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[0:15] David Armstrong: Welcome to another episode of Broadway Nation, the podcast that tells the extraordinary story of how immigrants, Jews, queers, African Americans, and other outcasts invented the Broadway musical and how they changed America in the process.

[0:28] David Armstrong: I'm David Armstrong, and I call this episode I Am What I Am: Gay Liberation and the AIDS Crisis on Broadway.

[0:35] David Armstrong: The modern era of Broadway Part 6.

[0:38] David Armstrong: As we have seen, all of the progressive social movements of the 1960s and 70s would have an effect on the Broadway musical and be reflected back into the culture by them.

[0:48] David Armstrong: These include the civil rights movement, women's liberation, black power, and of course the gay liberation movement.

[0:55] David Armstrong: And legend has it that the gay liberation movement's inciting incident, the Stonewall Uprising, was actually sparked by a musical theater-related event that took place that same day, June 22nd, 1969.

[1:07] David Armstrong: The first of three days of rioting that began as a protest against a police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York's Greenwich Village.

[1:16] David Armstrong: Earlier that day, 20,000 fans had jammed the streets of the Upper East Side where Judy Garland's funeral was being held.

[1:23] David Armstrong: Garland had a gigantic gay following, and the theory is that the gay community's grief over her death later fed their anger and spurred on their resistance to this latest episode in a long line of police harassment.

[1:37] David Armstrong: Some historians reject this idea, pointing out that the queer street youth that were at the center of the rebellion were more likely to be into rhythm and blues and pop music than be fans of Judy Garland's show tunes.

[1:48] David Armstrong: However, I don't think the separation between these two musical worlds was as rigid as later historians might assume it was.

[1:56] David Armstrong: Whatever the case may be, Judy Garland is certainly tied in a multitude of ways to the gay rights movement, as is evident from its symbol, the rainbow flag, which was inspired by her signature song Over the Rainbow.

[2:08] David Armstrong: The Stonewall Rebellion brought gay issues into the mainstream, and its first-year anniversary would inspire the first gay rights parades in New York and Los Angeles, and these would eventually lead to gay pride parades and celebrations held nationwide and around the world.

[2:24] David Armstrong: The 1970s would see queer people begin to be out loud and proud in significant numbers.

[2:30] David Armstrong: And of course, it makes sense that this new visibility and this feeling of liberation would be felt on Broadway, where there had always been a large representation of queer people throughout the industry, including in positions of power.

[2:43] David Armstrong: As a result, queer characters and stories began appearing on Broadway, especially in plays, but also in a few musicals as well.

[2:50] David Armstrong: I talked about the pansexual content of Hair in a previous podcast, and that show actually opened on Broadway over a year before Stonewall, but Hair was groundbreaking and controversial in so many ways that its queer content was and is largely overlooked.

[3:05] David Armstrong: Just six months after Stonewall, actor Renee Aubergenois won a Tony Award playing the role of Sebastian Bay, a flamboyant fashion designer in the musical Coco, written by Alan J. Lerner and Andre Previn, and starring Catherine Hepburn as the legendary designer Coco Chanel.

[3:22] David Armstrong: This was the first openly gay character of the modern era, and actually it was very similar to the role Danny Kaye had played in Lady in the Dark 30 years earlier.

[3:31] David Armstrong: This time, however, the gay character was the antagonist, and even at the time he was seen as a stereotypical, demeaning caricature of a homosexual.

[3:41] David Armstrong: Yes, go how I have waited and waited for you.

[3:49] David Armstrong: Yes, go.

[3:51] David Armstrong: Thank God at last a disaster came true.

[3:58] David Armstrong: She's from a primeval speech to Givenchy at the end of the line.

[4:13] David Armstrong: Today we might view a campy gay villain very differently, but that's because there's so much queer representation overall.

[4:24] David Armstrong: It's a unanimous, unqualified, unmatchable, incomparable, incredible, fantastic, and fabulous.

[4:30] David Armstrong: The go.

[4:33] David Armstrong: Oh, what a thrilling, fulfilling decline.

[4:38] David Armstrong: And while she's slipping and slipping, I'm skipping and skipping.

[4:47] David Armstrong: For now, this faded, degraded, and jaded old maid is mine.

[4:58] David Armstrong: Then three months later came the 1970 hit Applause with a score by Strauss and Adams, book by Comden and Green, and based on the classic film All About Eve.

[5:09] David Armstrong: What is it that we live in for?

[5:14] David Armstrong: Applause, applause.

[5:18] David Armstrong: Nothing I know for rings on the glow.

