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[0:00] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Welcome to the Drama Book Show, where we bring you conversations with writers, artists and theater professionals whose work helps shape the world of live performance. My name is Mark Eugene Garcia. In this episode, we take a closer look at the history of representation, identity and storytelling in one of America's most enduring art forms, the musical. We're joined by Robert W. Schneider, author of Queer Musicals, a chronological exploration of queer musicals developed on Broadway throughout the second half of the 20th century and into the 21st century. Through research into the creation, production, reception and cultural impact of these shows, Schneider examines how queer storytelling has evolved within musical theater and how these works have helped shape the broader American dramatic canon.

As the artistic director of the award-winning J2 Spotlight Musical Theater Company, a producer at Tony Award winning 54 Below, and a leading historian of queer musicals, Schneider brings his expertise as a theater producer, historian and advocate for preserving musical theater history. Here's Robert W. Schneider, live at the Drama Bookshop.

[1:25] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Welcome Robert W. Schneider and Patrick Hinds.

[1:35] Robert W. Schneider: Thank you so much. Hi everybody. Hi you. Oh my gosh, hello. Don't forget, we have to be very close to the microphone. Yes, I can get this close. As podcasters, we know that is how this works. This is nice. Hi everyone. Well, we were saying backstage. Oh, did we already ruin it? Is it already over? Was it us? Should we leave? You want to do it again? We were saying we want this to be a conversation, so I'm going to be asking Rob questions, but if you have questions along the way, don't wait. Just raise your hand and ask away. Please, because I'm not a very interesting person, so. And I'll answer anything. I'll talk to you about your taxes. Not true.

[2:12] Patrick Hinds: Exactly. I'll talk to you about great places to eat around here. If you have any questions about your taxes, Rob is your guy. Shall we jump in?

[2:22] Robert W. Schneider: Yeah, deduct it. That's all I know how to say.

[2:27] Patrick Hinds: Exactly. Exactly. It's an exemption. Okay, tell us first, can we take this off the thing? We can? Oh good. There's no rules. Oh my god, it's going to be like Judy Garland. Look at this.

[2:31] Robert W. Schneider: Yes, exactly. Tell me first the inspiration for the book. How did you come up with it? Why did you want to write it?

[2:36] Robert W. Schneider: I wish I could tell you something really inspirational and intelligent, but somebody asked me if I wanted to do it.

[2:46] Robert W. Schneider: And I needed to pay my rent, and I was like, yeah, then I realized. There's that passion we love. And then when I'm like, when you write a book, they don't pay you anything for it.

[2:53] Robert W. Schneider: Oh right, don't I know. And so now I'm still hustling for the rent. Yeah. There's a wonderful series by a woman named Kristen Presley, and it's called The Essential Musical Series, and I know a couple of her other editions are over there. So there's like a series on jukebox musicals, and then there's a series on Pulitzer Prize winning musicals. And so she reached out to me and she said, do you want to write the one on queer musicals? And I'm like, I know a little something about gay musicals.

[3:16] Robert W. Schneider: Yeah. I called my dad and I was like, I said, I'm going to write a book on gay musicals. And he's, isn't every musical gay? And then he was like, slip me an index card. And he'd be like, that's my one on straight musicals.

[3:25] Robert W. Schneider: Yeah, exactly. It's a very short book, a short book. So anyway, so that was the catalyst for it was somebody asked me and I was like, yeah. And then I started doing research and there really wasn't a lot of books that dealt with this subject. They deal with a lot of like queerness in movies and queerness in straight plays, no pun intended, but there was nothing really for musical theater.

[3:46] Robert W. Schneider: And so then I got excited and I was like, let me start digging into this. It's so interesting. How far back does it go?

[4:04] Robert W. Schneider: Okay. So the first we were, we were told by the editors, we could only cover 10 musicals in the book.

[4:09] Robert W. Schneider: Oh, wow. But I wanted to so rules. I know I don't like rules. No. And I wanted to do a lead up though, to be like, how did we get to these 10?

[4:18] Robert W. Schneider: Yeah. So the first few musicals, the first we actually talk about is a musical by Gilbert and Sullivan, an operetta called Patience, which was supposed to be a parody of Oscar Wilde.

[4:24] Robert W. Schneider: And like talking about how back then there was even this idea of these queer coded characters.

[4:28] Robert W. Schneider: Yeah. So it starts all the way back there in the introduction. And then the first like musical we talk about is one called Boy Meets Boy from 1975. And that's like the first show.

[4:35] Patrick Hinds: Okay. That seems recent.

[4:43] Robert W. Schneider: Yeah. In the past 50 years. Is that right?

[4:49] Patrick Hinds: Yeah. 51. So is that what you would say? I didn't do math. Would you call it like the first gay musical? 1975.

[4:54] Robert W. Schneider: There's one more that's before it called The Faggot.

[5:00] Patrick Hinds: Oh my God. I know. Yes. I'm sorry, but it's what it's called.

