Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T22:37:25.811Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Whatever Happened to Gay Theatre?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

With hopes for a repeal of Clause 28 poised for imminent realization or disappointment, a successful European challenge to Britain's policy on gays and lesbians in the armed forces, and an overwhelming House of Commons vote to equalize the gay ‘age of consent’, gay issues are high in the public consciousness. But to what extent are these political events being reflected in contemporary theatre? In this article, Brian Roberts considers the fluctuations in gay visibility, and asks what happened to the gay theatre that sprang to prominence in the 'eighties. He situates the best of present gay theatre work as standing in a critically defining role to mainstream theatre culture, not only through its political conscientizing of ‘queer’ and theatricality, but also in its opposition to an assimilationist gay subculture. Brian Roberts lectures in Drama and Theatre at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and is presently revising his book Artistic Bents: Gay Sensibility and Theatre for publication.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2000

References

Notes and References

1. Taylor, Paul, The Independent, 26 09 1994Google Scholar.

2. This section of the Local Government Act of 1988 is still referred to by its original title of ‘Clause 28’ and states that: ‘A local authority shall not: a) Intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality, b) Promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.’ The section/clause remains on the statute books, unre-formed and unchanged.

3. Crum, John M., Acting Gay: Male Homosexuality in Modern Drama (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992; revised, 1994), p. 281Google Scholar.

4. Sullivan, Andrew, Virtually Normal (London: Picador, 1995), p. 122Google Scholar.

5. ‘Clause 28’ is still the most commonly understood description of the notorious paragraphs. Strictly, when it passed into law it became ‘Section 28’ of the Local Government Act, 1988.

6. Osment, Philip, ed., Gay Sweatshop: Four Plays and a Company (London: Methuen, 1989), p. lxivGoogle Scholar.

7. Osment, Ibid., p. 88.

8. Garfield, Simon's The End of Innocence: Britain in the Time of AIDS (London: Faber, 1994)Google Scholar is a compelling account of the history of the virus in Britain.

9. Bersani, Leo, Homos (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 31–2Google Scholar.

10. Sinfield, Alan, Gay and After (London: Serpent's Tail, 1998), p. 115Google Scholar.

11. Harris, Daniel, The Rise and Fall of Gay Culture (New York: Ballantine Books, 1997), p. 4Google Scholar.

12. Manning, Toby, ‘Gay Culture: Who Needs It?’ in Simpson, Mark, ed., Anti-Gay (London: Cassell, 1996), p. 100Google Scholar.

13. Act-Up (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) was formed in 1989, based on the American organization Outrage. It was/is an ad hoc pressure group which uses theatrical strategies to raise public awareness about Queer issues.

14. Warner, Michael, ed., Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), p xxxi–viiGoogle Scholar.

15. Steven Seidman, Identity and Politics in a ‘Post-modern’ Gay Culture, in Warner, op. cit., p. 129.

16. Ibid., p. 130.

17. Fuss, Diana, Essentially Speaking (London: Rout-ledge, 1989), p. 102–3Google Scholar.

18. Crum, op. cit., p. xvi.

19. Bartlett, Neil, ‘What Mainstream?’, paper delivered in absentia at the ‘Queering the Pitch’ conference, Manchester, September 1994Google Scholar.

20. Dungate, Rod, Playing by the Rules, in Wilcox, Michael, ed., Gay Plays: 5 (London: Methuen, 1994), p. 76Google Scholar.

21. Dungate, Ibid., p. 99.

22. Ravenhill, Mark, interviewed by McAuley, Tilly, Gay Times, 04 1997Google Scholar.

23. Ravenhill, Mark, Shopping and Fucking (London: Methuen, 1997)Google Scholar.

24. Ibid., p. 83.

25. Jonathan Harvey, in an afterword to Beautiful Thing, in Wilcox, ed., Gay Plays: 5, op. cit., p. 210.

26. Harvey, Jonathan, Hushabye Mountain (London: Methuen, 1999), p. 94–5Google Scholar.

27. Robert Lepage, in discussion withEyre, Richard, quoted in Huxley, Michael and Witts, Noel., eds, The Twentieth-Century Performance Reader (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 238–41Google Scholar.