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Tig Notaro Realizes She is a Role Model for Queer Women
Boy George on Broadway: Stars in Moulin Rouge

Hannah Gadsby’s Netflix Special Features Genderqueer Comedians

Chita Rivera, Pioneering Tony-Winning Dancer/Singer/Actor, Dies
Giselle Byrd Is Putting Trans Voices Center Stage
Jazz Musician Dave Koz on Going Silver and Gay Cruising
Andrew Garfield and James McArdle: Angels in America
Tony Awards: No Script, but Plenty of Song, Dance, High Spirits, History
Barry Humphries, Known for His Drag Persona Dame Edna Everage, Dies

Poor Unfortunate Souls (Little Mermaid) by Drew Sarich
GMA: Jinkx Monsoon Rocks Chicago Musical

Amrita Sher-Gil (Indian)
Vaginal Davis (Germany)
Hannah Hoch (Germany)
K8 Hardy
Felix Gonzalez Torres
Ellsworth Kelly
David Hockney (England)
Adi Nes (Israel)
Betty Parsons
Zackary Drucker
Michael Stokes
Meg Allen
Dave LaChapelle
Vincent Keith
Oliver Zeuke
Mel Odum

Gilbert & George (England)
Touko Laaksonen (Tom of Finland)
Catherine Opie
Berenice Abbott
Isaac Julien (England)
Lope Navo
Alice Neel (England)
David Wojnarowicz
Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt
Leo Herrera
Ron Amato
Terry Hastings
Steven Menendez
Joan E. Biren (JEB)
Hinda Schuman
Nicole Coenan (Canada)

The Lesbian Photo Book That Changed Everything
Gay Photographer George Platt Lynes

Chita Rivera, Revered and Pioneering Tony-Winning Dancer/Singer/Actor, Dies at 91

Jazz Musician Dave Koz on Going Silver and Gay Cruising

Jim Parsons on Stage: Man of No Importance
Randy Rainbow: Making a Difference Award Honoree

This Man's Illustrations About Life With His Boyfriend Are Absolutely Adorable
This Artist Is Giving Lesbian Couples The Retro, Pinup Treatment
Pieces from LGBTQ Artists at Superfine Art Fair in New York
Feed The Id: Live On The Lake with Cory Wong and Dave Koz
Sondheim's A Little Night Music Gets a Queer Twist
SNL: Ariana DeBose and Kate McKinnon

Broadway Tribute to Stephen Sondheim
Dancing with the Stars: JoJo Siwa’s Viennese Waltz

Ellen DeGeneres: Gay Cartoon Characters

Glenn Copeland: Trans Musical Genius

Steven Menendez: Photos Celebrating the Earth and the Male Form

New Netflix Documentary Tells the History of Queer Stand-Up Comedy

Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution features several generations of queer comedy royalty

From Tig Notaro’s legendary album Live to movies like Bottoms, queer and trans people have been dominating the modern comedy landscape. But until relatively recently, that was not the case. A forthcoming documentary from Netflix will explore the history of LGBTQ stand-up comedy, from the days when the phrase “out comedian” was an oxymoron to today’s renaissance.

The documentary, Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution, will premiere on the streamer in June 2024. According to an official description, it is the first feature-length documentary to look at the history of queer stand-up as “an instrument for social change over the past five decades.”

Written and directed by Page Hurwitz, who founded a comedy production company with Wanda Sykes in 2013, Outstanding gathers a veritable who’s who of queer comedy to speak to that history. Interviews and clips of Sykes, Suzy Izzard, Hannah Gadsby, Tig Notaro, Rosie O’Donnell, Margaret Cho, Bob the Drag Queen, and Trixie Mattel, among many others, are all featured in the film. The film also taps several historians and journalists for their expertise, including Shar Jossell and Susan Stryker.

Netflix dropped the trailer for Outstanding on YouTube, featuring a blend of archival footage and interviews with some of the aforementioned pioneers of queer comedy. As Guy Branum says in the sneak peek, humor has long served a social function for LGBTQ people beyond just making each other laugh. “Queer people taught America to stop being scared of us by making jokes,” he observes.

In a statement to Variety, Hurwitz asserted that the history of queer stand-up is intertwined with liberation. “We don’t normally think of comedians when we think of social movements but the talented artists in this film helped to shift the culture in significant ways, sometimes having to make great personal sacrifices,” she said. “I hope this film honors and celebrates their contributions to LGBTQ history and to the larger community.”

Outstanding is intended to complement Stand Out, Netflix’s 2022 special featuring sets from several of the comedians featured in the documentary. The streamer also recently released Gender Agenda, hosted by Hannah Gadsby, which highlights the talents of seven trans and genderqueer comedians.

[Source: James Factora, Them, April 2024]

New Netflix Documentary Is Telling the History of Queer Stand-Up Comedy

Vaginal Davis’ Queer Punk Art Is More Relevant than Ever
This Photographer Left Her Husband for a Woman and Documented It in Portraits
Neil Patrick Harris: It’s Not Just for Gays Anymore

Boys in the Band Finally Nominated for a Tony Award

Vancouver Men's Chorus performs Anthem by Leonard Cohen
Queer Composers You Should Know

Autostraddle: Lesbian Photographers You Should Know About

How Curators Are Queering Art History
Gay Photographer George Platt Lynes

LGBTQ Influence in Theatre

A Powerful Force for Change

The world of theatre has long been a bastion of creativity and artistic expression, pushing boundaries and challenging societal norms. One of the most significant and enduring influences on theatre has been the LGBTQ community. From actors and playwrights to directors and designers, LGBTQ individuals have played pivotal roles in shaping the evolution of theatre, both on and off the stage. Let's explore the profound impact of the LGBTQ community on theatre and how it has contributed to a more inclusive and diverse landscape.

Meet Comedian Nurse Blake
Beautiful Thing Celebrates 30th Anniversary Through a Black Queer Lens
Minnie Bruce Pratt: Poet, Essayist, Activist, Dead at 76
Standup Comedian Mae Martin Calls Out Dave Chappelle
Dancing with the Stars: JoJo Siwa’s Viennese Waltz
How LGBTQ Excellence Helped Shape Broadway

Strictly Come Dancing: LGBTQ Fans Blown Away by Same-Sex Dance

Gay Playwright Matthew López: First Latino to Win Tony Award for Best Play

Historical Perspective - Historically, the LGBTQ community faced immense prejudice and discrimination, leading many individuals to seek refuge and acceptance within the world of theatre. The theatre has served as a sanctuary for LGBTQ artists, providing a platform to express their authentic selves and tell stories that reflect their experiences. Iconic playwrights such as Tennessee Williams and Oscar Wilde, both of whom were gay, created timeless works that explored themes of identity, love, and societal expectations.

Breaking Stereotypes - The LGBTQ influence in theatre has also played a significant role in breaking stereotypes and challenging traditional gender norms. Productions like "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" and "Rent" have featured genderqueer characters and non-conforming relationships, helping to normalize diverse expressions of gender and sexuality. These productions have been instrumental in fostering understanding and acceptance among audiences.

Chita Rivera, Revered and Pioneering Tony-Winning Dancer/Singer/Actor, Dies at 91

Circle of Life: Featuring London Gay Men's Chorus
Stephen Sondheim, Musical Theater Legend, Dead at 91
Out Acclaimed Shakespearean Actor Antony Sher Dies at 72
Jane Lynch and Beanie Feldstein Star in Revamped 'Funny Girl' Revival
Meet the Young Artists of Provincetown

Stephen Sondheim, Master of Musical Theater, Dead at 91
Remembering Stephen Sondheim: The Best There Ever Was
Stephen Sondheim, Legendary Broadway Composer and Lyricist, Dies at 91

Visibility and Representation - One of the most powerful contributions of the LGBTQ community to theatre is its emphasis on visibility and representation. LGBTQ characters and narratives have become increasingly common on stage, allowing audiences to see a broader spectrum of human experiences. This visibility helps LGBTQ individuals feel seen and heard, reducing feelings of isolation and promoting acceptance.

Advocacy Through Art - Theatre has also been a powerful tool for LGBTQ advocacy. Productions like "The Normal Heart" and "Angels in America" tackled the AIDS crisis head-on, shedding light on the devastating impact it had on the LGBTQ community. These plays not only raised awareness but also spurred action and support for those affected by the epidemic.

Creating Safe Spaces - Theatres have often been safe spaces for LGBTQ individuals to express themselves openly and without fear. LGBTQ theater companies and festivals, such as the renowned "Pride Plays" in New York City, provide a platform for emerging LGBTQ playwrights and performers to showcase their talents and share their stories. These spaces celebrate diversity and continue to be important hubs of LGBTQ artistic expression.

The influence of the LGBTQ community in theatre cannot be overstated. It has shaped the industry by challenging norms, fostering diversity, and providing a voice for those who have been historically marginalized. Theatre has not only reflected the experiences of LGBTQ individuals but has also been a catalyst for social change, helping to advance LGBTQ rights and acceptance. As theatre continues to evolve, the LGBTQ community remains a driving force in ensuring that stories of all backgrounds are told, celebrated, and embraced.

Tango: John Whaite and Johannes Radebe
LGBTQ Art Shows: Now Showing at Museums From Boston to Berlin

Meet the Creators that Are Proving that Pride Is a State of Mind

GQ Magazine: Keith Haring Blew Up the Art and Fashion World

Hairspray Pandemic Spectacular: You Can't Stop the Beat

Kellen Stancil: Dance Performance at Stonewall Day 2020

Brave: Duet Dance by Cleo and Jude

Chita Rivera | 1933-2024

Broadway legend Chita Rivera has sadly passed away at age 91

The trailblazing Latina performer was most known for starring in "West Side Story" and "Chicago." Rivera was a theatrical superstar and a true triple threat as a talented dancer, singer, and actor. She amassed 10 total Tony award nominations and winning twice.

Chita Rivera, Broadway's First Great Triple Threat, Dies at 91
Chita Rivera, West Side Story Star and Latina Trailblazer, Dies at 91
Chita Rivera, Revered and Pioneering Tony-Winning Dancer/Singer/Actor, Dies at 91

She took on some of Broadway's most iconic roles. In 2018, Rivera was awarded a Tony for lifetime achievement in theatre, which included originating the roles of Anita in "West Side Story," Rose Alvarez in "Bye Bye Birdie" and Velma Kelly in "Chicago."
Rivera also starred in "The Rink," "Guys & Dolls," "Sweet Charity," "Kiss of the Spider Woman," "Merlin," "Jerry's Girls," "Nine," "The Dancer's Life," and "The Visit."

President Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Rivera spent much of her long career advocating for LGBTQ people and people living with HIV and AIDS. She was one of the group of Broadway voices on the "It Gets Better" recording.

The Wiz Returns to Broadway Starring Wayne Brady

The Art Story: Queer Art
LGBTQ America: Arts and Artists
Braden Summers: LA-Based Gay Photographer Adds Fresh Color to LGBTQ Spectrum
Raising LGBTQ Awareness Through Art
Queer Poets to Read Now and Forever
Andrew Garfield and James McArdle: Angels in America
Without JEB’s Photography, The World Wouldn’t Know Lesbian History
These Artworks Captured the Aftermath of Stonewall
Artist Jaime Hayde Illustrates Happiness of Gay Love
Gay Photographer George Platt Lynes
Dear Evan Hansen: Waving Through a Window
Ian McKellan Reading Harvey Milk's Hope Speech

Harvey Fierstein: Broadway Superstar

Harvey Forbes Fierstein (born 1952) is a gay American actor, playwright and screenwriter. He is best known for his theater work in Torch Song Trilogy and Hairspray and movie roles in Mrs. Doubtfire, Independence Day, and as the voice of Yao in Mulan. Fierstein won two Tony Awards, Best Actor in a Play and Best Play, for Torch Song Trilogy. He received his third Tony Award, Best Book of a Musical, for the musical La Cage aux Folles and his fourth, the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical, for playing Edna Turnblad in Hairspray. Fierstein also wrote the book for the Tony Award-winning musicals Kinky Boots, Newsies, and Tony Award-nominated, Drama League Award-winner A Catered Affair. He was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2007. He published his memoir I Was Better Last Night in 2022.

Biographical Notes: Harvey Fierstein
Harvey Fierstein: IMDB
Broadway: Harvey Fierstein

Fierstein was born in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York City, the son of Jacqueline Harriet (Gilbert), a school librarian, and Irving Fierstein, a handkerchief manufacturer. He was raised Jewish, but later rejected the faith and became an atheist. Fierstein attended High School of Art and Design and received a BFA from the Pratt Institute in 1973. He began working in the theater as a founding member of The Gallery Players of Park Slope. Fierstein's distinctive gravelly voice is a result of an overdeveloped vestibular fold in his vocal cords, essentially giving him a "double voice" when he speaks. Prior to puberty, Fierstein was a soprano in a professional boys' choir.

Fierstein is best known for the play and film Torch Song Trilogy, which he wrote and starred in both off-Broadway (with a young Matthew Broderick) and on Broadway (with Estelle Getty and Fisher Stevens). The 1982 Broadway production won him two Tony Awards, for Best Play and Best Actor in a Play; two Drama Desk Awards, for Outstanding New Play and Outstanding Actor in a Play; and the Theatre World Award. The film adaptation earned him an Independent Spirit Award nomination as Best Male Lead.