[5:05] Robert W. Schneider: Yeah. By a guy named Al Carmines, who was this openly gay musical theater writer. He was fantastic. He was very political, but the musical that he wrote was more of a review. And I was like, ooh, do I want to go that way? Or do I want to do a book musical?

[5:09] Robert W. Schneider: Yeah. And I started with Boy Meets Boy because it was the first successful gay musical.

[5:15] Patrick Hinds: Successful in what way?

[5:21] Robert W. Schneider: It played off Broadway. It ran for almost two years.

[5:27] Patrick Hinds: Wow. Do you know where it played?

[5:31] Robert W. Schneider: Yeah. It was at a theater on, oh boy, 13th street. Okay. And it was there for two years. They did a tour of it. It played in LA. Now here's what makes me sad. And this is why I wanted to cover it in the book.

[5:42] Robert W. Schneider: The show was, it took the 1930 screwball comedies of a boy meets girl, boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl in the end. And they said, what if we did it, but it's a gay world, but they never say the gayness is wrong. They never call it out. They never go, oh my God, you're marrying a man. They go, yep. This is a totally normal, acceptable thing.

[6:03] Robert W. Schneider: So it's a 1930 screwball comedy.

[6:07] Patrick Hinds: Oh my God. Just with all these gay characters in it.

[6:13] Robert W. Schneider: And I was like, this is great. And then I was like, imagine if you are some kid in the middle of Texas or Oregon or upstate California, and you think you're the only person that exists that's gay.

[6:19] Robert W. Schneider: Yeah. Because remember, this is 1975. It's not on TV. It's not on music. That's six years post Stonewall.

[6:23] Patrick Hinds: Yeah, exactly. Right. And so I'm like, but imagine what would happen if you had seen this show and you saw it and you said to yourself, oh my God, I'm not alone.

[6:28] Robert W. Schneider: Yeah. And oh my gosh, actually queer love can be a real thing. And it was supposed to have this huge tour across the United States. And the producers got into a fight with each other over the royalty queens.

[6:34] Patrick Hinds: Exactly. And they were like, fine, then we just won't do it at all. Bruce and the show never toured.

[6:42] Robert W. Schneider: Wow. And so I thought to myself, I was like, think of all the kids that could have seen this musical, all the parents that were closed minded that could have seen this musical. And it didn't happen because two people couldn't agree on how much money somebody was owed. And to me, I was like, that's the story I want to start telling.

[7:02] Patrick Hinds: Yeah. I want to start there to show people how rare it was to have this.

[7:07] Patrick Hinds: Has it been done again? I've never heard of it.

[7:13] Robert W. Schneider: No, it didn't. It was so sad. It didn't even really get the real cast recording. There was one cast recording that the actors made in the living room of somebody's house, and they sold a thousand records of it. So it's rare. It's available now, I think you can get it on iTunes. It's available there. But it wasn't there was no real recording of it. It really wasn't published anywhere. The authors and the producers were not giving out the rights because they were still angry and arguing with each other all the time.

[7:33] Patrick Hinds: So it has not really been done since once in 2012. I think here it was done.

[7:38] Robert W. Schneider: Oh, yeah, go ahead. There was a big revival of it that was done by the New York City Gay Men.

[7:42] Patrick Hinds: Yes. Oh, wow.

[7:45] Robert W. Schneider: Yes. Oh, yes. I'm so sorry. So our good friend there is saying that there was a revival of it done by the Gay Men's Chorus in the early 90s. And you're absolutely right. They also did it in London a few years back off Broadway. Sorry, off in the West End.

[8:03] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And yeah, of course, I'm turning the mic over to David now.

[8:06] David Rigano: If I could just chime in really quickly to say if only there was like an off Broadway theater or something here in New York that did limited runs of rarely produced musicals, just putting that out there.

[8:15] Robert W. Schneider: Yes, sir. Thank you, David. And I'll make sure of course knows. No, I would listen. I would love to do it at J2. I would love, love, love to do it. And it's a good show. If you listen to it, it's still did you see it when Gay Men's Chorus or did you see the original?

[8:27] Patrick Hinds: No, you're probably too young to see the original.

[8:29] David Rigano: He says not really, but he's lying.

[8:35] Robert W. Schneider: I wrote it and I'm still fighting with that bitch. She won't give me the right.

[8:41] Patrick Hinds: Exactly. Do you know the company that commissioned them to write the musical? It was a children's theater company.

[8:45] Robert W. Schneider: Oh, wow. Children's theater company that was like, we do children's shows, but we kind of want to do more adult things. And they were. And so the guy, his name was Bill Solly. He was the children's. He wrote all the music for the children's shows. They're like, do you have anything that's more like adult? He said, yeah, I've got this musical about gay people and like, great, put it on.

[8:59] Patrick Hinds: And was it well received?

[9:05] Robert W. Schneider: Very well received. People loved it. People absolutely loved it. If you were gay and you were seeing it, you loved it because you're like, oh my gosh, I'm being represented on stage. And if you were straight, because this is also not to get too geeky about musical theater.

