CROWLEY, Mart
The Boys In the Band
London: Bridge Productions Ltd, N.d. [1969]
113 mimeographed pp., paginated in two acts, bound in red stiff paper wrappers secured with two split pins to left edge. Title window to front wrapper. Inked number ‘3’ to title page. A little browning and light edge wear, but a very well preserved copy.
Original production script for the London premiere of The Boys in the Band, presented at the Wyndham’s theatre in February 1969.
In 1967, the current affairs programme CBS Reports aired a 60-minute programme called The Homosexuals, the first-ever US network broadcast to be devoted to the subject: two years later, in 1969, the Stonewall riots ignited the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement. In between these two landmark events, on 14 April 1968, The Boys in the Band by the gay playwright Mart Crowley opened at Theatre Four, a small off-Broadway theatre in New York. Drawing directly from Crowley’s Life, the show was meant to run for only five performances at Theatre Four, but racked up one thousand and one before closing in 1970. It was still running in New York when the show premiered in London at the Wyndham’s theatre on 11 February 1969, in a production directed by Robert Moore and starring John Carlisle and William Gaunt. (This script was generated in London for the Wyndham’s production.)
In 1970, director William Friedkin filmed the play with the original cast. Robert La Tourneaux, who played Cowboy, struggled to find work after the film’s release. He eventually resorted to prostitution, attempted suicide, and died from AIDS-related complications in 1986. Between 1986 and 1993, five of the original nine cast members would lose their lives to the AIDS epidemic: La Tourneaux, Kenneth Nelson, Leonard Frey, Keith Prentice, and Larry Combs.
A key title in the queer theatre canon from its London debut.
CROWLEY, Mart
The Boys In the Band
London: Bridge Productions Ltd, N.d. [1969]
113 mimeographed pp., paginated in two acts, bound in red stiff paper wrappers secured with two split pins to left edge. Title window to front wrapper. Inked number ‘3’ to title page. A little browning and light edge wear, but a very well preserved copy.
Original production script for the London premiere of The Boys in the Band, presented at the Wyndham’s theatre in February 1969.
In 1967, the current affairs programme CBS Reports aired a 60-minute programme called The Homosexuals, the first-ever US network broadcast to be devoted to the subject: two years later, in 1969, the Stonewall riots ignited the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement. In between these two landmark events, on 14 April 1968, The Boys in the Band by the gay playwright Mart Crowley opened at Theatre Four, a small off-Broadway theatre in New York. Drawing directly from Crowley’s Life, the show was meant to run for only five performances at Theatre Four, but racked up one thousand and one before closing in 1970. It was still running in New York when the show premiered in London at the Wyndham’s theatre on 11 February 1969, in a production directed by Robert Moore and starring John Carlisle and William Gaunt. (This script was generated in London for the Wyndham’s production.)
In 1970, director William Friedkin filmed the play with the original cast. Robert La Tourneaux, who played Cowboy, struggled to find work after the film’s release. He eventually resorted to prostitution, attempted suicide, and died from AIDS-related complications in 1986. Between 1986 and 1993, five of the original nine cast members would lose their lives to the AIDS epidemic: La Tourneaux, Kenneth Nelson, Leonard Frey, Keith Prentice, and Larry Combs.
A key title in the queer theatre canon from its London debut.