Biographical Notes: Harvey Fierstein
Harvey Fierstein: IMDB
Broadway: Harvey Fierstein

Fierstein also wrote the book for La Cage aux Folles (1983), winning another Tony Award, this time for Best Book of a Musical, and a Drama Desk nomination for Outstanding Book. In 2007, Fierstein wrote the book to the musical A Catered Affair in which he also starred. It received 12 Drama Desk Award nominations and won the Drama League Award for Distinguished Production of a Musical. Fierstein wrote the book for the stage musical Newsies, along with Alan Menken (music) and Jack Feldman (lyrics). The musical opened on Broadway in March 2012. Fierstein was nominated for the Tony Award for Book of a Musical. Fierstein wrote the book for a stage musical version of the film Kinky Boots with music and lyrics by Cyndi Lauper. The musical was nominated for thirteen 2013 Tony Awards and won six, including best musical. In 2019 Fierstein wrote and starred in Bella Bella, a one-person play about New York Congresswoman Bella Abzug. It premiered at Manhattan Theatre Club's Stage One at City Center.

As one of the first openly gay celebrities in the United States, Fierstein helped make gay and lesbian life into viable subjects for contemporary drama "with no apologies and no climactic suicides." Fierstein stated, "I'm still confused as to whether I'm a man or a woman," and that as a child he often wondered if he'd been born in the wrong body. "When I was a kid, I was attracted to men. I didn't feel like a boy was supposed to feel. Then I found out about gay. So that was enough for me for then." The interview also noted his ease at playing both Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof and Edna Turnblad in Hairspray. On the LGBTQ&A podcast, Fierstein said, "I'm comfortable being me and if I ask myself, 'Would you want to transition?' The answer's no." He avoided identifying as non-binary in the interview, saying he had thought about it a lot and "it's the term that bothers me", but concluded that "I don't think I've missed anything by not making up my mind".

Billy Porter and Kinky Boots Cast: Raise You Up

LGBTQ Writers, Artists and Activists of the 80s and 90s

Kristin Key: Between a Redneck in Portland

Jazz Musician Dave Koz on Going Silver and Gay Cruising

Essential Plays, Books, and Movies for Understanding the History of Queer Liberation

Smooth and Wicked: The Art of Mel Odum

Only Us: Laura Dreyfus and Ben Platt

Tom of Finland Exhibit in Los Angeles

Hymn for Alvin Ailey

Poet Mary Oliver Dies at 83

Queer Poets to Read Now and Forever

Celebrating 100th Birthday of Tom of Finland
I Am What I Am: La Cage Aux Folles
Ballet 22: Challenging Gender Norms

Stephen Sondheim, Musical Theater Legend, Dead at 91

The gay composer and lyricist of greats like Into the Woods and Company died suddenly after reportedly spending Thanksgiving with friends. Out songwriter and composer Stephen Sondheim died November 2021 at the age of 91. Sondheim’s work reshaped American musical theater and has influenced generations of songwriters.

His death was announced by his lawyer and friend, Richard Pappas, according to The New York Times. Pappas said Sondheim wasn’t known to be ill, and his death was sudden. The Broadway legend had spent Thanksgiving with some friends, Pappas said.

Stephen Sondheim, Musical Theater Legend, Dead at 91

Musical Theater Master Stephen Sondheim Dies at 91

Sondheim’s success stretched from the 1950s, writing lyrics for West Side Story, to the 1990s, writing for such musicals as Assassins and Passion. The first Broadway show that he wrote the music and lyrics for was the 1962 comedy A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. It won a Tony Award for best musical.

The Times noted that the 1970s and 1980s were his “most productive” years. His works in those decades included Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Pacific Overtures, Sweeney Todd, Merrily We Roll Along, Into the Woods, and Sunday in the Park With George.

“If you think of a theater lyric as a short story, as I do, then every line has the weight of a paragraph,” he wrote in his 2010 book Finishing the Hat, which was the first volume of his collection of lyrics and comments.

Sondheim majored in music at Williams College in Massachusetts, going on to study with avant-garde composer Milton Babbitt after graduation, reports the Associated Press.

Stephen Sondheim, Musical Theater Legend, Dead at 91

Musical Theater Master Stephen Sondheim Dies at 91

Stephen Sondheim, Master of Musical Theater, Dead at 91
Remembering Stephen Sondheim: The Best There Ever Was
Stephen Sondheim, Legendary Broadway Composer and Lyricist, Dies at 91

According to a 2013 HBO documentary, Six by Sondheim, he liked to write his music lying down and would occasionally have a cocktail to help him write. He also revealed in the documentary, directed by frequent collaborator James Lapine, that he only fell in love after he turned 60. Most recently, he had been in a relationship for several years with Jeff Romley.

In April of 2020, at the height of lockdowns, musical theater luminaries came together in a virtual event to celebrate Sondheim’s momentous birthday with Take Me to the World: A Sondheim 90th Birthday Celebration. The event was hosted by Raúl Esparza and included performances from Neil Patrick Harris, Patti LuPone, Ben Platt, Jake Gyllenhaal, Beanie Feldstein, Bernadette Peters, Mandy Patinkin, and Katrina Lenk, among so many others. The comedic showstopper of the evening arrived courtesy of Christine Baranski, Audra McDonald, and Meryl Streep, who delivered a boozy “The Ladies Who Lunch.”

During a 2010 event renaming the Henry Miller Theatre on Broadway as the Stephen Sondheim Theatre, Sondheim said, “I’m deeply embarrassed. I’m thrilled, but deeply embarrassed,” according to the AP. “I’ve always hated my last name. It just doesn’t sing.”

[Source: Alex Cooper, Advocate Magazine, November 2021]

Queer Arts: List of LGBTQ Artists

Wikipedia: List of LGBTQ Dancers

Little Shop of Horrors: With Trans and Gay Leads
Neil Patrick Harris: Medley of Broadway Songs

Steven Menendez: Photos Celebrating the Earth and the Male Form

Origin of Love: Hedwig and the Angry Inch

This Man's Illustrations About Life With His Boyfriend Are Absolutely Adorable

Info: LGBTQ Television and Media

Andrew Garfield and James McArdle: Angels in America

Queer Art

Queer art, also known as LGBTQ art or queer aesthetics, broadly refers to modern and contemporary visual art practices that draw on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer imagery and issues. While by definition there can be no singular "queer art", contemporary artists who identify their practices as queer often call upon “utopian and dystopian alternatives to the ordinary, adopt outlaw stances, embrace criminality and opacity, and forge unprecedented kinships and relationships.” Queer art is also occasionally very much about sex and the embracing of unauthorized desires.

Queer art is highly site-specific, with queer art practices emerging very differently depending on context, the visibility of which possibly ranging from being advocated for, to conversely being met with backlash, censorship, or criminalization. With sex and gender operating differently in various national, religious, and ethnic contexts, queer art necessarily holds varied meanings.

While historically, the term 'queer' is a homophobic slur from the 1980s AIDS crisis in the United States, it has been since re-appropriated and embraced by queer activists and integrated into many English-speaking contexts, academic or otherwise. International art practices by LGBTQ individuals are thus often placed under the umbrella term of 'queer art' within English-speaking contexts, even though they emerge outside the historical developments of the gender and identity politics of the United States in the 1980s.

'Queer art' has also been used to retroactively refer to the historic work of LGBTQ artists who practiced at a time before present-day terminology of ‘lesbian’, ‘gay’, ‘bisexual’ and ‘trans’ were recognized, as seen deployed in the 2017 exhibition by Tate, Queer British Art 1861–1967. The term “queer” is situated in the politics of non-normative, gay, lesbian and bisexual communities, though it is not equivalent to such categories, and remains a fluid identity.

Adhering to no particular style or medium, queer art practices may span performance art, video art, installation, drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, film, and mixed media, among many others.

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Info: LGBTQ Music and Songs

Queer Poetry

Dreams by Langston Hughes

Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams, for when dreams go
Life is a barren field frozen with snow.

A Book by Emily Dickinson

There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot that bears a human soul!

Feed The Id: Live On The Lake with Cory Wong and Dave Koz

Diverse Humanity: LGBTQ-Themed Photo Book Series
30 Different Pride Flags on Display

Most Influential LGBTQ Plays

Ursula K. LeGuin: On Being a Writer and a Man

Braden Summers: LA-Based Gay Photographer Adds Fresh Color to LGBTQ Spectrum

I Sing the Body Electric by Walt Whitman

I sing the body electric,
The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.
Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves?
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?
And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul?
And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?

The Dream Keeper by Langston Hughes

Bring me all of your dreams, you dreamer,
Bring me all your heart melodies
That I may wrap them in a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too-rough fingers of the world.

Footnote to Howl by Allen Ginsberg

The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand and asshole holy!
The bum’s as holy as the seraphim! the madman is holy as you my soul are holy!
Holy the groaning saxophone! Holy the bop apocalypse! Holy the jazzbands marijuana hipsters peace peyote pipes and drums!
Holy the solitudes of skyscrapers and pavements! Holy the cafeterias filled with the millions!

Holy the mysterious rivers of tears under the streets! Holy the lone juggernaut!

Holy the vast lamb of the middleclass! Holy the crazy shepherds of rebellion!

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre: Full Performance

Broadway Backwards: Cell Block Tangy

Tig Notaro Realizes She is a Role Model for Queer Women

Andrew Garfield and James McArdle: Angels in America

Fun Home: Ring of Keys

LA Gay Men's Chorus: Love On Top

The Prom Broadway Show: You Happened

Kehinde Wiley: Painter of President Obama Official Portrait

Advocate: Queer Composers Who Made History

A Litany for Survival by Audre Lorde

And when the sun rises we are afraid it might not remain
when the sun sets we are afraid it might not rise in the morning
when our stomachs are full we are afraid of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty we are afraid we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid love will never return
and when we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcomed
but when we are silent we are still afraid
So it is better to speak, remembering we were never meant to survive.

My People by Langston Hughes

The night is beautiful, so the faces of my people.
The stars are beautiful, so the eyes of my people.
Beautiful, also, is the sun.
Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people.

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How Lauren Ys Channels Queerness Through Their Art
Walt Whitman: America's Poet as Queer Pioneer

GQ Magazine: Keith Haring Blew Up the Art and Fashion World

LGBTQ Art Shows: Now Showing at Museums From Boston to Berlin

Autostraddle: Lesbian Photographers You Should Know About

Justin Sayre's Love-In: Music, Laughs, and Hope Through Gay Lens

Wikipedia: LGBTQ Related Plays

Mart Crowley: Boys in the Band Playwright Dies

Why Queer People Love Evan Hanson

SF Gay Men's Chorus: Every Sperm is Sacred

Three Theatre Titans: Mart, Larry, Terrence

2020 saw the loss of three gay giants in worlds of theater and activism: Mart Crowley, Larry Kramer, and Terrence McNally. McNally passed at 81 of the novel coronavirus. The four-time Tony Award-winner wrote many pioneering plays, including The Ritz, Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, and Love! Valour! Compassion!, which told the heartfelt story of a circle of gay men friends grappling with the AIDS epidemic. Kramer, who died at 84, was the playwright of the Tony-winning The Normal Heart, a fictionalized account of Kramer’s early AIDS activism as he cofounded Gay Men’s Health Crisis and ACT UP. The Normal Heart was later adapted into an acclaimed HBO movie by Ryan Murphy. Murphy also helped bring Crowley, who also died at 84, to a new generation with the Netflix adaptation of The Boys in the Band, which centered on a gay dinner party and societal stigma. A 2018 Broadway revival with the same all-gay cast won a Tony for Best Revival of a Play.

Broadway United: We Are the World

Theatre is Queerer Than ever

Gay Playwright Matthew López: First Latino to Win Tony Award for Best Play
Poetry Slam: Dear Straight People

Renowned Shakespearean Actor, Author and Playwright Sir Antony Sher Dies of Cancer at 72
Funny That Way: Documentary About Trans Comic Julia Scotti

Advocate: Queer Composers Who Made History

Sculpture Unveiled in NYC Honoring Trans and Nonbinary Communities

Grant Wood: Rural Painter and Shy Bachelor

Grant Wood (1891-1942) was an American painter, best known for his paintings depicting the rural American Midwest, particularly American Gothic, which has become an iconic example of 20th-century American art. As a gay man in Iowa, he was forced to hide or disguise his same-sex references and representations, but they are there, hiding in plain sight.

Wood was married to Sara Sherman Maxon from 1935–38. He was a closeted gay man. There was an attempt on the part of a senior colleague, Lester Longman, to get him fired both on moral grounds and for his advocacy of regionalism. Critic Janet Maslin states that his friends knew him to be "homosexual and a bit facetious in his masquerade as an overall-clad farm boy."