[9:12] Robert W. Schneider: Yeah. This is the 70s when the nostalgia craze was happening. Yeah. So Nonanette and Grease and this idea of let's look back to the past. So this was like for the older crowd. They're like, ah, it's the 1930s. And the show sounds very 1930s.

[9:27] Patrick Hinds: Let me ask you, because I'm thinking about the plays. I want to say what was the what was the gay play that they made into the movie Boys in the Band?

[9:32] Robert W. Schneider: Oh, yeah. That was 1969 as well.

[9:38] Patrick Hinds: Yeah. Yeah. Now, that was very angsty.

[9:43] Robert W. Schneider: Very. I think we look at that now and think of it as self-hating.

[9:47] Patrick Hinds: Yeah. Boy meets boy like that or is it celebratory?

[9:50] Robert W. Schneider: Not at all. There was no guilt. There was no shame. There was no punishment. It was literally this guy loves this guy and they can't be together because they're separated by economic class. What's going to happen?

[10:00] Robert W. Schneider: Oh my God. That's wild. And that was the whole conceit was they never said queerness was wrong. Queerness was bad. Queerness was a mistake. And in the book, I break down queer development through what I call four different eras.

[10:11] Robert W. Schneider: So I was like, there's the amuse us era, which is everything before 1950. And that's we can laugh at queer characters. We have the pansy characters in vaudeville.

[10:17] Patrick Hinds: If you looked right at me when you said that, we had me and the characters, Chelsea, the Nance, the Douglas Carter being played that covers a lot of that.

[10:28] Robert W. Schneider: And then the boys in the band goes into the next era that I call the avoid us era, which is we're gay. We're wrong. Get away from us.

[10:33] Robert W. Schneider: Yeah, we should. You should be ashamed. And that's like plays like the Children's Hour where spoiler alert, she commits self-harm at the end or like suddenly last summer, the Tennessee Williams play where he's being punished because and he's being eaten by cannibals. You know what I mean?

[10:49] Patrick Hinds: Oh my God.

[10:50] Robert W. Schneider: Oh yeah, it's intense. So don't be gay. The cannibals are going to get you. And that's they're going to get your kids. No, eat me. Eat me. You can put that in the podcast if you want. And I'll give you my phone number, too.

[11:03] Robert W. Schneider: And so but Boy Meets Boy is right in the middle of that era, which is the avoid us era. So it's like a big beacon of hope.

[11:08] Patrick Hinds: Yeah, I'm going to say, like, I'm a little bit of a gay history nerd. And I've been looking at the 1970s recently. Anyway, 1969 was Stonewall. And like the 70s really is this generation sandwiched in between Stonewall and AIDS.

[11:19] Robert W. Schneider: Yes. And it was an era of hope and an era of promise and an era of freedom and liberation.

[11:25] Patrick Hinds: And so that's really and I was thinking about this on the way over here, too, that are these queer musicals tied to eras because I'm thinking so 1975 makes sense because that's that post Stonewall vibe of like, we're here, we're queer.

[11:36] Robert W. Schneider: Yeah. And then the 80s, there must have been 7000 AIDS musicals.

[11:47] Robert W. Schneider: Oh, yeah. So that then comes into the what I call the assist us era.

[11:54] Robert W. Schneider: Yeah. Which is like every show that you're watching that has queer characters in it. It's usually someone has AIDS. Yeah. One just died of AIDS. Someone's going to get AIDS. So it's this horrible decade for that. And all the plays are mostly dealing with that.

[12:03] Robert W. Schneider: So look at The Normal Heart or as is a lot of the Terrence McNally plays. Musicals didn't want to touch it at all. There's nothing fun about AIDS.

[12:14] Patrick Hinds: Yeah. Sing and dance.

[12:19] Robert W. Schneider: Yeah. Until Falsettos comes along. Yes.

[12:25] Robert W. Schneider: In 1990. But at that time, in that era, the only big musical that's running at that time is La Cage. And La Cage is the first musical to put a gay couple front and center.

[12:32] Patrick Hinds: Yeah. Protagonist.

[12:38] Robert W. Schneider: But once the AIDS crisis started to really amp up, those ticket sales declined. And I was speaking to Leroy Reams, who is just fabulous. And if you don't know who he is, please look him up. Just watch one YouTube video of the guy. It'll give you hours of entertainment.

[12:49] Robert W. Schneider: He was the first openly gay actor to play an openly gay character in a musical.

[12:54] Patrick Hinds: Is that right?

[12:56] Robert W. Schneider: Yeah. Applause in 1970.

[12:59] Patrick Hinds: Yeah. And he's still with us, thank God. And he's amazing. There's also, you can watch the entire, there's like a, they filmed a stage production of Applause with Anne Bancroft and Leroy Reams.

[13:04] Robert W. Schneider: Oh, you know what? He's not in that one.

[13:09] Patrick Hinds: Oh, he's not?

[13:13] Robert W. Schneider: He's not. And he's still angry about it. Oh my God. Harvey Evans. Harvey Evans is in that one. Don't even.

