Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America [Paperback]

Sarah Schulman (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0822322641 | ISBN-13: 978-0822322641 | Publication Date: September 3, 1998 | Edition: 1St Edition

In Stagestruck noted novelist and outspoken critic Sarah Schulman offers an account of her growing awareness of the startling similarities between her novel People in Trouble and the smash Broadway hit Rent. Written with a powerful and personal voice, Schulman’s book is part gossipy narrative, part behind-the-scenes glimpse into the New York theater culture, and part polemic on how mainstream artists co-opt the work of “marginal” artists to give an air of diversity and authenticity to their own work. Rising above the details of her own case, Schulman boldly uses her suspicions of copyright infringement as an opportunity to initiate a larger conversation on how AIDS and gay experience are being represented in American art and commerce.
Closely recounting her discovery of the ways in which Rent took materials from her own novel, Schulman takes us on her riveting and infuriating journey through the power structures of New York theater and media, a journey she pursued to seek legal restitution and make her voice heard. Then, to provide a cultural context for the emergence of Rent—which Schulman experienced first-hand as a weekly theater critic for the New York Press at the time of Rent’s premiere—she reveals in rich detail the off- and off-off-Broadway theater scene of the time. She argues that these often neglected works and performances provide more nuanced and accurate depictions of the lives of gay men, Latinos, blacks, lesbians and people with AIDS than popular works seen in full houses on Broadway stages. Schulman brings her discussion full circle with an incisive look at how gay and lesbian culture has become rapidly commodified, not only by mainstream theater productions such as Rent but also by its reduction into a mere demographic made palatable for niche marketing. Ultimately, Schulman argues, American art and culture has made acceptable a representation of “the homosexual” that undermines, if not completely erases, the actual experiences of people who continue to suffer from discrimination or disease. Stagestruck’s message is sure to incite discussion and raise the level of debate about cultural politics in America today.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

While working as a theater critic for Manhattan's New York Press in 1996, novelist Sarah Schulman reviewed the original off-Broadway production of the eventual worldwide hit Rent. She did not particularly like the show and resented what she saw as its easy and simple-minded appropriation of the East Village's gay and alternative cultures. It was only later, when a friend pointed it out to her, that she began to see that the writer and composer of Rent, Jonathan Larson, had "borrowed" a good chunk of his play's plot and detail from Schulman's own 1987 novel People in Trouble. This shock of recognition was transformative, and it ultimately led to the writing of Stagestruck.

Schulman begins with an unhappy account of having her novel ripped off by Larson, but uses this as a springboard to discuss the broader and more complex issues of how gay themes--particularly AIDS--are used and distorted in mainstream culture, focusing her discussion on a wide range of entertainments including the film Philadelphia, Jon Robin Baitz's play A Fair Country, performances by Diamanda Galas, and POZ magazine. As in her best novels, Schulman's observations on culture and politics are astute and startlingly original. Stagestruck is an incisive and important work of social criticism. --Michael Bronski

