A Brief Analysis Of The Transformation Of The Queer Images In Contemporary American Queer Theatre-From Angels In America To The Inheritance

In the past 30 years,the world pattern has undergone tremendous changes.The economic level and comprehensive national strength of various countries are changing with each passing day.Along with these are the liberation of ideas,the attention to marginal groups and people's pursuit of self-realization.Theatrical art,as a comprehensive art form,has always followed the pace of the times and reflected the spirit of the times.Modern and contemporary American theatre is unique in the world because of its diversity,among which the queer theatre especially has its own category.This paper first briefly sorts out the history of queer play-writing since the beginning of the 1920 s,and then focuses on three queer plays written after 1990 s.They are Angels in America(1991,1992)by Tony Kushner,Love! Valour! Compassion!(1994)by Terrence Macnally,and The Inheritance(2018)by Matthew Lopez.Endowed with great artistic value and recognized by the mainstream American theatrical world,these three plays perform stories about the queer community,and,to some extent,represent the evolution of the writing subjects in queer theatre.Along with the analysis of the artistic images of these three plays,this paper will emphasize their transformations through the relations between the queer community and AIDS,queer's self-identification as well as the playwrights' writing techniques and the outcomes of queer figures.Then conclude that the modern Queer Theater has presented the following features:1.the enriching and modernizing process in the writing skills,2.the complicating process of characters' personality and the change from flat to round characters,3.the change of characters' fate from tragedy to light,4.the expansion of the involved subjects from the queer community to the community of shared future for mankind.