PARTY

New Line Theatre's alter-ego, Out of Line Productions, brings back by popular demand the critically acclaimed adult gay comedy PARTY, July 31-Aug. 23, 2003. Despite its full frontal nudity and its sometimes outrageous humor and sexual content, Party’s very existence is a political statement. Living room comedy (or drawing room comedy, as it was once called) has been exclusively heterosexual since Oscar Wilde (ironically enough) and even before that, and certainly today there’s no excuse for that. Theatre is supposed to reflect and comment on the world around us, and gay people have living rooms too. Sure, there have been gay plays like The Boys in the Band and Love! Valour! Compassion! but those are plays about being gay, about how hard it is to be gay, about how gay people suffer at the hands of an unfeeling straight world, blah, blah, blah. 

Party isn’t about being gay. It’s about love, friendship, sex, God, marriage, loss, and loyalty, all the things the other living room comedies are about. These aren’t gay issues – they’re human issues. It’s also about one of the most compelling of human needs – the need to find your tribe, to inherit your culture, to know where you come from and where you’re headed. While African Americans, Italian Americans, and Irish Americans are born into their tribes, gay people have to seek out theirs. Establishing that connection may be a different process for gay Americans, but the need and the feelings of belonging are the same. In many ways, the older characters in Party pass on their culture to the younger characters in the same way Tevye and Golde pass on their culture to their children in Fiddler on the Roof. (Still, all philosophizing aside, Party does have nudity and sexual content, so it's not recommended for kids. Duh.) BUY YOUR TICKETS NOW.