30 Days of NYMF on BroadwayWorld Day 11: YANK by David Zelnik
By: BWW Sep. 12, 2005
uniforms and – for the first time – put on hoopskirts for the dream ballet.What an image. It's all feels so surreal...How did I get here? Where to start... 4 years ago my brother Joe suggested – almost on a whim – that our next project should be a gay WWII musical. "Why not?" I replied… which sent me into a year of research and bookwriting – which led me to read histories, archival letters, and journals of gay and lesbian soldiers from during WWII. And led me to a servicemen's magazine I'd never heard of called "Yank" providing an architecture for our show.Somehow I kinda thought "gays in the military" was a recent issue. Important during the Clinton years, sure, but not something that stretched back through every war America has fought. I found out WWII was the first war they explicitly asked soldiers' sexuality and discharged gay soldiers (dishonorably) or disclosing it. Before then "sodomy" was a crime (that is: the act of gay sex) but when WWII started that changed: it was in the army that generation of young men and women discovered that "gay" wasn't just an act, but an identity that could define you. Out of those witch hunts a movement was born. And out of the mobilization of 16 million Americans came the beginnings of a shared secret culture, came newsletters and journals, and of course countless romances and sexual relationships.
.png)
|
.png)
|
Videos
