Abstract
Abstract La Cage’s appearance on Broadway at the moment when the gay rights movement shifted from ideologies of liberation to pride was auspicious. The musical’s politics of assimilation were present in both its narrative and its casting. Its recalibration of family values marked a shift in gay representation on Broadway that mirrored the ideological split within contemporary gay politics, which were forever changed by AIDS and the ensuing gay stigma. The paradoxes of gay representation in the early 1980s are the subject of this chapter. An overview of how Broadway musicals staged homosexuality before La Cage opens the chapter and is followed by a historicization of how changes in gay politics primed La Cage to meet its moment. The bulk of the chapter then explores the original production of La Cage’s casting of its gay and drag roles and what that meant for the musical’s politics.
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