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Adonis Perez

Professor Thames

ENC 1102

October 4, 2020

Glitter and be Gay : An Exploration of the Elements and Common Threads Found in

Contemporary Queer Theatre as a Genre

Throughout the years, the stories that are showcased on Broadway change with the social

and political climate of our country. These stories often function as a mirror to society and the

audience. It is not a big secret that a large majority of Broadway’s patrons as well as performers

are members of the LGBTQ+ community, but it was not until the last couple of decades that the

queer community has been freely portrayed onstage. Queer members of society have always

been present but their truths and their lives were considered too scandalous to be portrayed in

front of audiences. Through this article I want to explore how queer lives were finally welcomed

into the stage and how they were embraced. Most of the plays portraying queer characters are

political in nature, and often result as a cry for change from the queer community. Queer theatre

has been around for a few decades now an it appears to be in a constant state of metamorphoses.

But what exactly makes a script part a queer play? Is it the type of characters they explore? Is it

the style in which the stories are told? What type of stories do they tell, and what type of stories

do they leave out?

Queer theatre functions in a way that breaks the standards and rules of conventional

plays. Rather than try to fit into the lines created by heteronormative society, queer people have

created a theatre that is solely meant for them. With all the rule breaking and form changing it
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can be a little difficult to pinpoint what constitutes as queer theatre. As a queer playwright, I

think it is important for me to know and study that history. It’s also important for other queer

people in general to break down their history and their struggles and how they were presented to

an American audience. Queer theatre is important in terms of visibility for the LGBTQ+

community. As a playwright, I think it is important for me to tell those stories. I want to

specifically break down the genre of contemporary queer theatre because I also want to

eventually add to it.

It is safe to say that while queer representation onstage has always existed in one form or

another (mostly coded language and symbolism), it was never as transparent and literal until the

early eighties when the AIDS epidemic obliterated a large part of the queer community. David

Roman writes an article entitled “It's My Party and I'll Die If I Want to!': Gay Men, AIDS, and

the Circulation of Camp in U.S. Theatre” in which he discusses the birth of queer theatre as well

as early conventions and styles of this new (at the time) gay play. Through my reading, all signs

point to the play Angels in America as the catalyst for contemporary gay theatre. An article by

Alan-Kilner Johnson dissects the play specifically and how it uses elements of camp to tell this

specific story about mostly gay men. A couple of years pass and the “gay play” becomes very

common on Broadway theatres as the daily lives of gay men are showcased onstage. Leopold

Libert writes an article detailing how the daily lives of gay men are dissected on Broadway

stages as a way to normalize queer people and connect them to a heteronormative society. Fast-

forward to our current times and contemporary theatre audiences readily know the term “gay

play”. They have an idea of what it is, but on a similar level they have no idea what they are

going to walk into because the types of worlds explored in queer theatre are so expansive. An

article by Louisa Hann discusses the threads between The Inheritance (the most recent “gay
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play” to hit Broadway”) and Angels in America, which is often considered the father, or “motha

darling” if you will, of contemporary queer theatre. There is enough conventions to the genre

that people have their criticisms like the ones explored in articles by C. Winter Han and Zachary

Small. Both of these articles criticize queer theatre for its lack of ethnic diversity and its focus on

the life of conventionally attractive well-off white men. But is that really all that queer theatre is,

according to what is presented on Broadway? While a lack of character diversity is certainly a

bad characteristic, considering a contemporary lens, it does not negate it from being a

characteristic. Is one of the genre conventions of contemporary queer scripts the fact that is has

to focus on a white male body? Is that a common thread that qualifies a script into that specific

genre? Throughout my research I did not run into much that gave a thorough definition for queer

theatre. I want to explore what makes a script a part of queer theatre. There is of course style,

characters, tone, subject material, and one element that I specifically identified as camp.

Before diving into the research, one major thing to do is identify or give definition to the

ever-elusive word. What is camp? If the 2019 Met Gala (with its Camp theme) is any indication,

it is clear that a majority of heterosexuals would not be able to identify what camp is if it

melodramatically slapped them across the face with all its over-the-top glory. Camp is drama.

Camp is flair. Camp is tongue-in-cheek art. It is a deliberate taste for tackiness mixed with class.

In all honesty, camp is an effervescent state of being that takes many forms. A dog show is as

campy as Cher, Britney Spears, and the Kardashians. Guy Fieri is a heterosexual version of

camp, if that starts to help put things into perspective. Camp has the ability of taking low art and

presenting it as high art. Camp has been a part of the queer community since the beginning

because it allows the community freedom to express themselves while simultaneously laughing

at themselves. It helps that the epitome of camp finds itself within drag queens, who are revered
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among the community as royalty. Camp became essential to the queer community because in a

time of silence it was a way to identify themselves within a society where they had to keep their

sexual identity a secret. A common way to ask another man if they were gay back in the day was

to ask “are you a friend of Dorothy?” Dorothy of course being the character Judy Garland (who,

just to clarify, was not camp herself, but liking Judy Garland is very camp) played in the Wizard

of Oz (which is camp). Camp was a way for homosexuals to express themselves in a society that

told them to quiet down and hide. Camp has been claimed by the queer community with such

fervor that one could name anything gay men stereotypically flock to and it is camp in one form

or another.

But how exactly does camp fit into the world of Queer Theatre, other than being an

essential part of the queer community (and just as sidenote, a limp wrist? Very camp)?

Theatricality in itself is full on camp. Now that does not mean every play is camp, that is far

from the truth. In fact, most realistic dramatic plays are far from camp. Musicals on the other

hand, there is just no way around it, are mostly unanimously camp. But Queer theatre has found

a way to exalt camp into its pages and scripts. Like mentioned before, it’s a little hard to box in

Queer Theatre scripts as a genre because they all create and explore such different landscapes.

