Theatre Rhinoceros
Encyclopedia
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
and lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
people.
Theatre Rhinoceros is the first gay theater company to employ actors under a professional seasonal agreement. The company was recognized by the California State Assembly
California State Assembly
The California State Assembly is the lower house of the California State Legislature. There are 80 members in the Assembly, representing an approximately equal number of constituents, with each district having a population of at least 420,000...
on its twenty-fifth anniversary and again as a pioneering organization at the twenty-fifth anniversary remembrance of assassinated San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk
Harvey Milk
Harvey Bernard Milk was an American politician who became the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors...
.
History
Their first production, mounted in August 1977, was Lanford WilsonLanford Wilson
Lanford Wilson was an American playwright who helped to advance the Off-Off-Broadway theater movement. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1980, was elected in 2001 to the Theater Hall of Fame, and in 2004 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters...
’s The Madness of Lady Bright
The Madness of Lady Bright
The Madness of Lady Bright is a short play by Lanford Wilson, among the earliest of the gay theatre movement. It was first performed at Joe Cino's Caffe Cino in May 1964 and went on to tour internationally, appearing in revivals to the present day...
, at the Gay Community Center (then located at 330 Grove Street in San Francisco, now the site of the Performing Arts Parking Garage), produced by Baugniet, and directed by Estes. That first season continued with Gays at Play, Stone Rhino, Gayhem, and David Guerdon’s The Laundry, directed by Baugniet. The operating budget for that first year was $3,900 — an amount which doubled every year for the company’s first seven years of operation to $250,000 for its 1983-1984 season.
1978-1979 season
The 1978-1979 season opened with a revamping of Gays at Play, which consisted of LeRoi Jones’ The Baptism (directed by Estes) and Fred Puliafito’s Para de Noya (directed by Baugniet) — but it was the monumental success of the next production, Doric WilsonDoric Wilson
Doric Wilson was an American playwright, director, producer, critic and gay rights activist.He was born Alan Doric Wilson in Los Angeles, California, where his family was temporarily located. Originally from the Pacific Northwest, he was raised on his grandfather's ranch at Plymouth, Washington on...
’s West Street Gang (performed at the South of Market leather bar The Black & Blue), that won the company’s first Cable Car Award and enabled the company to establish residence in its first home at the Goodman Building at 1115 Geary Street. The season concluded with Male Rites, which included C.D. Arnold’s Downtown Local, Robert Chesley
Robert Chesley
Robert Chesley was a playwright, theater critic and musical composer....
’s Hell, I Love You, Lanford Wilson
Lanford Wilson
Lanford Wilson was an American playwright who helped to advance the Off-Off-Broadway theater movement. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1980, was elected in 2001 to the Theater Hall of Fame, and in 2004 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters...
’s The Great Nebula in Orion, and Cal Yeomans’s Richmond Jim, which production also toured to New York.
1979-1980 season
The 1979-1980 season was dedicated to a festival of plays by Robert PatrickRobert Patrick
Robert Hammond Patrick, Jr. is an American actor, known for his leading and supporting roles in a number of films and television shows....
which included See Other Side, Fred and Harold, The Loves of the Artists, Haunted Host, Kennedy’s Children, T-Shirts, and My Cup Ranneth Over. The season concluded with Doric Wilson
Doric Wilson
Doric Wilson was an American playwright, director, producer, critic and gay rights activist.He was born Alan Doric Wilson in Los Angeles, California, where his family was temporarily located. Originally from the Pacific Northwest, he was raised on his grandfather's ranch at Plymouth, Washington on...
’s A Perfect Relationship. By this time, Baugniet had written successful grants for the fledgling theater company from the City & County of San Francisco, the California Arts Council
California Arts Council
The California Arts Council is a state agency based in Sacramento. Its eleven council members are appointed by the Governor and the state Legislature...
, and the National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
, and he had formulated a successful subscription campaign that was second only in numbers to the American Conservatory Theater
American Conservatory Theater
American Conservatory Theater is a large non-profit theater company in San Francisco, California, that offers both classical and contemporary theater productions. A.C.T. was founded in 1965 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in conjunction with the Pittsburgh Playhouse and Carnegie Tech by theatre and...
in the San Francisco Bay Area.
