| Popis: |
This introductory chapter provides an overview of both the plays and the people that introduced gay culture to the American stage. These plays either treat strong gay content (like The Boys in the Band), minor gay content (like Season In the Sun), or even a phrase in passing (like the joke in New Faces of 1956 about Rome’s piazza Di Spagna). Other plays portray gay through dog whistles—such as Bell, Book and Candle—while the sense of parody or outright camp in others (like Little Mary Sunshine) are at least gay-adjacent. The chapter also introduces the writers, actors, and creatives who had little interest in portraying gay lives even though they are gay themselves. These pre-Stonewall eminences—such as writer Edward Albee and actor-manager Eva Le Gallienne—are as much a part of the chronicle as such overtly gay-in-content writers as Terrence McNally. |
