July-August 2012
Shakespeare defied the constraints of the Elizabethan era in numerous plays, such as Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Troilus and Cressida, and Twelfth Night, which feature characters who violate the norms of gender or sexual behavior in their romantic relationships or their individual personae. In his cross-dressing comedies, such as Twelfth Night and As You Like It, gender rebellion and same-sex love are joyously intertwined.
MoreSarah Schulman’s latest book, The Gentrification of the Mind, is in large part a set of provocative arguments about what gets preserved and promoted in American culture and why. …
MoreONE camp-disco-rock ensemble from New York City has seized the stage and captivated us for over a decade with the swift hips and flawless falsetto of down-home boy Jake Shears, the fabulous, loud, and tattooed Ms. Ana Matronic, and their virtuoso, if only slightly more demure comrades, Babydaddy and Del Marquis. …
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ON SUNDAY, MARCH 18, Panti, one of Ireland’s best-loved drag queens, took the stage at the Olympia Theatre in Dublin to offer a prayer to Dolly Parton and a welcome to the final performance of Alternative Miss Ireland or AMI, Ireland’s long-running queer beauty pageant-or what Panti likes to call Gay Christmas. After eighteen performances over 25 years, a coming of age and a “silver jubilee,” the last AMI ended on a transformative and powerful note. …
MoreHENRY VAN DYKE (né Henry L. Van Dyke, Jr., 1928-2011), novelist, editor, teacher, musician, and connoisseur of art and life, died on Dec. 22, 2011, of heart failure, at the Mary Manning Walsh Nursing Home he had recently moved into when he felt he was failing and nearing the end. …
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MoreTHE POLITICAL WORLD was rocked on May 10 by the revelation that the eighteen-year-old Mitt Romney and his ‘posse’ attacked Cranbrook schoolmate John Lauber, whose long, bleach-blond hair, worn after the fashion of Veronica Lake, sparked ire in the future politician. With appalling force, a group that included the school’s wrestling champion pounced ‘like a pack of dogs’ on an effeminate boy, whose distress manifested itself in loud screams, and forcibly cut his hair. …
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[The “Murder House”] figures as prominently as any character in American Horror Story, the new hit show from out TV mogul Ryan Murphy, [and] When American Horror Story returns for a much anticipated second season, Murphy will present an entirely new cast in a new location.
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DAVID AUBURN’S new play, The Columnist, is a stroll down memory lane for many of us of a certain age. … [and] End of the Rainbow … is a play with music rather than a musical. It marks the Broadway debut of Tracie Bennett, who inhabits the role of Judy Garland as she struggled with the addiction to pills and alcohol that would soon be her undoing.
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