[5:23] David Armstrong: Like sweet applause.

[5:27] David Armstrong: Applause featured actor Leroy Reims as Dwayne, the gay best friend, hairdresser, and confidant of Broadway star Margot Channing, played in the musical by Lauren Bacall.

[5:38] David Armstrong: In contrast to Coco, this was a very positive depiction of an out gay man.

[5:43] David Armstrong: And most importantly, it was included in a very popular, mainstream, Tony-winning, big transgressive lady musical.

[5:51] David Armstrong: The authors of Applause boldly had the gay character take the star out for a night on the town to a gay bar in Greenwich Village.

[5:58] David Armstrong: Hey, come on, Paul Yachi baby, gotta get pretty up for the party.

[6:03] David Armstrong: Oh, I don't want to go to another opening night party.

[6:06] David Armstrong: What?

[6:07] David Armstrong: I deserve a good time tonight.

[6:09] David Armstrong: Duane, how would you like to escort two lonely ladies out on the town?

[6:15] David Armstrong: I got a date.

[6:17] David Armstrong: Bring him along.

[6:18] David Armstrong: I was just going down to the village to join some friends.

[6:22] David Armstrong: I don't know if you'd like it.

[6:24] David Armstrong: We'll adore it.

[6:26] David Armstrong: Eve, we are going to Greenwich Village.

[6:32] David Armstrong: I feel groggy and weary and tragic.

[6:35] David Armstrong: Punchy and bleary and fresh out of magic, but alive.

[6:35] David Armstrong: But alive, but alive.

[6:44] David Armstrong: What you just heard was a clip from the 1973 TV production of Applause with Harvey Evans as Duane.

[6:54] David Armstrong: Less than a year after Stonewall, Broadway would see an entire production number set in a gay bar, much like the Stonewall Inn.

[7:02] David Armstrong: This collier scope of the round inside my brain.

[7:09] David Armstrong: I have been unconscious, but it's gone to be.

[7:16] David Armstrong: And I feel brilliant.

[7:17] David Armstrong: Yay!

[7:18] David Armstrong: That's it!

[7:20] David Armstrong: Super!

[7:21] David Armstrong: That's it!

[7:22] David Armstrong: Alive!

[7:33] David Armstrong: Applause became the biggest hit of the season, winning four 1970 Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Leading Actress in a Musical for Lauren Bacall, and two for the spectacular work of its queer director and choreographer Ron Field.

[7:50] David Armstrong: Then in 1973, Tommy Tune won his first Tony Award portraying another gay best friend character in the musical Seesaw.

[7:58] David Armstrong: This character dreams of being a Broadway choreographer and becomes one.

[8:03] David Armstrong: He liked it.

[8:04] David Armstrong: He liked it.

[8:06] David Armstrong: He really liked it.

[8:07] David Armstrong: He said, would you be interested in being the assistant choreographer of my new Broadway show?

[8:13] David Armstrong: And I said, well, uh gee, you know, I'm not really interested in being an assistant choreographer.

[8:20] David Armstrong: I'm lying, I'm lying, I'm lying.

[8:22] David Armstrong: I really said interested.

[8:24] David Armstrong: Interested.

[8:25] David Armstrong: Would I be interested?

[8:33] David Armstrong: Well, it's the beginning.

[8:36] David Armstrong: It's not where you start, it's where you finish.

[8:40] David Armstrong: It's not how you go, it's how you land.

[8:45] David Armstrong: A hundred to one shot, you call him a clutz, can outrun the favorite.

[8:52] David Armstrong: All he needs is the guts.

[8:54] David Armstrong: Your final return will not diminish, and you can be the cream of the crop.

[9:04] David Armstrong: It's not where you start, it's where you finish, and you're gonna finish on top where you start, it's where it's not where you start, it's where you're not how you go, it's how you it's not how you go with how you land.

[9:22] David Armstrong: This was truly a case of life-reflecting art.

[9:25] David Armstrong: Tommy Tune would soon become one of Broadway's most accomplished director choreographers.

[9:31] David Armstrong: Both Applause and Seesaw featured subplots involving Broadway chorus dancers and choreographers that were without a doubt precursors to the 1975 Broadway smash, A Chorus Line.

[9:52] David Armstrong: It's not where you start, it's way too fair.

[10:05] David Armstrong: Among its many significant aspects was a giant step forward in queer visibility.

[10:10] David Armstrong: This show put multiple smart, funny, accomplished, and empathetic gay characters center stage and introduced them to an enormous mainstream audience during its 15 years on Broadway, its multiple long-running national tours, international productions, and revivals.