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[26:29] Robert W. Schneider: All the stuff he was doing was really well loved. It was very political, was very contemporary, was very edgy. And Joe Papp at the Public Theater loved him and said, David, whatever you want to do next, we're going to produce it. And David Hare said, I want to do a musical. He had never done a musical before. He said, I want to do a musical, but I want the world to see that transgender people are just like you and me, and that it's existed forever. And what goes on in someone's mind to become transgender or to make them go through with the process. So the heart is totally in the right place. It's just executed so poorly. First of all, David Hare guessed at what makes somebody trans. And his guess was, this was the scene, Mandy Patinkin was a bellboy at a hotel, and he goes into a guest's room without knocking.

And the guest was Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. And she just got out of the shower and she's naked and they're looking at each other and she goes, interesting. And he says, what? And she goes, you're the first man who's ever looked at me like a woman when I'm naked. Most men, when they look at me and I'm naked, it's so clear they want to have sex with me. But I see something else when you look at me. Wow. He goes, oh, I think I'm a woman. And he begins his journey. Wow. So I'm assuming that if you're transgender, that's not the way it goes. That's right. I'm guessing so. But the heart was in the right place. Yeah. He wanted to say, look, there's no reason why we should be othering this. There's no reason why we should be mocking this.

This is a legitimate thing. And these people deserve the same sort of love and humanity that we give everybody else. Who wrote the music? Oh, my gosh. His name was he was a film composer. He had mostly done music for David Harris plays like incidental music. OK, I cannot remember his name off the top of my head. I'm telling you, I wrote the book. I promise. Yeah, it wasn't you. You did not know. I was going to quiz you about your book in order. But if you want to see something, go back and look at the past. Most transphobic. You're like, oh, wow. All they want to do is make fun of Mandy Patinkin for how he looks. It's horrible. Yeah. It was stacked, though. Mary Testa was in it. Oh, my God. Really?

This is I give him a lot of credit, too. This was right at the height of his Broadway fame. Oh, wow. He was just about to release Princess Bride. Wow. On hold other movie deals and other musicals because he's I really want to tell this story because I think it's important to tell. So I don't know. That's something else we cover. I teach a lot and a lot of my young students don't really appreciate the straight allies that have helped us. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. I think a lot of young people now would be like, how dare a role. However, you name me a transgender actor back then or any ticket or who would even dare to come in and audition. Yeah. And Jean Barry and George Hearn, who ended up doing it, their agents were like, what are you doing?

This was the era where people like Harry Hamlin did that gay movie and lost his career overnight. Yeah. Yeah. No, I just I remember reading about and Harry Hamlin to this day, it still feels like he made the right decision in doing that movie in Hollywood. It's called the Hamlin Law. Oh, wow. Hamlin rule, which is if you are a young, hot, up and coming actor, do not play a gay role because unless it's heated rivalry, unless it's heated right now. Thank God it's changed. Yeah. Thank God it's changed. I shouldn't say it's changed entirely. Yeah, it's changing because I used to work out in L.A. and the number of actors that are out there that are big star straight presenting with their wife and kids gayer than life.

Oh, wow. And there's I won't name names unless you buy the book. And there's. Oh, great, Michael. Michael, you were Michael lived out there in L.A. to you. I'll tell you tomorrow at lunch. You'll probably know some of the same people. There's still a sense of you can't do that. You can't come out. Interestingly enough, not because that American audiences have a problem with it. They cannot sell it to foreign distributors. Oh, interesting. They don't believe that the biggest markets that are international will buy films that have gay leads in it. It's also why you don't see. This is horrible, but it's also why you don't see a lot of interracial couples in big movies because the biggest buyers don't want to buy it.

Wow. They say America probably would not have a problem with it. It's the foreign markets that are like they go. We want to, quote unquote, American movie. And to them, that's not American. Gay is not American. Interracial is not American. Oh, my God. Seriously. I wish I had better news. I know. I'm being honest with you. No. Yeah. No. So sorry. Oh, my God. So what does then. So then Kinky Boots, of course, and then contemporary. Oh, yeah. So contemporary. So we have Kinky Boots. We have Fun Home. We have the prom. And I end the book with I put in the book to talk about the controversies of the casting of Jagged Little Pill, because to me, I think it's a nice book until a cause in which the cause the actors are told, don't you know, you are straight.

And George Hearn and Jean Barry, who were the stars, had it in their contracts that any time they were interviewed in the press, they had to mention Jean Barry had a wife and kids. And George Hearn had a reputation for being a ladies man on Broadway that he had been married three times and he kind of got around to go to Jagged Little Pill, which is how dare you not cast a non-binary actor? Yeah. How dare you not cast somebody that actually fits this? So to me, I think that's just a really cool arc. Yeah. To go from don't tell anyone to why we have people that are telling everybody you're not using them. I can't imagine it today. I can't imagine doing a show on Broadway where you would cast a non-gay actor.

