BWW Sunday Exclusive Pride Special: Playwright Jonathan Tolins on Friday's Historic Ruling- 'Theater Definitely Played an Important Role in What Happened'

Playwright Jonathan Tolins (author of BUYER & CELLAR and TWILIGHT OF THE GOLDS) coined the phrase 'The Last Sunday in June' and turned it into a landmark play which debuted in 2003 at the Rattlestick Theater starring Arnie Burton, Donald Corren, Jonathan McClain, Susan Pourfar, Mark Setlock, Peter Smith, David Turner and Matthew Wilkas and directed by Trip Cullman.

BroadwayWorld.com reached out to him this week, as we face the most historic PRIDE in American History.

This week, the United States Supreme Court was faced with a landmark decision involving the legalization of same-sex marriage across the country. The high court was confronted with two questions, whether states can ban same-sex marriage and whether states must recognize same-sex marriages performed legally in other states.

On Friday morning, the Supreme Court ruled that the 14th Amendment requires individual states to license a same-sex marriage. The nine justices reviewed an appellate court's decision to uphold gay marriage bans in Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee. The landmark ruling was a 5-4 decision with the majority opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, who declared, "From their beginning to their most recent page, the annals of human history reveal the transcendent importance of marriage."

On Friday, BroadwayWorld brought you reactions from the theatre community, as we rejoiced in the news together. We also reached out to playwright Jonathan Tolins, an ardent advocate for equality, who wrote about gay life in New York in his 2003 play The Last Sunday in June. We are kicking off our NYC Pride celebration today by sharing some of his words on the news with you.

Tollins writes: "I watched the news this morning with my husband and our kids. That pretty much says it all. I grew up thinking something like this was unimaginable and now, thanks to the work of activists, progressive politicians, artists, and ordinary people brave enough to come out, we're here.

"When I wrote The Last Sunday in June, I was writing about characters in a sort of social and legal limbo. Gay people were becoming popular on television and accepted in certain areas of the country, but the nagging legacy of otherness and shame was still haunting them. The main couple responds to someone asking why they don't get married by saying, "If it's not the real thing...." Well, now they can have the real thing and that makes a huge difference. That play also dealt with the social pressures within the gay community - the frustrating standards of beauty, the challenge of monogamy, the limits of friendship. Those questions will always be with us in some form, but they can now be seen as part of the human condition and no longer as symptoms of second-class status."

As to how theatre has impacted the fight for equality, he added:

"Theater definitely played an important role in what happened today. That's because theater is one of the few places where artists can consistently speak the truth. We know that prejudice against gays and lesbians diminishes when people actually know someone who is gay - a family member, a friend, a neighbor. Writers like Tony Kushner, Terrence McNally, Mart Crowley, Larry Kramer, William M. Hoffman, Lanford Wilson, and Harvey Fierstein (to name just a few) created memorable characters that exposed audiences to the full humanity and dignity of gay people, even if those audiences didn't know any (or think they knew any) gay people offstage. The theater should be proud of its important and continuing role in gay history.

"Speaking of which, back in 1993, Justice Ginsburg attended a performance of my play The Twilight of the Golds at the Kennedy Center. I'm not saying there's any connection, but...

"Congratulations to everyone on this happy and historic day! Except Scalia."

Tolins is the author of Buyer & Cellar, which was named Best Unique Theatrical Experience by the Off-Broadway Alliance when it premiered at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. Other plays include The Twilight of the Golds (Broadway, Booth Theatre), If Memory Serves (Promenade), The Last Sunday in June (Rattlestick, Century Center) and Secrets of the Trade (Primary Stages). A collection of his plays has been published by Grove/Atlantic. His film work includes The Twilight of the Golds and Martian Child. For television, he was a writer for "Queer as Folk," The Academy Awards, The Tony Awards and "Partners." He was the author of Pushkin 200: A Celebration at Carnegie Hall, acted as script consultant on Walking with Dinosaurs: The Arena Spectacular, and co-wrote The Divine Millennium Tour and The Showgirl Must Go On for Bette Midler. He has written articles for Opera News, Opera Monthly, TheaterWeek, Time magazine and The Huffington Post, and is a panelist on the Metropolitan Opera Radio Quiz. He lives in Fairfield, Connecticut with his husband, the writer and director Robert Cary, and their children, Selina and Henry. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild and the Writers Guild of America.