{"id":383142,"date":"2025-10-22T18:17:58","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T22:17:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dctheaterarts.org\/?p=383142"},"modified":"2025-10-27T09:40:46","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T13:40:46","slug":"can-queer-theater-ever-be-true-to-queer-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dctheaterarts.org\/2025\/10\/22\/can-queer-theater-ever-be-true-to-queer-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Can queer theater ever be true to queer life?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Remembering a divide<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In the fall of 2019, two plays opened on Broadway written by gay men of color. The first was Jeremy O. Harris\u2019 Slave Play<\/em><\/a>, transferring from a hit off-Broadway run. The Black writer made a provocative work set in the antebellum South, staging sexual submission scenes with enslaved people \u2014 before taking a wild turn, and engaging with power dynamics between interracial couples in the present day. The second play was Matthew L\u00f3pez\u2019s The Inheritance<\/em><\/a>, transferring from an award-winning West End run. The Puerto Rican writer created a two-part, seven-hour epic. L\u00f3pez translates E.M. Forster\u2019s 1910 novel Howards End<\/em> into a 2010s New York City, to explore the enduring influence of the AIDS pandemic in gay America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In subject matter, Harris\u2019 and L\u00f3pez\u2019s shows overlap. Both reveal how physical diseases create psychological trauma, arguing that historical events terrorize the present moment. Both works are also very<\/em> gay, staging group sex scenes with a frank, subversive pleasure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet in mood, Slave Play <\/em>and The Inheritance <\/em>are worlds apart. Harris writes what he calls an \u201cexorcism,\u201d challenging audiences with racial and sexual violence, and showing uncrossable divides between lovers. Slave Play <\/em>aims to disturb, but The Inheritance <\/em>aims for catharsis. L\u00f3pez challenges audiences with beauty: characters monologue about caring for the sick, and the play\u2019s coup de th\u00e9\u00e2tre includes a resurrection of dead bodies miraculously healed. The racial makeup for each play\u2019s Broadway production should be noted, too. Slave Play <\/em>had an equal number of Black and white\/\u201cwhite-passing\u201d cast members. The Inheritance <\/em>had actors of color in smaller roles, but every main character was played by a white man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the fall of 2019, I was a junior in college studying theater, and the buzz around both shows was inescapable. I saved up some of my RA money to see Slave Play<\/em> on Broadway, and left feeling devastated. The queer interracial relationships onstage felt uncomfortably familiar to my own experiences in Virginia. I hadn\u2019t saved up enough money to also catch The Inheritance<\/em>, but I ordered its playscript as soon as it was published.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the page, I appreciated L\u00f3pez\u2019s detailed prose and melodrama, but The Inheritance <\/em>didn\u2019t sweep me away with emotion. Its knowing portrait of upper-class, millennial NYC felt unwelcoming. This was a gay world I knew existed, but to me as a Gen Z reader, it had little to do with the gay community I was living in. When I saw production photos of The Inheritance<\/em>, they resembled Provincetown Instagram posts: attractive and sun-kissed, but insular and homogenous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The differences between Slave Play <\/em>and The Inheritance <\/em>also reflected a growing divide I felt in gay academia. Slave Play <\/em>aligned with a specifically Black movement led by scholars like Zakiyyah Iman Jackson<\/a>, L.H. Stallings<\/a>, and Frank B. Wilderson III<\/a>. These writers acknowledge that Black Americans have never been treated as \u201chuman,\u201d so these writers reject that label and slyly embrace submission and non-human modes of being. The Inheritance <\/em>instead aligned itself with Jos\u00e9 Esteban Mu\u00f1oz<\/a> and Tavia Nyong\u2019o<\/a>: writers exploring how gay culture can create hopeful, utopic spaces of belonging through memory and imagination. Both sides of queer scholarship felt oppositional to each other. One undid the idea of belonging at all, and the other affirmed new<\/em> spaces of belonging. The