Finished Hat Productions

06/06/2026

Q***r History Through Theatre Day 6: As Is by William M Hoffman

As Is debuted on Broadway at the Lyceum Theatre on May 1, 1985, making it the first play on Broadway to discuss the AIDS epidemic. (Two other prominent plays about the AIDS epidemic, A Quiet End and The Normal Heart, also premiered in 1985, just not on Broadway.) In the middle of the height of the epidemic, many artists began to use their voices and their art to bring attention to the willful government ignorance around it. We highly recommend the essay "AIDS Writing and the Creation of Gay Culture" by Michael Denneny for an excellent discussion on the topic.

(Important Note: Similar to yesterday's post about RENT, AIDS is used to define the entire illness as HIV was only just identified in 1984 and it was officially named as Human Immunodeficiency Virus in 1986.)

As Is follows the relationship of Richard and Saul. The play begins with their separation, however, shortly thereafter, Richard contracts AIDS from a new lover. Rich's story is used to show how impersonal and detached attitudes from doctors, friend, and families isolated gay men, especially those with AIDS. Seeking emotional support, he reconciles with Saul. Over the course of the course of the play, Rich's condition worsens severely to the point he considers assisted su***de through street drug. Saul reluctantly agrees, but changes his mind upon seeing a neon sign in the window of a s*x shop. He returns to convince Richard that the two of them find as much joy in their lives as they can. Before the closing scene, Saul and Richard have safe s*x in the hospital, a moment of hope, finding safety in what was being demonized at the time.

At a time when fear, misinformation, and political inaction surrounded the AIDS crisis, As Is insisted on portraying people with AIDS as fully human: worthy of love, dignity, intimacy, and hope. By bringing these stories to Broadway, Hoffman challenged audiences to confront a reality many preferred to ignore (particular the government under the Reagan administration.) More than forty years later, the play remains a powerful reminder of how theatre can bear witness to a crisis, preserve community memory, and affirm the humanity of those society tries to push to the margins. Our Q***r voices are important and our art will continue to show audiences our authentic lives.

06/05/2026

Wishing a happy opening night to our friends at Lyric Music Theater and their production of 9 to 5! Break all the legs.. especially two of a certain Boss... ;-)

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06/05/2026

Q***r History Through Theatre Day 5: RENT

RENT was THE hit of the 90s on Broadway. Opening off-Broadway in 1996 and it very quickly needed a larger venue. RENT found it's home at the Nederlander Theatre, opening officially on April 29th, 1996.

An adaptation of Puccini's opera La Boheme, the story follows a cast of artists living in Alphabet City, NYC during the early 90s. Puccini's opera in which characters died of consumption (as we now know it, tuberculosis) provided the perfect template to discuss the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

The characters in the musical who are affected (Angel, Collins, Roger, and Mimi) use the term AIDS to discuss their health, however, they are also on AZT. AZT at the time was used to treat both HIV and given to those who has progressed to AIDS to help slow the effects as long as possible. While the official distinction between HIV and AIDS was released by the CDC in 1987, well into the 90s the general public used HIV and AIDS interchangeably.

The show featured Q***r people across the spectrum: Maureen is bis*xual, Joanne is a Black le***an, Collins is a Black gay man, Angel is a POC who is most likely a transgender woman (this is never stated in the play, but the text supports this as Angel is referred to as she/her, including at her funeral, Mark corrects himself saying "he (pauses) she...")

RENT sparked a fan frenzy, coining the term RENT-heads. Several songs became common place on playlists: Seasons of Love and La Vie Boheme will activate any theatre kid from the 90's and 00's. It put the story of q***r artists and folks LIVING with HIV/AIDS at the forefront of the conversation.

The world has grown and changed a lot in the last 30 years and we have a lot of updated knowledge and terminology. However, RENT is an excellent period piece that gives name and attention to a lot of the struggles the LGBTQIA+ community faced at the time. Celebrating life, here is the original cast album's La Vie Boheme:

Provided to YouTube by Universal Music GroupLa Vie Boheme · Antho...

06/04/2026

Q***r History Through Theatre Day 4: Bent by Martin Sherman.

Bent, written in 1979, follows the events surrounding Max, a promiscuous gay man living in 1930s Berlin, during and after the Night of the Long Knives. After inviting a Sturmabteilung officer home, Max and his more effeminate boyfriend Rudy end up on the radar of the SS.

Max is given a single ticket and papers to flee to France without Rudy, but he declines, not wanting to leave his boyfriend. They are captured and sent via train to Dachau, however, Rude does not survive the brutality of the train ride, singled out for wearing glasses.

At the camp, Max tells the guards he is Jewish so that he will be given a yellow star instead of the pink triangle used to identify gay men. Max meets another gay man in Dachau named Horst, who at first spurns Max for having shame in who he is. The two spend their time moving large rocks back and forth as their "job" at the camp, building a relationship through their imaginations of in*******se. As with many stories from this era, we do not see a happy ending. Horst becomes sick and is shot and killed by a guard who orders Max to bury him. Max does so, but emerges from the grave wearing Horst's jacket with the pink triangle. He runs directly into the electric fence, to end his life, but symbolically choose his freedom and his identity over oppression.

