HowlRound Theatre Commons: When the Lambda Emerging LGBTQ Voices Retreat was born in 2007, it was the first program of its kind for queer writers. Since then, annual week-long workshops have been led by queer faculty from a range of genres, organized by queer administration, for groups of around twelve queer writers of tomorrow.
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The plea for more spaces for queer artists to share their work is one I have heard many times and one that is incredibly important and should be listened to. I used to think that having spaces for only queer people was not a good idea and that it was wrong to assume that people who were not queer wouldn’t understand the experience but I have since changed my mind. Even if there are straight people who try to understand the experience and advocate queer visibility, there is still something missing and that is the understanding that you can only have if you have lived through it. I was lucky enough in high school to be surrounded by other queer people who understood what I was going through and whose experiences I too could understand and I didn’t really acknowledge how important that was until I left that community. In the world of playwriting, I think it is especially important to have these spaces, because, as the article mentioned, there are many other playwrights who will shut down queer playwrights simply because they don’t understand them and I think it’s very important for these queer playwrights to be heard just as much as straight artists are.
This is a really cool idea, and I’m very glad that projects like this exist and are growing. On the other hand, though I hate to be the never-satisfied cynic of the room, there seem to be precious few women in the photographs. There are some, and the author even states towards the end that we should be wary of queer groups comprised exclusively of cis white men, but I always find myself a little uncomfortable with groups that seem to advance the cause of a single letter while purporting to support the entire LGBTQ+ community. Especially considering the little talked of but largely impactful history of prejudice within the LGBTQ+ communities (for instance, negative stereotypes about bisexual and pansexual people, transphobia, etc), representation from a variety of groups within the LGBTQ+ community is extremely important. None of this to say that the Lambda Retreat isn’t doing great work, but it is certainly something to keep in mind.
I am really pleased to hear about this opportunity. I have followed the organization Lambda for a couple years now, but only on their "Legal" branch. Lambda Legal deals with human rights and LGBTQI+ issues by supporting them in court and sending emails to average citizens on what they can do to help the queer community. I understand why people may not feel as much a need for this organization, especially cis-gender straight people. People will feel that "playwriting is playwriting", or that their career is not exclusive of queer people, and not see why someone would need such a space. However, even if unintentional, straight people have been defining what to do, and don't understand the queer experience. Having a special place just for cultivating plays by queer artists will give them a comfortable place to truly bring about a piece that would never be achieved in straight spaces. These plays can bring about new lenses that will provide representation of experience of queer love that comes from a real place. Who knows maybe even the straights will understand and connect through a different medium of people.
I thought this article made some very interesting points about queer media in the entertainment industry! The quote “there wasn't anyone in the room who I needed to justify my queerness to” was very poignant to me because when a character is represented as any type of minority in theatre or television, the reaction from the public is usually, “why did they have to make them gay/black/a woman? Stop pandering!” and yet the thousands and thousands of straight white men are viewed as the ‘default’ and require no justification as to why they are straight white men. I also enjoyed their point about allowing queer artists to take risks and possibly fail; queer and other marginalized media shouldn’t have to be perfect to be allowed to exist or to be enjoyed.
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