There of course has to be threads because otherwise there would not be a genre, they would be

their own individual thing. For my research I set out to analyze six major work in the Queer

Theatre canon and find out what they had in common. I approached this with the idea that Queer

Theatre’s most important common thread is its use of camp in the script to tell a story. I made

sure to include plays from across the decades and written by a diverse handful of playwrights. It

is true that if one looks at the Queer Theatre cannon it mostly consists of plays written by white

gay men about other white gay men. Some could argue that that observation is a common thread
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to begin with, but I don’t agree with that. I believe that those voices have definitely sounded the

loudest in the community, but they are not the only ones and there is certainly no gender or race

requirement for queer theatre. Another requirement for picking these plays was that they had to

have been on Broadway, as that demonstrates a certain level of success.

Logically it made sense to start the analysis in a chronological order, but this proves a

little tricky. Out of the set of plays, The Boys in the Band by Mart Crowley was the first written

but it did not premier on Broadway until 2018. The Boys in the Band premiered in 1968 in an

Off-Broadway theatre. It garnered an incredible amount of attention because it was the first play

ever to depict gay men in all their gay men glory. There was no coded language, no symbolism,

just one big undeniable gay party. The play follows nine gay men in 1968 in a New York

apartment celebrating the birthday of one of their friends. The first box it ticks in the in Queer

Theatre genre is that it is written by a gay man. As demonstrated by the plays to follow, it is

essential for a piece in the Queer Theatre genre to be written by someone who is a part of the gay

community. The script itself is written in the style of realism, with one non-moving set. There

are no jumps in time, no scene changes, no flashbacks. Everything in the script is presented as a

slice of life. While the latter plays have elements of camp pop up in interesting theatrical

elements, the camp in this play comes from the characters themselves. The characters, while

being three-dimensional, have stereotypical elements of gay men. Most of them are obsessed

with fashion and female stars and that becomes a constant subject in the dialogue. The characters

are vicious which other, poking jabs at their insecurities and misfortunes. At one point the reader

(or audience member) begins to wonder why they are all friends to begin with. This type of catty

dialogue and conflict where much of the element of camp is found.

The following play in the set is Angels in America written by Tony Kushner in 1991. The

plays follows a group of gay men in New York and their family members as the AIDS crisis

takes over. The lead of the play is Prior, who is the embodiment of camp. The character is an ex-

drag queen who speaks with quotes from female stars in the forties and fifties. Another elemnt of

camp that is brought into play is the way that the world of the script is structure. Prior gets AIDS

and eventually starts to deteriorate and some of the scenes written in the play are dream

sequences. This overtly dramatic element can be counted as part of the camp found in the play.

Prior is haunted by the ghosts of his ancestors and eventually becomes a sort of prophet for gay

men, seeing visions and talking with divine spirits. At the play’s climax an angel crashes through

the roof to greet Prior, who is only able to say “God almighty… very Steven Spielberg.” This

end with it’s dramatic flair and nod to pop culture is the epitome of camp.

The following script I reviewed in the Queer Theatre genre was the musical Falsettos

with music and lyrics by William Finn and book by William Finn and James Lapine. One does

not have to look far to find the camp in this script because as I briefly touched on before,

musicals are just camp to begin with. The idea of someone breaking out into song is just campy.

The script follows a middle class Jewish family as the father leaves his wives to be with his new

male lover. The elements of camp are first established in the pseudo world created in the scripts.

The setting of this very real story is Falsettoland, a place that does not actually exist. The

characters often speak (or sing) in poetry rather than complete sentences. Characters exist in

different planes and settings at once. At times one character could be singing what they are

actually saying aloud while the other characters sings what they are thinking. This whole concept

allows for an exaggeration of theatrical elements and conventions which ultimately end up being

expressed as camp.
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WORKS CITED

Han, C. Winter. “The Deliberate Racism Making #Gaymediasowhite.” Contexts, vol. 16, no. 4,

2017, pp. 70–71. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26370598. Accessed 28 Sept. 2020.

Hann, Louisa. ‘If We Can’t Have a Conversation with Our Past, then what will be Our Future?’:

HIV/AIDS, Queer Generationalism, and Utopian Performatives in Matthew Lopez’s The

Inheritance, English: Journal of the English Association. https://doi.org/10.1093/english/

Efaa014.

Kilner-Johnson, Alan ‘[God] Is A Flaming Hebrew Letter’: Esoteric Camp in Angels in America.’

Literature and Theology, Volume 33, Issue 2, June 2019, Pages 206-222

https://doi.org/10.1093/litthe/frz003

Lippert, Leopold. “‘How Do You Think We Get to Pottery Barn?" Mainstream Gay Drama,

Homonormativity, and the Culture of Neoliberalism.” South Atlantic Review, vol. 75, no.

3, 2010, pp. 41–59. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41635633. Accessed 28 Sept. 2020.

Román, David. “'It's My Party and I'll Die If I Want to!': Gay Men, AIDS, and the Circulation of

Camp in U.S. Theatre.” Theatre Journal, vol. 44, no. 3, 1992, pp. 305–327. JSTOR,

www.jstor.org/stable/3208551. Accessed 28 Sept. 2020.

Small, Zachary. "LGBTQ, Emphasis on the Q: A new generation of theatremarkers is ready to blow up

the gay canon and reclaim a defiantly queer aesthetic." American Theatre, vol. 35, no. 1,

Jan. 2018, p. 66+. Gale Academic OneFileSelect,https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A5237956

19/EAIM?u=orla57816&sid=EAIM&xid=32181926. Accessed 18 Sept. 2020.