From Library Journal

Schulman, a lesbian activist and 1997 winner of the Stonewall Award, joined ACT UP in 1987. Shortly thereafter, she completed her fourth novel, People in Trouble (NAL Dutton, 1991), which featured a group of East Village artists struggling with homelessness and AIDS and was based on her personal experiences. After attending a performance of Rent in February 1996 and writing a review of it, Schulman realized that the storyline of this mega-hit was, in fact, taken directly from her novel. Stagestruck is an engrossing narrative of Schulman's mainly futile struggle to gain recognition and legal restitution for the use of her material, but more than that is an expose of how mainstream theater has twisted gay and lesbian culture and themes such as AIDS to make it more palatable to mass audiences. Schulman also provides a look at some off-Broadway plays and performance pieces by gay and lesbian artists that give a much more authentic depiction of gay life and issues. As the struggle continues for gays and lesbians to gain acceptance and to see themselves portrayed accurately in literature and drama, Schulman clearly comes out a winner with Stagestruck. Highly recommended. [For another facet of Schulman's talent, see a review of her most recent novel on p. 134.?Ed.]?Howard E. Miller, M.L.S., St. Loui.
-?Howard E. Miller, M.L.S., St. Louis
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Duke University Press Books; 1St Edition edition (September 3, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822322641
• ISBN-13: 978-0822322641
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 6.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,413,736 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sarah Schulman is the author of fifteen books, including nine novels. Forthcoming is the hard cover edition of a new nonfiction book THE GENTRIFICATION OF THE MIND: WItness to a Lost Imagination by University of California Press, to be followed in Spring, 2012 by the paperback of TIES THAT BIND: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences Then is Fall 2012, Duke University Press will publish ISRAEL/PALESTINE AND THE QUEER INTERNATIONAL. Most recently the paperback edition of her novel THE MERE FUTURE was published by Arsenal Pulp.Previous novels are THE CHILD, SHIMMER, EMPATHY, RAT BOHEMIA, PEOPLE IN TROUBLE, AFTER DELORE, GIRLS VISIONS AND EVERYTHING and THE SOPHIE HOROWITZ STORY. Her nonfiction titles are TIES THAT BIND: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences, STAGESTRUCK:Theater, AIDS and the Marketing of Gay America, and MY AMERICAN HISTORY: Lesbian and Gay Life During the Reagan/Bush Years. A working playwright, her productions include: CARSON McCULLERS (published by Playscripts Ink), MANIC FLIGHT REACTION and the theatrical adaptation of Isaac Singer's ENEMIES, A LOVE STORY. As a screenwriter, her films include THE OWLS (co-written with director Cheryl Dunye)- Berlin Film Festival 2010, MOMMY IS COMING (co-written with director Cheryl Dunye)- Berlin Film Festival selection 2011, and she is co-producer with Jim Hubbard of his feature documentary UNITED IN ANGER: A History of ACT UP, which will premiere in Jan/Feb 2012.. SOPHIE, a film based on her 1984 novel, THE SOPHIE HOROWITZ STORY is being written and director by Claude Mangold and is currently in pre-production. As a journalist, her essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, and Interview. She has won a Guggenheim Fellowship in Playwrighting, a Fullbright in Judaic Studies, two American Library Association Book Awards, and is the 2009 recipient of the Kessler Prize for sustained contribution to LGBT studies. Sarah is Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York, College of State Island, a Fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities at New York University. She is on the advisory board of the Center for Human Rights and Social Movements at Harvard's Kennedy School. She is the US coordinator of the first LGBT Delegation to Palestine. She lives in New York.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Witty and insightful, March 22, 2001

By 

John Labella (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America (Hardcover)

I often read a book and then, once I've seen the author read from his own stuff, had to go back and read it again with a different tone of voice. That applies to this book. It's much funnier and rueful than I realize the first time.

It's also not recommended unless you have a dark sense of humor, and understand that it's not about Rent or Broadway really, but about some of the subtle ways that history gets revised by the winners. It's a brilliant book and I often had those moments of recognition where I got goose bumps reading a paragraph. Then I would laugh at the next paragraph.

I think that people who read this ONLY because they are fans of Rent will be mystified or offended. Rent is a moving show, but it IS sort of odd for urban gays - it's kind of like reading a Hitler biography devoted solely to his being a wonderful father and compassionate family man. . . It may be true, but you have to scratch your head and wonder how the author managed to completely avoid mentioning the holocaust even once in 1000 pages, and just what was his agenda in doing so.

It is clear that Ms. Schulman's book was completely stolen by Larson. However! As she points out, the theft of the plot is not really a problem, cause plot borrowing and character theft is common practice; what she regards as the sore spot is that, in stealing those elements, Larson inadvertently did the same thing that bigots and the media often deliberately do to gays and lesbians: in the same way that the winning side of a war gets to decide what version of the war goes down in history as the TRUE version, Jonathan Larson's made-up version of the AIDS epidemic will be written on most people's hearts as the true version, when in reality it is a powerful distortion of who and what actually happened - unfortunately wrapped in some excellent theater so it is more likely to burn into people's brains as the truth.

