporting on gay theatre activity nationwide. He also serves as curator for the performing arts division of the One Institute in Los Angeles, a research library and museum dedicated to gay culture. He says, "I can remember, when I first came to L.A. in 1981 and served on the Celebration board for a while, gays were just happy be represented onstage. That was more important than seeing fine production values. We're seeing a far better caliber of production now. The participants are more technically proficient than they used to be, and there is more money put into the productions. The AIDS plays were a gut reaction to the horrors facing all of us. Now things are less intense. Topical issues are being integrated more into the story, instead of serving as the central focus."
Nollette says the Celebration receives many promising new gay-themed scripts. He believes there are new issues important to gays worth dramatizing now, substantiating a continuing need for the Celebration and theatres of its ilk. "For example, there were no plays about gay marriage 10 years ago," he notes. A recent gay-marriage play presented in a theatre not focused on gay issues was the Black Dahlia Theatre's Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle–winning world premiere of Richard Kramer's Theater District, about a child being raised by his divorced father and the father's new male lover.
Nollette points out that the next Celebration play, Scott Smith's Buddies, the first under Matthews' helm, represents another form of progress. "It doesn't deal with big issues, such as the fight against AIDS or discrimination. Years ago, we struck a chord with plays like Mark Savage's The Ballad of Little Mikey, a coming-out story that was hugely popular for its time. That's less of an issue these days, and that play might not resonate if we brought I back. The fun thing about Buddies is that it assumes a gay world. The passing years have made it possible for plays to simply assume a universe where it's okay to be gay. Now we can deal with everyday matters, such as what does it mean to have a gay relationship."
Matthews, a 26-year-old director with a long and successful career in Chicago, accepted his new post in February, replacing Derek Charles Livingston, who resigned after four years. Under Livingston's leadership, the Celebration reached new plateaus of excellence, contributing greatly to the upsurge in local standards. Matthews, whose challenge is to continue the Celebration's artistic growth, says there is a lot of gay-oriented fare in Chicago, at the city's two gay-specific venues and beyond. He believes there is a lot of quality gay theatre in various U.S. cities in general.
Matthews also believes gay theatre has gone through many changes during the past 20 years. "In the 1980s, I think it was predominantly political," he explains. "Then in the '90s it became very much about sex. Lots of these plays started to become nothing more than cash cows. I want to cover relevant human issues. That's why I still believe in the need for a gay theatre company. Gay relationships are not the same as straight relationships, and there are issues that need to be dealt with. I want so desperately for [the Celebration] to offer plays that are driven by language, and to offer a portrait of what our life is now--about how people connect. Even if we do some revivals of old shows [such as the planned staging of Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour], I want the productions to reflect on how the world is today."
He continues, "I agree that it is healthy that gay characters are much more integrated into general entertainment than they ever have been before. At the same time, that doesn't mean that certain plays should not be presented that are more relevant to gays than to a general audience. My mission is to bring in more of that Chicago quality of edgy, storefront theatre to L.A. I do believe gay theatre in L.A. is currently going through a renaissance, and this is a great time to make the most of it and nurture it toward greater success." BSW
Watch Back Stage West for our upcoming feature on gay film.