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Gwen Sour
Theatre History
Andy Felt
29 April 2019
LGBT Theatre: 1900’s – 1960’s

When putting in the research for LGBT Theatre from this time period I was

frankly shocked at the sheer volume of available theatre. One can presume due to

rampant homophobia, transphobia, and larger-scale attempts to eradicate and erase

LGBT people and their history that there would not be an abundance of LGBT

theatre from any time earlier than the 1970’s. A large issue regarding resources

prior to the Second World War is that there is information that they existed, but

there is not information about the productions themselves.

The first source I found was the book Not in Front of the Audience:

Homosexuality Onstage written by Nicholas de Jongh. In de Jongh’s book takes a look

at American and English theatre between 1925 and 1959 and discusses LGBT

theatre from this time-span. I would say the scholarship of the book is within a

decent standing due to it having more information about gay theatre between the

50’s and 60’s but lacking larger chunks about LGBT theatre prior to that point. It

does, however, mention that pre-1950 most LGBT theatre artists remained in the

closet due to the Christian Church having a firm grasp on the theatre scene, which

may explain a lack of scholarship at an earlier date. However, gay liberation and a

theatre reformation took place in the 50s and allowed for more freedom meaning

people could be more open about their sexuality and gender identities.

The second source is a book titled Like a Brother, Like a Lover: Male

Homosexuality in the American Novel and Theatre from Herman Melville to James
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Baldwin and is written by Georges-Michel Sarotte. This book spends at least half of

itself on gay American novels and novelists so that lends itself to not being about

theatre. Which lowers the scholarship a bit since one has to wade through all of the

literary side of things. When once finds things that are about theatre in the book it,

again, only takes place in the 50’s and 60’s citing Tea and Sympathy from ’53, The

Boys in the Band from ’68, and Hair from ’68 as breaking LGBT dramas.

The third source is a collection of gay plays from the late 1800’s and all the

way through the 1990’s. The book is titled Gay Alliance Theatre: A Gay Play

Directory. The book is pretty much what it says it is and is exclusively a directory of

plays featuring LGBT people. The directory mentions the number of character it

calls for, the gender of the characters, and gives a small plot summary. The largest

issue is that most of the plays were written in 1970 or later. A good handful of plays

are from the 60’s and prior but still, the vast majority of LGBT plays were ones listed

from 1970 and onward.

Another painfully large issue I have run into when documenting the

scholarship of LGBT theatre from the 1900’s to the 1960’s is that most of the theatre

is just the ‘G’. Lesbian theatre did not see a takeoff until the 1980’s and there is very

little mention of Bisexual people and Transgender people were often used as a

caricature rather than an appropriate example of their identity. On a deeper search

there is a book titled Lady Dicks and Lesbian Brothers: Staging the Unimaginable at

the WOW Café Theatre by Kate Davy – this book primarily focuses on the 1980’s and

the 1990’s but does mention some LGBT influences for lesbian theatre such as Hair,

La Cage Aux Folles, and German Travesti Theatre. While the scholarship of that book
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does not assist with the era of the 1900’s through the 1960’s it assists in leading to

new material that could increase the scholarship of LGBT theatre from this time.

The fifth reference is the book, Bulldaggers, Pansies, and Chocolate Babies:

Performance, Race, And Sexuality in the Harlem Renaissance written by James F.

Wilson. In Wilson’s book the subject remains exclusively on the subject of the

1920’s. It talks about Lesbian theatre in Harlem in the 1920’s, which, incidentally,

included Transgender women. The shows were often burlesque shows or variety

shows rather than full written down plays. The shows just happened to be

performed mainly by Lesbians and Transgender women. However, the book yet

again explains that LGBT people were vilified and often treated as if they were pure

evil during this time period, which explains for the lack of explicitly LGBT theatre.

Following The Stonewall Riots many LGBT people felt like they were able to

talk about being LGBT and this led to many people writing books about their

experiences in whatever field they were in and what it was like prior to Stonewall.

The book The Gay & Lesbian Theatrical Legacy: A Biographical Dictionary of Major

Figures in American Stage History in the Pre-Stonewall Era is a collection of

biographies about theatre artists that existed prior to the Stonewall riots. This book

is excellent in scholarship because it takes place right in the era that it needs to –

pre-1969 – and discusses LGBT theatre creators.

An area where there is a lack of information on LGBT theatre is from the

1930’s to the mid 1950’s. This is due to the fact that during WWII there was a

pressure on heteronormativity and transgender people were being persecuted in

the US for ‘avoiding the war’. In addition to persecution in the West, in Germany
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there was known to be a thriving LGBT scene but due to the rising up of the Nazis

and the Kristallnacht nearly all trace of LGBT media from pre-WWII Germany was

erased from history because they burned it all. This included innovative medical

procedures for Transgender people as well as poetry, film, and theatre. It is

considered to be one of the greatest losses of the LGBT community and punches a

rather large hole in the scholarship of early 20th century LGBT theatre.

When it comes down to it, Gay theatre has great scholarship, but the LBT is

sincerely lacking when it comes to early 20th century theatre artists. However, due

to the loss of the German LGBT theatre scene and the hope that we, one day, unearth

more of that fantastic era I will say that the scholarship on any LGBT theatre prior to

1950 is mediocre at best.

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Bibliography

Davy, Kate. Lady Dicks and Lesbian Brothers: Staging the Unimaginable at the WOW

Café Theatre. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010.

De Jongh, Nicholas. Not in Front of the Audience: Homosexuality on Stage. New

York: Routledge, 1992. Ehrenstein, David. Open Secret: Gay Hollywood,

1928-1998. New York: William Morrow, 1998.

The Gay & Lesbian Theatrical Legacy: A Biographical Dictionary of Major Figures in

American Stage History in the Pre-Stonewall Era. Edited by Billy J Harbin,

Kim Marra, and Robert A Schanke. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005.

Gay Theatre Alliance Directory of Gay Plays. Compiled and edited and with an

introduction by Terry Helbing. New York: JH Press, 1980.

Sarotte, Georges Michel. Like a Brother, Like a Lover: Male Homosexuality in the

American Novel and Theater from Herman Melville to James Baldwin. Garden

City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1978.

Wilson, James F. Bulldaggers, Pansies, and Chocolate Babies: Performance, Race, and

Sexuality in the Harlem Renaissance. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan

Press, c2010.