Exploring Theatre Hot Takes: Queer Tragedy, Queer Joy, and the Space Between
The cast of “Trick! The Musical” at Out Front Theatre (Photo by Sydney Lee)
by Chris Peterson
Theatre people always have opinions and sometimes those opinions come in hot. Recently, I put out a call on social media asking for your boldest, spiciest theatre takes, and the responses did not disappoint. From thought-provoking critiques to eyebrow-raising declarations, you gave me plenty to chew on.
So here’s what we’re going to do: I’ll be exploring as many of these submissions as I can in this column series. Some I may agree with, others I may not, but that’s the fun of it. Theatre thrives on conversation, and even the most out-there hot take can lead to surprising insights and fascinating discussions.
Think of this as an open forum, where no opinion is too bold to examine. Ready to dive in? Click on the “Exploring Theatre Hot Takes” tag at the bottom to keep up with every installment.
Stephen Callum Bryum left an interesting comment. “Is it time to stop over-producing queer tragedy and instead produce queer joy?"
Over the past few decades, the queer plays that have risen highest in the theatrical canon tend to carry a lot of weight. The Laramie Project, Angels in America, The Inheritance, Fun Home—these works are monumental, memorializing trauma and forcing audiences to reckon with grief, injustice, and survival. They’ve shaped the landscape of contemporary theatre. But in more recent conversations, there seems to be a growing fatigue: are we overproducing queer tragedy? Have we built a canon so rooted in pain that joy rarely gets its turn on stage?
I should pause here to acknowledge that I’m not a member of the LGBTQ community myself. I can’t speak from lived experience, and I don’t want to claim authority that isn’t mine. What I can do is listen to the conversations happening in rehearsal rooms, in lobbies after shows, with my friends, and across theatre circles. From that vantage point, what I hear most often is not dismissal of the tragedies—they matter deeply—but a wish for a fuller picture.
That doesn’t mean joy is absent. Trick! The Musical, which premiered in Atlanta last year, offered romance, humor, and warmth. The Big Gay Jamboree leaned into camp and satire, gleefully twisting Golden Age tropes. A fresh adaptation of Orlando at Belvoir emphasized whimsy and wonder. Even plays from decades ago, like Last Summer at Bluefish Cove, are remembered for their depictions of friendship and community as much as for their conflicts. On Broadway, A Strange Loop blended biting self-examination with moments of playful irreverence, while Head Over Heels used pop music to celebrate queer love in a jubilant key. These works point toward a different way of writing queer lives into theatre—not only through tragedy but also through joy, silliness, and spectacle.
But the context in which queer theatre is made now (2025) is charged. With the Trump administration in its second term, there have been executive orders defining gender strictly as a binary, withdrawing recognition of gender identity in many official contexts, and rescinding protections and policies that had been used to promote inclusion, diversity, and care for trans people.
There’s also been intense state-level legislative activity: hundreds of bills proposed or passed across the U.S. that target gay marriage and transgender people’s rights in health care, education, identity documents, and public accommodations. For many artists, critics, and audience members, this creates pressure: queer stories are not just artistic projects, but also acts of resistance or survival.
The reasons tragedy has dominated aren’t hard to see. Theatre has always prized high stakes, and tragedy offers them in abundance. The AIDS crisis and stories of persecution demanded to be told, and those plays remain vital. Serious subject matter has also historically been easier for gatekeepers to embrace. Tragedy was proof of legitimacy. And for many audiences, especially queer audiences, seeing trauma reflected on stage has been validating, a mirror of lived experience.
But the cost of that dominance is real. Constant stories of suffering can be exhausting. They risk flattening queer life into a single register, as if queerness itself is synonymous with loss. Without balancing depictions of joy, romance, humor, and the everyday, the stage misses the chance to show queer life in its fullness. Joy does not mean triviality; it can be just as radical to portray queer characters thriving in ordinary ways, to imagine futures where love and friendship are central, or to stage comedies that let queer people laugh without apology.
Audiences, especially younger ones, are signaling that they crave this variety. They want the catharsis of tragedy but also the uplift of celebration, the sense that theatre can hold both mourning and dancing in the same breath.
The question isn’t whether tragedy should vanish. It’s foundational, and it still matters. The harder question is whether there’s room to expand the frame. Can queer theatre continue to honor history while also imagining futures filled with delight? Can it hold both the pain and the celebration in equal measure? Maybe the most powerful mirror theatre can hold up is one that allows both the shadows and the light to share the stage.