Bent brings to light a side of Q***r history that is not often talked about. Prior to the N**i regime, Germany was a place full of q***r joy and culture. Berlin was one of the biggest hot spots for q***r life; it is said there may have been as many as 90-100 gay bars in the city by 1923. You read more in this in depth article by Andromeda Pearson (she/they) here: https://theq***rresource.com/a-q***r-history-of-berlin/

Bent is a crucial work to study and read during Pride as it gives us some insight into the global history of what our community has endured. For easier access to viewing, there was a movie adaptation starring Clive Owen in 1997 (with a featured performance by Sir Ian McKellen, the original Max, as Uncle Freddie)

By: Andromeda Pearson Introduction and Origins of the First Homos*xual Movement Tracing many of the roots of contemporary, Western q***r history will inevitably take you back to Germany. From the q***r urban scenes at the time to the scientific advancements made in studies of s*xuality and gender id...

06/04/2026

Q***r History Through Theatre Day 3: Hedwig and the Angry Inch by John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask.

First seen in 1998, this one act musical focuses on a one-night only concert of "internationally ignored song stylist," Hedwig Schmidt. Her songs tell us all about her life, starting as a boy, Hansel, in East German, who falls for a US soldier, Luther. Luther promises to bring Hansel back to the US if she changes genitalia, resulting in a botched surgery that gives her the titular "angry inch." She adopts her grandmother's name Hedwig but Luther abandons her in Kansas where she turns to writing music and falls in love with a geek named Tommy Speck. Tommy steals her music to become a rock sensation Tommy Gnosis and the audience watches as Hedwig wears all of this trauma in her mantle of blonde curls.

With a genderq***r character leading the show, a cast of 2 individuals who can be played by any and all genders, Hedwig was a revolutionary show to hit the mainstream. Mitchel himself says Hedwig is “more than a woman or a man. She’s a gender of one, and that is accidentally so beautiful.” Her story resonates heavily with the transgender and gender q***r community, as well as the LGBTQIA+ community. Here is the beautiful song, The Origin of Love, performed on the OBC recording starring Neil Patrick Harris as Hedwig and Lena Hall as Yitzhak (Hedwig's husband and back up singer) both of whom were awarded Tonys in 2014:

The official audio of "The Origin of Love" by Neil Patrick Harris from the soundtrack of Hedwig and the Angry Inch.The Original Broadway Cast Recording of He...

06/02/2026

Q***r History Through Theatre Day 2: The Boys in the Band

The Boys in the Band is a play by Mart Crowley that was first seen in 1968. At the time, it was one of the most provocative pieces of openly q***r theatre to hit the American stage. The play focuses on a group of mostly gay men (Alan's orientation remains ambiguous throughout the show) in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. They have come to celebrate Harold's birthday, who is approaching 40, lamenting aging and his loss of his looks. The party, hosted by Michael, a "frenemy" of Harold's, who is an alcoholic and the catalyst of most of the core tensions of the show, sees the entry of seven other guests, all of whom with various connections to each. The drunken party culminates into a nasty "game" where each man must call someone he loved and tell them about it.

The play focuses on several topics relevant to the lived gay experience: aging in the q***r community, monogamy vs ENM, s*x work ("Cowboy" is a listed in the dramatis personae as a "hustler" who is a birthday gift for Harold), the need to stay closeted vs the push to be "authentic" at a time when it wasn't welcomed. It was widely considered to be one of the first plays that showed authentic q***r life to a mainstream audience. Straight audience members saw what the effects of bigotry did to the gay men in their lives, some gay men felt empowered to no longer accept being treated less than equal. However, as if to highlight the key themes of the story, several of the original cast members from the 1968 production stayed closeted for the majority of their lives, still not feeling safe enough to come out themselves.

Check out this scene from the film adaptation made in 1970 (a more recent film adaptation was done in 2020 starring Jim Parsons and Zachary Quinto as Michael and Harold). The language is definitely heavy, but it offers a window into how many gay men spoke about themselves and each other in an era shaped by secrecy, discrimination, and internalized homophobia:

40 years later, this groundbreaker hasn't lost any of it's bite. Th...

06/01/2026

Happy Pride Month!

Our company was founded by a proud bis*xual man who is passionate about Q***r History so this month we're going to post daily about some of our favorite Q***r pieces of theatre. Today, we start with William Finn's Falsettos.

The story follows a unique family situation: Marvin is an openly gay man who married Trina and had a son named Jason, and then left to pursue a relationship with a man. He desperately wants his new partner Whizzer to be a part of a bigger family. Act one explores this family dynamic, including the effect of Trina marrying Marvin's therapist, Mendel.

Act two goes deeper into the family dynamic as Marvin and Trina are planning Jason's bar mitzvah, which becomes complicated when Whizzer is revealed to have contracted AIDS, although it is never named. Falsettos is considered one of the first musicals to discuss the AIDS epidemic that took a large portion of that community in the 80s and 90s due to lack of education and willful government ignorance at the hands of the Reagan administration.

This song, sung here by Whizzer played by Andrew Rannells for the 2016 revival, discusses coming to terms with the diagnosis. https://youtu.be/I7JkxuCVLjE?si=VSgFRUyeGRMYd7j8

Tune in tomorrow for more Q***r History in Theatre.

Provided to YouTube by Ghostlight RecordsYou Gotta Die Sometime · Andrew RannellsFalsettos (2016 Broadway Cast Recording)℗ 2016 Sh-K-Boom Records, Inc. and L...