DOCSLIB.ORG

Gay Legal Theatre, 1895-2015 Todd Barry University of Connecticut - Storrs, [email protected]

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Gay Legal Theatre, 1895-2015 Todd Barry University of Connecticut - Storrs, Todd.Barry@Uconn.Edu University of Connecticut OpenCommons@UConn Doctoral Dissertations University of Connecticut Graduate School 3-24-2016 From Wilde to Obergefell: Gay Legal Theatre, 1895-2015 Todd Barry University of Connecticut - Storrs, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://opencommons.uconn.edu/dissertations Recommended Citation Barry, Todd, "From Wilde to Obergefell: Gay Legal Theatre, 1895-2015" (2016). Doctoral Dissertations. 1041. https://opencommons.uconn.edu/dissertations/1041 From Wilde to Obergefell: Gay Legal Theatre, 1895-2015 Todd Barry, PhD University of Connecticut, 2016 This dissertation examines how theatre and law have worked together to produce and regulate gay male lives since the 1895 Oscar Wilde trials. I use the term “gay legal theatre” to label an interdisciplinary body of texts and performances that include legal trials and theatrical productions. Since the Wilde trials, gay legal theatre has entrenched conceptions of gay men in transatlantic culture and influenced the laws governing gay lives and same-sex activity. I explore crucial moments in the history of this unique genre: the Wilde trials; the British theatrical productions performed on the cusp of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act; mainstream gay American theatre in the period preceding the Stonewall Riots and during the AIDS crisis; and finally, the contemporary same-sex marriage debate and the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Obergefell v. Hodges (2015). The study shows that gay drama has always been in part a legal drama, and legal trials involving gay and lesbian lives have often been infused with crucial theatrical elements in order to legitimize legal gains for LGBT people. i From Wilde to Obergefell: Gay Legal Theatre, 1895-2015 Todd Barry B.A., Princeton University, 2000 J.D., University of Connecticut School of Law, 2006 M.A., University of Connecticut, 2008 A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut 2016 ii Copyright by Todd Barry 2016 iii APPROVAL PAGE Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation From Wilde to Obergefell: Gay Legal Theatre, 1895-2015 Presented by Todd Barry, B.A., M.A., J.D. Major Advisor ___________________________________________________________________ Brenda Murphy Associate Advisor ___________________________________________________________________ Margaret S. Breen Associate Advisor ___________________________________________________________________ Mary M. Burke University of Connecticut 2016 iv Acknowledgments My advisory committee generously gave their time and expertise throughout this process. The deepest debt of gratitude goes to my major advisor Brenda Murphy, whose patient support and excellent advice have sustained me throughout a decade in graduate school. I’m particularly grateful that she stuck with me even as the years dragged on and the project was delayed. Mary Burke has also been an important mentor for me in graduate school, always providing unique insights and suggesting further connections that could be made in my work. Finally, Margaret Breen has always given immensely helpful feedback and constructive criticism on this project, aiding in crucial conceptualization and teaching me some important principles of scholarly writing. I am deeply grateful to all of them. v Table of Contents Acknowledgments iv Introduction From Wilde to Obergefell: Gay Legal Theatre, 1895- 2015 1 Chapter 1 Resolving and Transcending the Trauma: Literary Interventions in the Wilde Trials 15 Chapter 2 Re-imagining the Law: Coward, Orton, and 1960s British Gay Legal Theatre 66 Chapter 3 Domestic Spaces in American Gay Legal Theatre: The Boys in the Band and Angels in America 108 Chapter 4 A Case Study: Same- Sex Marriage in the United States 154 Works Cited 217 Barry 1 From Wilde to Obergefell: Gay Legal Theatre, 1895-2015 Introduction Since the trials of Oscar Wilde, how have theatre and law worked together to shape constructions and regulations of gay men? This interdisciplinary study attempts to provide some answers to that central question. As they have emerged over the last several hundred years, sexual minorities have had a substantial relationship with legal and theatrical stages.1 Specifically, the representation of gay male lives has often been through a hybrid genre, legal theatre. Gay legal theatre has a hybrid composition that potentially includes dramatic texts, theatrical performances, and legal texts and trials that involve representations of gay characters. Since at least 1895, dramatizations of gay characters have been inevitably enmeshed in legal regulations or implications; such dramatizations have also potentially shaped laws related to homosexuality and gay lives. Moreover, gay men have been performing in a theatrical history of legal trials that began with seventeenth-century sodomy trials. This multi-faceted, legal-theatrical tradition has evolved and culminated in the recent legalization of same-sex marriage in the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, and the United States. On an abstract level, law and theatre perform essential rituals that are collective acts of judgment within a community: punishing criminality; demanding atonement; granting absolution; allowing forgiveness. These are the rituals that bestow or withhold 1 Alan Sinfield claims, “Theatre has been a particular site for the formation of dissident sexual identities” (Out on Stage 1). Barry 2 humanity from individuals and groups. Legally, these rituals can encompass simply written language, such as statutes, a judicial