Voices in Isolation:

4 Queer Plays at a Social Distance

Owen Keehnen

Community – I love these plays and hope, someday, to see all four produced. As Owen Keehnen writes in a brief preface: “Social and personal distance is not a new theme in queer history … In an era of uncertainty, passing on our history is more important than ever.” Owen is a go-to guy for questions about LGBTQ history in Chicago, a co-founder of Legacy Project and the new AIDS Garden Chicago, an author or co-author of a dozen or more books, a bookseller at Unabridged Books. “Sirens of the Belmont Rocks,” “Pansies on Parade,” and “Presenting Wanda Lust” focus on separate facets of LGBTQ life: the Belmont Rocks were a place, other than bars, where queer community could form and thrive; a tribute to the Pansy Craze, a time in the early 1930s when drag queen performances surged in popularity in America’s biggest cities; and the story of one Chicago drag performer, Wanda Lust. Owen calls his fourth play “sidewalk theater.” “COVID Summer” recounts snippets of real-life conversations overheard from passersby in June-August 2020 by a worker who sits on a stool in a shop doorway, limiting the number of customers who enter the store at any given time. It’s a particularly fascinating piece of pandemic theater.