Are gay plays offensive?

The stage has distorted the image of homosexuals.

In the past, most plays often chose to portray homosexuals in an ostentatious, noisy, and ridiculous way, and some characters even seemed rude. Homosexuals had to wear bright green eye makeup, glitter, doll-like cheeks, bright red lips, huge, colorful flowers on their heads, and their hair in pigtails or strangely messy buns. As for costumes, they were dressed like "crayon boxes" with all the right tones, with lace, glitter, and bunny slippers, butterflies, cats, dogs...

Hoang Ngoc Son (left) and Huu Tai in the play Dandelion

With such a portrayal, the image of a homosexual on stage is really difficult to gain sympathy from others and from society. Not to mention, the character also speaks loudly, sarcastic, sour, likes to use vulgar words or has unusual reactions and screams.

In general, the director and actors all wanted these gay characters to be funny and entertaining, but the comedy ended up being awkward and even offensive.

In real life, homosexuals, like heterosexuals, blend into the colorful society, not being "defaulted" as the theater has imagined and "nailed down". To write and act about homosexuals, one should try to create beauty, create sympathy for the audience, to reduce prejudices in society, not to increase differences, strangeness, making the audience not want to approach, creating the opposite effect.

People's Artist My Uyen shared: "The audience is becoming more and more demanding, so the stage must be more careful. When creating homosexual characters, we now try to make them more beautiful, more reasonable, and closer to real life. From there, the audience can easily sympathize with them." The stage once exaggerated homosexuals and damaged the audience's aesthetic. In fact, those plays have also been filtered and eliminated.

Progress

In recent years, there have been plays about homosexuality that show signs of progress, portraying characters with identities, silence, and psychology, making the audience laugh and cry along with the characters. Audiences of all genders can empathize.

Minh Du (right) and Cam Tu in the play Men's Shadow

Play 5B has the play Dandelion with two male characters both named Tran Cong Anh, implying that it seems that nature created the two to bind them together. However, one was forced to marry by his harsh mother, and the other had to escape to the mountains to avoid the world. The two actors Hoang Ngoc Son and Huu Tai portrayed these two male characters very well, with sophistication, elegance, and courtesy, true to the model of educated, well-educated intellectuals. Both delved into psychology, expressing the beauty of the soul in the poetic setting of the mountainous region. Taking the image of dandelions scattered in the wind as the theme, the play was further enhanced and left an impression on the audience.

The World Youth Stage last Lunar New Year had a play called Shadow of a Man telling the story of Sang, a character who was also forced by his family to marry and have children to continue the family line, but in the end he still had to return to his true self. Minh Du played the role of Sang with clear progress. He still threw out comedy according to his forte, but at the same time he knew how to restrain himself, expressing the character's psychology well, creating touching silences, at times the audience could not hold back their tears.

Director Cao Tan Loc said: "I want Minh Du to develop more, to create characters with depth. Even other homosexual characters are not allowed to be vulgar." In the play, Gia Bao plays the role of the female homosexual character Hoang Dung next to Minh Du, which is also funny and charming.

Previously, Quoc Thao staged the play "The Strange Dreamers", although it was not about homosexuality, it had a homosexual character, played by young actor Bao Minh, leaving a pleasant impression. A girl was rejected by her family, so she relied on a poor theater troupe as her home. Bao Minh acted well, had a beautiful appearance, and created sympathy with the audience. In fact, the audience did not discriminate against the homosexual theme, nor did they watch it out of curiosity. The problem is that the stage needs to stage the play beautifully, true to life, and bring sympathy for human fates.

Source link: https://thanhnien.vn/kich-ve-dong-tinh-co-gay-kho-chiu-1852403122253044.htm