opinion, or a Constitutional Amendment; but legal rituals also rise to the level of performative ceremony in the courtroom, ranging from lawyers arguing motions in front of a judge, to the full-blown theatrical spectacle of a trial performed for a community of spectators. The structure and function of theatre in many ways mirror the rituals of a trial. Theatre also consistently capitalizes on emotions that arise only in a small number of legal trials: imagination, compassion, and empathy. Gay legal theatre consistently presents gay characters and issues in an inextricable and culturally captivating web of legal and theatrical discourse. In The Juridical Unconscious: Trials and Traumas in the Twentieth Century (2002), Shoshana Felman presents an interdisciplinary study of law and literature that has opened up scholarly possibilities in the field of LGBT dramatic criticism. This dissertation was inspired by Felman’s book because I saw how her approach could be productively applied to gay drama, something she did not specifically address. When Felman interpreted moments in twentieth-century trials as a form of literature, I felt liberated to explore the interdisciplinary paths of this dissertation. Felman’s categorization of what law and literature try respectively to accomplish is also helpful for my purposes in this dissertation. She argues that law, especially significant trials, works to “bridge over” and resolve the “abyss,” as she calls it—irresolvable conflicts and traumas of race, gender, and sexuality—while literature revels in and exploits those conflicts that ultimately have no certain solutions (95). If, according to Felman, law attempts closure and literature exploits indeterminacy, I am claiming that gay drama, because it is often obsessed with and Barry 3 infiltrated by the law, achieves status as a hybrid discourse. It is also queer in its dynamic orientation toward the law: potentially reinforcing, potentially destabilizing. Thus, gay drama has always been a form of legal theatre that can be performed in theaters or courtrooms, but it is never wholly within or outside of legal and theatrical discourse. Even when performed in a theater, these texts function in certain ways as authoritative discourse, especially with regard to delimiting the cultural parameters of sexual minorities. In turn, many of the contemporary trials involving gay and lesbian lives, as I argue in Chapter Four on the same-sex marriage cases, utilize theatricality to compel cultural attention and justify the law’s authority. In this sense, I am exploring a particular genre that circulated most powerfully in the period between the Wilde trials and the contemporary transatlantic legalization of same-sex marriage. Most of my analysis focuses on gay male playwrights and dramatic representations of gay men. The selected texts share important commonalities related to the production, representation, and regulation of mainly gay male lives. LGBT, the contemporary acronym meaning lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, is an admirably inclusive term, and I use variants of the term strategically when I think they can apply, but I try to be as specific as possible in every instance. I undertake a brief reading of a lesbian drama, The Children’s Hour (1934), and in the final chapter my analysis focuses on the gay and lesbian movement for marriage equality in the United States, reading the landmark marriage equality case Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) as a form of gay and lesbian theatre. To this extent, “gay and lesbian legal theatre” might also be an appropriate title for this dissertation, but I think the specific history of lesbian theatre and law deserves development in a future study. Bisexual characters do not play a large role Barry 4 in the study, except I suppose for some of the characters in Joe Orton’s plays, but there is nothing in my analysis that would exclude bisexuals or bisexuality. Although I do not engage with any plays that address
Load more

Recommended publications
  • A Queer Aes- Thetic Is Suggested in the Nostalgia of Orton’S List of 1930S Singers, Many of Whom Were Sex- Ual Nonconformists
    Orton in Deckchair in Tangier. Courtesy: Orton Collection at the University of Leicester, MS237/5/44 © Orton Estate Rebel playwright Joe Orton was part of a ‘cool customer’, Orton shopped for the landscape of the Swinging Sixties. clothes on Carnaby Street, wore ‘hipster Irreverent black comedies that satirised pants’ and looked – in his own words the Establishment, such as Entertaining – ‘way out’. Although he cast himself Mr Sloane (1964), Loot (1965) and as an iconoclast, Emma Parker suggests What the Butler Saw (first performed that Orton’s record collection reveals a in 1969), contributed to a new different side to the ruffian playwright counterculture. Orton’s representation who furiously pitched himself against of same-sex desire on stage, and polite society. The music that Orton candid account of queer life before listened to in private suggests the same decriminalisation in his posthumously queer ear, or homosexual sensibility, that published diaries, also made him a shaped his plays. Yet, stylistically, this gay icon. Part of the zeitgeist, he was music contradicts his cool public persona photographed with Twiggy, smoked and reputation for riotous dissent. marijuana with Paul McCartney and wrote a screenplay for The Beatles. Described by biographer John Lahr as A Q U E E R EAR Joe Orton and Music 44 Music was important to Joe Orton from an early age. His unpublished teenage diary, kept Issue 37 — Spring 2017 sporadically between 1949 and 1951, shows that he saved desperately for records in the face of poverty. He also lovingly designed and constructed a record cabinet out of wood from his gran’s old dresser.
