Gay Plays at the Cino

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See Video of Cino playwrights discussing the Cino and gay plays HERE.

See 1 1/2 hour illustrated lecture on the Cino as the birthplace of gay theatre HERE.

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(From 1962 to 1966, Alan Lysander James staged lyrically homoerotic readings
of Oscar Wilde’s poems and letters from which alas, we have no flyers or photos.)

MYSTERY PICTURE: Who, what, when? Apparently, but not certainly, men in drag. The wicker table appears in Cino show photos as late as 1967.

1960, what critrics called “homoerotic suggestiveness.” DEAN SELMIER is embraced by an unidentified actor while watched by another in GLENN DUBOSE’s staging of Edna Millay’s “Aria de Capo.”

In 1961, ANDY MILLIGAN directed Genet’s The Maids with a steamy Lesbian love scene, then
an homoerotic Deathwatch with revealing prison rags (DEAN SELMIER in fun-fur prison garb).

From a 2002 revival of DORIC WILSON’s 1961 Now She Dances! This play, generally regarded as the first modern gay play, transformed Wilde’s Salome into the hideous persecution of a gay rights activist before there even were gay rights activists. Script HERE.

ANDY MILLIGAN’s adaptation of Tennessee William’s short story One Arm opened at
the Cino July 5, 1962, before becoming the very first La Mama play on July 27. This is the La Mama poster.

In RUTH YORCK’s 1964 play, a condemned man offers his body to his executioner for one more moment of life.

LANFORD WILSON’s meticulously-crafted 1964 The Madness of Lady Bright starred NEIL FLANAGAN for more than 200 performances as a queen driven mad by aging.

1964. In DANIEL HABEN CLARK’s The Singing Lesson, Cazmir Garas informs CONNIE CLARK that her lost boyfriend was (gasp!) gay while TILLIE GROSS watches. (from the La Mama revival)

CLARIS NELSON in her Neon in the Night: A Revenge Comedy, is a runaway who’s talked into staying home and getting even by wanderer FRANK MANUELLA (based on JOHN P. DODD).

In my The Haunted Host. I played a man who fears he caused his straight beloved’s suicide. I exorcised that idea while evading the wiles of an opportunistic visitor resembling the dead youth. WILLIAM M. HOFFMAN was my beautiful nemesis.MARSHALL MASON directed. See The Haunted Host PAGE.

The existentially-depressed lovers in BOB HEIDE’s 1965 The Bed have burned-out on love, sex, and philosophy.

BOB HEIDE’s 1965 The Bed. Photo: JAMES D. GOSSAGE.

WILLIAM M. HOFFMAN’s own Good Night, I Love You, 1965, chronicles a call between a hag and her fag. She holds his attention by weaving sweet tales of him and his lover. Lisa Jasper and Hank Henderson in a 1983 L.A. production.

In LANFORD WILSON’s Sex Is between Two People, 1965, BOB DAHDAH and NEIL FLANAGAN met in a bathhouse but didn’t mate. Charming photo of a 2006 revival in Boston HERE.

CHARLES STANLEY, a “Mona Lisa with a mustache,” spoke langud words of love on a chaise longue to author PETER HARTMAN in Hartman’s “Vistas of the Heart Unveiled.”

In 1967, JEFF WEISS starred in his own A Funny Walk Home as a releasee from a looney bin who, having been gotten drunk and raped by male orderlies, abuses his mother, father, and adorable little brother, played by GEORGE HARRIS III. All this years and years before Reagan opened the nut-houses and unleashed Jeff’s kind on us! This show drew the biggest houses I ever had to pack into the Cino.

Jeff Weiss play: A Funny Walk Home.

In BOB HEIDE’s Moon, 1967, JOHN GILMAN as the new gay from upstairs proved far healthier than his straight neighbors. JOHN played the role in the 1967 premiere and in this 1968 revival with ROBERT FRINK. Photo: JAMES D. GOSSAGE.

This blurry image is the only other one we have of this momentous moment in western drama when a gay first has it more together than a straight!

HAL (HAAL) BORSKE in his own The Brown Crown, 1967 (no photos available) was the god of the west wind exiled to a desert island for competing with Apollo over beautiful Hyacinthus, So there’s no west wind on Earth. Scientist IRVING METZMAN finds first the god, and then first love. WALTER HARRIS played The Sandman. HAL entered by bursting through a paper hoop. Well, if I told you the plot of Alice in Wonderland, that would sound pretty silly, too, wouldn’t it? This unique romp played The Old Reliable and La Mama as well.

HAAL BORSKE’s The Brown Crown. Photographer CONRAD WARD got the title comically wrong when making the poster.

JEAN-CLAUDE VAN ITALLIE’s 1965 War and GEORGE BIRIMISA’s 1967 Daddy Violet dealt respectively with games and an acting rehearsal. Each had fleeting moments when two male characters realized a subterranean sexual interest in each other. VICTOR LIPARI, MARI-CLAIRE CHARBA, and MICHAEL WARREN POWELL in a 1966 La Mama production of War, photo JAMES D. GOSSAGE.

Carol Getzoff toured Daddy Violet widely with DAN LEACH and author GEORGE BIRIMISA post-Cino.

So far as I’m concerned, the ultimate Cino play and gay play was written in 1983 by DORIC WILSON. It can be done on any bare floor with only 14 enthusiastic actors and a garbage can. It depicts the events on Christopher Street on the afternoon leading up to the Stonewall riots.

The directing and setting credits are left over from TOM EYEN’s “Why Hanna’s Skirt Won’t Stay Down” from the week before. The promised H.M. KOUTOUKAS show didn’t materialize until January 6th.