Utilizing a model based on Queer theory and comprising four relational paradigms, this thesis examines specific dramas of Mae West and Terrence McNally in an effort to understand the multiple relationships between the text, the society and the culture in the production of a gay male identity and its representation on the American stage in the 1920s and the 1990s. Each relational paradigm is the product of a different twentieth century scholar and can be viewed as an individual lens through which one aspect of a drama or culture can be magnified, illuminated or distorted. These paradigms are: culture and power; science and sex; gender and performance; plus structurization and identity. The most significant paradigm, structurization, provides the culminating focal point for the contributions of the other relational paradigms. Through this examination, Mae Wests dramas in the 1920s produced a prescriptive attitude toward the gay male in society, a thing to be cured. The dramas of Terrence McNally produced a subscriptive attitude toward the gay male, an equal human being who should not be marginalized. Ultimately, Broadway Theater can be seen as a site of cultural production that shapes the views of its audience as much as it is shaped by the larger society in which it exists.

In 1998, the Manhattan Theatre Club’s staging of Terrence McNally’s play Corpus Christi ignited protest and virulent condemnation from various religious and politically conservative groups which eventually led to the cancellation of the play’s production. This led to a barrage of criticism from the national theatre, gay, and civil rights communities and free speech advocates, including the ACLU and PEN, which issued a press releases about the cancellation that decried censorship and acquiescence by the theatre to neo-conservative religiously political groups. As swiftly as the cancellation, the Manhattan Theatre Club reversed its decision and the show resumed its rehearsal schedule. Although the critical reception of the play was mostly negative, the political controversy surrounding its production testifies to the fact that a contemporary play in America dealing with both religious and gay themes is still economically risky, radical politically, and worthy of critical rhetorical analysis. This work aims to fill that gap by providing an in-depth investigation of the tangled rhetorical history of Corpus Christi. First providing an account of the controversy surrounding the 1998 production of Corpus Christi, this work then gives a historical and cultural analysis of McNally’s career and corpus of work leading up to the play’s contentious staging. Second, a full account of the play’s critical reception is given through a close analysis of the rhetorical responses to the work from the Christian Right and the more secular community that supported the play’s production. Third, the American Christian Right’s vitriolic rhetorical response to the play is indicted as homophobic hate speech. Fourth, how McNally’s play repudiates the rhetorical violence perpetrated by the Right against gays is revealed. Finally, the last two chapters examine how the rhetoric of the play speaks directly to its queer audience. Chapter five reveals the rhetorical and meta-theatrical conversion strategies employed by McNally in Corpus Christi to proselytize his expansive message of Christ to his gay audience. Ending the work, chapter six examines McNally’s rhetorical reclamation of the Christ figure from the Right as a means of sacralizing homosexuality as a religious identity and homosexual love and sex as a spiritual act.

Este trabalho é um estudo da peça And Things that Go Bump in the Night, escrita pelo norte-americano Terrence McNally na primeira metade da década de sessenta. À luz do materialismo cultural, estabeleço as relações entre a forma e o tema da obra com as condições de possibilidade históricas existentes na época de sua escrita. A conclusão geral a que chega este trabalho é a de que o choque de coisas aludido no título é o choque entre um estágio do modo de produção capitalista que chegava ao fim e outro que se iniciava então. Em nível mais específico, demonstro que na peça de McNally já podemos detectar os rumos que os movimentos sociais tomaram - mormente o Movimento Gay - a partir da década de sessenta, como conseqüência da própria necessidade de expansão do capital. / This is a study of the play And Things that Go Bump in the Night, by American playwright Terrence McNally, written in the first half of the 1960\'s. Using cultural materialism as my theoretical basis, I try to establish the connection between forms and themes found in the play to the historical conditions by the time the play was written. My conclusion is that the \"bump\" alluded to in the title of the play is the result of the turmoil produced by the shift from a stage of capitalism to a new stage of this mode of production. More specifically, I will show that in McNally\'s work one can already detect the directions followed by the social movements of the 1960\'s - especially the Gay Movement - as a consequence of the very need for the expansion of capital.

Este trabalho é um estudo da peça And Things that Go Bump in the Night, escrita pelo norte-americano Terrence McNally na primeira metade da década de sessenta. À luz do materialismo cultural, estabeleço as relações entre a forma e o tema da obra com as condições de possibilidade históricas existentes na época de sua escrita. A conclusão geral a que chega este trabalho é a de que o choque de coisas aludido no título é o choque entre um estágio do modo de produção capitalista que chegava ao fim e outro que se iniciava então. Em nível mais específico, demonstro que na peça de McNally já podemos detectar os rumos que os movimentos sociais tomaram - mormente o Movimento Gay - a partir da década de sessenta, como conseqüência da própria necessidade de expansão do capital. / This is a study of the play And Things that Go Bump in the Night, by American playwright Terrence McNally, written in the first half of the 1960\'s. Using cultural materialism as my theoretical basis, I try to establish the connection between forms and themes found in the play to the historical conditions by the time the play was written. My conclusion is that the \"bump\" alluded to in the title of the play is the result of the turmoil produced by the shift from a stage of capitalism to a new stage of this mode of production. More specifically, I will show that in McNally\'s work one can already detect the directions followed by the social movements of the 1960\'s - especially the Gay Movement - as a consequence of the very need for the expansion of capital.