The New York Times: I don’t know whether it was because my parents were just generally open-minded, or because they had a specific, kindly yet mortifying agenda, but one of the first Broadway plays they took me to, in June of 1977, was way too gay for comfort. It was about the closeted son of a Philadelphia family who returns from his fancy New England college to spend the summer at home — which is exactly what I was at that moment.
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The journey of queer media from subtle to explicit and back to subtle is so interesting to me. Once upon a time, plays like The Captive were shut down for merely implying homosexual characters, and to produce media that featured gay characters was taboo. This eventually led to a period of liberation, where everything was queer and nothing was off-limits, giving LGBT+ individuals the chance to explore the facets of sexuality, gender, and identity on stage in overlapping and intersectional ways. This started with the cis white gay man, which was the easiest story for conservative audiences to digest, and eventually led to a revolution of all kinds of other stories that still are not fully represented today. However, it’s interesting to see how this eventually led back to more subtle stories – where queerness can be a side trait, as is mentioned in the article, and not the whole story. After all, queerness is just one part of a person’s identity, so it’s nice to see that now plays can be made where queerness acts as just that: not out of a need to be closeted, but as a reflection of the fact that being gay does not define your entire person.
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