debate demanded I pick a side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a way, I chose Slave Play<\/em>\u2019s side. The year 2019 was a time when the Trump administration was wreaking havoc on American institutions, so Slave Play<\/em> boldly intervened into American storytelling (joining other Black playwrights<\/a> and journalists<\/a> of the time). Harris\u2019 play matched the zeitgeist of Gen Z teens looking for disruption. So as I developed my journalistic practice, I extensively<\/a> covered<\/a> Slave Play<\/em><\/a>, championing it as a work truly of our times, a play openly exploring my biracial and Virginian identities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet in many ways, the rest of the world chose The Inheritance<\/em>\u2019s side. The Broadway production spoke<\/a> to the Gen X gay men who lived through the height of the AIDS crisis. The Inheritance <\/em>definitively triumphed at the 2021 Tony Awards, winning four awards, including Best Play<\/a>. In that same ceremony, Slave Play <\/em>was nominated for 12 awards, making it the most Tony-nominated play in history up to that point. Slave Play <\/em>also lost every nomination, a fact that still feels pointed to me. It seemed like the world saw two differing versions of queerness: one brutal and eviscerating, the other optimistic and comforting. The world picked the latter option, and has since seen The Inheritance <\/em>produced across the globe.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The cast of \u2018The Inheritance\u2019 at Round House Theatre. Photo by Margot Schulman. <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

The Inheritance <\/em>has now arrived closer to my hometown, at Bethesda, Maryland\u2019s Round House Theatre (where it\u2019s playing through November 2). Today, I\u2019m different from my 2019 self \u2014 as I\u2019ve written about in this publication, I\u2019ve now participated in the affluent NYC culture<\/a> that once intimidated me, and traveled into queer adulthood<\/a>. The Round House production presented a unique opportunity to reconsider The Inheritance<\/em> from a mature perspective. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When going to both parts of the Round House production, I tried to let go of any assumptions or biases I had about the play itself, and watch with an open mind. This revival delivers incredible performances and exquisite direction, but I still found The Inheritance <\/em>to be a flawed play that doesn\u2019t successfully engage with gay history. This Round House production does, however, achieve something far stranger for me. This show convinced me that both The Inheritance <\/em>and Slave Play <\/em>aren\u2019t the best way forward for queer theater.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Watching with appreciation and fear<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This Round House revival demands a closer inspection of the play\u2019s plot. The Inheritance <\/em>opens with a group of young gay men sitting on stage, hoping to write a story about their lives. One young man (played by Jordi Betr\u00e1n Ram\u00edrez) returns to his favorite novel Howards End<\/em>, thus summoning the presence of its author E.M. Forster (Robert Sella). The rest of the play unfolds as a communal retelling of Howards End<\/em>, with the ensemble speaking in assured third-person narration to the audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Schlegel sisters, the protagonists of Howards End<\/em> navigating romance and class in England, have become an American gay couple. It\u2019s 2015, and Eric Glass (David Gow) is celebrating his 33rd birthday party in his spacious Manhattan apartment, which is also about to lose its rent-controlled status. He lives with his partner, Toby Darling (Adam Poss), a snarky but endearing novelist who\u2019s adapting his writing for the stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After some intense sex, Eric and Toby decide to get married. But two chance encounters with other gay men set off a chain of developments. First, the recent college graduate Adam (also played by Ram\u00edrez) arrives at Eric\u2019s party to retrieve a mistakenly-swapped tote bag \u2014 and soon joins the friend group, even auditioning to play the lead in Toby\u2019s play. Then, Eric starts forming a friendship with the ailing Walter Poole (also played by Sella), an older gay man married to the wealthy businessman Henry Wilcox (Robert Gant). Walter tells Eric about his romance with Henry: they found each other just before