The Boys in the Band | Acting Gay in the Age of Queer: Pondering the Revival of The Boys in the Band
In the following essay, the author discusses the controversy over the representation of gay identity in the play The Boys in the Band, calling into question what it means to be a ‘‘gay spectator in the 1990s’’ while assessing various audience reactions to the play over time.
‘‘Bellwether,’’ ‘‘watershed,’’ ‘‘crossroads,’’ ‘‘turning point’’: with these and other ponderous terms, critics have hailed Mart Crowley’s 1968 The Boys in the Band as the breakthrough production that brought frank and direct representations of homosexuality to American theatre. Where earlier plays had disposed of their ‘‘deviant’’ characters in a denouement that was often tantamount to a cleansing of the homosexual taint, spectators of The Boys in the Band witnessed for the first time a group of men discussing their sex lives,...
[The entire page is 5648 words long]
Join eNotes
The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:
Summary and Analysis – Themes – Characters – And much more...
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Navigate
Tell a friend about The Boys in the Band at eNotes.
