Year: 2002
Type: article
Abstract: The article explores the history of three of the plays Mae West wrote and staged on Broadway between 1926 and 1928. Sex, in which West played a prostitute, offered the ‘fallen woman' a happy ending; The Drag and The Pleasure Man, plays about homosexuality, were staged with gay actors playing themselves. All three plays were closed by the police. Although West is seldom taken seriously as a playwright, the article argues that the three plays had profound impact on the New York stage, and on the treatment of language and sexuality in American theater. The plays were political radicalism staged as ‘low comedy’
Source: Women s History Review
Author: Lillian Schlissel
Institutions: City University of New York, Brooklyn College
Language: English
Subfield: Music
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2078283059