Hi there, everyone, and happy Pride.
I'm Eric Ulloa, and these are Iconic LGBTQ Moments in the Theater
You Should Know.
I have always had a deep passion
for not only the history of theater, but the history of the LGBTQ community.
Knowing your history
is, knowing you stand on the fierce shoulders of those that came before you.
So I've teamed up with Roberto Araujo, the team at Playbill and four other LGBTQ
Broadway stars, to empower and uplift you each week of Pride 2022.
So let's learn a little something.
Now, when I ask you, what's the first openly gay play or the first play
to feature openly gay characters or mine goes to the same place?
A birthday party shared among a group of gay friends becomes a deep dive
into their own personal torture, and a hell of a fight ensues.
That's right, Boys in the Band.
And with that answer, you'd be...
wrong.
The answer to that question has a long, winding and interesting road.
So join me back to the 1920s.
We all know Mae West for her famous persona
and that classic “Come up and see me some time.”
That was the worst Mae West impression ever.
Anyways, did you know that she was a playwright?
Yup. Mae West wrote and starred in her own plays on Broadway in the 1920s.
Plays considered so scandalous that she was arrested
on multiple occasions for “corrupting the morals of youth.”
But most scandalous of all was a play called The Drag.
Now, The Drag was a play written under Mae's pen name.
Jane Mast.
The play not only had homosexuals and cross-dressing in it, but
scandalous of scandalous!
It argued for the sympathetic treatment of homosexuals,
a huge financial success and out of town tryouts in New Jersey and Connecticut.
The play brought in $30,000 on opening night.
So they transfer it to Broadway, right? Not so fast.
The critics have all the papers in 1927 had different plans and destroyed the play
and of out-of-town reviews for its open portrayal of homosexuality.
And the play closed after two weeks.
It was then told the producers by government agencies
that if they dared to bring this play to Broadway,
all Broadway productions that season would be scrutinized and censored.
And to top it all off.
You guessed it Mae West went to jail
this time for ten days and a fine of $500.
Now how did they get away with this?
Well there was a law in place the 1927 Padlock Law
prohibited homosexual matter on the stage.
Can you actually imagine trying to keep a homosexual matter off
the stage in this business?
I digress.
Now, the sad reality
was that for decades and decades, we could kind of see ourselves on stage
written by Masters like Tennessee Williams and Lillian Hellman.
But these were often sad, tragic, closet cases for which no happy ending
would ever be afforded. And then came the 60s.
Lanford Wilson delivered us a new play that premiered at Cafe Cino
in May of 1964.
The Madness of Lady Bride.
Now the play's a monologue
delivered by an aging drag queen and was noted by many critics
and historians as the first to depict a gay character in an unsensational way.
Now, there's no way to make certain that Lady Bright was the first,
but it has been dubbed
as one of the first gay plays in which a gay character was portrayed as a human
and not a villain or a depressive or a deviant.
And what we do know for certain was that the door had been kicked open
and we came ready to tell our authentic stories.
We were even ready to sing about them.
The first openly gay characters in musicals...
Whoa, whoa Beth! That's next week.
So here's where I leave you
and tell you to keep going, keep googling, keep researching, type in these topics.
I gave you an appetizer and there is a whole feast out there.
We'll be back next week with a new host and a new topic to remind you
of the powerful history of this gorgeous, diverse community.
Happy Pride family!