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NEW YORK'S GAY PRIDE BENEFITS REMEMBER THE BIRTH OF THE GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT
NEW YORK'S GAY PRIDE BENEFITS REMEMBER THE BIRTH OF THE GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT
06/16/2008 (12:14 PM)
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June 17, 2008 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE THE BIRTH OF GAY RIGHTS REMEMBERED AT GAY PRIDE WEEK BENEFITS AT NEW YORK’S LGBT CENTER In 1966, teenaged David Gaard, then a Freshmen a U.C.L.A., was taken to an outrageous gay party in West Hollywood . Among the entertainers was a flamboyant comic drag queen who urged the assembled gay men to follow the lead set by the civil rights activists and anti Vietnamese War protesters. "Stand up for your gay rights, and someday you will be able to march in a Gay Pride parade, the very same way Dr. Martin Luther King leads black people in Black Pride parades!" The room was filled with closeted professionals, fearful of the loss of income and prestige from revealing themselves as homosexuals. The crowd laughed with astonishment and disbelief at the impossible situation the drag queen was describing. Three brief years later, one Saturday night in June, Gaard left a workshop of his soon to be produced play AND PUPPY DOG TAILS and headed down Fourth Street toward the Sheridan Square Subway station, walking into the fateful confrontation between the New York City Police Department and the patrons of the Stonewall Inn. That night gave birth to the Gay Rights Movement. That autumn Gaard’s play opened. A romantic, optimistic look at love between two gay young men. It was the first play to be produced on the professional New York stage with the radical and to many heritical point of view that gay people were not only productive citizens, but happy and well adjusted as well. The play opened to controversy, acclaim and unprecedented success. at The Astor Place Theatre. The following year the Gay Rights Movement gained momentum and in June of 1970 the very parade that had seemed like a fever dream that night in West Hollywood took place on the streets of New York city . David Gaard marched in it. “I had to be in that parade, that drag queen in West Hollywood was right, if we stood up for our rights, we’d get our rights.” Gaard says today, “The era of out of the closets and onto the streets had come. I had an obligation to myself and to society to be part of that historic first march.” In Gay Pride Week 2008, David Gaard will be celebrating that life changing first year of the Gay Rights Movement when he directs Carol Polcovar's play STONEWALL STORIES. Ms. Polcovar's docudrama follows the events in the lives of six diverse people in the days leading up to the confrontation at the notorious Greenwich Village gay bar, The Stonewall Inn, and through the ensuing action that filled the streets of the neighborhood for several nights, and culminated in the review and major changes put forth in police and public policy on New York’s homosexual citizens that were effected during the next year. Appearing in the production will be Dolores Kenan, Cody Andrus, Michael Bunoni, Nelson Felix, Aaron King and Mary Murphy. Presented as benefits for SYLVIA’S PLACE, a shelter for LGBT homeless teenagers run by Homeless Youth Services, a branch of the New York Metropolitan Community Church , the performances will be held at New York ’s LGBT Community Center , 208 West 13th Street on Wednesday June 25 at 8:00PM and on Saturday June 28 @ 2:00PM. Tickets are available thru _Smarttix.com_ (http://smarttix.com/) or by calling 212-868-4444.
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