the AIDS crisis hit New York City, and escaped to an upstate house to avoid being surrounded by death. Yet Walter would use their home to care for his dying friends, leading to a strained relationship with Henry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As an adaptation of Howards End<\/em>, The Inheritance <\/em>is very shrewd. L\u00f3pez tackles the central theme of the novel \u2014 what responsibilities we owe to strangers, family, and lovers \u2014 and grounds it in the millennial generation of gay men. It\u2019s a generation that has tangibly benefited from gay liberation movements, but one that still can\u2019t shake oppression. By making all but one of his characters gay men, L\u00f3pez can better dramatize connections between all the story\u2019s characters. The Inheritance<\/em>\u2019s web of friendly, romantic, and sexual situationships is one I find accurate to modern queer life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Director Tom Story excels when utilizing the large ensemble of this Round House production. The image of gay men gathered together recurs throughout the show \u2014 yearning individually, but connected physically. Each time that image appeared, it took my breath away. Story also encourages his ensemble to perform narration with a steady demeanor, emphasizing the show\u2019s metatheatricality. I\u2019m reminded of the gay film critic Parker Tyler, who wrote<\/a> in 1944, \u201cThe [film] spectator must be a suave and wary guest, one educated in a profound, na\u00efve-sophisticated conspiracy to see as much as he can take away with him.\u201d At its best, The Inheritance <\/em>feels like L\u00f3pez\u2019s witty conspiracy to take away as much from Howards End <\/em>as possible. This ensemble likewise makes the audience feel like we\u2019re part of a suave in-crowd, seeing everything gay NYC offers.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Yet for most of The Inheritance<\/em>\u2019s runtime, I could feel Story (and this Round House production) working overtime to massage the play\u2019s flaws. The most consistent critique of the Broadway production was that despite the play being written by someone of Puerto Rican descent, The Inheritance<\/em>\u2019s cast was too white. L\u00f3pez defended himself in 2020 <\/a>by stating, \u201cEric Glass, my central character, may be a white man, but he is a white man who was created by a Puerto Rican one. That has fundamentally informed his journey through the play.\u201d It\u2019s a valid rebuttal, one I\u2019ve seen playwrights of color Branden Jacobs-Jenkins<\/a> and Larissa FastHorse<\/a> make while defending their Broadway shows led by white actors. What these playwrights fail to address is that productions about people of color aren\u2019t often produced at the same level. It\u2019s because<\/em> Eric Glass is white that he can journey to Broadway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thankfully, the cast of this Round House production is much more diverse, adding dimension to the play\u2019s social mobility narratives. When the actor of color Adam Poss plays Toby Darling, suddenly his search for wealth makes more sense to me. In Toby, I recognize my own Asian American family members who think succeeding under capitalism will end their feelings of alienation. Looking through the playbill, I also discovered that Ram\u00edrez previously played B in Sanctuary City<\/em><\/a>. That play stressed how safety can feel maddeningly arbitrary in America, and that same idea also animates Ram\u00edrez\u2019s characters (Young Man 1, Adam, and later Leo).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, these resonances for audiences of color are all subtext. L\u00f3pez writes with detail about Eric\u2019s German immigrant family, but doesn\u2019t offer that same specificity to Toby\u2019s family. In fact, Toby\u2019s character arc is a textbook definition of the trauma plot<\/a>: for nearly six hours, L\u00f3pez dangles Toby\u2019s horrific backstory in front of the audience like a carrot on a stick. When L\u00f3pez finally gives us the backstory, he\u2019s hoping to provide justification for all of Toby\u2019s anger, and to deliver a wallop of pathos. I mostly felt manipulated. Toby didn\u2019t feel like a real person, just a sentimental, tragic archetype.