July | Center Theatre Group

As the first major U.S. revival of Bent opened at the Mark Taper Forum, the Los Angeles Times took two close looks at the production.

When Martin Sherman’s play Bent premiered on Broadway in 1979, it introduced many audiences to the story of gay persecution in the Holocaust. Over the past few decades, this history has become more widely known, thanks in part to the re-appropriation of the pink triangle the Nazis forced gay male prisoners to wear.

In 1980, just out of college, I moved to New York where my older brother, the actor Richard Gere, was already making a big name for himself. That was the year of American Gigolo with Lauren Hutton, and it was also the year he starred on Broadway in Martin Sherman’s Bent.

Bent director Moisés Kaufman was surprised to discover that in the 1920s and early 1930s, Berlin was home to over 100 gay bars—far more than you’d find in any global city today. The first scenes of Bent take place there in 1934, just as that world came crashing down. Why was pre-World War II Berlin an epicenter of gay life, and what was t...

Remember the summer when you had no responsibilities to fulfill, no bills to pay, and no deadlines to meet (besides your curfew)? For a lot of us, the summer after high school graduation just might be the first and last totally free stretch of time we have in our adult lives—which is why it’s the stuff so many stories we love are made from...

Discussions about the future of theatre tend to invoke “the next generation”—diverse, digital—in the aggregate. But who are they, where do they see theatre going next, and what matters to them? In order to bring young people into this larger discussion, Center Theatre Group and a number of other theatres around the country brought teen...

Theatre’s Next Generation Speaks

It was a passing reference to “pink triangles” in As Time Goes By, a 1976 play about a century of gay life, that caught Martin Sherman’s attention. As he put it recently, “It was one of those awful clichés—you could see the light bulb going off over my head.” That eureka moment led to Bent, Sherman’s path-breaking 1979 drama abo...

My experience in New York City as a finalist in the August Wilson Monologue Competition was extraordinary: I was able to share and perform Wilson’s most gut-wrenching monologues with so many talented people, from all walks of life—on Broadway in the August Wilson Theatre! But most importantly, the atmosphere of the competition and the enti...

My Broadway Debut at the August Wilson Monologue Competition

News:

The ‘L.A. Times’ Spotlights ‘Bent’

Refashioning Oppression–The History of the Pink Triangle

David Gere on ‘Bent’

Gay Berlin, Before Hitler Came to Power

18 Movies and Novels That Will Take You Back to the Summer After High School Graduation

Theatre’s Next Generation Speaks

How ‘Bent’ Made Gay History

My Broadway Debut at the August Wilson Monologue Competition