the time that glenn howerton was in a gay period-piece play about crossdressing
so awhile back i was poking around glenn howerton's wikipedia looking for movies and such that i might have missed, and i noticed it had a small theatrical section listed. this was never something i'd given much thought in the past, but on this particular occasion i was so hard-up for new Glontent that i decided to see what i could find about the three plays listed there, because i'd never seen anyone else have much luck with that and i love a good internet scavenger hunt. walk with me.
compleat female stage beauty caught my eye right away-- the title of the play itself is interesting, and i happened to know already that the most famous real-life duke of buckingham was the lover of king james. so of course i went delving...
and what should i find but the entire playscript for compleat female stage beauty, For Free, on archive dot org? anyone on earth can rent it and read it for an hour at a time, or for 14 days if you want to really take your time with it. i have to assume that this is NOT common knowledge among sunny fans (or anyone else), as the archive upload only has 99 views at the time of making this post.
to give a VERY succinct summary of what the play is about-- in the 1660s, during the english restoration, women were allowed to act professionally onstage for the first time in english history. this caused problems for the male actors who had previously made their careers playing female characters, such as edward kynaston, around whom the play centers. outside of his acting career, kynaston is a gay man, and he's in a romantic entanglement with george villiars, the duke of buckingham (NOT the same duke of buckingham who was fucking king james-- that was this villiars' dad. we love gay fathers and their gay sons!) kynaston struggles to find his place in a changing social landscape where it seems as though his talents are no longer needed or wanted.
before getting into the script proper, the book has some information about notable early productions of the play. this is great because it pins down a lot of details about glenn's involvement in the show that wikipedia left unanswered, but there's also an unexpected sunny crossover here-- in an even EARLIER production, the lead role was played by david hornsby!
(i also learned over the course of my deep dive on this that glenn's costar, lead actor brandon demery, was a fellow member of glenn's graduating juilliard group!)
things don't end well for kynaston and villiars, but still, the onstage relationship between the two is both electrifying and heartbreaking as it changes over the course of the show.
now, this WOULD be where i would include cast pictures or footage or any kind of photos of glenn in this show... but if any such material exists, it's not publicly available. i went so far as to email the publicity and outreach coordinator for the theater that hosted glenn's production of this show to ask if they had any archived materials, but she told me that they didn't.
but this production took place in october of 2000, meaning it was pre-that 80s show, meaning we can all sit and think about how a glenn that looked like This was acting in a gay period piece about crossdressing and gender roles and the mystery of human sexuality. dudes rock.
a bit of a disappointing note to end on, i know, but i really wanted to talk about this play and share it with people!! it's a super interesting and overlooked part of glenn's early career, but also i think the script is fascinating and very well-written in its own right. i definitely encourage yall to check it out on the internet archive if you're interested-- again, it's literally free!
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i know why the caged bird sings.
the trees witness everything, victoria chang | unknown | bookwyrminspiration | richard siken | brother, sister, rival, friend: the longstanding effects of sibling relationships, joshua a. krisch | bloodshot, julien baker | antigone, sophicles | unknown | please ignore vera dietz, a.s. king | everyone but you, the front bottoms | wandavision 1x08, dir matt shakman | jamie anderson | antigonick, anne carson
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i want every single white piece of shit on that post calling people fascists or misguided or privileged or stupid for not voting for biden to look a palestinian person whose entire family got killed by biden in the eyes and tell them you think they should vote for biden. tell them you think they're privileged for not voting for biden. look them in the eyes and condescend to them about how much danger they clearly don’t know they’re in.
don't actually do that. don't actually ever speak to a fucking brown person lmao. eat shit actually.
i want every single one of you genocidal freaks to think for two seconds about why you think it's acceptable to tell brown people to vote for the man committing genocide on their fucking families. to tell disabled people to vote for the man committing eugenics based genocide on them at home via covid. (you do realize the largest amount of covid protection rollbacks occurred during biden's presidency right? you do realize a thousand people a week are CURRENTLY dying from covid?)
using the threat of our rights being taken away as a cudgel against Black and Brown and disabled ppl as if the biden admin hasn’t overseen more covid deaths than the trump admin, massive attacks on immigration rights (including the recent immigration proposal increasing mandatory detention and allowing mass deportations), massive attacks on reproductive rights (they knew abt roe v wade for WEEKS. we can bypass congress for genocide & for worsening immigration rights but we can't do anything about abortion?), as if we aren't looking at the current highest levels of homelessness since 2007. and all of that on top of the fact that joe shitstain biden is LITERALLY COMMITTING GENOCIDE.
the audacity. the absolute audacity. of this white bitch going ""vote for them: the most marginalized, the most vulnerable"" BIDEN IS KILLING "THEM." BIDEN IS KILLING US. How dare you speak for us? biden's complete rollback of covid protections have killed more people than trump. biden's admin has utterly abandoned disabled people to die. he is committing a eugenicist genocide against all disabled and immunocompromised people. he is committing a genocide against palestinians. the audacity to call those people "privileged" for refusing to enable THEIR OWN GENOCIDES.
"boohoo we have no choice but to vote for the genocidal fascist or else there'll be fascism!!!" you dumb fuckers we are already living in a fascist state. you don't care about stopping fascism. you don't care about stopping genocide. you care about fascism and genocide not hurting you. if spineless liberals and dems want so badly to beat trump they should put forward a candidate who hasn’t alienated the voter base that let them win the last time, not the candidate that barely won four years ago before reneging on his promises (student loans, environmentalism, etc), killing half a million people from covid, and killing 20,000+ more via colonial genocide.
to every dumbass in those notes going “uwu he isn’t perfect uwu he isn’t my first choice uwu we can't let ~disagreements~ get in the way uwu voting is like public transport <3 voting is like a group project”: ten thousand children are dead. ten thousand children are dead. ten thousand children are dead. biden killed ten thousand children. what the fuck is wrong with you.
i hope you all rot.
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