Robert Cohen - Theatre, Brief Version-McGraw-Hill Education (2016)

266 Chapter 10 Global Theatre Today
Anyone struggling to read a bad translation of a foreign language will find Asian American David Henry Hwang’s
Chinglish a very funny play. About an American businessman who seeks to expand his entreprenurial enterprise in
China, the play is written in both Chinese and (fractured) English, helped (and often hindered, as above) by projected
supertitles. Premiering at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre, the play afterward enjoyed a three-month 2011–2012 Broadway
run. Direction was by Leigh Silverman and scenic design by David Korins. © Sara Krulwich/The New York Times/Redux
Falsettos, Kiss of the Spider Woman, The Wild Party,
Avenue Q, Hedwig and the Angry Inch), popular
comedies (Love! Valour! Compassion!, Jeffrey, The
Little Dog Laughed, Buyer & Cellar), and serious
dramas (Bent, M. Butterfly, Angels in America, Gross
Indecency, Stop Kiss, The Laramie Project, Take Me
Out, I Am My Own Wife). Gay actors have come out
of the closet to advocate gay rights worldwide, such
as British classical star Ian McKellen in his one-man
performance “A Knight Out” at the Gay Games in
New York in 1994. Gay plays have entered the global
mainstream as well, as exemplified by the Shameless
Theatre company, which opened a theatre in London’s
Victoria district in 2008 wholly dedicated to plays on
gay themes, and the annual Gay Theatre Festival in
Dublin, Ireland, which has presented gay-themed plays
from Poland, Germany, Zimbabwe, France, Spain,
Australia, South Africa, Venezuela, Canada, America,
England, and Ireland since its creation in 2004.
During the 1980s, in the wake of the devastations of
the AIDS crisis, a growing genre of plays centered on
the emotional and tragic impact of the disease in the gay
community, most notably Larry Kramer’s 1985 The Normal
Heart. In 1992, Tony Kushner’s Angels in America,
treating AIDS as central to what Kushner termed his
“gay fantasia on national themes,” proved the country’s
most celebrated stage production of the decade, while
in 2011, a Broadway production of Kramer’s Normal
Heart won the Tony Award for Best Revival. Although
AIDS does not dominate the headlines today as it once
did, it remains a serious issue, and the suffering, nobility,
and community that emerge in its wake remain timeless
themes.
Differently-abled people are also represented by new
plays as well as by theatre companies that were created
specifically for these voices and for expanding differentlyabled
audiences. In New York, Theatre Breaking Through
Barriers (until 2008 known as Theatre by the Blind)