Sixteen years ago, the Arvada Center staged the gentle, gay-friendly musical comedy “La Cage Aux Folles” in its big, 500-seat mainstage theater at the very same time it was offering a sequel to the popular barbershop revue “Forever Plaid” in its 200-seat studio theater next door. By the end of those two simultaneous runs, 9,000 had attended “Plaid Tidings” in the small theater - 800 more than those who bought tickets to “La Cage” in the big one.
Fast forward to 2023, and a new local production of “La Cage Aux Folles” is being staged in Littleton that sold more advance tickets than any other show in the company’s entire 2022-23 season – including Disney’s “Newsies.”
When Harvey Fierstein’s story about a loving, stable, long-term gay couple (one of them a drag star) first opened as a Broadway musical in 1983, it was accused of “mainstreaming homosexuality for mass consumption” – no doubt by people who never bothered to see it.
But tolerance – and fabulous sequins – won the day. The original Broadway musical ran for more than four years and has been revived twice. It inspired the 1996 runaway hit film “The Birdcage,” which made $185 million at the box office.
“No piece of theater has done as much to enhance gay self-esteem or encourage tolerance,” Michael Billington wrote of “La Cage” in The Guardian. “The show’s popularity confirms that theater has the capacity not just to reflect social attitudes – but maybe even to shift them.”
And yet, for whatever reason, Arvada Center audiences in 2007 had no appetite for an otherwise fairly standard romantic comedy that brings its final curtain down on two men embracing each other and dancing into the sunset. Not so today.
“La Cage” is taking center stage at a time when the queer community is again under duress. Hate crimes against transgender people are spiking. States are advancing a record number of bills that target LGBTQ rights, especially transgender youth and drag queens. The ACLU is tracking 452 anti-LGBTQ bills in the U.S., including one that is on hold in Colorado.
And yet, Denver theater stages are presently filled with more concurrent queer-positive live theater offerings than perhaps any other time in local history. None bigger than the Denver Center’s national touring production of “The Color Purple” – which is rough storytelling terrain, but might just be the most powerful staging I’ve seen in 20 years of watching live theater in Colorado.
Dakota Hill, Bobby Bennett and Kyle Lawrence in Vintage Theatre's massive, two-part play 'The Inheritance.'
Meanwhile, the Vintage Theatre in Aurora has undertaken its largest production since “Angels in America” in 2010. It’s “The Inheritance,” a two-part, six-hour play by Matthew Lopez (“The Legend of Georgia McBride”). It updates E.M. Forster’s novel “Howards End” as a treatise on gay life for three generations of men in present-day New York. A critic for The Daily Telegraph called it “perhaps the most important American play of this century.”
The Pop Up Theatre is presenting “Corpus Christi,” Terrance McNally's celebrated play that tells the Biblical story of a gay Jesus who meets his disciples in Texas, at the People's Building in Aurora.
Grapefruit Lab's 'Strange Bird,' Queer Bird' is based on the real-life COVID shutdown love story of Lars Reid, left, and Julie Rada.
The Grapefruit Lab is staging “Strange Bird, Queer Bird,” an original and achingly beautiful story of two queer strangers who find love from a safe distance during the pandemic shutdown. The story is told with an affecting underscore by the local indie band Teacup Gorilla alongside the choreographed dance of two human birds.
Benchmark Theatre just opened a play called "The Great Wilderness," by Samuel D. Hunter ("The Whale"). It's about a teen who wanders off from a gay conversion Christian camp in the remote Idaho mountains.
Elsewhere, Cherry Creek Theatre is preparing a May 5 world premiere of "The Headliners," about two vaudeville superstars telling "a surprisingly timely story that explores the sometimes explosive crossroads of gender, fame, sexuality and power." On May 18, Control Group Productions will open "Strange Natures," an "unapologetically queer kaleidoscopic immersive journey exploring how the natural is unnatural and how to find joy and pleasure in the plastic and decaying world."
In June, the Springs Ensemble Theatre will present "The Boys in the Band" at a location to be determined in Colorado Springs. The new 2¢ Lion Theatre Company, a troupe of University of Denver students dedicated to producing plays by LGBTQ+ artists, will next present "In Loving Memory" at the upcoming Denver Fringe Festival. It's an immersive play about an estranged teenager estranged processing the trauma of some roadkill.
And, down the road the Arvada Center has announced it will stage “The Laramie Project,” about the murder of gay college student Matthew Shephard, in September.
“Small, intimate theaters in Colorado have clearly entered their queer era,” said Town Hall Arts Center Marketing Manager Steven Burge. “And as the cruelty – both legislative, and just good old-fashioned human-to-human bullying – continues to rise when it comes to freedom and human rights for queer folks, I'm so grateful for it.”
Still, many of these productions are being staged under heightened security after having received threats – most of which are sent from organized, out-of-state disruptors. Some companies are taking added measures to ensure the safety of performers from the moment they arrive until the moment they depart.
Aaron Vega, curator of The People’s Building that is hosting “Corpus Christi” in Aurora, says, on balance, the present proliferation of queer theater “is a positive sign that ours is a welcoming community that embraces progressive ideas. We need to support each other, especially our marginalized communities, whoever that might be at any given time.”
It’s also a sign that there is a healthy market for these kinds of stories.
When Vega looks at the varied lineup of titles being offered, he sees they have two things in common: “These are great stories,” he said, “and they are universal stories that everyone can relate to. They just happen to be told through a queer lens.”
Burge’s hope is that no matter who you are, “if you come to a queer theater story, you will see someone on stage who isn’t scary and is worthy of love and respect. If we can get to that place as a society – a lot of things would change for a lot of people.”