Being Un-politically Queer

Lesbian Womanhood Through Straight Men and Queer Women

It is not until halfway through the 1926 play The Captive that audiences learn that the play’s main lady is a lesbian.

We are greeted with Irene, an attractive woman with a rich father, and suspect that the conflict of the play would be a common one: a rebellious daughter who fears that her father will reject the man that she loves. To hide the true identity of her lover, Irene claims that she is seeing her distant cousin Jacques. But, following scene after scene of confessions, Irene slowly reveals her homosexuality and her inability to love Jacques, who, despite warnings from men who walked the same path, struggles to stop loving her.

While I did not find Edouard Bourdet’s The Captive to be exceptionally insightful about love or queer identity, the fact that it had an attractive, seemingly ordinary, and relatable queer principal character in 1926 makes it significant to me. Following an uneventful but successful run in France, the play was translated into English and shipped off to Broadway. And, only five months after The Captive arrived in New York, the actors playing Irene and Jacques were arrested on stage. To prevent similar plays from gaining traction, the New York Legislature passed the Wales Padlock Act, asserting that any actor or producer involved in depicting homosexuality on stage could be arrested and incarcerated for a year.