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s the same problem facing Leo \u2014 a poor, Gen Z sex worker who makes a treacherous journey through NYC. Still, Ram\u00edrez delivers a heartbreaking performance as the character, conjuring an intense daze of desperation. It\u2019s through Leo that L\u00f3pez writes most incisively about the AIDS pandemic. \u201cHe thought of the chain of infection that had been passed along the years,\u201d Leo states, \u201cdecades and generations, his particular lineage moving from person to person, until it was eventually passed to him. A bitter inheritance. And yet, despite this chain of humanity, Leo never felt so alone in all his life.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deep into the show\u2019s second part, these lines made my ears prick up. Even if Leo was an archetype, maybe he<\/em> would speak up for truly marginalized Americans. But just as Henry Wilcox retreats into his wealth to escape the AIDS pandemic, L\u00f3pez retreats into his wealthy characters and away from his poor, HIV-positive ones. Leo is granted a few moments of delicate feeling, but The Inheritance <\/em>is far<\/em> more focused on cataloging bespoke restaurants, dazzling art performances, and opulent apartments. Within this epic is nearly an hour of Vogue<\/em>-esque lifestyle writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This writing reveals L\u00f3pez\u2019s ownership over NYC, one he sees as hard-earned. In a 2019 New Yorker <\/em>profile<\/a>, L\u00f3pez shared his sadness at having been raised in Florida, stating, \u201cI feel like what was taken from me without my consent \u2014 before I was born \u2014 was my birthright, which was being a New Yorker.\u201d L\u00f3pez\u2019s attitude reminds me of Jeremy Atherton Lin\u2019s book Gay Bar: Why We Went Out<\/em><\/a>, wherein Lin recounts a 1990s gay San Francisco reeling from AIDS but also doubling down on gentrification. \u201cI\u2019d imagined that homos moved to the city out of rebellion,\u201d Lin writes. \u201cI hadn\u2019t considered entitlement as a motivating factor.\u201d L\u00f3pez\u2019s entitlement fuels The Inheritance<\/em>. Although the playwright has dramatized NYC\u2019s changing neighborhoods<\/a>, here L\u00f3pez doesn\u2019t explore gay men\u2019s status as harbingers of urban displacement<\/a>. The Inheritance <\/em>itself sometimes feels like a work of gentrification, of sanitized luxury. L\u00f3pez wants to show wealthy gays in all their splendor, bitchiness, and beauty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The song can\u2019t last forever<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Beauty, more than anything, is the goal of this production of The Inheritance<\/em>. Tom Story encourages us to appreciate the male form; Colin K. Bills’ lighting design bathes actors in exquisite colors; Lee Savage\u2019s scenic design includes gorgeous cherry blossoms. Historically, AIDS narratives have been tragedies rendered ugly and stomach-churning. The Inheritance <\/em>offers a corrective of sorts, envisioning a gay future of sun-dappled beauty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet after hours of tasting The Inheritance<\/em>\u2019s sweetness, I wondered where Leo\u2019s \u201cbitter inheritance\u201d had gone. In 2018, writer Doreen St. F\u00e9lix critiqued<\/a> the film adaptation of If Beale Street Could Talk<\/em>, arguing that the film\u2019s beauty sanded down the rough edges of James Baldwin\u2019s original novel. When I\u2019m feeling most cynical, this is exactly what I see L\u00f3pez doing to the AIDS pandemic. It\u2019s ironic that Washington, DC is an important site of gay activism, but none of that energy is captured in this DC production. Watch the documentary How to Survive a Plague<\/em><\/a> and you\u2019ll see ACT UP protesters putting red dye in fountains to make them resemble blood, chanting, \u201cBringing the dead to your door, we won\u2019t take it anymore!\u201d and spreading the ashes of AIDS victims on the White House lawn. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t expect every AIDS narrative to stage polemic moments like that. Still, it\u2019s telling that L\u00f3pez felt obligated to include activist characters in The Inheritance<\/em>, but didn\u2019t fully explore them. Black characters like Jason #1 (John Floyd) and Tristan (Jamar Jones) reference the double standards Black and transgender people face in the LGBTQ community. But they mostly state statistics, serving as human virtue signals<\/a> not woven into the larger arc of the show. The play\u2019s sole leftist character, Jasper (Hunter Ringsmith), is similarly underwritten. Jasper keeps bringing strained identity politics into his capitalist critiques \u2014 and while some 2010s activists certainly did this, I just