PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — A Philadelphia theater company is giving new life to a play that was censored in the 1920s.
Vaudeville star Mae West wrote “The Drag” to try to create an accurate depiction of queer life, inviting gay friends to contribute to the script, which centers around a closeted gay man who is married to a woman and has a secret life in the drag scene. It premiered in 1927 and was shut down shortly after opening.
But now, nearly 100 years later, EgoPo Classic Theater will bring the play back to the stage at Christ Church Neighborhood House with some tweaks.
“The language that they had in the 1920s just doesn't match what we have today,” said Thomas Choinacky a writer who was brought in to add “interjections” into the script to address outdated terminology and depictions. “So the writing layers in these, like, characters, kind of … reflecting upon the play as the play is happening.”’
“And so they're asking questions about the characters that they are playing … like, 'I really, oh, I wish I had better words for how to describe myself' when they are using problematic words of queerness today."
“The Drag” is part of EgoPo’s “Queer Revolutions” season, which Associate Producer Devon Roberts says is all about celebrating queer art in light of political movements to remove queer stories and education.
“We wanted to look back over the last 100-plus years at what ways queer artists were trying to resist or assert their identities and their stories,” Roberts said, noting how difficult it is to find those works.
Roberts said even though West “doesn't quite constitute as a queer voice in the traditional sense,” “The Drag” is one of the first times people saw a “different kind of gay story on stage.”
“There was a real heart behind trying to present gay, queer, trans, non-binary people … in a different way,” Roberts said.
“The Drag” runs Jan. 31 through Feb. 9. They’ll also be collecting clothing donations for The Wardrobe, which provides professional and casual clothes for people experiencing clothing insecurity, often including the trans community, throughout those weeks.
Roberts says their partnership is "just a little way that hopefully we can get audiences to join us in supporting the queer community and making life a little better."
Tickets are available on EgoPo’s website.