1980-1981 season
The 1980-1981 season consisted of Doric WilsonDoric Wilson
Doric Wilson was an American playwright, director, producer, critic and gay rights activist.He was born Alan Doric Wilson in Los Angeles, California, where his family was temporarily located. Originally from the Pacific Northwest, he was raised on his grandfather's ranch at Plymouth, Washington on...
’s Forever After, Joel Schwartz
Joel Schwartz
Joel Schwartz is an American epidemiologist, and Professor of Environmental Epidemiology, at Harvard University, School of Public Health.He graduated from Brandeis University with a Ph.D...
’s Power Lines, Noel Grieg’s The Dear Love of Comrades, Harvey Fierstein
Harvey Fierstein
Harvey Forbes Fierstein is a U.S. actor and playwright, noted for the early distinction of winning Tony Awards for both writing and originating the lead role in his long-running play Torch Song Trilogy, about a gay drag-performer and his quest for true love and family, as well as writing the...
’s The International Stud, Victor Bumbalo
Victor Bumbalo
Victor Bumbalo is an American actor and playwright.-Biography:Bumbalo grew up in a working-class Italian family in Utica, New York, where he attended public high school...
’s Kitchen Duty and American Coffee, and Arch Brown’s News Boy. Theatre Rhinoceros also opened its studio theater during this season with Cal Yeomans' The Line Forms to the Rear and Dan Curzon’s Beer and Rhubarb Pie, and hired its third full-time employee, Raleigh Waugh, as Technical Director.
1981-1982 season
The 1981-1982 season opened with C.D. Arnold’s Dinosaurs, the final production at the Goodman Building, after which the company moved into its quarters at the Redstone BuildingRedstone Building
The Redstone Building, also known as the Redstone Labor Temple, was formerly called "The San Francisco Labor Temple" was constructed and operated by the San Francisco Labor Council Hall Associates. Initial planning started in 1910, with most construction work done during 1914...
at 2926 16th Street, where it remains to this day. The inaugural productions in the company’s new theatre were Harvey Fierstein
Harvey Fierstein
Harvey Forbes Fierstein is a U.S. actor and playwright, noted for the early distinction of winning Tony Awards for both writing and originating the lead role in his long-running play Torch Song Trilogy, about a gay drag-performer and his quest for true love and family, as well as writing the...
’s Fugue in a Nursery on the main stage and Robert Chesley
Robert Chesley
Robert Chesley was a playwright, theater critic and musical composer....
’s Stray Dog Story in the studio. The remaining main stage productions for that year were George Birimisa
George Birimisa
George Birimisa is an American playwright, actor, and director who contributed to the explosion of gay theater in the mid-1960s during the early years of Off-Off-Broadway...
’s Pogey Bait, Doric Wilson
Doric Wilson
Doric Wilson was an American playwright, director, producer, critic and gay rights activist.He was born Alan Doric Wilson in Los Angeles, California, where his family was temporarily located. Originally from the Pacific Northwest, he was raised on his grandfather's ranch at Plymouth, Washington on...
’s Street Theater, Noel Coward
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...
’s Design for Living, and a revival of T-Shirts.
1982-1983 season
The 1982-1983 main stage season consisted of Robert Graham’s Sins of the Father, Jane Chambers’ My Blue Heaven, Arthur LaurentsArthur Laurents
Arthur Laurents was an American playwright, stage director and screenwriter.After writing scripts for radio shows after college and then training films for the U.S...
’ The Enclave, Victor Bumbalo
Victor Bumbalo
Victor Bumbalo is an American actor and playwright.-Biography:Bumbalo grew up in a working-class Italian family in Utica, New York, where he attended public high school...
’s Niagara Falls, C.D. Arnold’s King of the Crystal Palace (one of the first produced plays to deal with AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
), and a revival of A Perfect Relationship.
1983-1984 season
The 1983-1984 main stage season included Bill Russell’s Fortune, Tennessee WilliamsTennessee Williams
Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs...
’ Vieux Carré
Vieux Carre
Vieux Carré may refer to:*New Orleans's French Quarter* Vieux Carré, a play by Tennessee Williams...
, Jane Chambers’ A Late Snow, Richard Benner
Richard Benner
Richard Benner was an American film director and screenwriter. His 1977 film Outrageous! was entered into the 28th Berlin International Film Festival, where Craig Russell won the Silver Bear for Best Actor.-External links:...