In 1939, the US Post Office refused to distribute a lithograph, declaring its depiction of a nude man bathing by a horse trough “pornographic.” Wood, ever the closeted artist described the work euphemistically as a “shy bachelor,” and was surprised and affronted, and cropped the nude figure out of a painting based on the same image. The idiosyncrasies of his works seem to flow not simply from the fact that Wood was gay, but from a deeper, transformative sense of gender. His America can never be neatly sorted into traditional ideas about masculine and feminine, and that, even more than the nudity of the man depicted in the problematic 1939 lithograph, may have been what unsettled the US Post Office prudes.

In 1930, the same year American Gothic debuted at the Art Institute of Chicago and made Wood an overnight sensation, he painted Arnold Comes of Age, a portrait of his former high school student and assistant Arnold Pyle. In the painting, Wood depicts the 21-year-old Pyle as spindly and dark, mournful against the countryside during the last warm days of autumn, as two skinny-dippers exhaust themselves at the water’s edge. At Pyle’s elbow is a butterfly (a gay symbol at the time) and, like Wood himself, it nearly disappears into its environment.
The day before his 51st birthday, Wood died of pancreatic cancer. His estate went to his sister, Nan Wood Graham, the woman portrayed in American Gothic.

[Source: Text from White Crane Institute]

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Torch Song Trilogy: 35 Years Later

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Billy Porter and Kinky Boots Cast: Marriage Equality Curtain Call Speech

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Alison Bechdel: Winner of McArthur Grant

Alison Bechdel, a lesbian artist and writer from Vermont, was the winner of the 2014 Mac Arthur Foundation Fellowship award, commonly referred to as the Genius Grant. She is known for such literary works as Fun Home, Dykes to Watch Out For, and Are You My Mother? Alison Bechdel is a cartoonist and graphic memoirist exploring the complexities of familial relationships in multilayered works that use the interplay of word and image to weave sophisticated narratives. Bechdel’s command of sequential narrative and her aesthetic as a visual artist was established in her long-running comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For (1983–2008), which realistically captured the lives of women in the lesbian community as they influenced and were influenced by the important cultural and political events of the day.

Vermont Artist Receives MacArthur Fellowship

Washington Post: Bechdel Wins Genius Grant

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MacArthur Foundation: Alison Bechdel

Home Page: Dykes to Watch Out For

Wikipedia: Dykes to Watch Out For

Fun Home: Ring of Keys

Garnering a devoted and diverse following, this pioneering work was a precursor to her book-length graphic memoirs. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (2006) is a nuanced depiction of a childhood spent in an artistic family in a small Pennsylvania town and of her relationship with her father, a high school English teacher and funeral home director. An impeccable observer and record keeper, Bechdel incorporates drawings of archival materials, such as diaries, letters, photographs, and news clippings, as well as a variety of literary references in deep reflections into her own past.

Bechdel came out as a lesbian at age 19. Bechdel's gender and sexual identity are a large part of the core message of her work. "The secret subversive goal of my work is to show that women, not just lesbians, are regular human beings," she explains. In February 2004, Bechdel married her girlfriend since 1992, Amy Rubin, in a civil ceremony in San Francisco. Bechdel and Rubin separated in 2006. As of 2013, Bechdel lives in Bolton, Vermont with her partner, Holly Rae Taylor.

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Leonard Bernstein
Aaron Copland
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Cole Porter

Gertrude "Ma" Rainey

Dave Koz
Samuel Barber

Ethel Waters

Andy Bey
Johannes Brahms

Bessie Smith
John Cage

Billy Strayhorn

Jennifer Higdon
Jean-Baptiste de Lully
Ethel Smyth
Lou Harrison
Pauline Oliveros

Angela Morley

Franz Schubert

Cecil Taylor

Gladys Bently
Stephen Sondheim
Igor Stravinsky
Frederic Chopin

Bill Stewart
Nikolai Rimsky Korsakov

Gary Burton
Maurice Ravel

Alberta Hunter
George Friderick Handel
Fred Hersch

Patricia Barber

Benjamin Britten
Wendy Carlos
Nico Muhly

Julius Eastman

Jackie Shane

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Jazz Musician Dave Koz on Going Silver and Gay Cruising

As he prepares for a return to the Hollywood Bowl and headlining a musical cruise, the out Grammy nominee reflects on his genre and growing older...

LGBTQ musicians are well-represented in dance, pop, and folk, with everyone from Billy Porter to Troye Sivan to Brandi Carlisle finding success and accolades. While jazz is not strongly associated with LGBTQ artists, saxophonist Dave Koz is an outlier. An out gay musician for years, Koz has found success on the charts with 12 number 1 albums on Billboard’s Current Contemporary Jazz Albums chart, nine Grammy nominations, and several performances for presidents.

Following last year's release of his holiday album, Christmas Ballads, Koz is now in the midst of traveling the globe, headlining the Dave Koz & Friends Summer Horns 2023 tour, featuring other sax legends like Candy Dulfer and Eric Darius as well as vocalist Maysa. The tour rolls into the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles Sunday, marking Koz's 10th appearance at the legendary venue. The tour will move to the Mediterranean in the spring, with the (sold-out) Dave Koz and Friends at Sea voyage, traveling around Greece, Turkey, Israel, and Egypt.

What’s special about this venue?

Growing up in Los Angeles, my parents always insisted on taking my brother, sister, and I to the Hollywood Bowl. We saw all different kinds of shows there, and the venue made this profound impact on me from a very young age. And even though we've headlined there a bunch of times now, I still feel this overwhelming privilege taking that stage. It's a place like no other ... almost like the West Coast version of Carnegie Hall or something. Beyond special, every single time.

You’re headlining a musical cruise next year in the Mediterranean. It’s not a gay cruise per se, but do you expect to encounter many LGBTQ cruisers?

Ha! No, it's not a gay cruise. I've never taken one, and I'd like to! But I will say that our cruises attract a very diverse group of guests. Our shared love of music is what binds this group together, but we have everyone — young/old, gay/straight, Republicans/Democrats, all races and religions — and for one week, we all get along and support and nurture each other. It's amazing to see. And yes, our gay clientele is actually growing.

How did you get into jazz? And how do you sell it to the unconvinced?

I think the best way to be inspired is to see this music live. It's one thing to listen to a record or a Spotify playlist, and a totally different experience to see a band killing it on stage live. It can be an electrifying experience, even with jazz. We're starting to see a lot of younger people at shows, which is really gratifying. There's a whole new group of young instrumentalists capturing the attention of people in their 20s and 30s. For me, learning to play the saxophone when I was 13 became the natural way for me of exploring jazz. And I've been on that path now for almost 60 years! It never ends. It just gets deeper and more interesting.

You’ve now gone gloriously silver. How does it feel?

Funny. I dyed my hair religiously for like 25 years, petrified of going gray. I already had one coming-out as gay. I fought the next coming-out as gray for a very long time. Then one day in 2017, I just said, "fuck it" and let it go. One of the most freeing things I've ever done, and the unthinkable happened — I got compliments on my gray! I've never looked back since. Being a "silver daddy" has its perks.

[Source: Neal Broverman, Advocate, August 2023]

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Patricia Racette
Beth Clayton
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David Portillo
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Nicholas Phan
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LGBTQ Art History: Art, Sexuality, Culture

Art and sexuality have been synonymous with each other almost as long as the existence of art itself. From Praxiteles’ revolutionary Knidian Aphrodite to Erin M Reily’s tapestries of sexts in 2013’s brazenly modern Nudes, art has frequently been seen as the perfect platform to convey feelings and desires that aren’t always expressible in ordinary life.

With awareness of LGBTQ issues and rights over the past century rapidly increasing, gay artists and their sexuality have been brought to the forefront of contemporary culture. Whilst liberating, being open about their sexuality also runs the risk of being put into a box – gay artists can only paint about sex or queerness, and their work can only be analyzed and appreciated from that viewpoint. This can, and has been, extremely damaging to queer creators.

As Andy Warhol stated when speaking about his work, ‘there’s nothing behind it’. Not every element of his work has to be, or indeed can be, picked apart, and sexuality is only one contributing factor to his impressive oeuvre. However, it is important to recognize the impact his and other gay artists’ work has had on the LGBTQ movement. Both he and David Hockney were key figures in the sexual revolution of the sixties and seventies, elevating them to the position of gay icons. Think of Hockney’s iconic series ‘Love Painting’ and the detailed drawings of copulating couples from Warhol’s early career for reference of one side of their approach to sexuality.

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Despite how central queerness was to their artistic identities, these artists didn’t as much create ‘gay art’ as they developed how sexuality was expressed through different medias. It was instead the more implicitly sexualized of their work that became notable. The overt and fluorescent colors of Warhol’s pop art and campy subject choices scooped from pop culture defined camp culture; Hockney’s bright studies of hot summers in 1970’s LA run along a similar vein.

Many women in the artworld have utilized, or equally omitted, sexuality in their work to make a statement about the modern world

We mustn’t forget the impact queer female artists have also had on culture, however. Although noticeably (and erroneously) less known than their male counterparts, many women in the artworld have utilized, or equally omitted, sexuality in their work to make a statement about the modern world.

Diane Arbus is one great example. An American photographer, excluded not only due to her gender but also because of her bisexuality, her isolation from the wider community likely influenced her interest in outsiders; gritty, monochrome portraits of prostitutes, nudists and street urchins populate her photography and suggest her own fearless outlook on sexuality.

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Romaine Brooks could be considered the flipside of this. Rather than portraying sexuality in all its brazen beauty as Arbus does, she instead rebelled through androgyny and reticence. Although she had many relationships with women throughout her life, it was never a fact she wore on her sleeve, even marrying her also closeted male friend for a short period.

Her work instead explores female sexuality not through the male gaze, but in spite of it. Muted portraits of women in heavy, enveloping gowns or suits and top-hats show how the feminine body can be appreciated in many different forms – a far cry from the provocative nudity of other contemporary works like Manet’s Ophelia. Her art was incendiary in an implicit way.

There is the danger that, if artists choose to be open about their sexuality, they will always be marked with the same brush

As a result of the wave of LGBTQ rights and acceptance over recent decades, artists previously not considered to be gay are now having their work looked at through a different lens. A new opera has unveiled intriguing information about Leonardo da Vinci’s relationship with his young assistants, Metzi and Salaí, and the potentially sexual nature of their close bond. Da Vinci lived at a time when sexual liberty, especially for men, was culturally normalized, even if it was decried by the Florentinian state. This revelation provides a new perspective on his intensely detailed and anatomical studies of the male form, shining a whole new light on such works as the Vitruvian Man.

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An artist’s reluctance in revealing their queerness can be both the bain and the blessing of their professional lives; while on one hand they have the freedom to paint, sculpt or photograph as they wish, without receiving the reductive ‘provocative’, ‘liberal’ or ‘licentious’ labels that often emerge when an individual is open about their sexuality, they also have to suffer the anguish of repressing their emotions in art.

There is the danger that, if artists choose to be open about their sexuality, they will always be marked with the same brush. That’s not to suggest that there is anything wrong with being known as the ‘gay artist’ – many creators have embraced how their work has been accepted by the LGBTQ community. However, it does run the risk of making their art appear one-dimensional, as if everything they produce has to in some way be linked to their sexuality when in fact an artist’s influences are far-ranging and delimited.

However, times are changing. Now it has become increasingly important for queerness to be analyzed as one contributing element or influence of an artist’s oeuvre, rather than being the overriding feature that makes appreciating it worth-while. It is perhaps the rebellion that their work represents, in whatever form that takes, that is inspiring to the queer community. As Warhol details in his 1980 book POPISM, “one straight kid said to me, “It’s nice not to be trapped into something, even if that’s what you are”. This freedom is exactly what makes LGBTQ art so rousing – it stands for people that have so long been repressed finally receiving the liberty they have fought for.

[Source: Cerys Turner, February 2020]

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Michelangelo

Edmonia Lewis

Adolf Hildebrand
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Richmond Barthe

Louise Abbema

Prem Sahib

Jehangir Jani
Jehoshua Rozenman

Raul de Nieves

Robert Pruitt
Florence Wyle
Frances Loring

Robert Indiana

Ellsworth Kelly

Robert Wilson

Charles Pachter
Maggi Hambling
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Eddie Izzard: One Woman Show

Eddie Izzard One Woman Show "Charles Dickens' Great Expectations" is a big hit.

Eddie Izzard is a Brit stand-up comedian, actor, and activist and something of a slightly manic multi-tasker. When she is performing her stand up routine it is always at wonderful frantic pace that she mumbles her hilarious stories that have the most obscure connections that have her audiences screaming. She has put her political campaign on a temporary hold. Her desire to become a Member Of the UK Parliament for now will take a backseat to bringing her one-woman show to Off-Broadway.

Izzard is genderfluid and calls herself “somewhat boy-ish and somewhat girl-ish.“ She uses the word “transgender’ to describe herself and because she is public about this has become something of a queer idol.

Now she has bought her solo show of Charles Dickins' classic Creat Expectations to off-Broadway. It’s a classic tale of convicts, mystery, friendship, rivalry, unrequited love, revenge, and redemption and in it, Izzard plays a total of 19 characters from scary Miss Haversham to young Pip. The script is written by her brother Mark Izzard and directed by Selina Cadell, and it opened in Dec 2022 at the Greenwich House Theater to some initial excellent reviews

Director Selina Cadell‘s production does not rely on high-tech set and lighting design, quick costume changes and other visual effects. This is theater as storytelling in its most elemental sense, with Izzard herself as the biggest special effect.