    [Show full text]
  • Detestable Offenses: an Examination of Sodomy Laws from Colonial America to the Nineteenth Century”
    “Detestable Offenses: An Examination of Sodomy Laws from Colonial America to the Nineteenth Century” Taylor Runquist Western Illinois University 1 The act of sodomy has a long history of illegality, beginning in England during the reign of Henry VIII in 1533. The view of sodomy as a crime was brought to British America by colonists and was recorded in newspapers and law books alike. Sodomy laws would continue to adapt and change after their initial creation in the colonial era, from a common law offense to a clearly defined criminal act. Sodomy laws were not meant to persecute homosexuals specifically; they were meant to prevent the moral corruption and degradation of society. The definition of homosexuality also continued to adapt and change as the laws changed. Although sodomites had been treated differently in America and England, being a sodomite had the same social effects for the persecuted individual in both countries. The study of homosexuals throughout history is a fairly young field, but those who attempt to study this topic are often faced with the same issues. There are not many historical accounts from homosexuals themselves. This lack of sources can be attributed to their writings being censored, destroyed, or simply not withstanding the test of time. Another problem faced by historians of homosexuality is that a clear identity for homosexuals did not exist until the early 1900s. There are two approaches to trying to handle this lack of identity: the first is to only treat sodomy as an act and not an identity and the other is to attempt to create a homosexual identity for those convicted of sodomy.
    [Show full text]
  • Clubscene-Jun83.Compressed.Pdf
    C") Q) 0: oCl!, Q) c Q) (J (J) ..c ::l G Q) c Q) (J (J) ..c ::l G C\I Q) 0> oCl!, CONTENTS 5'. \-EP-"t"'e.;. _ • .cLUB ·--<-'r~. ..6"CENE •• ISSUE #11 '•. \~:l<i ~ ·~ l.{. ~"oj' Club News Pg. 8 International Mr. Leather '83 Pg. 16 Whitewater Weekend V Pg.23 J. Colt Thomas-International Mr. Leather '83 Rocky Mountain Regional Rodeo Pg.30 Sponsored by Officers Club-Houston Photo by I.M.L. Studios Club Calendar Pg.36 FOR THE ANIMAL OFFICES Kansas City IN YOU .... 3317 Montrose, Sui.te 1087 Burt Holderman (816)587·9941 Houston, Texas 77006 Minneapolis (713) 529-7620 Dan VanGuilder. (612) 872·9218 New Orleans PUBLISHERS .... .Alan LipkinlDan Mciver Wally Sherwood (504) 368-1805 Phoenix EDITOR .. .. Gerry "G. w." Webster Jerry Zagst (602) 266-2287 ART DIRECTOR. .... .Ty Davison FEATURE WRITERS TYPESETTER .. .Lee Christensen Fledermaus (713) 466-3224 Courtesy of Dungeon Master REPRESENTATIVE·AT·LARGE .Bill Green OFFICIALLY SANCTION ED ADVERTISING DIRECTOR Mid·America Conference of Clubs Dan Mciver (713) 529-7620 ADVERTISING AND EDITORIAL Atlanta Dale Scholes (404) 284·4370 The official views of this newsmagazine are expressed only in editorials. Opinions expressed in by-lined cot- (404) 872-0209 umns,letters and cartoons are those of the.wrlters and Chicago artists and do not necessarily represent the opinions Chuck Kiser. (312) 751·1640 of CLUB SCENE. Cleveland Publication of the name or photograph of any person or Tony Silwaru & organization in articles or advertising in CLUB SCENE Ron Criswell (216) 228·2631 is not to be construed as any indication of the sexual Corpus Christi orientation of such person or organization.
