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AIDS
A poster for the 1983 Fighting for Our Lives March, one of the first public AIDS demonstrations.

For those who worked in the theatre, AIDS brought personal and professional devastation. Friends, lovers and co-workers died in mind-numbing numbers. I recall comforting a friend who had to stage manage a performance after returning from the sixth memorial service he had gone to in two weeks. This was the sort of non-stop grief one expects in wartime. The infuriating thing was that most of America refused to know or care about any of it. In May of 1983, I and many other theatre people joined in a candlelight march on New York's Federal Building, one of the first major public rallies calling attention to the AIDS crisis.

From early on, the theatrical community organized all sorts of fundraisers, including all-star nights at Lincoln Center, Easter Bonnet competitions and "Broadway Bares" strip shows. Actors on the Tony Awards broadcast were the first to give the red AIDS awareness ribbon national exposure. In time, Broadway Cares and Equity Fights AIDS joined forces to help those living with the disease. Their collections increased from year to year, topping the $2 million mark in 1999.

Out of the Shadows
Most gays in the entertainment industry had always done their best to keep their sexuality to themselves. "Camping it up" to get laughs on talk shows was fine, but in the years before AIDS no one on show business discussed their preferences in public forums. I know of one gay Tony nominee who was warned by his agent to bring a female date to the ceremony "or else." When he appeared on the air seated beside his male lover, his agent dropped him and smeared his professional reputation. Over a decade passed before this talented acotr worked on Broadway again.

It took the deaths of two major stars to blow the closets open. Rock Hudson and Liberace had always denied their homosexuality, but as David Ehrenstein points out in Open Secret (William Morrow, NY, 1998) both press and public had known better for decades. Their desperate attempts to keeps their battles with AIDS secret proved fruitless, and their deaths opened long-feared floodgates of press coverage and public discussion. To the surprise of many, the collapse of the old "don't tell and we won't ask" hypocrisy did not infuriate the public. Bit by bit, gays and lesbians in the entertainment industry came out. Homosexuals were such a vital part of show business that disposing of them en masse was impossible. A few pioneers took the greatest risks. When John Glines thanked his gay lover during a Tony acceptance speech in 1983, it set off a firestorm of controversy, including death threats. Within two years, similar speeches caused no fuss at all.

As someone who worked both on and Off-Broadway during the 1980s and 90s, I can verify that the ongoing nightmare of AIDS did not prevent those years from being exciting ones for gays and lesbians in the theatre. While fighting a seemingly "unbeatable foe," we gained a new sense of our place in the theatrical community. We were no longer on the fringes or banished to the chorus. Gays and lesbians were finally recognized as a visible and vital part of the entertainment industry.

Musicals in the Age of AIDS
Gay playwrights gave us the believable, three dimensional characters we needed to dramatize and define the AIDS nightmare. Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart, Terrence McNally's Love! Valor! Compassion! and Tony Kushner's two part Angels In America led the way.

The musical stage was not left behind. Beginning as two separate installments of an acclaimed Off-Broadway trilogy, William Finn's March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland depicted gay men facing life, love and AIDS with the support of family and friends. That circle of friends included the first lesbian couple to appear as characters in a major Broadway musical. Combined into a two-act evening, Falsettos (1992) surprised everyone by winning Tony Awards for Best Book and Score, running for more than a year and turning a solid profit. From The Black Crook to Falsettoes, the musical had come a long way. But that progress would face some surprising twists in the decade that followed.

Rent: AIDS as a Marketing Ploy
In an ominous trend, plays and films of the mid to late 1990s began to put forward a straight-authored view of AIDS and homosexuality, one that condescended to gays but reassured straight audiences. In a blatant flight of fantasy, straight characters were depicted as the real heroes in the battle against AIDS and homophobia. Instead of being ridiculed, films like Philadelphia and musicals like Rent (1996) won acclaim and box office success. Novelist and critic Sarah Schulman decries this commercial "commodification of homosexuality," stating that Rent depicts "basically straight-made homosexuality for predominantly straight audiences."

. . . the existence of homosexuality is no longer being denied. Instead, a fake public homosexuality has been constructed to facilitate a double marketing strategy: selling products to gay consumers that address their emotional need to be accepted while selling a palatable image of homosexuality to heterosexual consumers that meets their need to have their dominance obscured . . . While fake stories about AIDS that make straight people feel good are the most public narrative, reaping huge financial rewards, Oscars, Pulitzers and whatnot, real gay people and real people with real AIDS are on an entirely different consumer pipeline, invisible to straight people . . .
- Stagestruck: Theatre, Aids and The Marketing of Gay America (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), pp.146 & 151.

Another appalling problem with Rent is its ending. Because the heroine-addicted heroine Mimi is gratuitously kept alive, someone must be disposed of to give the final scenes some dramatic impact. The result? A queer is killed off instead – so much easier for general audiences to accept, no? 

Most of us had thought that killing off a fag before the final curtain was a thing of the past, but it was still acceptable enough to win a Pulitzer Prize for Drama and a Tony for Best Musical. Pity. After it became clear that Rent was not the beginning of any sort of theatrical trend, other musicals pointed the way to a less manipulative use of gay characters.

In The Full Monty (2000), gay playwright Terrence McNally upped the ante by having straight characters contend with a budding gay romance in their ranks. While attending a co-worker's funeral, two unemployed steelworkers realize their love for each other in the song "You Walk With Me." They join hands – a daring gesture. But instead of condemning them, their butch friend (the lead character in the show) remarks, "Good for them," providing a watershed moment of quiet affirmation and understanding.

A Woman, Pretending To Be a Man,
Pretending To Be a Woman?
Despite the dwindling number of musical films, several dealt with the topic of homosexuality –

• Leering draft board officers singing "White Boys/Black Boys" in Hair (1979)

• Gay characters were toned down but still heard and seen in the screen version of A Chorus Line (1985)

• The 1930s gay Parisian demimonde came back to life in Victor/Victoria (1982). While other films went further, it was no small thing to see Julie Andrews – Mary Poppins herself! – attack homophobia.

Even Disney's animated musicals made an oblique reference to homosexuality when Robin Williams' Genie in Aladdin (1993) assured his master that their warm relationship did not mean he that wanted to "pick out drapes or anything." Of course, I've always wondered about Jacques and Gus-Gus, those two buddy-buddy mice in Cinderella (Disney 1950), but that would be wild speculation, no?

In the years following Stonewall, gay piano bars became a popular home away from home for showtunes and those who love them . . .