Making Gay History

For the fag- Hey, stick that in your fucking eye! [gentle music]

I'm Eric Marcus, and this is Making Gay History: The Queens of Welfare Island.

The playwright Travis Lee Russ and I are friends, and when he told me about The Gorgeous Nothings and the Welfare Island fag ward, I was hooked, too.

I couldn't wait to dig into Travis's research and find out more, and I can't wait to share what we found with you.

But this isn't a making-of documentary about a musical.

Instead, we're using Travis's research as a portal to the past.

In this season of Making Gay History, you're gonna meet the queens of Welfare Island, the real fairies, pansies, and queers who were incarcerated in the fag ward.

And we'll break out of the prison to explore the gay world of New York City in the early 20th century, the places, songs, and street life that shaped these queens.

I knew when to take advantage of luck when it, you know, when it crossed my path.

And I did a lot of advocacy in the LGBTQIA plus community beforehand, you know, gay marriage and archiving, working with Eric Marcus and Making Gay History and Gay Men's Health Crisis in New York, archiving our history and understanding where we came from.

And I say that because when I got to convention and found out, oh my God, there's a group.

And there's folks that, excuse me, are doing good things together.

And we just got back.

I was in New York for a few weeks this summer and we shot at stonewall so that was incredible we have eight episodes coming out from stonewall and we were looking to do that with more regularity so just like bringing our show in our community to these really incredible important places just even to have it as setting it as the backdrop like it doesn't need to be a history lesson like i'm i'm very aware that history sometimes is triggering for some people like they just don't like they don't like history and they don't want to necessarily feel like they're in a class setting in that way so like in my approach I feel like even just setting it there and having our fun conversation in the backdrop of history and if it comes up in an organic way like that's so much more engaging for an audience to potentially like learn from so yeah so history is something now that is a huge huge core pillar for our community that i i want to just share in like such beautiful entertaining ways because it's so so rich and there's so much queer history out there another podcast i'll plug that i that was very instrumental in a lot of my learnings was it's called making gay history um so i highly recommend that podcast for if you're really if you're a history buff and and want to just learn queer history it's a great one

That's amazing.

As like a fellow like Catholic school kid, I'm like, I so know you're going to the library.

I'm Eric Marcus.

This is Making Gay History.

In our newest season, The Queens of Welfare Island, we're inviting you to join us at the Fag Follies.

We're going back to the early 20th century in New York City, when fairies, pansies, and queens were both celebrated and criminalized, on occasion at the same time, in the same prison ward, the fag ward.

Episode one

of The Queens of Welfare Island drops on October 19th.

Subscribe to Making Gay History wherever you get your podcasts.

Making Gay History, The Queens of Welfare Island.