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Queer Culture: Spring 2020

Emerging Queer Culture

Spring 2020 ushered in a variety of new talent in the LGBTQ arts and entertainment community.

She Sings Too - Based on Chelsea Clinton’s (and illustrator Alexandra Boiger’s) bestselling children’s book, She Persisted: The Musical, follows fourth-grader Naomi on a field trip to a women’s history museum that turns into an adventurous and inspiring voyage through time. “With so many kids’ shows based on fairy tales,” said one Broadway insider, “it’s a treat to have one inspired by feminist tales.”

Queering the Classics - New mobile-based media innovators Quibi has given the green light on a modern-day queer romantic comedy inspired by Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, written by rising Asian-American comedy star Joel Kim Booster (NBC’s Sunnyside). Trip follows two besties embarking on a wine-filled week on Fire Island during the summer.

We Like Pike - Austin-based duo Patrice Pike and Wayne Sutton (cofounders of formative ‘90s band Sister 7) have released their debut album, Heart Is A Compass, as their newest musical incarnation, Pike & Sutton. Pike, who Rolling Stone called “Tina Turner, Bessie Smith, Janis Jopin, and Robert Plant all rolled up into a tiny but explore package,” has been a longtime visible LGBTQ activist, participating in everything from Stonewall marches to ACT UP protests.

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Healing Power - Transmasculine Latinx pop artist Jakk Fynn’s EP, Cancelled, features his latest single, “Heal,” an emotional track telling the story of how he rebuilt himself from scratch at the end of an emotionally draining relationship. “Not being true to yourself in a relationship can feel like suffocation, like death,” he said of the song. “‘Heal’ is a chance to do just that by embracing the vulnerabilities that make me who I am.”

Something Witchy - Freeform’s Motherland tells the story of an alternate America where witches ended their persecution over 300 years ago by cutting a deal with the government. The parallels are uncanny.

Thank God for Saint Frances - Saint Frances stars Kelly O’Sullivan as Bridget, the nanny of Frances, the 6-year-old daughter of a same-sex couple. O’Sullivan was inspired to pen the script from her own experiences as a caregiver who decided to end an unwanted pregnancy. With humanity and comedy, she fights stigmas surrounding abortion, post-partum depression, and rainbow families.

Not so GLAAD - GLAAD announced the cancellation of its 31st Annual Media Awards in NYC, joining the growing list of LGBTQ events nixed over concerns of the COVID-19 outbreak. The ceremony was set to be hosted by bisexual comedian Lilly Singh and had planned on honoring Ryan Murphy, Judith Light, Janet Mock, and Taylor Swift, among others. GLAAD stated it was working to ensure that honorees’ “game-changing work is rightfully recognized at another time.”

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Brief History of Queer Theatre

What do we mean by ‘Queer’? Well, once a derogatory slur, it’s now an umbrella term reclaimed by the LGBTQ community and means someone who is not heterosexual and/or does not conform to the established ideas of sexuality and gender. It’s also important to say that Queer artists have existed throughout history and, as a society, we’re still very much at the beginning of bringing these stories into the mainstream. Moreover, there is not one singular ‘Queer’ experience or narrative. There are certainly commonalities in experiences, but we do a disservice to the complexity of LGBTQ stories by conflating everything. Part of the beauty of the Queer community lies in its diversity and its rejection of heteronormativity. ‘Queer theatre’ doesn’t have to be defined being a ‘play’ or ‘musical’. Queerness exists in all mediums: in drag, dance, burlesque, circus, cabaret etc., and we are seeing these lines blurred more and more often with new shows incorporating aspects of all disciplines. So, where do we begin?

It’s often forgotten that up until 1968, British theatre was at the mercy of censorship. All plays intended for public performance had to be approved and licensed by the Lord Chamberlain’s Office, which was a legal requirement under the Licensing Act of 1737 and the Theatres Act of 1843. Essentially, this was to prevent anything indecent, offensive or blasphemous taking place in theatres; censorship was particularly strict on homosexuality.

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Whilst openly or overt Queer work was banned from our stages, it doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. Elements of Queerness can be seen in the works of Shakespeare (A Midsummer Night’s Dream / Twelfth Night) as well as in the actual performances of his plays with men cross-dressing (as women were banned from performing until the 1660s). Check out Goran Stanivukovic’s book Queer Shakespeare, Desire and Sexuality for more on this. The act of cross-dressing in theatre has been popular since the Medieval period and is a particularly important part of one of Britain’s most-treasured traditions – panto!

Queer activities were merely pushed underground particularly during the Georgian era with the proliferation of Molly Houses in the 18th and 19th centuries. The clampdown on ‘morality’ came during the Victorian era, which ushered in an openly hostile environment towards ‘deviants’, perhaps most evident in the treatment of writer Oscar Wilde.

The aggression towards Queerness pervaded throughout society in the first half of the 20th century yet, in spite of this, Queer nightlife flourished in London with well-known Queer-friendly bars and cabarets including The Cave of the Golden Calf and The Shim Sham Club. Frequented by artists, writers and musicians, The Shim Sham Club was also a reputed safe space for Queer Black and Jewish patrons. Check out this great article on Bohemian London to learn more.

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During this time, there was also an increased persecution of Queer people in the United States, yet, like in the UK, the arts were a centre of resistance, particularly in the successful plays The Drag by Mae West and The Captive by Édouard Bourdet, the latter being one of the first plays to deal with lesbianism. It’s also interesting that some of the most famous and respected playwrights and performers of the ‘30s - ‘50s were Queer (whether publicly ‘out’ or not), including John Gielgud, Noel Coward, Ivor Novello, and Terrence Rattigan to name but a few. It’s as if Queer people were only acceptable within certain parameters, set and defined by straight people.

Attitudes towards homosexuality showed signs of change when the Wolfenden Report was published in 1957, which recommended for the decriminalization of homosexuality. However, it was still impossible to show same sex relationships on stage. Despite this, Joan Littlewood and her Theatre Workshop Company staged Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste of Honey here at Stratford East in 1958. Ground-breaking in many ways, Delaney’s play evaded censorship and featured Geof, a gay student (played by Murray Melvin) who lives with protagonist Jo and helps her through her illegitimate pregnancy. This marked a change in depicting gay people with sensitivity rather than as a joke or miscreant.

When homosexuality was decriminalized in England and Wales in 1967 (and 1981 in Scotland, 1982 in Northern Ireland), Queer artists were no longer under the threat of legal persecution. Whether the public actually wanted to see Queer work was another question. As a result, Queer artists were confined to the fringes – both of society and the theatre landscape. 1967 was also the year that influential Queer playwright Joe Orton was murdered by his partner. His black comedies and satires would go on to inspire countless artists (check out Loot and Entertaining Mr Sloane).

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The 1970s saw the emergence of Gay Sweatshop Theatre Company, whose aim was to counteract the prevailing perception in mainstream theatre of what homosexuals were like. Performing at theatres, festivals and working men’s clubs across the country, their sell-out first season took place at InterAction’s Almost-Free Theatre in Soho and included plays Thinking Straight by Lawrence Collinson and Ships by Alan Wakeman. Read more about Gay Sweatshop’s fascinating history here.

Artists Jane Boston, Tash Fairbanks and Debs Threthewey created the band Devil’s Dykes, later Bright Girls. They were part of the company that formed Theatre Against Sexism and then in 1979 the feminist theatre company Siren. Venues such as The Drill Hall (now RADA Studio) were dedicated to platforming gay, lesbian and bisexual work. Other key shows of the ‘70s include Martin Sherman’s play Bent and Richard O’Brien’s musical The Rocky Horror Show, which began life at the Royal Court Upstairs in 1973 before going on to become one of the most influential cult classics of all time.

As we enter the 1980s, moral reformer Mary Whitehouse attempted to prosecute director Michael Bogdanov for his production of The Romans in Britain by Howard Brenton at the National Theatre for procuring an act of gross indecency as defined by the Sexual Offences Act 1956. The prosecution lost, but there were further attempts at censorship throughout the decade. Queer work and writers persisted regardless with plays such as Sarah Daniels’ Ripen Our Darkness, Julian Mitchell’s Another Country, Hugh Whitemore’s Breaking the Code, Kevin Elyot’s Coming Clean and Harvey Fierstein’s acclaimed Torch Song Trilogy.

The first play produced in Britain to address the AIDS crisis was Louise Parker Kelley’s Anti Body in 1983, years before any film or TV series. A wealth of work came in the following two decades that defined the gay experience of HIV and AIDS with artists such as Neil Bartlett and plays including Robert Chelsey’s Night Sweat, Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart (the first play about AIDS in the West End), Janet Hood and Bill Russell’s Elegies for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens as well as Tony Kushner’s monumental Angels in America.

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In 1988, Jackie Kay’s Twice Over was Gay Sweatshop’s first play by a Black playwright and helped raise the profile of the women’s company within Gay Sweatshop. Kay’s other influential work includes Chiaroscuro (recently revived by Bush Theatre). 1988 also saw Gay Sweatshop’s widely celebrated play This Island’s Mine by Philip Osment.

Perhaps partly down to the likes of Danny La Rue in the ‘70s, we also began to see the transition of Drag from the nightclubs to the theatres in the ‘80s with Harvey Fierstein and Jerry Herman’s La Cage Aux Folles playing the London Palladium in 1986.

The ‘90s saw a stream of important Queer works such as Phyllis Nagy’s Weldon Rising, Kevin Elyot’s My Night With Reg, Jonathan Larson’s Rent, Diana Son’s Stop Kiss, Jonathan Harvey’s Beautiful Thing and John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation to name but a few. It was also the decade of the ‘in yer face’ movement with dramatists such as Mark Ravenhill and his play Shopping and Fucking. The Drill Hall continued to be a centre for LGBTQ shows, including work from performance artists Djola Bernard Branner, Brian Freeman and Eric Gupton, otherwise known as Pomo Afro Homos (Postmodern African American Homosexuals) – their show Fierce Love played at the venue in 1992.

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The turn of the century saw a continuation of gay plays as well as new venues specifically dedicating their programming to Queer work, including Above The Stag (founded in 2008). Key shows included Alan Bennett’s The History Boys, the Boy George musical Taboo, Jonathan Harvey and Pet Shop Boys’ musical Closer to Heaven, Tarrell Alvin McCraney’s Wig Out!, Joe DiPietro’s Fucking Men and Nicholas de Jongh’s Plague Over England. There was also the hugely successful Australian musical Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

In 2012, Jo Clifford became the first openly trans playwright to have a play in the West End with her adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. Prolific playwright Rikki Beadle-Blair had several plays performed here at Stratford East including Bashment in 2005, which tackled homophobia in the hip-hop scene. He would later write and direct Summer In London in 2017, which was the first full-scale show to featuring an all-trans cast on a mainstream stage in the UK. In 2015, The Lyric Hammersmith staged Laura Wade’s adaptation of Sarah Waters’ novel Tipping The Velvet showcasing an upfront and unapologetic celebration of sexuality.

In the last few years we’ve seen several Queer productions hitting the mainstream including a musical adaptation of Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, Matthew Lopez’s The Inheritance and blockbusters Kinky Boots, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, Death Drop and &Juliet.

We also have performance artists and theatre makers including Travis Alabanza, Le Gateau Chocolat, Temi Wilkey, Tabby Lamb, Scottee, Mika Onyx Johnson, Chiyo, Alexander Luttley, Daisy Hale, Debbie Hannan and Zachary Hing who are now shaping our perceptions of Queer work and making waves in mainstream venues. Plus, Queer bars like The Glory, Royal Vauxhall Tavern and Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club continue to pave the way as training grounds for emerging Queer talent.

But what’s next? It’s obvious that major progress has been made since the days of censorship with Queer stories being told on our stages. However, the work is far from done. There is still a lack of voices from marginalized sections of the LGBT community, particularly trans/non-binary voices, working class voices, disabled voices and Black, Asian and Latinx voices. Our physical spaces may currently be shut, but it’s never too late to start learning, reading and sharing more work by Queer artists.

[Source: Holly Adomah Thompson and Sean Brooks, Stratford East, February 2021]

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Richard Blanco: Gay Latino Poet

In 2013, President Obama selected gay Latino poet Richard Blanco to recite an original poem at the Presidential Inauguration Ceremony. Blanco, who was born in Cuba, was the first LGBTQ person and the first Hispanic-American person to recite a poem at the presidential swearing-in event. At 44 years old, he was also the youngest.

