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The queer rights movement of the last century has theatre and protest at its core and today both have never been more importantHarry Mackrill is a theatre director and co-founder of The Lot Productions, a theatre company that makes independent work with an inclusive mindset.
Feminist activist Gloria Steinem said: “People in the same room understand and empathise with each other in a way that isn’t possible on the page or screen.” As a theatre director, I agree. The concepts of theatre and protest are inextricably linked – people gather in a space to tell truth to power.
The queer rights movement of the last century – which came into prominence alongside feminism in the US and UK during the 1970s – has both theatre and protest at its core.
One of the founding members of the modern queer rights movement, Harry Hays, had a political awakening during his time working as an actor in a communist theatre troupe of the 1930s. Hays founded the Mattachine Society in 1950, which formed the foundation of the gay rights movement that developed in the 1960s and ‘70s.
The arts have always been interwoven with political movements, and this becomes especially acute around the expression of the queer body. The queer body is the very thing that needs to break free from social and political injustice. We can see this through the cultures of the Weimar Republic in Germany up until the early 1930s and the Harlem Renaissance in 1920s New York, through to the Portuguese pop of ‘80s icon António Variações and to the mainstream takeover of Ru Paul’s Drag Race.
Like grassroots political movements, theatre can take risks that the more commercial media of film and television can’t afford. During the 1970s and ‘80s, pioneering LGBTQ+ theatre group Gay Sweatshop spearheaded queer storytelling in London, showcasing performers such as artist and activist Lois Weaver and actor Simon Callow who celebrated queer identity and fought – in real time and space, on a stage – for equality.
And despite AIDs being largely ignored by mainstream culture throughout the 1980s and ‘90s, one of the most important plays of the 20th century, Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, was written as a direct protest against the Reagan administration’s lack of response to the epidemic. Angels was preceded by Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart, a play that exploded off-Broadway, eventually landing in the West End in 1985 and was followed by Phyllis Nagy’s 1992 Royal Court debut Weldon Rising.
What better way to protest than with queer voices front and centre on some of the biggest stages in the world?
And the work continues today.
At a time when trans rights are constantly debated and debased across politics and the media, theatre can offer a space of protest and celebration.
Travis Alabanza has been seen on some of the most important stages in the country and has currently queered the work of Shakespeare for the Globe’s latest As You Like It. And writer and performer Len Lukowski celebrated the experience of trans joy and catharsis during the rehearsals of new play As Is by writer and academic Harvey Humphrey.
Perhaps this is what I love most about theatre. Even in its subversion, its anger and protest, there is a core of empathy and joy. In his 1971 essay, On Being Different, Merle Miller wrote of his coming out: “There it was, out at last, and if it seems like nothing very much, I can only say that it took me a long time to say it, to be able to say it, and none of the journey was easy.”
We are experiencing this journey daily as my theatre company rehearses a stage adaptation, What It Means, of Miller’s work.
The journey may not be easy, the protest might be necessary and hard – but there is joy and celebration at the end of the road, and I am here for that.
What It Means by James Corley, adapted from On Being Different by Merle Miller, runs at Wilton’s Music Hall, London October 4-28.
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