Scarlet Masque Theatre Journal New Beginnings and Fond Farewells Vol. 1 | Page 8

Nathan Muha
Professor Cherry
THE 303 - New York Stage and Screen
Queer Drama in New York City:
How We Respond to the Theatre of the LGBTQ+ Community Informs and Catalyzes
Sociopolitical Climate Over Time
Introduction
Queer drama as an art form can be concisely, if not incompletely, defined as any form of
theatre that deals directly or indirectly with issues pertaining to the LGBTQ+ community.
Standards for queer drama are hard to come by unless you’re talking about the great queer
literary figures of the 20th century: Tennessee Williams, Christopher Isherwood, Gore Vidal, and
some would venture to include outspoken feminist author Toni Morrison. It’s hard given this lofty
of criteria to imagine the context of how queer drama truly got its start, and where it generally
lies in the view of the public eye. The notions of what sexuality means and how people interpret
that meaning personally, politically, or culturally have shifted dramatically since the beginnings of
Gay Liberation in the late 1960s (following the rising tide of the larger Civil Rights Movements). I
believe, then, that it is important to consider these notions of shifting aspects and views of
sexuality with those who are most directly affected by it, the members of the LGBTQ+
community, along with the art that they create as a means of representing themselves to the
public.
This essay will serve to examine significant pieces of queer drama that poured out of the
cultural hub of New York City that range from the obscure to the infamous, the ways in which
these stories were produced, and how the voices of the authors and creators came to be and
what their notions of theatre and art could do to represent themselves as people within the
LGBTQ+ community. These examinations ultimately lead to questions of how general society
addresses these works and where they stand in relation to it over time. Although the scope of