Richard Blanco: Inauguration Poem

Video & Text: Richard Blanco Reads Inauguration Poem

Pres Obama Selects Richard Blanco to Read at Inauguration Ceremony

Openly Gay Hispanic American Selected as Inaugural Poet

Wash Post: Blanco is First Gay, First Hispanic, Youngest Inaugural Poet

Richard Blanco Marriage Equality Poem: Until We Could

Richard Blanco Book: How to Love a Country

Artist Arrested for Blasphemy for Painting Virgin May with Rainbow Halo

Rainbow Halo

Elżbieta Podlesna, a 51-year-old Polish woman was arrested in May 2019 for blasphemy after she painted the Virgin Mary with a rainbow halo. Polish interior minister Joachim Brudziński announced the arrest, saying she was detained for “carrying out a profanation of the Virgin Mary of Częstochowa.” The Black Madonna of Częstochowa is a Byzantine icon that is housed in the country’s holiest Catholic shrine.

“Offending religious feeling” is a crime in Poland punishable by up to two years in prison. “Telling stories about freedom and tolerance doesn’t give anyone the right to offend the feelings of believers,” Brudziński said, adding that the paintings are “cultural barbarism.”

The LGBTQ community in Poland has been under increasing attack in recent years as the country’s rightwing government attempts to copy Russian methods of demonizing LGBTQ people to hide their own failings. “We are dealing with a direct attack on the family and children inspired by the LBGTQ movement,” Jarosław Kaczyński, leader of the ruling rightwing Law and Justice party, told supporters. “They actually threaten our identity, our nation, and the Polish state."

HRW: Arrest in Poland Over Virgin Mary's Rainbow Halo

Art, Religion, and LGBTQ Rights in Poland

Unbreakable LGBTQ Art Installation in Warsaw

Art Exhibition: Gay in Trumpland

LGBTQ Latinix Mural Defaced in San Francisco

Artists Speak Up: LGBTQ People Under Attack in Brazil

Brazilian LGBTQ Art Show Shut Down
Boston Exhibits Artwork by LGBTQ Refugees

Maurice Sendak: Author and Illustrator of Children's Books

The beloved children’s author and illustrator Maurice Sendak died in 2012 at age 83. He is best known for his book, Where the Wild Things Are. Winner of countless awards and recognitions, Maurice Sendak is widely considered the most important children’s book artist of the 20th century, who wrenched the picture book out of the safe, sanitized world of the nursery and plunged it into the dark, terrifying and hauntingly beautiful recesses of the human psyche.

Maurice Sendak's NY Times Obituary

Believer: Maurice Sendak Interview

Vanity Fair: Sendak's Last Book

He was born in Brooklyn in 1928 to Polish-Jewish parents. As Maurice Sendak grew up (lower class, Jewish, gay) he felt permanently shunted to the margins of things. “All I wanted was to be straight so my parents could be happy,” he told The New York Times in a 2008 interview. “They never, never, never knew.” Sendak lived with his partner, psychoanalyst Dr. Eugene Glynn, for 50 years before Glynn's death in May 2007.

Only Us: Laura Dreyfuss and Ben Platt (Dear Evan Hanson)

Good Reads: Best Gay Plays

This Photographer Left Her Husband for a Woman — And Documented It in Portraits

Meet the Creators that Are Proving that Pride Is a State of Mind

Kehinde Wiley: Black Gay Artist

Artist Jaime Hayde Illustrates Happiness of Gay Love

Why Queer People Love Evan Hanson

Queer Artists Whose Work is Making Us Pay Attention

Broadway Backwards: Sixteen Going on Seventeen

Queer Men and Their Tattoos

Ethan Smith Poem: Letter to the Girl I Used to Be

LGBTQ Art Shows: Now Showing at Museums From Boston to Berlin

Gay Comedian Joe Lycett: Live at the Apollo
List of Queer Poetry

Evolution of Contemporary Gay Theatre

It seems almost inconceivable today, with the abundance of openly gay playwrights and gay-themed plays, that less than 50 years ago a drama critic for The New York Times felt the need to call for “social and theatrical convention” to be “widened so that homosexual life may be as freely dramatized as heterosexual life, may be as frankly treated in our drama as in contemporary fiction.” The impetus for Stanley Kauffmann’s 1966 article was his contention that three unnamed “reputed” homosexual playwrights—clearly identifiable then and now as Tennessee Williams, William Inge, and Edward Albee—were presenting a “badly distorted picture of American women, marriage, and society.” Although Kauffmann’s premise is highly debatable, he does end up advocating that the gay playwright be free to write about himself and his world without having to “disguise his nature.”

Less than two years later a play opened in New York that portrayed gay life onstage in a way it had never been before. In the words of another Times critic, Clive Barnes, it was “by far the frankest treatment of homosexuality I have ever seen on the stage.” Mart Crowley’s The Boys in the Band made theatrical history for gay theater just as Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, being performed at Juilliard this month, had done in the previous decade for African-American drama.

The Boys in the Band played 1,001 performances Off Broadway and was then filmed by William Friedkin with the original cast, marking a cinematic milestone as well. Over the years critics within the gay community have criticized Crowley for presenting stereotyped characters and an excessively negative view of gay life. Yet this play, staged a year before the Stonewall riots that are often cited as the beginning of the modern gay civil-rights movement, portrays the humor and resilience of the characters as well as their pain.

Acclaimed Shakespearean Actor Antony Sher Dies at 72

GQ Magazine: Keith Haring Blew Up the Art and Fashion World

Essential Plays, Books, and Movies for Understanding the History of Queer Liberation

Pieces from LGBTQ Artists at Superfine Art Fair in New York

Dear Evan Hanson: You Will Be Found

Lesbian Literature

Earlier this year, on the occasion of a new production of The Boys in the Band in New York, New York Times writer Patrick Healy interviewed several openly gay playwrights about the ways in which they had been influenced by The Boys in the Band. For Tony Kushner, “It was the first time I saw gay men represented in any other way than as a pathetic fuddy-duddy old bachelor or a figure of complete hatred and mockery.” Larry Kramer commented on the professional aspect of the play, noting that “it showed me as a writer, as a gay person, as a gay writer, what was possible in the commercial theater.” Doug Wright responded, “Personally it helped me to stop hiding. It showed me that there was a world where I could talk to other gay men and write about gay people and live in a manner consistent with myself.”

Two of the first “gay plays” to be performed on Broadway could not have been more different and established a pattern of diversity and the exploration of the past as well as the present that continues to this day. Martin Sherman’s Bent opened in London with Ian McKellen in 1979 and then in New York with Richard Gere. Sherman dramatized, in fictional form, the plight of gay men in Nazi Germany who were arrested and sent to concentration camps for their sexual orientation. Bent not only brought to audiences’ attention tragic historical events of which they may heretofore been unaware, but provided a symbol for the modern gay movement in the pink triangle, which became a badge of pride rather than opprobrium as it had been under the Nazis.

In a completely different vein, Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song Trilogy, originally produced in 1978 and 1979 as three separate plays by La MaMa E.T.C., became a one-evening trilogy Off Broadway in 1981 and 1982. It moved to Broadway later in 1982, ran for more than 1,200 performances, and won Tony Awards for Fierstein in both the best play and best actor in a play categories. A contemporary comedy about a gay man’s relationship with his lover, ex-lover, mother, friends, and adopted son, the play touched on such topics as gender identity, coming out, gay bashing, and gay parenting well before these issues were being discussed and analyzed the way they are today.

Tribute to Gay Classical Musicians

Braden Summers: LA-Based Gay Photographer Adds Fresh Color to LGBTQ Spectrum

When Fierstein’s next Broadway production—an evening of three one-act plays titled Safe Sex—opened in 1987, the gay community had been galvanized by the AIDS pandemic that was causing widespread devastation through its ranks. Just as AIDS transformed the gay community as a whole, it transformed gay playwriting as well, becoming an almost unavoidable source of subject matter. The irony that AIDS made the gay community more visible than it had ever been before was not lost on Ghee, one of Fierstein’s characters in Safe Sex: “Now they know who we are. ... We’ve found our voices. We know who we are. They know who we are. And they know that we care what they think. And all because of a disease. A virus. A virus that you don’t get because you’re Gay, just because you’re human. We were Gay. Now we’re human.”

Two years earlier two major nonprofit Off-Broadway theaters had produced plays that represented the opening salvo in the theatrical war against AIDS. One of these works, As Is by William Hoffmann, presented at the Circle Repertory Theater and then moved to Broadway, was more personal in nature, portraying a man with AIDS and his relationships with family, friends, business associates, and an ex-lover who stands by him throughout his illness. To show the widespread effect of AIDS, however, Hoffmann intersperses the scenes of his narrative with choral voices that present a variety of perspectives and responses to the pandemic.

While Hoffman wrote of AIDS primarily with sorrow and compassion, Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart, the longest-running production ever presented at Joseph Papp’s Public Theater, is suffused with anger and outrage at the lack of response to the crisis by the medical establishment, politicians, society as a whole, and the gay community itself. Based on Kramer’s own experiences as an early gay activist and founding member of Gay Men’s Heath Crisis (G.M.H.C.), it is part polemic, part call-to-arms, and part love story—The Normal Heart pulled no punches in confronting its audiences with the enormity of AIDS and its devastation of the gay community.

3D Artists: Famous LGBTQ Scupltors

Origin of Love: Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Diverse Humanity: LGBTQ-Themed Photo Book Series

Tig Notaro Realizes She is a Role Model for Queer Women

Although many successful plays dealing with AIDS followed in the 1990s—including Terrence McNally’s notable Love! Valour! Compassion!—none had a more profound and lasting impact than Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, the first part of which, Millenium Approaches, was given its New York premiere in 1992 at Juilliard when Kushner was a playwright-in-residence at the School. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for drama and two successive Tony Awards for Millenium Approaces and Perestroika, it was later filmed by Mike Nichols for HBO with a cast headed by Al Pacino and Meryl Streep, and is currently opening the Signature Theater season devoted to Kushner’s work. Subtitled A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, Angels in America mixes historical and fictional characters, humor and heartbreak, to dramatize not only the effect that AIDS had on gay Americans but how they are inextricably bound into the fabric of American life.

Certainly AIDS is not the almost unavoidable topic of gay theater today that it was 20 years ago, but it continues to be addressed and many playwrights are investigating both positive and negative aspects of gay history. In the 2009-10 season one play, Looking for Billy Haines, sought to acquaint audiences with a real-life, openly gay actor whose successful film career in the early days of Hollywood was ended when he refused to live in the closet and pretend to be straight. Another play, The Temperamentals, told the story of Harry Hay and the founding of the Mattachine Society, one of the first gay rights organizations established in the 1950s. This past summer the New York International Fringe Festival presented Veritas, dramatizing a witch hunt designed to drive gay men from Harvard in the 1920s and The Twentieth-Century Way, based on an incident in which the Long Beach, Calif., police department hired actors to entrap gay men in public restrooms in 1914.

While the case can be made, as Patrick Healy did in an article earlier this year in The New York Times, that gay theater today focuses more on personal relationships than political and social issues, the genre has arrived at a point where it is impossible to categorize it in any particular way. Geoffrey Naufft’s Next Fall does present a crisis precipitated by an accident rather than a health crisis, but it also dramatizes the tensions in a relationship where one man’s religious beliefs prevent him from being open about his sexuality to his family. Alexi Kaye Campbell’s The Pride, an English play that centered on the relationship between two men and a woman, showed the contrast between life for gay men in the 1950s and today. And on the horizon is Tony Kushner’s The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures, which opens at the Public Theater in March 2011 and promises Kushner’s usual mix of the personal and the political. Whatever their differences in time period, subject matter, and point of view, most of these plays combine comic and serious elements—perhaps the only generalization about gay theater, both then and now, that can ultimately be made with any degree of certainty.

