698 The American Century: Literature since 1945for previous generations of women. Nothing has really been resolved. “I’m afraid
I haven’t really been happy for some time,” the main character, Heidi Holland, in
The Heidi Chronicles, admits. “It’s just that I feel stranded. And I thought the whole
point was that we wouldn’t feel stranded.” That is a shared feeling among
female characters in these plays: confusion, irresolution, the sense of an
immeasurable gap between aspiration and achievement – what they want and
what their society, and even their loved ones, tell them they can get. Despite that,
these characters at some elemental level reveal an indestructible optimism: the
belief that, as Heidi Holland puts it, “maybe, just maybe, things will be a little
better.” Woven through the dramatic texture of The Heidi Chronicles and its
predecessors is a sustained if muted belief in the possible, a realization of a proper
role for women – if not now, then in the next generation.
It was not until the late 1960s that another minority group was able openly to
dramatize issues of identity. Up until then, a homosexual playwright like Tennessee
Williams had to explore his homosexuality, if he wished to do so, by stealth and
indirection. From one perspective, for example, Blanche Dubois can be seen as a
mask, a convenient, concealed means of expressing what it feels like to be different
from the moral majority. With plays like The Boys in the Band (1968) by Mart
Crowley (1945–), however, the subject of male or female homosexuality came
directly to be addressed. The Boys in the Band, although it suffers from a tendency to
conform to the stereotype of the anguished, self-hating gay, was one of the first
commercially successful plays to deal with its gay characters not only openly but
with considerable sympathy. Other, later dramas that deal with the homosexual
community and focus on homosexuals, and made their way into the mainstream
theater, include As Is (1985) by William M. Hoffman (1935–) and The Normal Heart
(1985) by Larry Kramer (1935–). Above all, there is The Torch Song Trilogy (1981) by
Harvey Fierstein (1954–). In three plays originally written and produced separately,
Fierstein here uses a dramatic persona, Arnold Beckoff, to consider the evolution of
homosexuals to social acceptance and, more important, acceptance of themselves.
A deft blend of autobiography, comedy, domestic realism, and social naturalism, the
trilogy concludes with Beckoff mourning the loss of his lover and partner. By now
he has discovered that, in his own way, he is as “normal” – if that is the right word –
as everyone else: wanting a home, a loving partnership, the right to mourn his loved
one openly. By now his mother recognizes this, too, acknowledging that his
widowhood is the emotional and moral equivalent of her own, and that his sexual
preference and status have to be honored.
Apart from some of the African-American playwrights discussed earlier, the most
notable dramatist from the racially marginalized minorities is without doubt David
Henry Hwang (1957–). His first play, F. O. B. (1978), deals with the cultural conflict
between those of Chinese origin born in America and those “fresh off the boat,”
newly arrived immigrants. It was followed by Family Devotion (1981), which explores
a similar theme, The Dance and the Railroad (1981), based on a strike in 1867 by
Chinese workers on a railroad, Sound and Beauty (1983), consisting of two one-act
plays, and Rich Relations (1986). Hwang consistently received support from theGGray_c05.indd 698ray_c 05 .indd 698 8 8/1/2011 7:31:39 PM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 31 : 39 PM