    [Show full text]
  • Fifty Shades of Leather and Misogyny: an Investigation of Anti- Woman Perspectives Among Leathermen
    University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Sociology Department, Faculty Publications Sociology, Department of 5-2020 Fifty Shades of Leather and Misogyny: An Investigation of Anti- Woman Perspectives among Leathermen Meredith G. F. Worthen University of Oklahoma, [email protected] Trenton M. Haltom University of Nebraska-Lincoln, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/sociologyfacpub Part of the Family, Life Course, and Society Commons, and the Social Psychology and Interaction Commons Worthen, Meredith G. F. and Haltom, Trenton M., "Fifty Shades of Leather and Misogyny: An Investigation of Anti-Woman Perspectives among Leathermen" (2020). Sociology Department, Faculty Publications. 707. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/sociologyfacpub/707 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Sociology, Department of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Sociology Department, Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. digitalcommons.unl.edu Fifty Shades of Leather and Misogyny: An Investigation of Anti-Woman Perspectives among Leathermen Meredith G. F. Worthen1 and Trenton M. Haltom2 1 University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA; 2 University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, USA Corresponding author — Meredith G. F. Worthen, University of Oklahoma, 780 Van Vleet Oval, KH 331, Norman, OK 73019; [email protected] ORCID Meredith G. F. Worthen http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6765-5149 Trenton M. Haltom http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1116-4644 Abstract The Fifty Shades books and films shed light on a sexual and leather-clad subculture predominantly kept in the dark: bondage, discipline, submission, and sadomasoch- ism (BDSM).
    [Show full text]
  • Joe Orton: the Oscar Wilde of the Welfare State
    JOE ORTON: THE OSCAR WILDE OF THE WELFARE STATE by KAREN JANICE LEVINSON B.A. (Honours), University College, London, 1972 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Department of English) We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA April, 1977 (c) Karen Janice Levinson, 1977 ii In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the Head of my Department or by his representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of English The University of British Columbia 2075 Wesbrook Place Vancouver, Canada V6T 1W5 30 April 1977 ABSTRACT This thesis has a dual purpose: firstly, to create an awareness and appreciation of Joe Orton's plays; moreover to establish Orton as a focal point in modern English drama, as a playwright whose work greatly influenced and aided in the definition of a form of drama which came to be known as Black Comedy. Orton's flamboyant life, and the equally startling method of his death, distracted critical attention from his plays for a long time. In the last few years there has been a revival of interest in Orton; but most critics have only noted his linguistic ingenuity, his accurate ear for the humour inherent in the language of everyday life which led Ronald Bryden to dub him "the Oscar Wilde of Welfare State gentility." This thesis demonstrates Orton's treatment of social matters: he is concerned with the plight of the individual in society; he satirises various elements of modern life, particularly those institutions which wield authority (like the Church and the Police), and thus control men.
    [Show full text]
  • Mr. Mid-Atlantic Leather Weekend 2018 Mr. MAL 2018 Contest Judges
    Mr. Mid-Atlantic Leather Weekend 2018 Mr. MAL 2018 Contest Judges Martel Brown Mr. Mid-Atlantic Leather 2017 Continuing the Pittsburgh legacy, Martel became the 5th Mr. Pittsburgh Leather Fetish to win the title of Mr. Mid-Atlantic Leather. As a proud member of The Three Rivers Leather Club he has made it his mission to bridge the gap between the sometimes-distant subcultures within the gay community. In this way, he embraces his individuality in such a way that others are encouraged to find their own truth in their kinkster identities. Leading by example, your reigning Mr. Mid-Atlantic Leather has called out to the leather community to recognize how their umbrella extends to all marginalized kinksters that we all belong under an umbrella of leather and fetish as a community of sex-positive persons that embrace diversity while building a mosaic of micro communities within it that honor our differences, yet recognize our best traditions. Once you see his smile, you'll feel the weight of his sincerity and his promise to break down stereotypes, breakthrough barriers of prejudice, and to support the mentoring and creation of tomorrow's kinkster leaders that follow in all our courageous past leader's footsteps. Ralph Bruneau International Mr. Leather 2017 Ralph Bruneau competed at IML as Mr. GNI Leather 2016 representing Gay Naturists International, the largest naturist organization in the world. He began his leather journey in 1974 at the legendary Mineshaft in NYC. In his first career, he was an actor on Broadway and on television creating the role of Mike Doonesbury in the Broadway musical Doonesbury and appearing on TV in shows from soaps to Seinfeld.
