Love is in the Air for the "New Breed" of Gay Theater

Thomas Jay Ryan and Michael Urie in The Temperamentals (Pic: Michael Portainiere/FollowSpotPhoto.com)

A front page article in The New York Times discusses an interesting shift that's going on when it comes to gay-themed plays and musicals.

The article suggests that gay theater is moving away from the politics of the past and into more personal themes such as love and relationships.

These productions about gay life make little or no mention of H.I.V. or AIDS and keep direct activism at arm’s length, with militant crusading portrayed with ambivalence more than ardor.

The politics of these shows — there are seven of them opening in New York in the next several weeks — are subtler, more nuanced: they place the everyday concerns of Americans in a gay context, thereby pressing the case that gay love and gay marriage, gay parenthood and gay adoption are no different from their straight variations.

So what's brought about this potential sea change in theater?

Patrick Heusinger and Patrick Breen in Next Fall (Pic: Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)

According to iconic writer Larry Kramer, he's witnessed this progression firsthand.

Mr. Kramer said that he has seen an evolution in plays with gay themes over time. The Boys in the Band was the first long-running Off Broadway show about gay life, and its 1,000 performances encompassed a period of police raids and arrests at gay bars, including the night, in June 1969, of the Stonewall riots. In the 1980s and ’90s The Normal Heart, Angels in America and other plays took aim at the Reagan and Bush administrations, among other targets. Today, finding support for AIDS research remains a major struggle. But Mr. Kramer said that playwrights and audiences now seem to have an appetite for a broader array of gay stories, whether political or not.

“I think we’ve reached the stage where anything goes in shows about gay characters, and we’re seeing plays with more themes than those that are explicitly political or are about oppression alone,” Mr. Kramer said.

This is obviously great news for gay visibility. The political and angry gay themes still exist (as they should), but they're also sharing the stage with more personal stories and universal themes.

Which is what we've been fighting for all along.

Bobby Steggert and Ivan Hernandez in Yank! (Pic: Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)

The New York Times has a terrific slide show of past and present gay theater, including The Pride and the re-do of Boys in the Band. And we're interested to know - do you prefer the political themes of the 80's and 90's, or the newer, more relationship-oriented gay themes?