NO LONGER AT THE BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN
by Sonia Fernández

One of the most remarkable achievements of Steven Yockey’s Octopus rests on the very fact of what is unremarked upon in the play. The men in Octopus don’t discuss their sexuality, they don’t struggle with being gay, and they don’t seem to be concerned about the way society will judge them. They simply are. Consequently Octopus is really something familiar to all audiences - a “relationship play” that happens to be about gay men. 

The play’s subtitle, “A post-modern love story,” is an apt description. Octopus blends previous styles and themes to create something new. This play is able to exist simply as a love story due to the rich heritage of gay plays and playwrights who paved the way for contemporary writers. Furthermore, Octopus owes a debt to the strides made by the gay community at large to gain acceptance and understanding.  The past 80 years offer plays that illustrate the changing perception of gay characters and reflect the societies in which they were written. It is because of these groundbreaking works that new playwrights are now free to write love stories.

There have always been theatre artists who were gay – Oscar Wilde, Tennessee Williams, Noel Coward, and Edward Albee are classic examples of generations of talented writers who either took on the direct discussion of gay life and desires to their peril (like Wilde) or cleverly incorporated their “underground” culture into the landscape of their work. Yet up until the late 1980s, there was little or no gay representation in mainstream culture.  Lesbian and gay theatre companies that had sprung up in the ‘70s and ‘80s produced plays for their own audiences. Since the mid ‘90s, however, that has begun to change. The landscape of mainstream theatre has broadened to include the successes of Tony Kushner, Terrence McNally, Richard Greenberg, Craig Lucas, Harvey Fierstein, and many others. Gay playwrights are major playwrights in the United States and gay plays are also mainstream successes.

One of the first plays to openly deal with homosexuality was Mae West’s The Drag (1927). The Drag generated such controversy that it was closed before finishing a pre-Broadway tour. The play was incredibly popular in its New Jersey run, yet West and the entire cast were prosecuted under the state law prohibiting “plays depicting or dealing with the subject of sex degeneracy or sex perversion.” And although this play is important for being an early dealing with the subject matter, in the end the “degenerate” is killed.

The theme of gay characters suffering for the threat they pose to “normal” society continued in plays for decades more. In Lillian Hellman’s The Children's Hour (1934), a suggested lesbian relationship between two women plants the seed for their later ostracization. Tea and Sympathy (1954), a Broadway premiere by Robert Anderson originally banned in England, dealt with a young man tormented by his peers for appearing to be gay. The ending suggests that he isn’t actually gay, which made the play more palatable for ‘50s audiences. Tennessee Williams’ plays like Summer and Smoke, A Street Car Named Desire, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof are steeped in questions of sexuality, both hetero and homo. In an interview with the Village Voice, Williams explained that his plays are about “all human relationships.”  He later added, “I see no essential difference between the love of two men for each other and the love of a man for a woman.…” Yet his plays highlight a world in which those who are gay constantly struggle and suffer for their desires.

It has been suggested that the groundbreaking representation of gay life in the theatre came with the appearance of Mart Crowley’s The Boys in the Band in 1968. While the play’s characters have been criticized as promoting gay stereotypes, the direct portrayal of gay life was a stark contrast to the ambiguous homosexuality in plays like Tea and Sympathy. The open representation of gay characters in Crowley’s play suggests the gay community’s increasing unwillingness to remain in the shadows.

Yet for decades more, gay characters were still reduced to a secondary status or only portrayed in musicals (La Cage aux Folles, 1983), comedies (Torch Song Trilogy, 1979) or as broad stereotypes within ‘straight plays’. Arnold, in Torch Song Trilogy, has been described as the type of gay man who appeals to critics and straight audiences alike – a character who is witty, effeminate, and so ridiculous as to represent no threat to straight audiences.

With the onset of the AIDS epidemic, depiction of gay characters shifted significantly. Playwrights felt a level of urgency in the need to respond to the stigmatization by the right wing media and religious organizations. Gay plays became either condemnations of societies’ failure to respond to the crisis (Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart, 1985), bleak portrayals of the oppression gays suffered (Martin Sherman’s Bent, 1979), or stories of the personal struggle of an individual and his family (William Hoffman’s As Is, 1985). The AIDS epidemic also pushed gay playwrights to be more politicized – fighting for gay men and women to receive the same compassion and rights that other people took for granted. While Williams recoiled from his work being referred to as “gay plays,” Tony Kushner has expressed pride at his plays being directly linked with gay culture. Kushner’s Angels in America (Part One: Millennium Approaches, 1991 and Part Two: Perestroika, 1992) speaks to audiences both gay and straight. Kushner’s portrayal of Prior Walter, Joe Pitt, Louis Ironson, and even Roy Cohn are nuanced and complex. It is the first play dealing primarily with gay characters to gain status as a modern American classic. 

The mainstream acceptance of plays with prominent gay characters can be attributed to a variety of reasons including acclaimed and popular presentations. Jonathan Larson’s Rent (1996) became an instant hit and still tours today. Love! Valour! Compassion! by Terrence McNally (1994) received rave reviews with the hilarious Nathan Lane at its center, won a Tony and broke ground with its exhibition of nudity.  More recently both Take Me Out (2003) and I am My Own Wife (2003) were critically acclaimed and won several awards including Tonys for Best Play in 2003 and 2004 respectively.  Many of these plays would have not been allowed on the stage even 10 years prior.  A Broadway audience in the early ‘90s would not have stood for the nude shower scene at the center of Take Me Out. With acceptance comes the freedom of genre, style, theme, as well as whether to discuss issues specific to gay life or not.

Just as gay plays no longer have to live in the shadows nor be outrageous and politically charged to get any attention, so the love between Kevin and Blake in Octopus is allowed to ebb and flow with a sensitivity and theatrical vision that captures how we all struggle with love. The monsters that live outside and within the characters, and the choice they face of whether to fight and emerge from the bottom of the ocean, are ones we all face. Their personal struggles are analogous to those of gay playwrights and gay characters finally emerging from the shadows.  It’s about time.

Photos:
Oscar Wilde, Mae West, Tony Kushner, and Terrence McNally.