Party

Despite its full frontal nudity and its sometimes outrageous humor and sexual content, Party’s very existence is a political statement. Living room comedy has been exclusively heterosexual since Oscar Wilde and even before that, and certainly today there’s no excuse for that. Theatre is supposed to reflect and comment on the world around us, and gay people have living rooms too. Sure, there are other plays about being gay, and how hard it is to be gay, about how people suffer at the hands of an unfeeling straight world….but this play isn’t all about being gay. It’s about love, friendship, sex, God, marriage, loss, and loyalty, all the things the other living room comedies are about. These aren’t gay issues – they’re human issues. It’s also about one of the most compelling of human needs – the need to find your tribe, to inherit your culture, to know where you come from and where you’re headed.