The LOOK AGAIN! series presents a rare opportunity for audiences to revisit plays that contributed to the making of what we now call gay theatre. The nine evenings of plays that make up the series in no way represent the "greatest hits" of American gay theatre, nor do they present an exhaustive or definitive survey. Rather, this series explores the breadth and depth of the gay theatre with an eclectic assortment of plays, from before and after Stonewall, from the mainstream to the marginal, from the realistic to the fantastic.

Although the Wales Padlock Law of 1927 forbade plays "depicting or dealing with the subject of sex degeneracy or sex perversion" on the stages of New York, gay characters and gay themes were never completely absent from the theatre. During the years of McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee, which sought to rid the entertainment industry of communists and queers, Robert Anderson wrote a coming-of-age drama that questioned traditional notions of masculinity, conformity, and sexual propriety. Tea and Sympathy opened on Broadway in 1953 and ran for 712 performances, directed by Elia Kazan and starring Deborah Kerr as a schoolmaster’s wife who befriends a "sensitive" boy. Vincente Minelli directed the 1956 film version, which toned down the play’s queer subject matter and punished the heroine for her indiscretion. Nearly a decade later, Hugh Wheeler created another play about a "sensitive" boy but addressed gay sexuality – and homophobia – more directly and explicitly. Look, We’ve Come Through opened on Broadway in 1961, featuring a young Burt Reynolds, and closed after five performances. A drama that sympathetically portrayed the sweetness and sorrow of being young, sensitive, and possibly gay proved too controversial for some critics, and the producer pulled the play before it could reach a wider audience. The play remains a favorite of those who believe it deserved a longer life on the stage, including critic Marilyn Stasio who included it in her anthology, Broadway’s Beautiful Losers. TOSOS II is happy to present this rare play to a contemporary audience for a second look.

The restrictions of mainstream commercial theatre in the 1960s and 1970s brought about a thriving theatrical scene off- and off-off-Broadway. The Caffe Cino on Cornelia Street in Greenwich Village featured a tiny stage, a continual stream of fresh coffee from Joseph Cino, and fresh theatre from playwrights including Tom Eyen, Maria Irene Fornes, John Guare, Robert Patrick, Megan Terry, Jeff Weiss, and Doric Wilson. Lanford Wilson’s The Madness of Lady Bright was first presented and became a hit at the Cino in 1964 with Neil Flanagan winning an Obie in the title role of the self-proclaimed "screaming queen." The Great Nebula in Orion received its American premiere at the Circle Theatre in 1972 under the direction of Wilson’s long-time collaborator, Marshall W. Mason. TOSOS paired these one-acts on a double-bill in 1976: TOSOS co-founder Billy Blackwell played Leslie Bright, and Orion featured Diane Tarleton, who later played Laurel in the original Broadway cast of Torch Song Trilogy.

Theatres like Caffe Cino and LaMama, which from their inception nurtured gay theatre artists, helped set the stage for the community-based theatres of the post-Stonewall Gay Liberation era. Groups such as TOSOS and The Glines (New York), Theatre Rhinoceros (San Francisco), and the Gay Sweatshop (London) produced plays that were – to borrow a phrase from W. E. B. DuBois – for us, by us, about us, and near us. Doric Wilson turned gay community space into theatre space with the site-specific production of The West Street Gang at the Spike Bar in 1977. Wilson’s comedy of gay power and gay "bashing" (both from outside and inside the community) was a popular success, running for five months. The original cast featured Billy Blackwell as the "tenacious transvestite" Shanghai Lil; Caroline Yeager performing a highly topical impersonation as "concerned citizen" Anita Bryant; and Frank Adamo as "self-styled hood" Danny Sienna. Wilson asked Adamo, a "tough guy" character actor and former policeman, if he would consider writing a play about the often-troubled relationship between the gay community and the New York City police. The result is Adamo’s precinct drama Dis Con (police lingo for "disorderly conduct"). Although the original TOSOS went into hibernation before it could produce Adamo’s play, TOSOS II is proud to be able to present it now.

One of the most prolific contributors to this new theatre scene was Robert Patrick, whose short comedies of gay life include Fred and Harold, which was produced in New York by the Old Reliable Theatre Tavern in 1969 and went on to be included in the initial season of London’s Gay Sweatshop Theatre in 1975. Patrick’s T-Shirts premiered at the Out and About Theatre of Minneapolis in 1978 and became a staple of the gay theatre circuit. When The Glines produced T-Shirts in New York at the Spike Bar in 1980, porn star Jack Wrangler played the role of Kink and Patrick himself appeared as Marvin (a writer). The Glines also produced Jane Chambers’ romantic drama Last Summer at Bluefish Cove, which became a hit in New York in 1980 and continues to be one of the most popular and most produced lesbian plays ever written. The original production starred Jean Smart, who earned a Drama Desk nomination for her portrayal of Lil; later in the run, Chambers herself stepped into the role of Kitty (a writer).

Musical theatre has played a crucial role in much of contemporary gay culture, usually by helping to construct "gay sensibility" more than by providing actual "gay content." That dynamic changed when the conventions of the old-fashioned Broadway musical comedy were lovingly recreated with a gay bent by Bill Solly and Donald Ward in Boy Meets Boy. The show was a popular hit at the Actors Playhouse in Greenwich Village in the 1975-76 season, running for 463 performances and generating numerous productions as well as an original cast album (now available on CD). Coming out of a more avant-garde theatre scene, Tom Eyen’s Sarah B. Divine! (subtitled "A Musical Biographical Fantasy on the Life of Sarah Bernhardt") re-imagined the life of the legendary French actress in an "experimental" theatrical style that treated the audience to song, spectacle, even a celebrity cameo from Oscar Wilde. The play premiered at LaMama in 1967 and went on to productions around the world, including London, where it starred Patricia Quinn (a.k.a. Magenta in The Rocky Horror Picture Show). Some of Eyen’s other notable successes with theatrical divas include giving Bette Midler her first New York stage role in his play, Miss Nefertiti Regrets (1965), and writing the book and lyrics for Dreamgirls (1981).

All of the plays presented in the Look Again series offer different pleasures as well as different challenges. Theatrical styles and tastes change over time, as do the ways in which we think and talk about gender and sexuality. Because of the ephemeral nature of live performance, many plays – particularly those produced outside of the mainstream – can be in danger of being overlooked or forgotten in time. TOSOS II presents the Look Again series with the firm belief that these plays maintain their value as entertainment and as glimpses into the way we lived – and perhaps still live – our lives. The theatre artists and audience members who join in the process of looking back will also find themselves looking inward and looking forward.

In the theater of an earlier era, it was almost obligatory that the gay character either commit suicide or turn heterosexual. In the 1961 Look, We've Come Through, he forms an alliance with a woman, but whether it turns sexual or not is, as realized by Rebecca Kendall, guiding the accomplished, youthful cast, left up in the air. Belle (sensitively limned by Eagan), plain, but intellectual, and just 19, and Jennifer (a brittle Moriber), an archly sophisticated actress, a bit older, are roommates and former schoolmates. Jennifer is estranged from her self-absorbed actor husband, Wain (Christopher McFarland), until success comes to him, thanks to their oily agent, Miltie (Tim Barker), but not to her. Before the couple's reunion, however, Belle loses her virginity to Wain, for whom she had nursed serious affection since their school days. For Wain, who had barely noticed her before, the tryst represents merely a meaningless fling.