For the Gay Stage: A Guide to 456 Plays, Aristophanes to Peter Gill Paperback – Import, 30 May 2017

Gunn continues his ground-breaking scholarship charting the contributions of gay literature to gay culture and through its pervasive influence to the broader culture by turning his attention to theatrical works with "For the Gay Stage: A Guide to 456 Plays, Aristophanes to Peter Gill." This guide, like his others, shows academic rigor yet it is accessible, informative, thoughtful, eye-opening, and, most especially, entertaining. I highly recommend this book.I’m an avid theatergoer typically seeing forty or more productions a year. So, I thought I knew a lot about gay theater. Well, Gunn, as he has a way of doing, opens an expansive view exploring chronologically the development of gay theater as it both reflects and pushes societal norms. Though I have seen around forty of the entries, I had never heard of the majority of the plays and I had only a passing knowledge of most of the rest. Gunn with a discerning selective eye puts these plays and their playwrights into social and historical context with an emphasis on their contributions to shaping and challenging conventional culture. Reading his summaries a reader can plot the progression of gay culture through sex, politics, identity, AIDS, relationships and most recently, marriage and domestic issues. But beyond the social scholarship, I often said to myself: I need to see or read that play, it sounds interesting and entertaining.While I might quibble with Gunn over his descriptions of a small number of plays – in my opinion both 'Six Degrees of Separation"' and "The Nance" are dramas not comedies – these differences of opinion bring up an important distinction between works of theater and artistic endeavors in other media that Gunn had to grapple with: It is very different to experience a play in full production than to listen to a reading of it and even more different than reading a script. Gunn does an admirable job of focusing on the impact of the plays’ words and plots and not getting caught up in the vagaries of any number of productions. Gunn gives plot summaries and themes and evaluates their cultural impact.Which brings me back to Gunn’s significant contribution: casting a spotlight on plays I knew little to nothing about and underscoring that without the efforts of Gunn and others, the lack of awareness and acknowledgement of significant works of gay literature would be a lamentable loss to the gay community and to culture at large.