Gay musicals
It is no confidential that many Homosexual people have a special affinity for Broadway musicals. "Keep it gay!" sings the extravagant director in The Producers, and musical theater has long drawn nonstraight folks to the ranks of its creators, performers and fans. But it is only in the past fifty years or so that tuners have actually featured openly gay characters onstage—and the product has been some of the best Broadway shows of all moment. Here is our list of the top musicals with powerful gay themes, ranked for their combination of quality, historical importance and Gay content. We've limited the list to ten, which means that some very good shows did not quite make the chop. But there's an awful lot here to be confident of.
RECOMMENDED: Complete A–Z listing of current Broadway shows
Been there, done that? Consider again, my friend.
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Musical Theatre and the LGBTQ+ Audience: An Interview with Patrick Pacheco
Musical Theatre is widely regarded as an art shape with particular appeal to the same-sex attracted community. How and why are so many LGBTQ+ people – particularly lgbtq+ men – drawn to musical theatre as creators and fans? We turned to author and theatre historian Patrick Pacheco for an exploration of the connection between male lover people and musicals.
(This interview has been edited for clarity and length.)
Contents
THE Prior YEARS: Reading Ourselves Into the Stories
Let’s start with early musical theatre. In the beginnings of American musical theatre, gay people were not represented directly onstage. Sure, Cole Porter would sneak in some innuendo, but there weren’t actually any gay characters in those shows, were there?
No, but there were always actors like Edward Everett Horton and Drew Demarest, who played what were termed as “pansies” – people who were “light in their loafers.” Queer audiences could relate to them.
But you have to depart back even further to Mae West and the twenties: Mae West was a gay star, no question about it. She was a sexual outlaw. I think same-sex attracted men identified with people that were sexual
Pride Timeline: 50+ Years of LGBTQ+ Plays and Musicals
Concord Theatricals proudly represents a great number of cornerstone plays and musicals in the LGBTQ+ canon. In celebration of Pride Month, we’ve assembled a timeline of influential and groundbreaking LGBTQ-themed theatrical works, placed in the context of queer history.
In this chronological list of seminal events and selected theatrical landmarks, you’ll find a spacious variety of gay, woman loving woman and transgender characters and stories – from same-sex attracted men in New York struggling with self-loathing in The Boys in the Band to a immature lesbian in North Carolina proudly facing her family in The Cake. For more information on any title, click the link to Concord Theatricals’ US or UK website.
1968: The Boys in the Band by Mart Crowley (US/UK)
(Full-Length Play, Drama / 9m)
This groundbreaking play premiered off-Broadway at Theatre Four on April 14, 1968 – more than a year before the Stonewall Uprising – and ran for 1,001 performances. Subsequently made into a main attraction film with the imaginative cast, The Boys in the Band was scathing and unapologetic in its frank portrayal of homosexual men in New York. In his Upper East Side apar
The Big Gay Jamboree
THE BIG Homosexual JAMBOREE PLAYED ITS FINAL Recital ON SUNDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2024.
From the Oscar-nominated producers of BARBIE and the delulu author of the Off-Broadway hit TITANIQUE comes THE BIG Homosexual JAMBOREE, a big new musical comedy that’s pushing the envelope…and the gay agenda.
Help! Stacey’s fallen into a musical and she can’t get out. Last night, she got a little bit blackout drunk. This morning, she woke up in some b*tch ass Music Man world where everybody keeps bursting into lyric & dance, and where same-sex attracted still just means happy. Maybe it’s a dream. Maybe it’s an allergic reaction to her birth control. Or maybe it’s Maybelline (don’t sue us! sponsor us? we’ll talk later). But if Stacey’s truly trapped inside a Golden Age musical, there’s only one way out: hum out! Or find the stage door. Whatever gets the most applause.
Starring one of Vanity Fair’s “brightest stars of New York theatre” and the world’s second favorite Celine Dion, MARLA MINDELLE, The Big Queer Jamboree is here to make you laugh, make you cry laughing, and make you laugh crying.