SATURDAY 19th July
Mister X by Roger Baker and Drew Griffiths (Gay Sweatshop, 1976) scripted with the company was based on the booklet With Downcast Gays: Aspects of Homosexual Self-Oppression by Andrew Hodges and David Hutte. A ‘coming-out’ tale, it illustrates the journey of a gay man from adolescence, through various stages of self-oppression until his proud liberation at a time when pride in one’s sexuality was a revolutionary act. The play was centre stage in the debate about whether homosexuals should lead a quiet, conformist life to fit into the status quo or participate in direct action to demand equality.
Men by Noel Greig and Don Milligan (The One-Off Company, offshoot of The General Will, 1976)
The One-Off Theatre Company was an offshoot of The General Will the agit-prop theatre group that Noel Greig had ‘zapped’ when he publicly outed himself in the middle of a performance. It confronted the tensions in the relationship between Richard trade union organiser and closeted homosexual when his relationship with his camp gay love Gene is discovered by his fellow workmates and explores the collisions between the repressive attitudes of the labour movement and the developing politics of sexual identity.
Gents by Brixton Faeries (Oval House1980)
Gents looked into the world of cottaging with the aim of celebrating this clandestine practice: ‘People thought that radical gays were giving respectable gays a bad name…Gents is about men having sex with men in public toilets… it was the only place where they could meet’ (Ian Townson, Drama Queens). Set up in 1974, the Brixton Faeries grew out of the South London Gay Community Centre in Railton Rd, Brixton and aimed to create topical humorous plays, that confronted the homophobic forces active at the time.
Minehead Revised or The Warts That Dared to Speak Their Name by Brixton Faeries (1979)
‘Based on a historical event that blazed a trail in media queer-bashing, the trial of Jeremy Thorpe on a charge of conspiracy to murder, this play attempted the exploration of the complexities of political power and class privilege surrounding the trial and the part played by the media in putting homosexuality in the dock of public execration’ (Ian Townson, Drama Queens). See Revolting Gays for more on this and the Brixton Faeries
All Het Up by Noel Greig and Bradford Gay Liberation Front theatre group (1975)
Devised for a conference at Bradford University on gays and psychiatry in Brechtian style with songs, music, scenes & narrative taken from those involved in it narrative of a family where one family member found himself in the psychiatric gulag, it was a critique of that profession and its attitude towards homosexuality.
Teatrolley by Peter Scott-Presland (Consenting Adults in Public, 1981)
Based on an actual 1970s event where members of the GLF decided to go to Hampstead Heath to confront the cruisers with the shallowness of their lifestyles, raise their political consciousness and convince them to come out – and went equipped with a teatrolley to offer refreshment! Consenting Adults in Public’s signature play revisits these events while reworking A Midsummer Night’s Dream and was first performed on the Heath at midsummer in 1981.
Where to Now? by Martin Patrick (Oval House, 1988)
Produced at Oval House by the Dyhard Theatre Company the play explores the confrontation of a young black university lecturer forced into confronting his identity in the context of the Brixton riots of 1981. Leaving his white lover of ten years and his own submergence in white culture, he hopes to find fulfilment with a vibrant young black lover. Brave and innovative (City Limits) it was among the first plays to bring black gay male experience to the stage. I
Saturday 26th July
Rites (NT, 1969) by Maureen Duffy
Originally presented as part of the programme of four plays by women, commissioned by Joan Plowright and produced as ‘An Evasion of Women’ in 1969, Rites is a highly effective modern version of Euripides’ The Bacchae, set in a women’s public toilet. The play uses the rituals of office chit-chat to create a chorus and to build a female world, at once comic and chilling, apart from and hostile to men, until an attempted suicide causes it to erupt in violence when a ‘man’ enters the space. In the light of Duffy’s 1966 novel The Microcosm, based on London’s lesbian Gateways club and her own persona[i] it is clear that the figure is a butch lesbian, seen by the women in the toilets as a man and attacked for intruding on a female space.
Washouse: a masque, by Maureen Duffy c1973
Washouse enacts a love story between Venus and Diana in a launderette run by a trans woman. Part of a series with Rites, written by Maureen Duffy that revisited Greek or Roman myths. Now aged 91, Duffy, author of numerous plays, poems, novels and non-fiction books, was the first gay woman in British public life to be open about her sexuality and has been a life-long activist.
Son of a Gun by Sidewalk Theatre was developed by the company in 1979, based on Tash Fairbanks’s life as a working-class lesbian and scripted by John Burrows, it ‘...charts the adventures of a mutinous nine year-old to her emergence as a liberated lesbian squatter…’ (The Times) and was acclaimed by the press as a ‘…a minor epic…a sensitive, portrayal of a working-class girl who fights against being second best…funny, politically exciting, well observed.’ Morning Star and by audiences.
Devilry by Debby Klein (1985) ‘an entertainment with music taking an irreverent look at the Faustian legend and the consequences when Fiona Faust summons up the devil…’ Parker and Klein (Karen Parker and Debby Klein were a lesbian writing and performance duo in the 1980s and 90s. Also the skit – Coming Out Straight
Ladies of the Vale by Sandra Freeman (1988)
Produced by Character Ladies theatre company whose policy was to create work based firmly on the reality of lesbian lives, relationships and experience, the play was a portrait of Lady Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby whose elopement in 1778 threw their Irish families into turmoil and created society gossip for years to come. The couple settled in the Vale of Llangollen in romantic retirement (…) for 46 years and were famous for being perfect friends …’sisters in love’
OTHER POSSIBILITIES WE ARE EXPLORING
John by Adele Saleem (Hard Corps, Oval House, 1985)
Using mime, projections, drama, song among other techniques, John explored the relationship of literary lesbians Radclyffe Hall, author of The Well of Loneliness, and Una Troubridge. ‘An exciting, imaginative and very enjoyable piece and deserves to be widely viewed.’ (Spare Rib) OR Les Autres by Sarah McNair