Cast Out : Queer Lives in Theater

R. Bernstein

Cast Out is a collection of memoirs and interviews by twenty-two leading performers, playwrights, technicians, producers, critics, educators, and passionate spectators. Cast Out also offers a backstage pass to the personal and creative lives of some of the most important and influential theater artists of the past fifty years: Edward Albee discusses the homophobic critical attacks he endured in the 50s and 60s; Cherry Jones talks about the first time she accepted a Tony Award_and her decision, in that moment, to come out; Peggy Shaw speaks of the drag queen who first inspired her stage career; Craig Lucas issues an impassioned call for theater practitioners and other artists to unite for the sake of art, creativity, and social change. Also included are memoirs by and interviews with Kate Bornstein, Lisa Kron, Tim Miller, and George C. Wolfe, among others. These diverse voices dispel the cliché of theater as a "safe haven" and replace the stereotype with a nuanced group portrait of the ways in which theater and queerness intersect.