“It’s been a long time since the last revolutions and the faggots and their friends are still not free.” Published in 1977, this passage from Larry Mitchell and Ned Astra's The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions sets the scene for a radically reimagined history of the world told through a queer lens where fantasy meets liberation. Having become unavailable and reissued on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall riots because of its enduring relevance, this cult book of fables and myths serves as the starting point for a new music theater adaptation from the creative minds of composer Philip Venables and director Ted Huffman.
Together they conjure up a world that takes the original text on a kaleidoscopic journey that ignores boundaries just like the characters on stage do, drawing on theater, dance and song from the Baroque to Broadway and beyond. The performers serve as actors, storytellers and musicians all rolled into one, continually swapping roles while doing away with gender and genre norms and replacing them with unapologetic individuality and a lust for life. Their deeply personal stories prove both comforting and healing when shared through community in a colorful, madcap and profound patchwork. The resulting cabaret-like spectacle is both vulnerable and daring, a fantastic parable hiding a political manifesto for survival that gives voice to the marginalized and oppressed everywhere.