We kind of saw when they did the prom movie, James Corden, right? But on Broadway. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. But that's why Jagged Little Pill is in the book, because it opened up a lot. The show itself doesn't move the needle that much in terms of queer representation. It's the discussions about the show. Yeah. That moves it forward in why we included it in the book. What were the most interesting? Like factoids or tidbits as you were doing your research that you were like, oh, my God, that's amazing. I thought there'd be more. Yeah. Like I like you were saying, I thought I'd have 90 million shows and I'd be which one can I pick? No. And there's probably going to be 20 musicals that have transgender.

And you're like, oh, there's one. Yeah. The fact that this basically starts in 1975, it makes sense. I know enough of gay history to know that, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, there might have been little things that were done around, but not anything commercial that anybody would know or remember. No. And so that's what surprised me. I thought there would be a wealth of material. Now, of course, we know that there's a lot of musicals that were written by queer people and a lot of musicals that starred queer people. And there's a lot of musicals that have coded queer elements in it. But like actually being brave enough to go front and center and saying, boom, this is it. Not so much. And it's so interesting, too, that like part of it is the economics of theater.

It's so expensive to produce a show. And it's also like I feel like any time like heated rivalry, I think is a good example of like it's such a cross. Everybody loves it. Yeah. Straight women, gay men, straight men. And I think it's like I think there's a conversation to be had about queer stories or just stories. Yes, that's the thing. If a story is good, people will go with it. Yeah. And then, oh, it's a good story that happens to be queer. Yeah. People are more willing to accept that. Yeah, because it's like it is it's a sad commentary that it really is a sad commentary that I know every single one of those musicals. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. That there isn't like this, like you were saying, because there are I always think that in our community there are so many stories to tell.

Yes. I don't remember who I was talking to years ago who was like, where is the Stonewall musical? And there was one. There was there was a show called Off the Wall that came in from Chicago, from Steppenwolf. And it was OK, but it wasn't. And I'm like a Stonewall queen. Like I know that story. That would be an amazing musical. Where are all like where is the actual like quintessential AIDS musical? Where's the Angels in America version? And I'm not saying make Angels in America a musical. I'm saying like that the story of the AIDS crisis, especially in New York and San Francisco is forgive me for saying it like this. It's so rich with stories to be told. Yes. And but there's also a whole new generation out there that says we don't want to be known as victims, which is for so many years, every single play that dealt with the gay character.

Someone had AIDS. They were getting a new someone who died of AIDS and they want to go. We're more than that. We want to leave that behind us now. Even with like, yeah, like rivalry. I kept being like, when is one of them going to die? That's the other thing. The gay character always has to die for. You know, what's interesting is from different generational point of views, because I grew up as a gay man when I was I was told you're going to get AIDS. Yeah, that's what it was. That's what it was leading to. Yeah. So you are nervous and afraid. Yeah. And now there's a whole generation that doesn't have to deal with that. Yeah. And they don't understand. Why do you guys want to stay in the past where it was morose and sad when we can be life affirming and celebratory? So it's it's always going to be a pull and a push and a pull. It's always going to be a dialogue. Yeah. So where do you see the future of queer musicals going?

[35:45] Robert W. Schneider: I'm hoping that it's moving more in what you're talking about with heated rivalry. Yeah. Where it's heated rivalry, the musical. OK, I would do it. I'd see it where it's this is a great story and they happen to be queer characters. Yeah. What I would love to see is more musicals that feature the transgender experience. Yeah. Because that to me, I feel is lacking. And I would love to see more musicals that feature lesbians front and center. Yeah. There's a lot of gay men. It's just a lot of musicals about gay men. But I'm like, where are lesbian characters? Where are bisexual characters? Where are transgender characters? It's so interesting, the transgender part of it, because that is still I think that experience is so unknown.

But you were talking about the knife and, you know, and what he guessed at what that experience was. Yeah, I would say that the world isn't much more educated on what that experience is now than we were then. No. And I was talking about this on a podcast yesterday, but they were they were asking, like, where do I see this going with the new political regime that's in charge now currently? And I think that the transgender experience needs to be put front and center because I don't want to speak for anybody else. But when I'm looking at what what is being going after as a gay man, I'm not as nervous as if I was transgender. Yeah. And I feel like the more stories that we can put out there to humanize and show what that life experience is like, for sure, maybe we can dissipate some of this hatred and this this bullying that's an impression that's horrible. So I'm hoping that's where it's going to go. I would love to see those stories come front and center. Yeah.

[37:19] Robert W. Schneider: I was going to open it up to questions from the house.

[37:36] Audience Member: Funnily enough, the question is, go ahead. Where do you see a chorus line which could not be represented in your book because of the rules of the series?

[37:41] Robert W. Schneider: Yeah, it's in the Pulitzer book. But where does this fit into the scope of queer musicals? Great question. And fun fact, Boy Meets Boy opened two months before a chorus line did at the public. Wow. They were both playing off Broadway at the same time. Wow. That's wild. But it goes chorus line has a pretty monumental impact because chorus line like Hamilton was this juggernaut that everybody knew. And a lot of people that were going to see it wanted to see the next hot thing. And in it, they were being exposed to gay characters and they were being exposed to characters like the character of Paul in a chorus line. I wish I could have written about this. It's the most brilliant thing in a chorus line, which is they're going to introduce you to a gay character.

