About Radical Rediscovery: Homosexual Acts and Beyond
Sunday 2nd November 2025
Let us remember the radical acts of 50 years ago. Susan Croft, who curates the exhibition Radical Rediscovery: Homosexual Acts and Beyond, says: “50 years ago Ed Berman, founder of influential arts project Inter-Action agreed to host Britain’s first Gay theatre season at the Almost Free Theatre in Soho. The press came in droves because as Alan Wakeman, one of the producers and a founder of Gay Sweatshop, said: ‘We were saying, “Yeah, we’re gay – so what? and having the audacity to put on plays about what life is like for gay people.”’ Runs were extended, moving to the Duke of Argyll pub and then the ICA and although the first season was all plays by men, in 1976 Gay Sweatshop staged Jill Posener’s Any Woman Can, and toured this nationally. Julie Parker, who acted in it, says: “People would come up, and talk to you afterwards, in tears, and say, ‘That’s me, that’s my story, that’s my life,’ and ‘I’ve never met people like you before.’” Parker went on to run The Drill Hall, for decades a key London home for Lesbian and Gay performance. Marking the 50th anniversary of Homosexual Acts, the first official Gay theatre season in Britain in 1975, the exhibition both celebrates and interrogates Lesbian and Gay theatre’s early years with an amazing array of posters, flyers, photos, magazines, props, set models, costumes, books, original footage and interviews with key participants. There is a fabulous amount of fascinating material: time to excavate this marginalised history and appreciate its impact on LGBTQ+ theatre today!
© Aleks Sierz
- Radical Rediscovery: Homosexual Acts and Beyond is at London Performance Studios from 7 November to 14 December.
