←Recommendations of DEAD GAY BODY

swift sharp chilling satire. Like if Glee was eiffel-towered by John Waters and Carmen Maria Machado--which I mean as a high compliment. great fucking work

This play is a bright bandana in the back pocket of modern theatre. It not-so-subtly coded queerness is a rip-roaring defiance of how hetero-normative standards manifest through pretending everything is "normal." The characters are satires and stereotypes rendered in that perfect mix between endearing and infuriating. Most importantly, the play turns its critical eye to its own queer subjects and how easily we subsume ourselves to straight standards. Great dramaturgy and biting satire masks itself as just another play about all those dead gay bodies that keep popping up.

From the second page of this script, it hits and keeps on hitting. Like a swift and lightfooted boxer, it moves swiftly and keeps punching at things, making sure you never get too relaxed. It is strikingly funny, rolling around in the irony and using theatricality to push the message forward. And it is a message that should be heard. This play is urgent, important, and I hope that this story gets shown across the country. So smart. So moving. Masterful.

A savage, searing thunderclap of a satire that leaves no stone unturned and is never afraid to speak its truth, raging against the anonymous, numberless carnage that the LGBTQIA+ community has endured over the last century. Cleverly subverting the narrative to encompass a closeted football star who fears discrimination for being straight, 'Dead Gay Body' careens through the body count of generations of homophobia from the Holocaust to Pulse and beyond, and as the bodies pile up the urgency becomes all the more apparent. Produce this play now. We need to see it.

A theatrical, sharp satire that examines violence against queer bodies. In Buck, Counselor, and Nancy, Johnson explores the multitude of ways heteronormative culture and heterosexual (or at least self-identified as such) people are made uncomfortable by violence against marginalized populations, but can center themselves and their fears, anxieties, and prejudices in response to it. In F****, we see the pressures put on queer folks to be "model gays" (or model examples of other minority groups) who can be pointed to when you proclaim your allyship because they are nonthreatening, placid, and, essentially, defanged. Funny, complex, wrenching.