And it's probably the first time that a lot of people in that audience are being introduced to a gay person. And there's no song. It's a five minute monologue. But that's the most brilliant thing to do in a musical to get so important. We're not going to add music to it. Yeah. And so I wish I could have covered that in the book because it allowed a lot of people. And I spoke to people I know who saw that their family was homophobic or they didn't accept their kid. And they get so moved by the story of Paul and his family that they immediately accepted their kid or they tried to make amends with their child. And I think that's important. So, yeah, I wish I chorus line is pretty important because it was a little part of a tapestry of humanity. And I think you learned a lot about people going to see a chorus line from all different walks. Did you see the chorus line documentary?

[39:09] Audience Member: Of course, I saw the Jason Tam moment where he does the monologue. Does anybody know what I'm talking about? And they he does the monologue and then everybody behind the table is crying and they ask him to leave the room. And as soon as he walks out the door, the director goes, sign him up. And it's the most beautiful because that is such a beautiful moment. The monologue is so good. It's so good. And it's able to make parents see the harm that they can do to their children when they deny them who they are. And I just think as a parent, how easy is it to just love?

[39:45] Robert W. Schneider: Thank you all for the applause for that. Thank you so much.

[39:51] Patrick Hinds: Yeah, I was going to ask something. Is there an acceptable era?

[40:14] Robert W. Schneider: What are you going to do about it?

[41:14] Patrick Hinds: I think it's an early ought, which was, if you were a lesbian, you weren't really a lesbian, you were bisexual. You were the straight guy's fantasy of what a lesbian was.

[41:22] Robert W. Schneider: Like, do you remember the movie The Kids Are Old?

[41:24] Patrick Hinds: Yeah.

[41:25] Robert W. Schneider: With Julianne Moore and Annette Bening. That was another one where it was like Annette Bening is a lesbian but Julianne Moore…

[41:29] Patrick Hinds: Yeah, she's sexy to just be a lesbian.

[41:31] Robert W. Schneider: Yes, but that was the trope about lesbians back then, especially on television.

[41:36] Patrick Hinds: Yeah.

[41:37] Robert W. Schneider: The first time we ever saw TV, like, lesbian TV characters was on L.A. Law.

[41:40] Patrick Hinds: Oh, wow.

[41:41] Robert W. Schneider: In 1991, there was a character, they were going to make her a lesbian. She kissed another woman on screen, and then within three episodes, the woman she kissed had died.

[41:50] Patrick Hinds: They always do.

[41:51] Robert W. Schneider: And the lesbian character was like, oh, no, sorry, I'm not a lesbian anymore, and had a boyfriend by the end of the season.

[41:55] Patrick Hinds: Yeah.

[41:56] Robert W. Schneider: But it was that idea. That's something I'm always fascinated by. Like, in media, they never question a gay guy saying I'm gay, but there's a lot of times where if you're a woman who's a lesbian, they're questioning that.

[42:06] Patrick Hinds: Or, no, she's not really a lesbian, she just likes to experiment, or she's bisexual. And I'm like, I don't know, it just feels odd to me.

[42:12] Robert W. Schneider: Yeah.

[42:13] Patrick Hinds: Yeah, because I was going to say, it's not, it was just in the last 20 years that you start to see gay people playing, like, gay men playing gay men.

[42:20] Robert W. Schneider: Yeah.

[42:21] Patrick Hinds: But, yeah, so, bad girls in England, and then, sadly, fun home here, which means we were all, we all got to see it because it was so recent.

[42:28] Robert W. Schneider: Yeah.

[42:29] Patrick Hinds: Yeah, Steve.

[42:34] Robert W. Schneider: Have to talk about Sondheim.

[42:36] Patrick Hinds: Who?

[42:38] Robert W. Schneider: Uh-huh. Great question. Do you want to repeat the question?

[42:41] Patrick Hinds: Oh, yeah, the question. Oh, God, now I have to get all the Sondheim titles right. Steve says, okay, Steve says Sondheim is not a part of the conversation, and I guess not until Bounce, and then he said another one, and I can't remember.

[42:53] Robert W. Schneider: Passion.

[42:54] Patrick Hinds: Passion.

[42:55] Robert W. Schneider: Passion. And then in Here We Are, the Michaela Diamonds character, Fritzie, I think is supposed to be bisexual. She says she's a lesbian, but then she falls in love with the male soldier, right?

[43:06] Patrick Hinds: Isn't that how it goes?

[43:08] Robert W. Schneider: Yeah. Still rearing its head, isn't it?

[43:13] Patrick Hinds: Oh, okay, so you're saying it's commentary in Here We Are. Great.