    [Show full text]
  • THE UNIVERSITY of HULL (Neo-)Victorian
    THE UNIVERSITY OF HULL (Neo-)Victorian Impersonations: 19th Century Transvestism in Contemporary Literature and Culture being a Thesis submitted for the Degree of PhD in the University of Hull by Allison Jayne Neal, BA (Hons), MA September 2012 Contents Contents 1 Acknowledgements 3 List of Illustrations 4 List of Abbreviations 6 Introduction 7 Transvestites in History 19th-21st Century Sexological/Gender Theory Judith Butler, Performativity, and Drag Neo-Victorian Impersonations Thesis Structure Chapter 1: James Barry in Biography and Biofiction 52 ‘I shall have to invent a love affair’: Olga Racster and Jessica Grove’s Dr. James Barry: Her Secret Life ‘Betwixt and Between’: Rachel Holmes’s Scanty Particulars: The Life of Dr James Barry ‘Swaying in the limbo between the safe worlds of either sweet ribbons or breeches’: Patricia Duncker’s James Miranda Barry Conclusion: Biohazards Chapter 2: Class and Race Acts: Dichotomies and Complexities 112 ‘Massa’ and the ‘Drudge’: Hannah Cullwick’s Acts of Class Venus in the Afterlife: Sara Baartman’s Acts of Race Conclusion: (Re)Commodified Similarities Chapter 3: Performing the Performance of Gender 176 ‘Let’s perambulate upon the stage’: Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem ‘All performers dress to suit their stages’: Tipping the Velvet ‘It’s only human nature after all’: Tipping the Velvet and Adaptation 1 Conclusion: ‘All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players’ Chapter 4: Cross-Dressing and the Crisis of Sexuality 239 ‘Your costume does not lend itself to verbal declarations’:
    [Show full text]
  • If a Thing's Worth Doing, It's Worth Doing on Public Television–Joe Orton's
    Middlesex University Research Repository An open access repository of Middlesex University research http://eprints.mdx.ac.uk Charlton, James Martin ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9066-4705 (2014) If a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing on public television – Joe Orton’s plays on television. In: Theatre and Television: Adaptation, Production, Performance, 19-20 Feb 2015, Alexandra Palace. [Conference or Workshop Item] Final accepted version (with author’s formatting) This version is available at: https://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/18929/ Copyright: Middlesex University Research Repository makes the University’s research available electronically. Copyright and moral rights to this work are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners unless otherwise stated. The work is supplied on the understanding that any use for commercial gain is strictly forbidden. A copy may be downloaded for personal, non-commercial, research or study without prior permission and without charge. Works, including theses and research projects, may not be reproduced in any format or medium, or extensive quotations taken from them, or their content changed in any way, without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder(s). They may not be sold or exploited commercially in any format or medium without the prior written permission of the copyright holder(s). Full bibliographic details must be given when referring to, or quoting from full items including the author’s name, the title of the work, publication details where relevant (place, publisher, date), pag- ination, and for theses or dissertations the awarding institution, the degree type awarded, and the date of the award.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Sticky Stories: Joe Orton, Queer History, Queer Dramaturgy
    Sticky Stories: Joe Orton, Queer History, Queer Dramaturgy. Stephen Farrier Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London. Joe Orton, commonly thought of as a playwright of risqué farces in the 1960s, was a very present figure for a while in the gay community in the UK in the late 1980s and early 1990s (perhaps because his biography was published late in the 1970s, his diaries in 1986 and a film based on the diaries released 1987). His presence in 1980s and 1990s gay culture was in part because he met a death worthy of column inches and, importantly, he stood as emblematic of a past homosexual who refused to curb his sexuality whilst living in a conservative social context. In England and Wales, homosexuality was not criminalised in the 1980s and 1990s as it had been in the 1950s and 1960s, but there were present homophobic social values and legislation (Section 28, unequal age of consent) that resonated with the context within which Orton was writing and his work was first being produced.1 Orton’s figure as a queer and a playwright stood as both inspiration and a lesson from the past, one that reminded queers and gays in the 1980s and 1990s that the fight for equality does not end with a change in the legal status of homosexuality, or indeed in the 2010s, with equal marriage. Yet in recent years Orton’s work has fallen out of favour and does not appear as often as it once did on the queer cultural landscape. There are many reasons for this, not least of all that the kind of work that Orton makes might not register as queer or even gay now.
