(Full-Length Play, Dramatic Comedy / 2f, 4m) ( US/ UK)ġ978, January 9: Harvey Milk is elected San Francisco City Supervisorġ978, November: Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone are murderedġ978: Gilbert Baker designs and builds the first rainbow flagġ978: Torch Song Trilogy by Harvey Fierstein
Post-Stonewall but pre-AIDS, The Ritz celebrated the free spirit of early “Gay Lib” with joy and high-speed hilarity. In the bathhouse, he encounters towel-clad chubby chasers, go-go boys, bumbling detectives, and Googie Gomez, an over-the-top would-be Bette Midler looking for her big break. When Gaetano Proclo, a hapless, middle-aged, overweight, very married man takes it on the lam from his mafioso brother-in-law, Carmine Vespucci, he ducks into “The Ritz,” the last place anyone would look for him. Terrence McNally managed to be both a traditionalist and a pioneer with this uproarious 1975 Broadway hit he set his traditional door-slamming farce in a gay bathhouse.
Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, pioneering transgender activists, found Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR)ġ973, June 24: Thirty-two people die in the UpStairs Lounge arson attack in New Orleansġ973, December 15: Homosexuality is removed from the American Psychiatric Association’s list of mental illnesses The conflict and ensuing protests are widely recognized as the beginning of the Gay Liberation movement.ġ970, June 28: NYC’s Stonewall Anniversary March becomes the first LGBTQ+ pride paradeġ970: Marsha P. ( US/ UK)ġ969, June 28-July 3: Stonewall Uprising - Transgender, gay and lesbian patrons of the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, NYC, fight back when police raid the establishment. In the 1995 documentary The Celluloid Closet, Crowley said, "The self-deprecating humor was born out of a low self-esteem, from a sense of what the times told you about yourself.” The play’s honesty and brashness made it a game-changer after The Boys in the Band, theatre would never be the same. The attitudes of the play are pre-Pride in every way the characters seem resigned to live in a world that refuses to accept them. As the evening wears on – fueled by drugs and alcohol – bitter, unresolved resentments among the guests come to light when a game of "Truth" goes terribly wrong. In his Upper East Side apartment, Michael throws a birthday party for Harold, a self-avowed "thirty-two-year-old, pockmarked, Jew fairy," complete with a surprise gift: "Cowboy," a street hustler. Subsequently made into a feature film with the original cast, The Boys in the Band was scathing and unapologetic in its frank portrayal of gay men in New York. This groundbreaking play premiered off-Broadway at Theatre Four on Ap– more than a year before the Stonewall Uprising – and ran for 1,001 performances. 1968: The Boys in the Band by Mart Crowley