don\u2019t buy that this <\/em>middle-aged character would make those mistakes. Jasper feels like a straw-man L\u00f3pez writes just so that a billionaire gay man can tear him down. The Inheritance <\/em>hints at disturbing histories in the gay community \u2014 but the play ameliorates those histories with flowery writing. Similar to the AIDS Memorial Quilt<\/a>, The Inheritance<\/em> sometimes smothers horrors under a fastidious beauty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve loved this kind of beauty before. The Inheritance <\/em>reminds me of Sufjan Stevens\u2019 song \u201cThe Only Thing\u201d<\/a> (coming from Stevens\u2019 album Carrie and Lowell<\/em>, a stunning reflection on his mother\u2019s death). In the song, the narrator encounters the dangers also faced by Toby and Leo: addiction, self-harm. The only thing protecting him? Beauty. He recalls constellations of stars, animals in nature, and his mother\u2019s face. When the narrator asks \u201cShould I tear my eyes out now, before I see too much?,\u201d it\u2019s because the world is too beautiful to bear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I\u2019ve been at my lowest, I\u2019ve needed this message. \u201cThe Only Thing\u201d has sometimes been the only thing stopping me from harming myself. Stevens\u2019 voice reminds me there\u2019s so much wonder in the world. Recently, though, Stevens has disavowed this message. For the 10th Anniversary Edition<\/a> of Carrie and Lowell<\/em>, the singer-songwriter wrote an essay stating that this music was an unhealthy way to grieve:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I could never make sense of the nothingness that consumed me, and it was foolhardy to believe anything good could come of superimposing my mother\u2019s memory onto my music in the first place. But I did it just the same. And the result was a hot mess. For the first time in my life, I was faced with the limitations of a creative process that exercised exploitation and exhibitionism as expressions of personal truth. My music failed me.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

When I watch The Inheritance<\/em>, I see a similar \u201chot mess\u201d of art and grief. Both L\u00f3pez and Stevens transform suffering into an almost holy tableau, but fail to truly understand their pain. Just as Stevens superimposed his mother\u2019s death onto his music, L\u00f3pez superimposes the entirety of the AIDS pandemic onto his drama. He\u2019s created a redemption fantasy for the dead so gorgeous<\/em> it threatens to mask the agony of the people who were (and are) victims of the AIDS pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Inheritance <\/em>is beautiful. But that beauty comes at a terrible cost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who shall inherit the stage?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not the only person of my generation who feels this way about The Inheritance<\/em>. I\u2019ve spoken to multiple gay friends my age who saw the play\u2019s Broadway production, and they all arrived at the same conclusion: this is history we want to remember, but maybe this specific play isn\u2019t the best way to restage it. The creative team behind this revival cares deeply<\/a> about passing along this play to subsequent generations, but The Inheritance<\/em> already feels like a dated 2010s period piece. The play\u2019s epilogue, written for a future 2022, now takes place in the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The six years between the 2019 Broadway production and this 2025 Round House production have felt like a lifetime. But it\u2019s a lifetime where, as the recent film One Battle After Another<\/em><\/a> puts it, \u201cvery little has changed.\u201d The COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement promised transformational changes to society, but those changes are now erased<\/a> from<\/a> existence<\/a> by the second Trump presidency. Just like in 2019, The Inheritance <\/em>feels overly optimistic in the face of destruction. In The Inheritance<\/em>, there\u2019s little discussion about political strategies to resist Republican administrations; gay men find solace only through individual acts of kindness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If anything good has come from discourse around The Inheritance<\/em>, it\u2019s that queer writers are now more conscious of the politics shaping their stories. Joel Kim Booster\u2019s rom-com Fire Island<\/em><\/a> also translates a classic novel of manners (Pride and