Nearly every season since has staged a show created by the AFYT program. This program engages with Chicagoland’s queer youth by fusing theatre with activism and community. Then, in response to the 1999 murder of Matthew Shepard, the company formed About Face Youth Theatre (AFYT). This focus has been present since the company’s inception. Though it occasionally presents the local premieres and revivals, About Face mainly develops and mounts new plays. Mission “About Face Theatre creates exceptional, innovative, and adventurous theatre and educational programming that advances the national dialogue on sexual and gender identity, and challenges and entertains audiences in Chicago and beyond.”Ībout the company Celebrating its 20th anniversary, this equity theatre in Chicago displays a staying power that eludes most young companies, gay or straight. Here are eight queer companies who help to suggest the dazzling variety of contemporary queer theatre and seven others making their mark across the country.Įrin Barlow, Lauren Sivak, Sadieh Rifai and Meghan Reardon in The Secretaries at About Face Theatre As the LGBT community gains acceptance in America, it rewrites definitions of normality and lifts other marginalized groups as well. These companies embrace the young, old and in-between, accept gay, straight and non-binary sexualities and identities and invent new modes of production and organization. Instead, the sheer diversity inspires us. This programming enhances those themes in even the most canonical works: mount a play about a femme Latina dealing with body issues, and Angels in America’s Louis gains significance as well.īut predictably, the alternative spirit of LGBT culture makes a uniform conclusion impossible.
Queer theatres, on the whole, are far more likely to stage plays about women, race and poverty than their mainstream counterparts. Playbill looked at the dozens of “out” companies, from California to New York Island, to examine queer-run troupes in an era when larger, general-interest theatres are proud allies. Maybe one way to answer the question “What is LGBT theatre?” is to look at companies across the country who self-identify as queer.
Unlike the theatre industry, which is still dominated by New York, the gay community has no center. So how does a theatre company define itself as queer when gay drama has become an essential part of the American canon? If white, cisgendered companies can mount Rent and high schools can stage Angels in America, what role do queer theatres have in American theatre today? Success is an ironic problem. Gay culture is, in part, about the rejection of conformity.