’s Crystal Blaze, Adele Prandini’s Safe Light, Lanford Wilson
Lanford Wilson
Lanford Wilson was an American playwright who helped to advance the Off-Off-Broadway theater movement. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1980, was elected in 2001 to the Theater Hall of Fame, and in 2004 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters...
’s 5th of July (it was during the run of this play that Estes died of AIDS), and Richard Gray’s Bad Drama.
After Estes’ death, Baugniet turned the theater over to his staff and retired into private life. Including studio productions and staged readings, he had produced over one hundred titles for the theater company. Baugniet's papers are housed at the GLBT Historical Society
GLBT Historical Society
The Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society maintains an extensive archive of materials relating to the history of LGBT people in the United States, with a focus on the LGBT communities of San Francisco and Northern California...
in San Francisco and the Bancroft Library
Bancroft Library
The Bancroft Library is the primary special collections library of the University of California, Berkeley. It was acquired as a gift/purchase from its founder, Hubert Howe Bancroft, with the proviso that it retain the name Bancroft Library in perpetuity...
at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
.
1984-1990
Under the artistic direction of Kristine Gannon (1984-1987), The Rhino continued to realize Estes' vision. Committed to exploring the impact of AIDS on the gay community, The Rhino produced several important new plays, including the collaboratively written The AIDS ShowThe AIDS Show
The AIDS Show is a collaboratively written theater piece about AIDS, and a documentary video about the making of the stage show.-1984 production:...
: Artists Involved with Death and Survival and an updated version titled Unfinished Business that was the subject of a PBS documentary by Rob Epstein
Rob Epstein
Rob Epstein, also credited as Robert P. Epstein, is a director, producer, writer and editor. Epstein has won two Academy Awards for Best Documentary Feature for the films The Times of Harvey Milk and Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt....
and Peter Adair
Peter Adair
Peter Adair was a filmmaker and artist, best known for his pioneering documentary, Word Is Out.-Career:Adair entered the film industry in the 1960s and first gained critical attention with his 1967 documentary Holy Ghost People, a film record of a Pentecostal snake handler worship service in the...
, Doug Holsclaw's Life of the Party and The Baddest of Boys, Leland Moss's Quisbies, Robert Pitman’s Passing, Anthony Bruno's Soul Survivor, and the Henry Macht–Paul Katz
Paul Katz
Paul Katz is an internationally renowned American cellist, best known for his membership of the Cleveland Quartet. Katz currently teaches at the New England Conservatory following positions at Rice University and the Eastman School of Music. He serves on the National Advisory Board of the...
musical Dirty Dreams of a Clean-Cut Kid, as well as cult classics like Tom Eyen
Tom Eyen
Tom Eyen was an American playwright, lyricist, television writer and theatre director.Eyen is best known for works at opposite ends of the theatrical spectrum...
's Women Behind Bars
Women Behind Bars
Women Behind Bars is a play by Tom Eyen.A camp spoof of the exploitation films produced by Universal, Warner's, and Republic Pictures in the 1950s, this black comedy is set in the Women's House of Detention in Greenwich Village...
. Charles Solomon (1987-1988) and Kenneth R. Dixon (1988-1990) expanded The Rhino’s boundaries of inclusiveness by staging several African-American productions.
1990-1999
Under the leadership of Artistic Director Adele Prandini (1990-1999), the Rhino forged partnerships with many groups, including Luna Sea, Teatro de la Esperanza, Black Artists Contemporary Cultural Experience, The Asian AIDS Project, and the Latino/a AIDS Festival. It received commendations from the City of Berkeley, the City and County of San Francisco, and the State of California on its fifteenth and twentieth anniversaries.Prandini continued as an artistic force writing and directing Coconut, directing Chay Yew
Chay Yew
Chay Yew is a playwright and stage director who was born in Singapore. As of 2007 he lives in New York City. As of July 2011, he becomes Artistic Director of Victory Gardens Theater, Chicago.-Career:...
's Porcelain and Beyond Bagdad, a wildly successful musical written by Pamela Forrest and Doug Holsclaw. Holsclaw continued as Rhino's most important male writers, with works including Don't Make Me Say Things that will Hurt You, directed by Sabin Epstein, Out Calls Only, The Plunge, and The Sensational Sin Sisters, directed by Prandini, and The Last Hairdresser, directed by Danny Scheie, which won a Critics Circle Award (tie) for Best New Play.