Prejudice<\/em>) into the gay community. But thankfully, Booster properly explores divides across race, class, and body type in his film. Steven Phillips-Horst\u2019s article \u201cWe\u2019ve Reached Peak Gay Sluttiness\u201d<\/a> also lovingly catalogues a sexually liberated friend group, yet with a keener eye for the influence of capitalism and technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dramatists are also filling in the narrative gaps that L\u00f3pez missed. The Inheritance <\/em>only features one woman character: Margaret, a mother who discusses caring for her sick son. Yet Paula Vogel\u2019s Mother Play<\/em>, being staged by Studio Theatre<\/a> next month, offers more multidimensional women. Drawing on her own experiences caring for a brother who died of AIDS, Vogel writes more candidly about the physical demands of care labor, and creates a detailed look at homophobia within the DC community. Even Drew Droege\u2019s play Messy White Gays<\/em><\/a>, currently in previews in NYC, seems to more directly address race and entitlement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nowadays, I feel ambivalent about both L\u00f3pez\u2019s work and Slave Play<\/em>. For years, I\u2019ve approached Slave Play <\/em>from a defensive stance: no regional theater in DC has staged Harris\u2019 work, a sign to me that it\u2019s not considered \u201cpalatable\u201d enough for DC audiences. But Slave Play <\/em>and The Inheritance <\/em>now seem like two theatrical extremes: one overwhelms me with cruelty, the other overwhelms me with beauty. Both are unsustainable to stage in the long run. And for me, both offer unsustainable political practices, for both queer theater and queer life. I can\u2019t feel devastation or catharsis all the time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If there\u2019s one play I\u2019ve seen that synthesizes Slave Play <\/em>and The Inheritance<\/em>, it\u2019s Jordan Tanahill\u2019s Prince Faggot <\/em><\/a>(now running in NYC\u2019s Studio Seaview). The show opens similarly to The Inheritance<\/em>: a group of LGBTQ actors gather to reminisce on their queer childhoods and the culture that\u2019s shaped them. Tanahill\u2019s show then imagines what would happen if a future heir to the English throne was a gay man, with the six-person ensemble playing multiple roles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just like L\u00f3pez, Tanahill is invested in what responsibilities gay men have toward strangers, family, and lovers. Similar to The Inheritance<\/em>, Prince Faggot <\/em>is an ambitious epic, spanning decades of history, exploring what\u2019s inherited across generations of gay men. Yet Tanahill\u2019s work also picks up on the best parts of Harris\u2019 Slave Play<\/em>. Prince Faggot <\/em>is unafraid to shock its audience with intense kink and sex. The show also investigates the uncrossable divides in interracial relationships, staging the horrific legacies of the United Kingdom\u2019s colonialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The show\u2019s most ingenious moments are also its most affecting. After scenes about the royal family, Prince Faggot<\/em>\u2019s actors will seemingly break the fourth wall, delivering part-fictional, part-real monologues<\/a> to the audience. After a sex scene, Rachel Crowl shares a bold story about watching that scene in rehearsals, feeling a mixture of admiration and jealousy as a trans woman. After a parade scene, N\u2019yomi Allure Stewart talks frankly about not caring about the royal family unless Black people like Meghan Markle are involved. She discusses NYC\u2019s ballroom culture<\/a> and the need for queer people to create their own monarchs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crowl and Stewart deliver powerful, personal interventions into Tanahill\u2019s play. The actors remind me of the interventions critics of color like me have made into both Slave Play <\/em>and The Inheritance<\/em> \u2014 but when Crowl and Stewart perform their monologues onstage, their criticisms felt so <\/em>vulnerable that I started to tear up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hope that future productions of The Inheritance<\/em>, and future dramatists writing about the queer community, will include some of the directness of Prince Faggot<\/em>. That radical honesty might create more sustainable political practice. Radical honesty might create theater that\u2019s even more beautiful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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