I didn't expect so much humor from a book that makes those sorts of points. I laughed repeatedly when reading this book, starting with the introduction.

Also, as I've come to expect with her books, Ms. Schulman manages to find the words to explain things I've always sensed but not been able to articulate. The section on marketing to gays (who, as she puts it, are still struggling with post-traumatic stress as a result of being raised in this society) was brilliant, and funny. An instance where she really stopped me in my tracks: when she compared gays and lesbians to a older relative of hers who was freed from a Nazi concentration camp and shortly afterwards had a small breakdown when trying to choose what color drinking glass to buy from a shelf of glassware that came in too many colors, sizes and shapes.

My advice to potential readers: Schulman is more like Sondheim than the Sound of Music. If you're a Broadway boy with a good heart and not much critical faculty, don't read it and you'll live happy. If you're a Broadway fan with a brain, you'll find it's not really about Broadway but rather an interesting tap dance on the subject of how things get twisted around. If you've got a political sensibility of any type, and maybe you're much older and wiser -- and you read the book with a tone of voice that's rueful and ironic much more than just angry, you'll love it. It brings out all the humor, which appears on every page, and makes me laugh even in public places.

People in Trouble were not one of my favorite novels of hers, but having read stage-struck, I now enjoyed it much more. Empathy is her funniest novel, but most experimental, and Rat Bohemia a truly angry ranting novel (and I mean it in the best Victor Hugo-if-he-were-a women sense of the word).

I'd recommend Shimmer as a more 'traditional' linear story line sort of novel - it's quite beautiful. I give this book 4 stars not because it's not wonderful, but because I liked Empathy better and so needed to keep one star extra if I ever review that book online. :-)

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Compelling Yet Annoying, June 18, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America (Paperback)

I find Schulman's story completely fascinating: what it must have been like to summarily ignored and dismissed by people form several communitites in and around the RENT phenomena is nothing short of amazing. I also find her radical politics incredibly invigorating. Schulman really puts herself out on a limb, seemingly careless of whom she might offend. However, Schulman's tone (I just can't think of a better word for it) throughout the book creates a great amount of distance between author and reader (well, at least this reader). While reading, I couldn't help but think: "No wonder no one came to your defense---you're completely annoying." Now, that might sound pithy (or even personal if I actually knew her), but Schulman simply doesn't make it easy for me to empathize with her. Furthermore, she tends to contradict herself at it suits her particular argument. When discussing critical responses to lesbian theatre/performance, she complains of a period in time when there were no papers hiring lesbian critics (who would, ostensibly, be truly qualified). The next page (the VERY next page) sees Schulman complaining that when papaers sent lesbian critcs to lesbian theatre/performances, they were invariably "marginalizing" her work and the work of other lesbian artists. I applaud Schulman for her brave text, but I ultimately feel that the work as a whole is contradictory, lacks specificity (examples would help the section on marketing immensely), and suffers from her (though entirely justifiable) wronged/angered/violated tone.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Insightful and challenging, July 24, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America (Hardcover)

Sarah Schulman is a pioneer in the world of lesbian fiction. Schulman has written countless articles, novels, and non-fiction, yet still maintains her edge.

It doesn't matter whether or not RENT was taken from the pages of "People in Trouble." I think that is beside the point, even for Schulman. She uses her own personal experience to discuss the broader issues that face our society, and the gay movement as a whole.

Looking for "proof" for what Schulman suggests in her text? Proof can be found in our own lives as gay people: from the patriarchal system of gender roles and power that dominate our society, to the pandering for gay votes and gay money. Further proof exists in the writings of such scholars as Gayle Rubin and Urvashi Vaid, among others. Schulman's book should be used as a jumping off point for other things. The book itself is call to re-examine our inner homophobia, our subconscious desire to be "normal," and our ability to be manipulated by the mainstream. If one cannot recognize these things in one's daily life, then one is not looking.

Schulman shares TRUTH and, although that is hard for some to deal with, who's going to do it, if she doesn't.