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Zusatztext "Queer Theatre and the Legacy of Cal Yeomans is a well-researched biography that explores the life and times of the often forgotten award-winning playwright. This book is not only a biography of a playwright but a history of theatre and GLBT as a whole during the significant period between the Stonewall riots and the AIDS epidemic. A documentary history, yet also a biography, this work draws the reader in and would be a valuable addition to any GLBT or theatre collection." - GLBTRT Newsletter "An absorbing gay history - psychological, social, sexual, and cultural - expertly informed by Schanke's knowledge of the theatre . . . [He] has used Cal's plays, journals, and letters, plus the interviews he conducted with Cal's friends, and put them together in unobtrusive, readable prose - and got it right. This book is not just about gay theatre and gay liberation, but also about gay childhood in the small-town South and gay adulthood in cities at a time when liberation turned to horror. It's an amazing story." - Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide "Schanke takes evident delight in recovering the life and work of Cal Yeomans, a now-nearly forgotten pioneer in the gay theatre movement of the Post-Stonewall era . . . Through meticulous research and patient reconstruction of Yeoman's life and work, Schanke has written an academic 'page turner' that restores this early maverick of Post-Stonewall theatre to his proper prominence. Simultaneously, however, Schanke situates Yeomans within the larger contexts of his cultural moment, demonstrating how his plays reflect and resist the various discursive trajectories of gay life during the second half of the twentieth century; in this sense, the book performs a valuable double duty, operating as both biography and social history." - Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism "The book succeeds on many levels, but most directly as a result of Yeomans's papers and most admirably in Schanke's incisive scholarship . . . Interviews with scores of Yeomans's friends and co-workers, and, most significantly, his own incisive analysis, permit Schanke to define Yeomans's achievement and the meaning of his life within the broader cultural evolution of gay culture in America. Schanke unspools Yeomans's life and times in engaging and intimate prose, illuminating that extraordinary era in the process. For those interested in LGBT theatre and its history, or in the personalities of a still too little-known era, this book is a page turner . . . The recovered accomplishments of Yeomans strengthen our common understanding of a complex, rapidly changing period in which gay artists and writers challenged American society to reconsider its values and its means of expressing them . . . In short, Schanke's book is an essential volume in the on-going and as-yet incomplete reconstruction of the LGBT foundation of contemporary American theatre." - Theatre History Studies "Schanke . . . scrupulously details [Yeomans'] tumultuous life and career, never hesitating to elaborate for the sake of balance and fairness . . . [and] goes to great lengths to give us a genuine feel for Yeomans' personality, without stooping to adoration or character assassination . . . His unapologetic approach fundamentally challenged the attitude and expression of the Queer American Theatre of his contemporaries. Robert Schanke's biography is an engrossing, melancholy, though ultimately optimistic text that suggests a compelling, alternative way of gauging a writer's success." - Lambda Literary Review "Schanke weaves the threads of this complex and conflicted life to give a fascinating portrait of Yeomans in the context of his times." - Lavendar Magazine "Schanke's fascinating, meticulously researched, well written biography of Cal Yeomans gives us the life of a small-town Southern gay man who lived through the early years of gay liberation and the heyday of radical queer theatre. Yeo...