1999-2003
Doug Holsclaw (1999-2003) presided over the premiere of new works by Marga GomezMarga Gomez
Marga Gomez is a Puerto Rican/Cuban-American comedian, playwright, and humorist. She is openly lesbian....
, Latin Hustle, Jason Post, John Fisher, F. Allen Sawyer, Marvin White, and Guillermo Reyes. The entire twenty-fifth anniversary season was celebrated with world premiere works by Johari Jabir, Sara Moore, Fisher, Kate Bornstein
Kate Bornstein
Kate Bornstein is a Jewish-American author, playwright, performance artist, and gender theorist.-Biography:Born in Neptune City, New Jersey, Bornstein studied Theater Arts with John Emigh and Jim Barnhill at Brown University . Bornstein joined the Church of Scientology but later became...
, and Ronnie Larsen
Ronnie Larsen
Ronnie Larsen is a playwright and film director specializing in writing plays about sex.His play Making Porn was based on the real lives of porn stars and in production was notable for casting porn actors. Productions have starred Blue Blake, Rex Chandler and Ryan Idol.In 1997 Larsen made a...
as well as special performances by Kate Clinton
Kate Clinton
Kate Clinton is a American comedian specializing in political commentary from a gay/lesbian point of view.-Early life:...
and Gomez.
2004-present
Now in its twenty-ninth year and under the artistic direction of Fisher, Theatre Rhinoceros remains committed to Allan Estes’ original vision of developing and producing works of theatre that enlighten, enrich, and explore all aspects of the gay community.2004 saw the first full American staging of Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett is a British playwright, screenwriter, actor and author. Born in Leeds, he attended Oxford University where he studied history and performed with The Oxford Revue. He stayed to teach and research mediaeval history at the university for several years...
's Single Spies (two one-acts: "An Englishman Abroad
An Englishman Abroad
An Englishman Abroad is a 1983 BBC television drama, based on the true story of a chance meeting of an actress, Coral Browne, with Guy Burgess , a member of the Cambridge spy ring who worked for the Soviet Union whilst with MI6...
" and "A Question of Attribution
A Question of Attribution
A Question of Attribution is a 1988 one-act stage play, written by Alan Bennett. It was premièred at the National Theatre, London in December 1988, along with An Englishman Abroad. The two plays are collectively called Single Spies....
"), which was co-directed by John Fisher and Jeffrey Hartgraves. Featuring John Fisher, Jeffrey Hartgraves, Libby O'Connell, Matt Weimer, Greg Lucey, and Dominick Marrone.
2005 featured the holiday production of George S. Kaufman
George S. Kaufman
George Simon Kaufman was an American playwright, theatre director and producer, humorist, and drama critic. In addition to comedies and political satire, he wrote several musicals, notably for the Marx Brothers...
and Moss Hart
Moss Hart
Moss Hart was an American playwright and theatre director, best known for his interpretations of musical theater on Broadway.-Early years:...
's classic farce The Man Who Came to Dinner
The Man Who Came to Dinner
The Man Who Came to Dinner is a comedy in three acts by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. It debuted on October 16, 1939 at the Music Box Theatre in New York City. It then enjoyed a number of New York and London revivals. The first London production was staged at The Savoy Theatre starring Robert...
, starring a collection of some of the Bay Area's best-known local actors, including Floriana Alessandria, David Bicha, P. A. Cooley, Matthew Martin, Kim Larsen, Matt Weimer, Libby O'Connell, and Jeffrey Hartgraves.
2006 featured the remounting of the critically acclaimed Family Jewels: the Making of Veronica Klaus by Jeffrey Hartgraves and Veronica Klaus, directed by Jeffrey Hartgraves. This production was subsequently brought back for another run in 2007.
2007 brought innovation and experimentation with the creation of The Studio Project There's Something About Marriage which explored the issues and opinions surrounding the topic of gay marriage. Conceived and created by John Fisher, David Bicha, and Maryssa Wanlass. With cameos by Drew Todd, Jeffrey Hartgraves, and Matthew Martin. This year also saw the first staging of Shark Bites (a very nearly solo show) written by and starring Jeffrey Hartgraves. Directed by Libby O'Connell and featuring Drew Todd, P. A. Cooley, David Bicha, davidmahr, and T.J. Lee. This show was remounted in 2008.