[Source: Roger Oliver, The Julliard Journal, 2010]

Sculpture Unveiled in NYC Honoring Trans and Nonbinary Communities

Ian McKellan Reading Harvey Milk's Hope Speech

Washington DC Gay Men's Chorus: I Am What I Am

Great Gay Moments in 20th Century Dance

Voguing with Kia LaBeija: Drafted

La Cage Aux Folles

Trans Nonbinary Performer Tackles Greek Tragedy

Feed The Id: Live On The Lake with Cory Wong and Dave Koz

Best Gay Musicals

Autostraddle: Lesbian Photographers You Should Know About

Neil Patrick Harris: It’s Not Just for Gays Anymore

Falsettos: Falsettoland

Without JEB’s Photography, The World Wouldn’t Know Lesbian History

Twisted Broadway: Hey Big Spender
Artist Jaime Hayde Illustrates Happiness of Gay Love

NPR: When Art is Queer

Philadelphia: Opera Scene

LGBTQ Thespians: Theatre, Drama, Plays

Lizard Boy - By Justin Huertas

Getting There - By Dipika Guha

Funny Girl - Starring Beanie Feldstein

Fun Home - By Alison Bechdel, Adapted by Kron, Tesori
Kinky Boots - By Harvey Fierstein, Cyndi Lauper

My Son’s A Queer - By Rob Madge
Bare - By Jon Hartmere Jr., Damon Intrabartolo
Spring Awakening - By Sater, Sheik
Dear Evan Hanson - By Benj Pasek, Justin Paul
Unnatural Acts - By Tony Speciale
Man of No Importance - By Flaherty, Ahrens,McNally

Avenue Q - By Lopez, Marx, Whitty
Invisible Thread - By Gould, Matthews
The Prom - By Beguelin, Sklar, Martin, Mitchell
Rent - By Jonathan Larson
Angels in America - By Tony Kushner
Hedwig and the Angry Inch - By JC Mitchell, S Trask

Standing on Ceremony: Gay Marriage Plays
The Boy From Oz - By Nick Enright

Laramie Project - By Moises Kaufman
Taboo - By Boy George

Frank and Percy - By Ben Weatherill
Torch Song Trilogy - By Harvey Fierstein
Bent - By Martin Sherman
Falsettos - By Finn and Lapine
Telling Moments - By Robert C. Reinhart
La Cage Aux Folles - By Harvey Fierstein
Jeffrey - By Paul Rudnick
The Sum of Us - By David Stevens
Cabaret - By Kander, Ebb, Masteroff
Boys in the Band - By Mart Crowley
The Pink Unicorn - By Elise Forier Edie

MOMA: Creating Safe Spaces for Art-Loving LGBTQ Youth

Broadway Backwards: Cell Block Tangy

Vancouver Men's Chorus performs Anthem by Leonard Cohen

Coming Out: Broadway Star Jonathan Burke

Slam Poetry: Coming Out Straight

Mart Crowley: Boys in the Band Playwright Dies

Sculpture Unveiled in NYC Honoring Trans and Nonbinary Communities

Funny That Way: Documentary About Trans Comic Julia Scotti

Barry Humphries, Known for His Drag Persona Dame Edna Everage, Dead at 89

Up and Coming LGBTQ Musicians

LGBTQ Anime

La Cage Aux Folles (Film)

3D Artists: Famous LGBTQ Sculptors

Photographer Ron Amato: Nude Men Among the Dunes

Only Us: Laura Dreyfuss and Ben Platt (Dear Evan Hanson)

The Prom Broadway Show: You Happened

Info: LGBTQ Television and Media

LGBTQ Artists in Bay Area
Voguing with Kia LaBeija: Drafted

The Iterations of La Cage Aux Folles

1973 - La Cage Aux Folles - French play written by Jean Poiret

1978 - La Cage Aux Folles - French-Italian film directed by Édouard Molinaro, starring Ugo Tognazzi, Michel Serrault

1983 - La Cage Aux Folles - America musical play by Harvey Fierstein and Jerry Herman

1996 - The Birdcage - American film directed by Mike Nichols, staring Robin Williams, Nathan Lane

Neil Patrick Harris: Medley of Broadway Songs

Acclaimed Shakespearean Actor Antony Sher Dies at 72

Info: LGBTQ Magazines and Periodicals

LGBTQ-Related Broadway Musicals

LGBTQ Broadway Performers

Tallulah Bankhead - Actor (Dark Victory, Little Foxes, Private Lives, Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore, Streetcar Named Desire)

Noel Coward - English Playwright, Composer, Director, Actor, Singer

Joel Grey - Actor (Cabaret, George M, Chicago)
Harvey Fierstein - Playwright (La Cage Aux Folles, Torch Song Trilogy, Kinky Boots)

Stephen Sondheim - Playwright

Derek Jacobi - Actor (Much Ado About Nothing)

Antony Sher - British Shakespearean Actor, Author, Playwright
Andrew Rannells - Actor (Book of Mormon, Hamilton, Falsettos, Boys in the Band)

Neil Patrick Harris - Actor (Hedwig and the Angry Inch)
Jesse Tyler Ferguson - Actor (Take Me Out)

Jonathan Groff - Actor (New Brain)

Billy Porter - Actor (Kinky Boots)
Tina Landau - Director (Brother Sister Plays, Hot L Baltimore, Spongebob Squarepants)
Gavin Creel - Actor (Book of Mormon, Holly Dolly, Hair, Waitress)

Mart Crowley - Playwright (Boys in the Band)
Todrick Hall - Actor (Chicago, Kinky Boots, Waitress)
Nathan Lane - Actor (The Producers)
Jenn Colella - Actor (Come From Far Away, Me and the Sky)
Ben Platt - Actor (Dear Evan Hanson)

Jonathan Burke - Actor (Choir Boy, Tuck Everlasting, Cats)

David Archuleta - Actor (Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat)

Charlie Carver - Actor (Boys in the Band)

LGBTQ Heroes in Theatre

List of LGBTQ-Related Musicals

LGBTQ Experiences on Stage

Best LGBTQ Plays and Musicals

Ian McKellen - Actor (Frank & Percy)

Alison Bechdel - Playwright (Fun House)
Tituss Bergess - Actor (Guys and Dolls, Little Mermaid, The Wiz)

Alan Cumming - Actor (Cabaret)
John Tartaglia - Actor (Avenue Q)
Ben Levi Ross - Actor (Dear Evan Hansen)
Javier Munoz - Actor (Hamilton)
Beth Malone - Actor (Fun Home)

Jerry Mitchell - Actor (Hairspray, Full Monty, Rocky Horror Picture Show)
Lisa Kron - Playwright (Fun Home, 2.5 Minute Ride)
Chita Rivera - Actor (Kiss of the Spider Woman)
Grey Henson - Actor (Book of Mormon, Mean Girls)
Laverne Cox - Actor (Rocky Horror Picture Show)
William Finn - Composer, Lyricist (Spelling Bee, Falsettos)
Indina Menzel - Actor (Rent)
Rory O'Malley - Actor (Book of Mormon)
Taylor Trensch - Actor (To Kill a Mockingbird, Dear Evan Hansen, Wicked)

Andy Mientus - Actor (Spring Awakening, Les Miserables)

Joe Locke - Actor (Sweeney Todd)

TED Talk: Hannah Gadsby

Queer Comedians who are Making Sure Stand-Up is Full of the Gay Agenda
Walt Whitman: America's Poet as Queer Pioneer

Feed The Id: Live On The Lake with Cory Wong and Dave Koz

3D Artists: Famous LGBTQ Sculptors

Fifty Shades of Gay: iO Tillett Wright's TED Talk

Io Tillett Wright: Fifty Shades of Gay

Artist iO Tillett Wright has photographed 2,000 people who consider themselves somewhere on the LBGTQ spectrum and asked many of them: Can you assign a percentage to how gay or straight you are? Most people, it turns out, consider themselves to exist in the gray areas of sexuality, not 100% gay or straight. Which presents a real problem when it comes to discrimination: Where do you draw the line?

iO Tillett Wright's Bio Notes

Gallery of iO Tillett Wright's Photography

As a child actor, iO Tillett Wright turned her shoes around in the bathroom stall so that people would think she was a boy. As a teenager, she fell in love with both women and men. Her life in the grey areas of gender and sexuality deeply inform her work as an artist.

iO Tillett Wright is an artist whose work focuses on the leading margins of contemporary life and culture. Her photography is regularly featured on two blogs at the New York Times: Notes from the Underground and The Lowdown. iO created the Self Evident Truths project, an ongoing document of LGBTQ America, which she continues to work on. She had her first solo show at Fuse gallery in New York City in 2010, and exhibited her latest work at The Hole Gallery in early summer of 2012. She has published three limited edition books of photographs; Lose My Number, KISSER, and Look Ma No Hands. iO has directed several music videos, and worked as a professional film actor for nineteen years, in addition to founding the world’s first nationally distributed street art magazine.

Before Night: Short Film Tells Queer Stories in New and Authentic Ways

Love is Lifting: LGBTQ Couples in Trick Photo Series

Queer Arts: LGBTQ Photography

Autostraddle: Lesbian Photographers You Should Know About

Tig Notaro Realizes She is a Role Model for Queer Women

Summary of Queer Art

Any art that can be considered "queer" refers to the re-appropriation of the term in the 1980s, when it was snatched back from the homophobes and oppressors to become a powerful political and celebratory term to describe the experience of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and intersex people. Adhering to no particular style, for over more than a century, Queer Art has used photography, portraiture, abstract painting, sculpture, and collage to explore the varieties and depths of queer identity.

While homosexuality has a long history, the modern sense of the term is relatively new. Since the late 19th century, cultural and legal responses to homosexuality have evolved, but it was only in the second half of the 20th century that many of the laws criminalizing homosexual acts were overturned. It wasn't until the late 20th century that homosexuality was no longer considered a pathology by psychiatrists, and it wasn't until the 21st century that marriage rights were granted to same-sex couples. Throughout all of these circumstances, Queer Art has addressed these issues covertly and overtly, insisting on a voice in the art world that routinely suppressed it.

Because of the early criminalization of homosexual acts and the social stigma connected to homosexuality, much Queer Art employs coded visual language that would not arouse suspicion among the general public but would allow those familiar with the tropes of the subculture to glean the hidden meaning.

With the rise of activism in the wake of the Civil Rights protests and the AIDS epidemic, Queer Art became more frank and political in its subject matter, forcing the viewers to recognize queer culture and to underscore the institutional inequities and hypocrisy that fueled homophobia.

The Identity Politics surrounding Queer Art has sparked much debate, with some artists embracing Identity Politics and other eschewing it as not important for their work. The shifting nature of identities in particular and changing contexts has induced much questioning in queer communities and produced a myriad of answers.

LGBTQ Poets Who Inspire

Diverse Humanity: LGBTQ-Themed Photo Book Series

LGBTQ Art Shows: Now Showing at Museums From Boston to Berlin

Steven Menendez: Photos Celebrating the Earth and the Male Form

Elska Magazine: Photo Spread of Gorgeous Global Men

NYC Gay Men's Chorus: All I Want for Christmas

"I feel ever so strongly that an artist must be nourished by his passions and his despairs. These things alter an artist whether for the good or the better or the worse."
-Francis Bacon

"There's a certain kind of equality I'm trying to create, which is what I believe American democracy is about."
-Catherine Opie

"Gay men today want to be ordinary. They want to fit in. Well, I didn't care about that. I didn't care about fitting in."
-David Hockney

"Works of art sometimes help us feel less out of place in the world. Alongside queer novels, films, poems and songs, art has played its part in nurturing the self-awareness and confidence of queer people around the world."
-Alex Pilcher

Standup Comedian Mae Martin Calls Out Dave Chappelle

Sculpture Unveiled in NYC Honoring Trans and Nonbinary Communities

Queer Artists Whose Work is Making Us Pay Attention

Celebrating 100th Birthday of Tom of Finland

LGBTQ Art Shows: Now Showing at Museums From Boston to Berlin

These Men and Their Glitter Beards

Interview with Comedian Hannah Gadsby
Poetry Slam: Dear Straight People

LGBTQ Authors, Poets, and Playwrights

Francis Bacon - English Statesman, Author
TE Lawrence - English Soldier, Author
Lord Byron - English Poet
Walt Whitman - US Poet, Author
Oscar Wilde - Irish Author
Marcel Proust - French Author
Gertrude Stein - US Poet, Author
Alice B. Toklas - US Author
Percy Bysshe Shelley - English Poet
James Baldwin - US Author

Susan Sontag - US Author
Herman Melville - US Author
Jack Kerouac - US Author

Federico Garcia Lorca - Spanish Poet

Lesbian Photographers You Should Know About

I Am What I Am: Song From La Cage Aux Folles
Only Us: Laura Dreyfus and Ben Platt

I Am What I Am: La Cage Aux Folles

Thomas Love Peacock - English Poet
Willa Cather - US Author
Langston Hughes - US Author
Christina Rossetti - English Poet
EM Forster - English Author
Hans Christian Andersen - Danish Author

Alice Walker - US Author
Ralph Waldo Emerson - US Author
Virginia Woolf - English Author
Tennessee Williams - US Playwright
Rainer Maria Rilke - German Poet
Edward Albee - US Playwright
Lord Alfred Douglas - English Poet

Armistead Maupin - US Writer

Adrienne Rich - US Poet

Carol Ann Duffy - Scottish Poet, playwright

Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette - French Author

Edmund White - US Novelist, Memoirist

Queer Artists Whose Work is Making Us Pay Attention

Info: Fashion and Clothing

This Man's Illustrations About Life With His Boyfriend Are Absolutely Adorable

Only Us: Dear Evan Hanson

Minnie Bruce Pratt - US Poet, Essayist

Pierre Louys - French Poet
William S. Burroughs - US Author
Rita Mae Brown - US Novelist
Algernon Charles Swinburne - English Poet
Mary Oliver - US Poet
Gore Vidal - US Novelist
Antonio Botto - Portuguese Poet
Allen Ginsberg - US Poet
WH Auden - English Poet

Pat Parker - US Poet
Truman Capote - US Author
Frank O'Hara - US Poet

Maurice Sendak - US Author, Illustrator

Carl Phillips - US Poet

Audre Lorde - US Poet

Jonathan Harvey - Playwright (Beautiful Thing )

Elizabeth Gilbert - US Author (Eat Pray Love)

Countee Cullen - US Poet

Oliver Sacks - British Author (Awakenings)

Marijane Meaker - US Author (Lesbian Pulp Fiction)

Amy M. Homes - US Author (Short Stories, Novels)

Art History Teaching Resources: Queer Art 1960s to Present

Gay Culture: Ancient Wonder or Modern Creation

Barry Humphries, Known for His Drag Persona Dame Edna Everage, Dead at 89

Same Sex Relationships Hidden in Classic Literature

Ian McKellan Reading Harvey Milk's Hope Speech

Photographer Ron Amato: Nude Men Among the Dunes

Kehinde Wiley: Black Gay Artist

Carol Ann Duffy: Britain's Poet Laureate

Dame Carol Ann Duffy DBE FRSL (born 1955) is a Scottish poet and playwright. She is Professor of Contemporary Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed Britain's Poet Laureate in May 2009. She is the first woman, the first Scot and the first openly LGBTQ person to hold the position.