    [Show full text]
  • “He Hath Mingled with the Ungodly”
    ―HE HATH MINGLED WITH THE UNGODLY‖: THE LIFE OF SIMEON SOLOMON AFTER 1873, WITH A SURVEY OF THE EXTANT WORKS CAROLYN CONROY TWO VOLUMES VOLUME I PH.D. THE UNIVERSITY OF YORK HISTORY OF ART DECEMBER 2009 2 ABSTRACT This thesis focuses on the life and work of the marginalized British Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic homosexual Jewish painter Simeon Solomon (1840-1905) after 1873.This year was fundamental in the artist‘s professional and personal life, because it is the year that he was arrested for attempted sodomy charges in London. The popular view that has been disseminated by the early historiography of Solomon, since before and after his death in 1905, has been to claim that, after this date, the artist led a life that was worthless, both personally and artistically. It has also asserted that this situation was self-inflicted, and that, despite the consistent efforts of his family and friends to return him to the conventions of Victorian middle-class life, he resisted, and that, this resistant was evidence of his ‗deviancy‘. Indeed, for over sixty years, the overall effect of this early historiography has been to defame the character of Solomon and reduce his importance within the Aesthetic movement and the second wave of Pre-Raphaelitism. It has also had the effect of relegating the work that he produced after 1873 to either virtual obscurity or critical censure. In fact, it is only recently that a revival of interest in the artist has gained momentum, although the latter part of his life from 1873 has still remained under- researched and unrecorded.
    [Show full text]
  • What the Artist Saw: Art Inspired by the Life and Work of Joe Orton What the Artist Saw
    What the Artist Saw: Art Inspired by the Life and Work of Joe Orton What the Artist Saw: Art Inspired by the Life and Work of Joe Orton Artists: David Lock, Louise Plant, Tim Youd Curators: Michael Petry (MOCA, London) and Emma Parker (University of Leicester) Museum of Contemporary Art, London: 5 February - 4 March 2017 New Walk Museum and Art Gallery, Leicester: 29 July - 22 October 2017 What Artists See The impetus for this exhibition was a conversation with Dr Sarah Graham, the partner of Dr Emma Parker, co-curator of the exhibition. Sarah and I met at a conference whose aim was to generate a festival around the history of HIV/ AIDS in Europe, which will take place in Amsterdam and London in 2018. Sarah mentioned that Emma was working on a project to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Joe Orton’s death and I immediately thought that MOCA should be involved. It is the odd nature of things that Orton, who had many sexual partners, should have died at the hands of his long-term lover, Kenneth Halliwell, and therefor not become ill from a disease that killed so many creative people from his generation. A hammer blow to the head, as opposed to a blowjob, took his life. Somehow, if he weren’t the victim of this scenario, I think he might have found it poetic, or funny, but most likely he would have preferred to still be alive either way, and not to have ever contracted HIV. The toll on the creative community in the 1980’s is in many ways a bad dream, one that is remembered, but institutionally, often pushed out of the mind.
    [Show full text]
  • Theatre Archive Project: Interview with Michael Codron
    THEATRE ARCHIVE PROJECT http://sounds.bl.uk Michael Codron – interview transcript Interviewer: Adam Smith 7 April 2009 Producer. Actors; Alphabetical Order; The Birthday Party; The Caretaker; censorship; critics; directors; 'Dirty Plays' controversy; Entertaining Mr Sloane; Gallery First Nighters; The Homecoming; Jack Hylton The Killing of Sister George; Joan Littlewood; Look Back in Anger; London Arts Theatre; Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith; Donald McWhinnie; Joe Orton; Harold Pinter; producers; Peggy Ramsay; scripts; Share My Lettuce; There's a Girl in My Soup; Kenneth Williams; writers. AS: You have been described as both a producer and an impresario, although some critics claim that there is nowadays an uncertainty as to the precise meaning of these words. Given the slippage between the two, and that you have been described using each of the terms, but that they are not mutually exclusive, which would you describe yourself as? MC: I sometimes say impresario but it sounds like the wretched man from Pinocchio, doesn't it? Do you remember that man that tried to capture Pinocchio? But I really am a producer, a theatre producer. Yes, impresario sounds rather evil, doesn't it? [laughs] Perhaps I am evil, occasionally. AS: So how would you define this profession before 1968, what would it involve? MC: As far as I'm concerned? Well you’re asking me to talk about 1945 aren't you first, when I was all of 15. AS: What about after you became a producer, how would you define the profession? MC: No I didn't become a producer until 1950-something. AS: You're right, we'll do it chronologically.
    [Show full text]