[10:42] David Armstrong: What does he want from me?

[10:46] David Armstrong: What should I try to be?

[10:50] David Armstrong: So many faces all around.

[10:55] David Armstrong: And here we go.

[10:57] David Armstrong: A Chorus Line's contribution to the gay rights movement cannot be underestimated.

[11:02] David Armstrong: Oh God, I need this show.

[11:11] David Armstrong: In 1979, a small four-character musical called In Trousers made its debut off Broadway.

[11:18] David Armstrong: This musical was not well received, but it introduced a character named Marvin who would continue to struggle with his sexuality in two later hit musicals, and most importantly, it marked the debut of queer composer and lyricist William Finn.

[11:32] David Armstrong: William Finn was born in Boston in 1952 into a conservative Jewish family.

[11:37] David Armstrong: He majored in music at Williams College, and like another Williams alumni, Stephen Sondheim, he received the Hutchinson Prize for Musical Composition.

[11:46] David Armstrong: In 1981, in collaboration with director James Lapine, Finn premiered a one-act musical called March of the Falsettos, in which his alter ego Marvin leaves his wife and son and begins a stormy relationship with a man named Wizard.

[12:00] David Armstrong: Well, the situation's this, it's not tough to comprehend.

[12:10] David Armstrong: But I want a tight-knit family.

[12:15] David Armstrong: Harmonizes, I want my wife and kid and friend to pretend the time will mend our pay.

[12:23] David Armstrong: The show became a critically acclaimed off-Broadway hit, running 265 performances.

[12:28] David Armstrong: We all eat as one wife, friend and son, and I sing out as I cook.

[12:34] David Armstrong: I want a tight-knit family.

[12:41] David Armstrong: Till you hear the dinner bell.

[12:43] David Armstrong: Such a dear clientele, I swear we're gonna come through it.

[12:51] David Armstrong: I feel we'll probably fight.

[12:57] David Armstrong: But nothing's impossible.

[12:58] David Armstrong: Live by your wit.

[13:00] David Armstrong: Kid wife and lover will have to admit I was right.

[13:03] David Armstrong: I cushioned the fall.

[13:06] David Armstrong: I want it all.

[13:14] David Armstrong: Broadway Nation will be back right after this brief message.

[13:57] David Armstrong: Jerry Herman, who wrote the music and lyrics, and the director Arthur Lawrence, partnered with a brash young queer playwright named Harvey Fierstein. The musical was based on a smash-hit French play and film of the same name, which later inspired the movie The Birdcage. The story was set in a nightclub in the south of France that featured drag entertainers, and for the first time, the leading characters of a musical were a gay couple involved in a long-term relationship. La Cage Aux Folles received eight Tony Awards, including Best Score, Best Book, and Best Musical, and it ran over four years on Broadway. Its big song, "I Am What I Am," would quickly become a gay anthem.

[15:39] David Armstrong: Meanwhile, even as La Cage was in its early planning stages, gay men in New York and Los Angeles began to get horribly sick and die very quickly of an unknown cause. This mysterious gay plague, as it was called, was first mentioned in the New York Times in 1981 in an article headlined "Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals." The disease would soon be officially called AIDS, autoimmune deficiency syndrome. The shameful history of AIDS is that even as hundreds and eventually thousands of people were dying, it was largely ignored and reviled by the mainstream. President Reagan refused to even mention it until 1985, by which time more than 12,000 people had died. Meanwhile, much of the gay community was in denial because it rightly feared that identifying AIDS with gay men would negatively affect the giant strides that the community had made over the past decade in achieving greater tolerance, acceptance, and freedom. As a result, during the 1980s and 90s, AIDS had a devastating effect on Broadway and all of the performing arts.

[16:49] David Armstrong: An article in the New York Times in June of 1987 was headlined, "Creative Arts Being Reshaped by the Epidemic." It goes on to read, "The AIDS epidemic, which is increasingly causing death and illness in the worlds of art and entertainment, is having a strong effect on the substance and spirit of creativity. More and more imaginative work is being shaped by the disease, from paintings to plays." While the disease has given rise to a body of works related to AIDS, it has also brought a sense of despair felt throughout the arts community. Beverly Sills, general director of the New York City Opera, said that within recent months, two dozen members of the city opera, including singers, musicians, and support staff, had died, and that she had delivered 10 eulogies for AIDS victims during that time. Joseph Papp, producer of the New York Shakespeare Festival, commented, "I have had so many people around me dying of this, I don't even want to talk about it. It's too painful."