She was born to a Roman Catholic family in a poor part of Glasgow, the first child of Frank and Mary who went on to have another four children, all boys. The family later moved to England. Duffy was educated in Stafford at Saint Austin's RC Primary School, St. Joseph's Convent School and Stafford Girls' High School. Her literary talent was encouraged by two English teachers, June Scriven and Jim Walker. She was a passionate reader from an early age, always wanted to be a writer, and produced poems from the age of 11.

Her collections include ‘Standing Female Nude’ winner of a Scottish Arts Council Award, ‘Selling Manhattan’ which won a Somerset Maugham Award, ‘Mean Time’ winner of the Whitbread Poetry Award, and ‘Rapture’ which won the TS Eliot Prize. Her poems address issues such as oppression, gender, and violence in an accessible language that has made them popular in schools. She applied to the University of Liverpool and began a philosophy degree there in 1974. She had two plays performed at the Liverpool Playhouse, wrote a pamphlet ‘Fifth Last Song’ and received an honors degree in philosophy in 1977.

She worked as poetry critic for The Guardian from 1988 to 1989 and was editor of the poetry magazine ‘Ambit’. In 1996 she was appointed as a lecturer in poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University and later became creative director of its Writing School. In 1999, she was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

She was appointed Poet Laureate in 2009 and was featured on the South Bank Show with Melvyn Bragg. Also in 2009 Duffy received an Honorary Doctorate from Heriot-Watt University.

Duffy was in a relationship with Scottish poet Jackie Kay.

I Am What I Am: La Cage Aux Folles

Autostraddle: Lesbian Photographers You Should Know About

Queer Art: 1960s to Present

From ancient Greece to contemporary art, queer art can be taught through many art historical trajectories. This lesson takes a contemporary approach and can be utilized within surveys of modern/contemporary art or in seminars pertaining to “art and identity” topics. This lecture has two key concepts: censorship and visibility. Until very recently it was not socially acceptable to be out as an LGBT or Q person. As such, queer art over the twentieth century has been shaped by, on the one hand—the need to conceal references to queer identity and experiences and, on the other—a desire for visibility: the cultural imperative to create representations of queer identity because none exist.

Queer Men and Their Tattoos

Art History: Queer Art 1960s to Present

Scholars, namely Richard Meyer and Jonathan D. Katz, have explored how mid-twentieth century artists (including Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns and Agnes Martin) developed visual codes to signify queerness in clandestine ways. After this period, the Stonewell Riots of 1969 marked a shift towards more visibility. This is an event that is largely defined as the “before/after” moment in LGBTQ history, when patrons (many of them queer and trans people of color) of a mafia-owned gay bar in New York’s West Village fought back against a routine police raid. The confrontation was part of a groundswell of activism tied to the protest spirit of the period, including civil rights and women’s liberation, and it led to a new social movement for lesbian and gay rights.

Unlike previous forms of gay activism, gay liberation promoted visibility by encouraging people to “come out” as LGBTQ, rather than remain closeted and/or assimilate to dominant social norms. This ethos was manifested in art as well as art history: artists became emboldened to make art about their sexual identity, and LGBTQ art historians began to recuperate the work of LGBTQ art that went unnoticed, had been censored, or written out of history books. The desire to document and celebrate depictions of queer identity, life, and history is an example of the politicization of sexuality that emerged during this period.

Queer Artists Whose Work is Making Us Pay Attention

Critically Queer: Being a Gay Student in the Humanities

MOMA: Creating Safe Spaces for Art-Loving LGBTQ Youth

Slam Poetry: Coming Out Straight

Braden Summers: LA-Based Gay Photographer Adds Fresh Color to LGBTQ Spectrum

In the 1980s, militant gay activists reclaimed the term “queer” to confront the homophobia unleashed by the HIV/AIDS crisis that emerged in that decade, which disproportionally affected gay men. “Queer” became the preferred label for many people on the LGBT spectrum because of its lack of a fixed meaning and the spirit of social deviance it connotes. Many queer artists embrace marginality as a position from which to create self-empowered narratives that resist dominant understandings of gender, race, class, and sexuality. For others, queer identity has little to do with their art. Queer is a reclaimed pejorative for people who desire someone of the same sex, is pansexual, bisexual, or any other sexuality that is not lesbian or gay, while transgender refers to a person whose self-identity does not conform unambiguously to conventional notions of male or female gender. While queer and trans are often related and overlapping identities, they are distinct and not interchangeable.

[Source: Tara Burk and Amy Raffel, Art History Teaching Resources]

History of Gay Art and Symbolism

Queer Tango

Art History: Queer Art 1960s to Present

Funny That Way: Documentary About Trans Comic Julia Scotti

Info: LGBTQ Movies and Film
Meet the Creators that Are Proving that Pride Is a State of Mind

Broadway Backwards: Sixteen Going on Seventeen

Tig Notaro Realizes She is a Role Model for Queer Women

LGBTQ Poets

Mary Oliver
Carol Ann Duffy
Richard Blanco
Saeed Jones
Audre Lorde
Frank O'Hara
Andrea Gibson
Danez Smith
Michelle Tea
Federico Garcia Lorca
Alok Vaid-Menon

Francisco Aragón
James Baldwin
Elizabeth Bishop
John Giorno
Kari Edwards
Rickey Laurentiis
Adrienne Rich
Tommy Pico
Joshua Jennifer Espinoza
Rafael Campo
Mark Doty

Lee Mokobe
Frank Bidart
Pauli Murray
Allen Ginsberg
Ifti Nasim
Melvin Dixon
Jack Kerouac
Eileen Myles
June Jordan
Walt Whitman
CP Cavafy

Queer Poets to Read Now and Forever
Neil Patrick Harris: Medley of Broadway Songs

Gay Playwright Matthew López: First Latino to Win Tony Award for Best Play

Info: LGBTQ Music and Musicians
Voguing with Kia LaBeija: Drafted

Hamilton: Schuyler Sisters Miscast

Tom of Finland: Homoerotic Artist

"My whole life long I have done nothing but interpret my dreams of ultimate masculinity, and draw them.

-Tom of Finland

"Tom of Finland defied homophobic censorship. He affirmed and glamorized our sexuality; giving hope and confidence to gay men at a time when many had internalized homophobia and sexual guilt. His imagery turned upside down the stereotype that we were weak and disgusting. It portrayed gay men as strong and desirable, which was refreshing and empowering. What Tom of Finland gave us was an antidote to the negative, demeaning heterosexual supremacist representations of homosexuality."

-Peter Tatchell, British LGBTQ Human Rights Activist

"Tom of Finland is one of the five most influential artists of the 20th century. As an artist he was superb, as an influence he was transcendent."

-Harvey Miller, Art Patron

Tom of Finland Exhibit in Los Angeles

Celebrating 100th Birthday of Tom of Finland

David Kordansky Gallery: View the Works of Tom of Finland

Tom of Finland Foundation: Let's Go Camping

Love and Liberation Exhibit

The Darkroom Exhibit

Tom of Finland (1920-1991) was an artist whose sexually charged drawings of musclemen impacted gay culture. He is known as the most influential creator of homoerotic images.

Born Touko Laaksonen in a small Finnish town, he was the son of two school teachers. At 19, Laaksonen moved to Helsinki to study advertising and began drawing erotic images. In 1957, he submitted drawings to Physique Pictorial, an American magazine, under the pseudonym Tom. When his gay-themed illustrations were published, the magazine credited Tom of Finland, a name he assumed for the remainder of his career.

Tom introduced to mainstream culture a stylized masculinity in sharp contrast to the effeminate stereotypes of gay men. His work, which embraced sailors, bikers, lumberjacks and construction workers in leather and jeans, became popular and widely distributed in the gay community.

In the late 1950s, US censorship codes restricted depiction of “overt homosexual acts” and limited the distribution of Tom’s work. In the 1962 case of MANual Enterprises v. Day, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that nude male photographs were not obscene. As soft-core gay pornography flourished, Tom’s illustrations became more explicit, including exaggerated musculature and genitalia.

By 1973, Tom was publishing erotic comic books and exhibiting his work in the mainstream art world. In 1984, he cofounded the Tom of Finland Foundation, which is dedicated to the preservation of homoerotic artwork. In 1995, the Tom of Finland Clothing Company introduced a fashion line based on his art.

Tom created more than 3,500 illustrations in his four-decade career. Five of Tom of Finland’s drawings are featured in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

[Source: LGBTQ Nation, Archives, Equality Forum, LGBTQ History Month Profile, October 2013]

Queer Tango

You Tube: Do You Dream in Color?

Funny That Way: Documentary About Trans Comic Julia Scotti

Info: LGBTQ Television and Media

Ellen DeGeneres: Gay Cartoon Characters

List of Gay Men's Choruses

Slam Poetry: Third Gender

This Man's Illustrations About Life With His Boyfriend Are Absolutely Adorable

Info: LGBTQ Magazines and Periodicals

GQ Magazine: Keith Haring Blew Up the Art and Fashion World

Playbill: Regional Companies Leading the Charge in Gay Theatre

LGBTQ Theatre Companies

Aputheatre Buddies in Bad Times

Celebration Theatre

Five Lesbian Brothers

Frank Theatre Company

Pomo Afro Homos

Split Britches

Stage Q Theatre Offensive

Theatre Rhinoceros

Triangle Theatre Company

Who Wants Cake Theatre

Pride Youth Theatre Alliance
List: LGBTQ Related Plays
Playbill: LGBTQ Theatre Heroes Who Inspire
Purple Circuit: Most Influential LGBTQ Plays

LGBTQ Poets Who Inspire

Audre Lorde was a Black feminist, lesbian, poet, mother and justice warrior. Her writing, activism and poetry speak to the struggle often faced by people who have been marginalized by society, including LGBTQ people and people of color. The last four stanzas of one of her most famous poems, “The Black Unicorn,” show that even though progress has been made, more work remains in the fight for full equality for all people: “The black unicorn is restless, the black unicorn is unrelenting, the black unicorn is not free.”

Mary Oliver, an out poet who believed “poetry mustn’t be fancy,” wrote at length about nature and the beauty of the world around us. Inspired by other queer women poets including Edna St. Vincent Millay, she explored the intersection of herself as a queer woman and the world in which she lived, embracing everyday beauty.

Andrea Gibson is a poet and activist whose work focuses on gender, politics and the struggles that LGBTQ people still face. Many of their poems are spoken word, a form of poetry and performance art characterized by rhyme, repetition, improvisation and word play that frequently speaks to issues of social justice and community. One of Gibson’s most moving poems is their tribute to the victims of the deadly Pulse nightclub shooting in June 2016.

Fatimah Asghar is a Pakistani, Kashmiri, American poet and queer woman. In her debut book of poems, “If They Come For Us,” Asghar focuses on navigating coming of age and questioning her sexuality without guidance from her parents, who passed away when she was young. The book explores what it means to hold an intersectional identity in today’s world, while still remembering the history of those who came before.

Chen Chen is an up-and-coming poet who also explores the intersection of identities in today’s world in his poetry. His poem “When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities” captures the heart of his work: “To be, in my spare time, / America for my uncle, who wants to be China / for me. … To be a cyclone / of laughter when my parents say / their new coworker is like that, they can tell / because he wears pink socks, see, you don’t, so you can’t, / can’t be one of them. To be the one / my parents raised me to be -- / a season from the planet / of planet-sized storms.”

A.W. is another young poet who is taking up the reins of the next generation of poets advocating for equality. A.W.’s poem “Differences” inspires us to be who we are, treat everyone equally and always stand up for ourselves and our friends: “Treat people well, don’t treat them different because they're different, all people should be able to do what other people can do if it is a good choice.”

[Source: Human Rights Campaign]

LGBTQ Poets Who Inspire

Barry Humphries, Known for His Drag Persona Dame Edna Everage, Dead at 89

Falsettos: Falsettoland

Kehinde Wiley: Painter of President Obama Official Portrait

LGBTQ Art Shows: Now Showing at Museums From Boston to Berlin

Opera: The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name

Neil Patrick Harris: Medley of Broadway Songs

Info: LGBTQ Music and Musicians
Art History Teaching Resources: Queer Art 1960s to Present

Info: LGBTQ Magazines and Periodicals

Washington Post: Laurie Rubin Describes Her World of Color

NPR: When Art is Queer

Laurie Rubin: Blind Jewish Lesbian Opera Singer

Blind since birth, mezzo-soprano Laurie Rubin tells her empowering story in memoir Do You Dream in Color? Insights From a Girl Without Sight. Acclaimed mezzo-soprano opera singer Laurie Rubin has been blind since birth, is openly lesbian, and of Jewish background. What better reason to write a memoir? On paper, she was, obviously, not your typical everyday teenager growing up. But with determination and a strong support system, she continually surpassed and redefined others’ expectations, both professionally in the music industry and outside of it.

