Blog post by Peggy Alexander, LSC Performing Arts Curator

Edward Martino Crowley was born on August 12, 1935 in Vicksburg, Mississippi. In the summer of 1967, inspired by The New York Times article by Stanley Kauffmann titled "Homosexual Drama and Its Disguises," Crowley began writing the script for "The Boys in the Band," which he completed in 5 weeks.

Unfortunately, Crowley's agent in New York was "embarrassed" and declared that she could not send the script out with her name on it. Richard Barr decided to produce the piece at a playwright's workshop in the West Village and Robert Moore was chosen as the director. The play was moved to Theatre Four, where it remained for almost three years.

Taking place in an apartment in New York's posh Upper East Side, the action concerns nine acquaintances who converge for the birthday of one of their friends. The group includes Michael, a lapsed Roman Catholic alcoholic who is undergoing psychoanalysis; Donald, a conflicted friend who has moved far from the city to spurn the homosexual lifestyle; Harold, who is turning thirty and is morose about losing his youthful looks; Bernard, an African American who still pines for the wealthy white boy of the house where his mother was a maid; Emory, who revels in his homosexuality by acting flamboyant and girlish; and Larry and Hank, a couple that lives together despite the fact that they do not agree on the issue of monogamy. Joining them are a male prostitute who has been hired as a ''present'' for Harold's birthday and Alan, an old college friend of Michael's, who claims to be straight but becomes a little too emotional when his manhood is threatened and is strangely reluctant to leave each time he says he is going.

The play was lauded as one of the best of the season, and in 1969, Crowley was awarded the first Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award. Although the play achieved artistic and commercial success quickly, after the Stonewall Riots it has been referred to as a "period piece." There were many critics inside the gay community that decried the production as playing into the grotesque stereotypes of homosexual men as self-loathing and preening; in a short period of time audiences and critics had viewed the play as a lively drama based on the experiences of specific individuals to a sociological study of gay male life. In 1970, the original members of the theatre production returned to their roles for the film version. The feature length film was directed by William Friedkin and based on the screenplay by Crowley. The stage production has been performed in numerous cities around the world.