[43:19] Robert W. Schneider: Get on the mic if you want. We got a mic. Hold on. Hold on. We're passing it over to David.

[43:24] David Rigano: I do think that a lot of that character is supposed to be performative wokeness, who we realize in the second act is not as woke as she acts. So there's a lot of other woke tropes that she is playing at, and she really is in many ways just like the bourgeoisie that she is cohorting with.

[43:48] Robert W. Schneider: And I think that her sort of playing at being a lesbian and then falling in love with a man is part of that commentary, not just playing it because I think that's also a lot more David Ives than Sondheim necessarily.

[44:01] Patrick Hinds: But I'll let you get back to…

[44:04] Robert W. Schneider: I love that. So I love what David's saying. David's saying it's a trope. It's done intentionally to show that she's woke, she's contemporary, she can be fluid.

[44:13] Patrick Hinds: And then as the show goes on, we realize what her core is. Love that. Love that. But where is Sondheim in the conversation?

[44:20] Robert W. Schneider: Not here. When he was working and when he was producing his greatest hits, it just was not a subject that seemed to interest him. He was more interested, I think, in other things.

[44:28] Patrick Hinds: I'm sure out of anybody, he probably could have gotten away with it. And there's always that big debate, is Bobby and company gay? He's resisting marriage. But all three of those guys said, no, that's not the case at all.

[44:41] Robert W. Schneider: But Sondheim was out, yeah?

[44:43] Patrick Hinds: Yes, he was.

[44:45] Robert W. Schneider: Yeah, but I think it took him a while.

[44:47] Patrick Hinds: Yeah.

[44:48] Robert W. Schneider: I think. It took him a while because I think he was madly in love with Lee Remick, and then he tried to…

[44:53] Patrick Hinds: Wasn't he engaged to Mary Rogers or wanted to be engaged to Mary Rogers at some point, if I'm remembering correctly?

[44:58] Robert W. Schneider: It was a different time. So I think that… But I'll be honest with you. I think if a story had come his way when he was at his height in the 70s that had a queer character in it, I think he probably would have embraced it. I don't think he would have run away from it. I just don't think the material spoke to him.

[45:10] Patrick Hinds: Bounce, which is the story of the Meisner brothers, is something that he loved more than anything. And I think he wanted to write that show in the 50s.

[45:24] Robert W. Schneider: And I'm very curious to know if in the 50s he would have explored it. I don't think he would have, but I'm curious if he had even thought about that.

[45:32] Patrick Hinds: The thing that comes up for me in that is that he was like a rich white guy.

[45:38] Robert W. Schneider: Yeah.

[45:39] Patrick Hinds: So the oppression didn't really affect him.

[45:42] Robert W. Schneider: The oppression.

[45:43] Patrick Hinds: Yeah. Yeah, the oppression that the gay community was experiencing. And that was why so many people were writing queer stories in his time was because they were writing the stories to tell their stories, to express their rebellion or whatever.

[45:58] Robert W. Schneider: And it didn't apply to him. And I will say, if you remember, because after Merrily, he was on the skids for a little bit. And when he starts coming back, the musicals at that time, it's the AIDS crisis. They don't really want to deal with a lot of gay characters in musicals.

[46:14] Patrick Hinds: So that also might have been something. He might have been in a vulnerable position and was like, I can't really explore that world until he felt ready for it or the commercial will or felt ready for it. I don't know. I don't know.

[46:25] Robert W. Schneider: But he's unfortunately as great as he is. He's not really a part of the conversation.

[46:29] Patrick Hinds: Yeah. And the show he did have a gay character in wasn't successful. Hence why it never came in.

[46:36] Robert W. Schneider: And Bounce wasn't a gay musical, but it had a major character who happened to be gay and didn't sing his most romantic song in the world.

[46:45] Patrick Hinds: I can't. You can do that. Our lovely friend was saying that maybe a show like Bounce is doing what we were talking about, which was having a musical in which it's a musical about something and the character happens to be gay. It's not the whole centerpiece of the show.

[47:01] Robert W. Schneider: And Bounce does do that. And it is a very romantic song. The best thing that ever happened to me, which Barbara Streisand covers on her album.

[47:09] Patrick Hinds: Oh, wow. Making it even gayer.

[47:11] Robert W. Schneider: Singing it with Alec Baldwin.

[47:13] Patrick Hinds: Alec Baldwin. It's fantastic. And Richard Kind sings it on the album. And it's great. And it's it is a very romantic, beautiful song. And originally it was the couple was Richard Kind and the great Gavin Creel.

[47:24] Robert W. Schneider: That was the couple.

[47:25] Patrick Hinds: Oh, my God.

[47:26] Robert W. Schneider: Yeah. Yeah. Howard McGillan played his brother.

[47:30] Patrick Hinds: Yeah.

[47:31] Robert W. Schneider: And Gavin Creel was the young lover. And when they did the workshop of it, I wish I could have seen it. It was Nathan Lane and Michael C. Hall is the young lover.

[47:40] Patrick Hinds: Wow. I wish I could. I have a bootleg of that.