Out: Opera Singer Inspires With Her Story

Defying the naysayers since childhood, the lively and charismatic Rubin released Do You Dream in Color? Insights From a Girl Without Sight in 2012, recounting her experiences from childhood to full-fledged opera singer. An uplifting story about her journey to follow her dreams, Rubin’s story asks those universal questions (Who am I? and Where do I fit in?) while giving an insight into a musical world you probably know nothing about. Not only does she have a busy concert schedule, Rubin is also in developing a curriculum for Yale music (where she earned her master's degree) that will aim to dispel stereotypes and better the perceived value of people living with disabilities by allowing people of all ages and walks of life to share in the experiences of blindness.

TED Talk: Hannah Gadsby

Tig Notaro Realizes She is a Role Model for Queer Women

Darcy & Jer Share Their Love Story, Talk TikTok Fame & Comedy Tour
LGBTQ Community Center: Arts and Culture

Blithe House Quarterly: LGBTQ Short Stories

Queer Comedians who are Making Sure Stand-Up is Full of the Gay Agenda
Interview with Comedian Hannah Gadsby

Info: LGBTQ Humor

Queer Arts: List of LGBTQ Organizations
Stevie Sings “Maybe This Time” - Schitt’s Creek

Irrepressible Moms Mabley

The African-American actress and comedienne Jackie "Moms" Mabley was born in 1894 and died in 1975. Though she had four children and five grandchildren, Mabley never married and she lived most of her life as a Lesbian.

Although she was not "out" in the modern sense, certainly Moms Mabley did break taboos and challenge assumptions throughout her career with her character of an old woman, who was sexual, savvy, and irrepressible.

The girl who survived childhood rape to carve out a successful career in the inhospitable world of show business grew up to be Moms, who described her television appearances by saying, "I looked at the world as my children."

Moms Mabley: Biographical Notes

Comedian Moms Mabley in 1967
Moms Mabley: Legacy Project

LGBTQ Comedians

Ellen DeGeneres
Ross Matthews
Tig Notaro
Hannah Gadsby
Suzanne Westenhofer
DeAnne Smith
Margaret Cho
Dana Goldberg
Mario Cantone
Simon Amstell
Paula Pell
Paris Sashay

Moms Mabley

Sophie Santos

Cassie Workman

Sam Morrison

Dame Edna Everage

Darcy & Jer

Nurse Blake

Randy Rainbow

Mae Martin

Kate McKinnon
Lea DeLaria
Eddie Izzard
Sandra Bernhard
Kate Clinton
Wanda Sykes
Gabe Liedman
Sabrina Jalees
Franqi French
Maggie Casella
Alec Mapa
Kelli Dunham

Julia Scotti

Jerrod Carmichael

Maggie Faris

Kristin Key

Tim Murray

Mo'Nique

Meg Stalter

Larry Grayson

Sampson McCormick
Lilly Singh
Eliot Glazer
Erin Foley
James Adomian
Fortune Feimster
KeLanna Spiller
Stephen Guarino
Joel Creasey
Joe Lycett
Matteo Lane

Kelsey Darraugh

Benito Skinner

Sydnee Washington

Mandy Jane

Jess Tom

New Netflix Documentary Is Telling the History of Queer Stand-Up Comedy

Tig Notaro Realizes She is a Role Model for Queer Women

Hannah Gadsby’s Netflix Special ‘Gender Agenda’ Sets Lineup of Genderqueer Comedians

Meet Comedian Nurse Blake

Kristin Key: Between a Redneck in Portland
Barry Humphries, Known for His Drag Persona Dame Edna Everage, Dead at 89

Standup Comedian Mae Martin Calls Out Dave Chappelle

Info: LGBTQ Humor

Dear Evan Hanson: You Will Be Found

Darcy & Jer Share Their Love Story, Talk TikTok Fame & Comedy Tour

LGBTQ Art Shows: Now Showing at Museums From Boston to Berlin

Meet the Young Artists of Provincetown

Voguing with Kia LaBeija: Drafted

LGBTQ Dancers

Rudolf Nuryev - Russian Ballet Dancer
Tommy Tune - US Tap Dancer, Broadway Star
Josephine Baker - US Dancer
Isadora Duncan - US Dancer

Alvin Ailey - US Dancer, Choreographer
Bronislava Nijinska - Russian Dancer
Vaslav Nijinsky - Russian Dancer

Bill T Jones - US Dancer, Choreographer

Kellen Stancil - US Dancer, Choreographer

LGBTQ Fashion Icons and Designers

Giorgio Armani

Pierre Cardin

Christian Dior

André Leon Talley

Domenico Dolce

Stefano Gabbana

Perry Ellis

Karl Lagerfeld

Halston

Thierry Mugler
Isaac Mizrahi
Yves Saint Laurent

Hallelujah: Queer Dance About Love, Hate, and Religion

Slam Poetry: Queer Marriage Poem

Darcy & Jer Share Their Love Story, Talk TikTok Fame & Comedy Tour

Polari Mag: LGBTQ Arts & Culture

This Man's Illustrations About Life With His Boyfriend Are Absolutely Adorable

Dancer Rudolph Nureyev

The heartbreaking letter to dance that Nureyev wrote while dying of AIDS in 1993:

It was the smell of my skin changing, it was getting ready before class, it was running away from school and after working in the fields with my dad because we were ten brothers, walking those two kilometers to dance school.

I would never have been a dancer, I couldn't afford this dream, but I was there, with my shoes worn on my feet, with my body opening to music, with the breath making me above the clouds. It was the sense I gave to my being, it was standing there and making my muscles words and poetry, it was the wind in my arms, it was the other guys like me that were there and maybe wouldn't be dancers, but we swapped the sweat, silences, barely. For thirteen years I studied and worked, no auditions, nothing, because I needed my arms to work in the fields.

But I didn't care: I learned to dance and dance because it was impossible for me not to do it, it was impossible for me to think I was elsewhere, not to feel the earth transforming under my feet plants, impossible not to get lost in music, impossible not not to get lost in music using my eyes to look in the mirror, to try new steps. Everyday I woke up thinking about the moment I would put my feet inside my slippers and do everything by tasting that moment. And when I was there, with the smell of camphor, wood, tights, I was an eagle on the rooftop of the world, I was the poet among poets, I was everywhere and I was everything.

I remember a ballerina El èna Vadislowa, rich family, well taken care of, beautiful. She wanted to dance like me, but later I realized it wasn't like that. She danced for all the auditions, for the end of the course show, for the teachers watching her, to pay tribute to her beauty. Two years prepared for the Djenko contest. The expectations were all about her. Two years he sacrificed part of his life. He didn't win the contest. She stopped dancing, forever. He didn't resist. That was the difference between me and her. I used to dance because it was my creed, my need, my words that I didn't speak, my struggle, my poverty, my crying. I used to dance because only there my being broke the limits of my social condition, my shyness, my shame. I used to dance and I was with the universe on my hands, and while I was at school, I was studying, arraising the fields at six am, my mind endured because it was drunk with my body capturing the air.

I was poor, and they paraded in front of me guys performing for pageants, they had new clothes, they made trips. I didn't suffer from it, my suffering would have been stopping me from entering the hall and feeling my sweat coming out of the pores of my face. My suffering would have been not being there, not being there, surrounded by that poetry that only the sublimation of art can give. I was a painter, poet, sculptor.

The first dancer of the year-end show got hurt. I was the only one who knew every move because I sucked, quietly every step. They made me wear his new, shiny clothes and dictated me after thirteen years, the responsibility to demonstrate. Nothing was different in those moments I danced on stage, I was like in the hall with my clothes off. I was and I used to perform, but it was dancing that I cared. The applause reached me far away. Behind the scenes, all I wanted was to take off that uncomfortable tights, but everyone's compliments came to me and I had to wait. My sleep wasn't different from other nights. I had danced and whoever was watching me was just a cloud far away on the horizon. From that moment my life changed, but not my passion and need to dance. I kept helping my dad in the fields even though my name was on everyone's mouth. I became one of the brightest stars in dance.

Now I know I'm going to die, because this disease doesn't forgive, and my body is trapped in a pram, blood doesn't circulate, I lose weight. But the only thing that goes with me is my dance my freedom to be. I'm here, but I dance with my mind, fly beyond my words and my pain. I dance my being with the wealth I know I have and will follow me everywhere: that I have given myself the chance to exist above effort and have learned that if you experience tiredness and effort dancing, what if you dance sits for effort, if we pity our bleeding feet, if we chase only the aim and don't understand the full and unique pleasure of moving, we don't understand the deep essence of life, where the meaning is in its becoming and not in appearing. Every man should dance, for life. Not being a dancer, but dancing.

Who will never know the pleasure of walking into a hall with wooden bars and mirrors, who stops because they don't get results, who always needs stimulus to love or live, hasn't stepped into the depths of life, and will abandon every time life won't give him what he wants. It's the law of love: you love because you feel the need to do it, not to get something or to be reciprocated, otherwise you're bound to unhappiness. I'm dying, and I thank God for giving me a body to dance so that I wouldn't waste a moment of the wonderful gift of life.

Vancouver Men's Chorus performs Anthem by Leonard Cohen

Info: Fashion and Clothing

LGBTQ Art Shows: Now Showing at Museums From Boston to Berlin

Lesbian Stand-Up Comedian: DeAnne Smith

Darcy & Jer Share Their Love Story, Talk TikTok Fame & Comedy Tour

Philadelphia: Opera Scene

Neil Patrick Harris: It’s Not Just for Gays Anymore

Info: LGBTQ Authors and Books

Kelli Dunham: Nun Turned Genderqueer Standup Comic

Wendy Carlos: Trans Musician of Electronic Baroque

Wendy Carlos (born Walter Carlos, 1939) is a transgender American musician and composer best known for her electronic music and film scores. Born and raised in Rhode Island, Carlos studied physics and music at Brown University before moving to New York City in 1962 to study music composition at Columbia University. Studying and working with various electronic musicians and technicians at the city's Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, she helped in the development of the Moog synthesizer, the first commercially available keyboard instrument created by Robert Moog.

Carlos came to prominence with Switched-On Bach (1968), an album of music by Johann Sebastian Bach performed on a Moog synthesizer, which helped popularize its use in the 1970s and won her three Grammy Awards. Its commercial success led to several more albums, including further synthesized classical music adaptations, and experimental and ambient music. She composed the score to two Stanley Kubrick films -- A Clockwork Orange (1971) and The Shining (1980) -- and Tron (1982) for Walt Disney Productions. In 1979, Carlos raised public awareness of transgender issues by disclosing she had been living as a woman since at least 1968, and in 1972 had undergone sex reassignment surgery.

Biographical Notes: Wendy Carlos

NPR: New Biography of Trans Woman Wendy Carlos

Wendy Carlos: Beauty and trauma of Being Openly Trans

Dana Goldberg: Jewish Lesbian Comedian

Willmer Broadnax: Transgender Gospel Singer

Willmer "Little Axe" Broadnax (1916–1992) was a transgender African-American hard gospel quartet singer. A tiny man with glasses and a high powerful tenor voice, he worked and recorded with many of the most famous and influential groups of his day.

"Little Axe" was born in Houston, Texas, and after moving to Southern California in the mid-1940s he and his brother, William, joined the ‘Southern Gospel Singers’, a group that performed primarily on weekends. The Broadnax brothers soon formed their own quartet the ‘Golden Echoes’.

"Little Axe" eventually left for Atlanta, where he joined the ‘Five Trumpets’ but Willmer stayed on as lead singer with the ‘Golden Echoes’. In 1949 the group, augmented by future Soul Stirrer Paul Foster, recorded a single of ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’ for Specialty Records. Label chief Art Rupe decided to drop them before they could record a follow-up, and shortly thereafter the Golden Echoes disbanded.

In 1950 "Little Axe" joined the ‘Spirit of Memphis Quartet’ which featured two other leads: Jethro "Jet" Bledsoe, a bluesy crooner, and Silas Steele, an overpowering baritone. This was one of the most impressive line-ups in quartet history.

‘The Spirit of Memphis Quartet’ recorded for King Records and "Little Axe" appeared on their releases at least until 1952. However, shortly after that he moved on, working with the ‘Fairfield Four’ and in the beginning of the ‘60s the ‘Five Blind Boys of Mississippi’ as one of the replacements for Archie Brownlee.

Following that, until 1965 he headed a quartet called ‘Little Axe and the Golden Echoes’ which released some singles on Peacock Records. By then quartet singing was fading as a commercial phenomenon, and "Little Axe" retired from touring, though he did record occasionally with the ’Blind Boys’.

Continuing to perform well into his 70s, it wasn't until an autopsy was performed following his death in 1992, that it was revealed Broadnax had been assigned female at birth.

Out Beat: America's First LGBTQ Jazz Festival

Meet the Creators that Are Proving that Pride Is a State of Mind