[17:46] David Armstrong: "We realize we are losing, first of all, friends," said Colleen Dewhurst, an actor who is also president of the Actors Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers. "But then, too, we are losing some of the great creative minds and some of the coming creative minds." The article goes on, "The impact of AIDS can be discerned in the work not accomplished as well as in the obituaries." Michael Bennett, one of the most influential Broadway directors and choreographers of his generation, withdrew as director of the musical Chess in January 1986, when, according to information confirmed by the New York Times, he was stricken with the illness. He had been in Tucson, Arizona since December, battling the disease that had prevented him from working for more than 18 months.

Vincent Liff, a Broadway casting director, said his agency contended with the consequences of AIDS every day. "I must confess that it's horrifyingly widespread in the community we're dealing with on a day-to-day basis," he said. "The sheer quantity of losses is stunning and ever growing all through the industry."

[18:51] David Armstrong: "I would easily say that over the past four years, 150 performers that we have known, been in our shows, or auditioned for us over the years, are dead. We work a great deal in the musical theater, and an astounding number of them have died." The Broadway creators that died of AIDS include three of the creators of A Chorus Line: Michael Bennett, who was 44 years old, and book writers James Kirkwood, who was 58, and Nicholas Dante, who was 49. The co-choreographer of Dreamgirls was Michael Peters, and he died at age 46. He had also been the choreographer for Michael Jackson's "Thriller" and "Beat It" videos. The book writer for Dreamgirls, Tom Ion, died at 50. The Tony Award-winning director and choreographer Joe Layton, who had worked on 17 Broadway shows, including choreographing The Sound of Music, died at age 63.

Director and choreographer Ron Field died at age 54. He had won Tony Awards for his choreography of Cabaret and his direction and choreography of Applause, and lyricist and bookwriter Howard Ashman died at the age of 40. He had written the musical Little Shop of Horrors, as well as the lyrics for the classic Disney films The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin. And finally, actor Larry Kurt died. He had been the original Tony in West Side Story and had also played Bobby in Company. AIDS also claimed the lives of hundreds of actors, singers, musicians, stage managers, production assistants, and designers, as well as scores of young dancers who had been trained by Bennett, Fosse, Champion, and Tune, and might one day have become influential directors and choreographers themselves.

[21:09] David Armstrong: It was only natural that the impact of the AIDS epidemic would be reflected on stage. In 1990, William Finn and James Lapine brought Marvin and his family back in the hit one-act off-Broadway musical Falsettoland. As in March of the Falsettos, the catchy tuneful score was sung through without any dialogue, but there was no hint of operetta. Instead, Finn employs his own quirky style of comic and heartbreaking pop-inflected show tunes, as well as complex musical sequences that again demonstrate the legacy of the bench scene. This time they added two additional characters, the lesbian couple that lives next door, and the focus of the story is on Marvin's son's bar mitzvah and Whizzer's diagnosis and ultimate death from AIDS.

[22:29] ♪ Musical number: "What More Can I Say?" — performed by Falsettoland cast ♪

[24:02] David Armstrong: March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland were combined into the Broadway musical Falsettos, which ran for four hundred and eighty-seven performances, and William Finn received two Tony Awards for Best Book and Best Score. Off stage, the theater community was at the forefront of AIDS activism and caregiving. In October 1987, the Council of Actors Equity Association founded Equity Fights AIDS. In February 1988, the producers' group founded Broadway Cares, both in response to the growing AIDS epidemic. The two groups merged in May of 1992 to form Broadway Cares Equity Fights AIDS. As of today, it has raised over more than $300 million. A whole generation of creative talent was eliminated or sidelined by the disease, and this opened the door to the British invasion that would soon dominate Broadway and unexpectedly bring the operetta back into fashion with the musicals Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera, and Miss Saigon.

[25:16] David Armstrong: On the next episode of Broadway Nation, we'll look at these shows as well as the one element they all have in common: producer Cameron Mackintosh. I am what I am. I don't want praise. I don't want pity. Broadway Nation is produced and written by me, David Armstrong. If you enjoy these podcasts, I hope that you will do me a big favor by subscribing, rating, and especially writing a quick review of the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. And please follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and our Facebook page, where I often post photos, video, and additional information about the musicals that are profiled in each episode. Special thanks to KVSH 101.9, the voice of beautiful Vashon Island, Washington, and especially to the entire team at the Broadway Podcast Network. And what I am needs no excuses. It's one life as there's no return and no deposit. One life, so it's time to open up your positive. I start working till you can shout out. I am what I am.