Mae west and the ‘queer plays’

Abstract

The article explores the history of three of the plays Mae West wrote and staged on Broadway between 1926 and 1928. Sex, in which West played a prostitute, offered the ‘fallen woman' a happy ending; The Drag and The Pleasure Man, plays about homosexuality, were staged with gay actors playing themselves. All three plays were closed by the police. Although West is seldom taken seriously as a playwright, the article argues that the three plays had profound impact on the New York stage, and on the treatment of language and sexuality in American theater. The plays were political radicalism staged as ‘low comedy’

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