Acting Gay in the Age of Queer: Pondering the Revival of The Boys in the Band
| Autor: | Timothy Scheie |
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| Rok vydání: | 1999 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Modern Drama. 42:1-15 |
| ISSN: | 1712-5286 0026-7694 |
| DOI: | 10.3138/md.42.1.1 |
| Popis: | "Bellwether," "watershed," "crossroads," "turning point": with these and other ponderous terms, critics have hailed Mart Crowley's 1968 The Boys in the Band as the breakthrough production that brought frank and direct representations of homosexuality to American theatre. Where earlier plays had disposed of their "deviant" characters in a denouement that was often tantamount to a cleansing of the homosexual taint, spectators of The Boys in the Band witnessed for the first time a group of men discussing their sex lives, dancing together, kissing, and even having sex on a mainstream stage. The play takes the spectator to an exclusively gay birthday party at the apartment of Michael, a troubled man who coerces his guests into playing a truth game that elicits a series of witty barbs, confessions, and emotional outbursts as each tells the story of his life and loves. In a marked reversal of theatre tradition, the sole straight character, Michael's former college roommate Alan, is the outsider; it is his unexpected arrival that triggers an explosive scene in Crowley's play, and the restoration of order requires the purging of the straight man from the stage. The Boys in the Band was a hit (1002 perfonnances). Thereafter, gay characters have frequently occupied center stage instead of the more pathologized regions of the margins, and "gay plays" have flourished in the years since The Boys' success. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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