Gale - A Study Guide for Harvey Fiersteins Torch Song Trilogy

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Harvey Fierstein

1982

Torch Song Trilogy is a play that straddles genres, existing as both a comedy and a melodrama. Harvey Fiersteins play opened at New Yorks Richard Allen Center in October, 1981, and moved to the Off-Broadway Actors Playhouse in January of 1982. The play opened on Broadway in June, 1983, at the Little Theatre and continued for a long and successful run, having won several awards, including two Antoinette Tony Perry Awards.

The work is semi-autobiographical; Fierstein used his own experience as a homosexual to bring a sense of authenticity to the play. Critics have remarked that the language and situations ring true and not only to homosexual audience members. Fierstein states in a brief authors note to the play that he hopes members of the audience will recognize themselves in the exchanges between lovers and the relationship between mother and child. The plays popularity among a wide range of viewers indicates that the playwrights intentions succeeded.

Torch Song Trilogy began as The International Stud, a one-act play that was produced Off-Off-Broadway in 1978. This early work was combined with two other one-act plays, Fugue in a Nursery(1979) and Widows and Children First(1979), to create Torch Song Trilogy. Each element of the play focuses on an important passage in the life of its protagonist, Arnold. Although the play is about homosexuals, at its heart it is a play about family, love, and survival. Fiersteins play appeared just as AIDS was recognized as a major medical problem. His reinforcement of the importance of love in all relationships, hetero and gay, served to counter the attacks against homosexuals as promiscuous pleasure seekers.

Harvey Fierstein was born June 6, 1954, in Brooklyn, New York. He received a fine arts degree from the Pratt Institute in 1973, but even before finishing school he had embarked on a career in theatre. After working as a female impersonator, and while still a teenager, Fierstein earned his first role as an actor in 1971. In Andy Warhols Pork, Fierstein played an overweight, asthmatic lesbian maid. He began writing his own plays in 1976. International Stud was written as a form of therapy after the end of a two-year romance.

Fierstein later combined the semi-autobiographical Stud with two other one-act plays, Fugue in a Nursery and Widows and Children First, to form Torch Song Trilogy, which debuted Off-Broadway in 1981. Torch Song Trilogy, which Fierstein also starred in, is the play with which he is most closely identified; it is considered his defining work. The play won a number of awards, including an Obie, two Drama Desk awards, and two Antionette Tony Perry Awards for best actor and best play.

Fierstein also won awards for his stage adaptation of the popular French comedy film La Cage aux folles, including Tonys for best musical and best book of a musical. His other plays include, Safe Sex and Forget Him. In 1988, Fierstein wrote the screenplay adaptation for Torch Song Trilogy and reprised his role of Arnold in the film. Fierstein has also written a television drama based on his play Tidy Endings, as well as a second television drama, Kaddish and Old Men.

In addition to writing plays, Fierstein has also gained a considerable reputation as an actor. He has appeared in many theatrical productions, including Xircus: The Private Life of Jesus Christ, The Trojan Woman, his own Safe Sex trilogy, and The Haunted Host. Films in which Fierstein has appeared include Garbo Talks, Mrs. Doubtfire, Bullets over Broadway, and Independence Day. Fierstein has received a Rockefeller Foundation Grant in Play wrighting, a Ford Foundation Grant for new American Plays, and a special Obie Award for writing and acting.

When not writing or acting, he enjoys painting, gardening, and cooking. Fierstein is also a committed activist for AIDS research and gay rights.