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John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC

Greetings NYCPlaywrights


Greetings NYCPlaywrights


*** FREE THEATER ONLINE ***

NYC Friday Night Footlights® series will present an online reading of FUKT by Emma Goldman Sherman Please join us for the virtual NYC Friday Night Footlights® series, celebrating new dramatic works in progress! This virtual reading will present FUKT by Emma Goldman Sherman.

DG Footlights™ is a program, created and moderated by the Dramatists Guild, that connects dramatists with free space in which to hold a public reading of a new work that is currently in development. This initiative operates on a space-grant model: a representative from the Guild will arrange for a venue to donate space during allocated dates and times, and will ensure that the space is available for dramatists to use to present a self-produced reading to the public, with an optional feedback session following the reading. Attendance is always free and open to all.



*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***

The So.Queer Playwrights Festival is a competitive, biennial festival of LGBTQ+ works which will lead to the selection of one work by a playwright — a work that RTP will develop further in close collaboration with the chosen playwright. The festival brings RTP to the forefront in the region to inspire and develop new LGBTQ+ musical and non-musical works.

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With theatre activities affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, Carlow Little Theatre Society (CLTS), will be running a new one-act playwriting competition this Autumn to encourage the writing of new play material.
Three finalist plays will be selected from the entries, which will each receive a rehearsed, performed reading by actors from CLTS. An overall winner will then be selected, with a monetary prize of €300 for 1st place, €200 for 2nd place, and €100 for third place.

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Fort Worth Opera wanted to provide librettists with a platform for dramaturgical development and assure the industry and opera lovers everywhere that the storytellers within this incredible art form would not be neglected during the COVID-19 pandemic. The company continues its commitment to supporting the creation of new works, and Frontiers: FWO Libretto Workshop will provide librettists with an exclusive opportunity to hone their craft. Not only will they experience passages of their libretto performed by professional actors, but they will receive real-time feedback from some of the top creative minds in opera. Librettists will also be able to obtain a recording of the Zoom workshop to assist them further in their compositional process. 
This collaborative series is presented free of charge to all participating librettists and auditors.

*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***


*** THE PANSY CRAZE *** 

This period, during the late 1920s and the early 1930s, was a golden era in Los Angeles for gay performers, entertainers in drag and the crowds of Angelenos – gay, straight, rich and poor – that loved them. It was during Prohibition and all the clubs were underground; but the culture was completely open and vibrant, filled with fluid sexuality and music that was often coded. It was called the Pansy Craze and it swept up not only Los Angeles, but many of the major cities nationwide.

Lillian Faderman, co-author of “Gay LA: a History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics and Lipstick Lesbians,” said of the era, “I think that sexuality was very fluid in Hollywood, particularly in the movie industry in the 1920s and the 1930s. These upscale nightclubs that featured female impersonators and male impersonators were a real draw for bohemian Hollywood.”

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During the Pansy Craze, people in the LGBTQ community performed on stages in cities around the world, but New York’s Greenwich Village, Times Square and Harlem were at its centre, hosting some of the most renowned drag acts of the 1920s.

It was the early 1930s, however, when gay subculture became mainstream and rose to prominence on the stages of Manhattan.

Why? Well, prohibition in the US had a large part to play in things. How come? Because everyone was in search of a delicious drink, of course.

Rather than doing what it was supposed to do, prohibition actually played a part in getting the party started. Because, unsurprisingly, alcohol brought people from all walks of life together in speakeasies and underground culture.

“It’s not just that they were visible, but that popular culture and newspapers at the time remarked on their visibility – everyone knew that they were visible,” says Chad Heap, a professor at George Washington University.

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When Mae West’s play The Drag was first performed, in Connecticut in 1927, its author was starring as a prostitute in the scandalous Broadway hit Sex. That show was soon deemed indecent, earning her a 10-day jail sentence. She took a limo to prison and said she wore silk underwear throughout her detention. The Drag proved no less controversial: it lasted for 10 performances before it was banned.

Why the fuss? Partly because West was a woman writing about sexuality and, in particular, gay male sexuality. The Drag, subtitled A Homosexual Comedy in Three Acts and written under the pseudonym Jane Mast, is about the cost of living with a secret life. Its hero is a closeted gay socialite, Rolly Kingsbury, who comes “from one of the finest families” and is trapped in a loveless marriage. Rolly’s father is a homophobic judge, his father-in-law a therapist who specialises in gay conversion. West herself had been a male impersonator early in her career, and the play culminates in an elaborate drag ball, with largely improvised dialogue and a jazz band on stage.

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Gladys Bentley left home at 16 and ended up in New York, the capital of "The New Negro" and the Harlem Renaissance.  For Bentley, her sexuality and the large Homosexual population in the 1920s made her need to strike out on her own all the more urgent.  In Harlem this great creative outpouring was also a celebration of optimism about the future of Black America.

Audiences of the prohibition era were often craving something new.  There was a "fashion of the Negro”, accompanied by a curiosity for "Pansy Acts" and "Hot Mama" lesbian or bisexual singers.  Bentley carved out a place for herself around this curiosity.  She would transform popular tunes of the day with bawdy mischievous playful lyrics. Dressed in signature tux and top hat, she openly and riotously flirted with women in the audience. Her popularity and salary climbed, as she was frequently mentioned in many of the entertainment columns of the day and characters based on her appeared in novels.

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The Pansy Craze: A New Musical by bright talent Avery Jean Brennan, welcomes us to the early 1930s, a time when the appetite for drag performances and “nance” roles (foppish, effeminate men) crested in vaudeville and burlesque shows, especially in underground clubs serving illegal liquor, where much was permitted (especially, it seems, that which was forbidden elsewhere). 

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"Hip Zip Hooray" is a comedy short made in 1933.  It features female impersonator and Pansy Craze artist Ray (Rae) Bourbon in a supporting role.  Ray plays the designer in the underwear shop and is in several slapstick sequences in the second half.


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Gene Malin - Pansy Craze - "I'd Rather Be Spanish" 1932

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