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A Small Gesture, a Powerful Honoring: Floating Lights after ‘Bent’

“Rituals are perhaps the oldest...members of the performance family. Their business in society is to effect transformations that cannot otherwise be brought about.”—Tom F. Driver, Liberating Rites: Understanding the Transformative Power of Ritual...

Why Is ‘Bent’ More Relevant Than Ever?

On June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage, a landmark decision for gay and lesbian Americans. Exactly a month later on July 26, Bent opened at the Mark Taper Forum in its first major U.S. revival.

The ‘L.A. Times’ Spotlights ‘Bent’

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.

Refashioning Oppression–The History of the Pink Triangle

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.

David Gere on ‘Bent’

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.

Gay Berlin, Before Hitler Came to Power

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,...