[47:43] Robert W. Schneider: Right. And it's fantastic. If that version had come in, it would have been great. I don't know why they fussed with it.

[47:49] Patrick Hinds: Wow. Who am I?

[47:51] Robert W. Schneider: Who am I? I just wear a sweater.

[47:53] Patrick Hinds: Yeah. Great question, though, Steve. Anybody else? Question.

[47:56] Audience Member: Yes. You mentioned earlier some straight plays like Angels of America and Normal Heart. And, you know, it seemed like in that era there were a lot more plays that were able to kind of touch on the subject of gayness in life in that era. Why do you think that there was such a filter going into music? Was it just economics?

[48:21] Robert W. Schneider: That's a great question. Shane was asking if the – because there were so many plays at that in the 80s and 90s that were dealing with gay characters. Why wasn't it going into musicals? And I think it goes into something like that's a larger musical theater history question, which was at that time, what is a musical supposed to be? Is it supposed to be entertainment, like escapist entertainment, which was what musicals were for a very long time until really the late 60s, early 70s with Hal Prince and Kander and Ebb and Stephen Sondheim.

[48:49] Patrick Hinds: And then the 80s was really still a poll between is it supposed to be serious or is it supposed to be entertaining and exorbitant and extravagant? And I think that's probably one of the reasons. And I think we would have seen so much more had it not been for AIDS.

[49:06] Robert W. Schneider: Absolutely. And just to reiterate, the normal heart was Larry Kramer, who was actually an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, who only stopped writing movies because he had to write about AIDS so people would know about it. And so I really think that was the era of writing about the gay experience as activism to spread information. And you could just do it so much more cheaply. And I think that places like the public theater were more willing to do those sorts of things.

[49:34] Patrick Hinds: Oh, yeah. And also, I remember my grandparents when they had seen Les Mis in the 80s. And they were like, we saw a wonderful musical comedy last night. And I said, what was it called? Les Mis.

[49:47] Robert W. Schneider: So that era is still thinking. Musicals are fun. They're frothy. Why do I want to go see a musical where people are dying? And a contemporary musical where people are dying. In musicals, we're OK accepting people dying if it happens in the past. You know what I mean? Les Mis is OK. Fantine is dying. She's 100 years ago. There's something very different about seeing her in her period garb dying and somebody wearing the same clothes I do dying. Suddenly, it's right in front of me. What am I supposed to do with this?

[50:14] Patrick Hinds: Yeah, great question, Shane. Anything else? Any other questions?

[50:18] Robert W. Schneider: Oh, I see Steve in the back. I love it, Steve. Thank you.

[50:24] Patrick Hinds: Yeah.

[50:35] Robert W. Schneider: Oh, God. They haven't asked me yet. I would. I'm working on a new book now.

[50:40] Audience Member: What's the book?

[50:42] Robert W. Schneider: It's called Broadway Bound, the musicals that never came to Broadway. And I have a podcast that's also called Broadway Bound, the musicals that never came to Broadway. And it's a little documentary series about all the musicals that were supposed to come in and for whatever reason, they did not. And so the same publishers, Matthew Androma, was like, do you want to write one and make it like a nonsense carry? And so the book's going to cover about 80 of those shows.

[51:08] Patrick Hinds: Oh, wow.

[51:09] Robert W. Schneider: That were supposed to come in. And why didn't they come in? And yeah, so that should be fun.

[51:14] Patrick Hinds: Oh, I love it.

[51:15] Robert W. Schneider: So I'm working on that one now. But I would, if they wanted me to do another essential series and find, I would love to do it. It's fun. I enjoy it. I'm a geek. I'm lonely.

[51:24] Patrick Hinds: I'm a geek and lonely.

[51:30] Audience: Yay.

[51:31] Robert W. Schneider: And done.

[51:34] Patrick Hinds: Yeah. I would love that.

[51:39] Robert W. Schneider: Thank you, Patrick. Thanks for having me, everybody. Thank you. So nice. Thank you.

[51:44] Patrick Hinds: My pleasure. Thanks.

[51:46] Robert W. Schneider: And we are back. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Drama Book Show. Our thanks to Robert W. Schneider for sharing his insights into the history and evolution of queer musicals and the ways these works have transformed musical theater storytelling.

[51:58] Patrick Hinds: Queer Musicals offers a fascinating look at the creators' productions and cultural conversations that helped shape the role of queerness on Broadway and beyond. Coming up next on the Drama Book Show, we'll explore musical theater through the feminist lens with authors Paige Allen and Stacey Wolfe and their book, Feminist Approaches in Musical Theater. Together with moderator Jill Dolan, they'll discuss how audiences and scholars can examine musicals through feminist perspectives, exploring the complex relationship between representation, gender, and the creation of this beloved art form.

[52:30] Robert W. Schneider: Remember to follow us on Instagram at Dramabookshow. Follow our eventbrite at Dramabookshop. And remember, all the books we talk about can be found here at the bookshop, and so can we. And we will see you at the bookshop.