Pride House at The Flea Theater

New York City’s oldest and longest producing LGBTQIA+ theater company, TOSOS, will launch its ground-breaking 50th Anniversary Season with the world premiere of Pride House, a new play by Chris Weikel. 

Igor Goldin (Yank!, With Glee) will direct a cast of thirteen, including London Carlisle, Gail Dennison, Dontonio DeMarco, Desmond Dutcher, Jessica DiSalvo, Jamie Heinlein, Alex Herrera, Aaron Kaplan, Jake Mendes, Patrick Porter, Raquel Sciacca, and Tom Souhrada.

It’s 1938 in the remote beach community of Cherry Grove on Fire Island, and Beatrice Farrar is planning a party for her colorful, flamboyant friends from the New York theatre scene who are visiting. As the guests descend on her summer home, Pride House, she hopes it will be smooth sailing. When several of the “family folk,” the more conservative Long Islanders who vacation in Cherry Grove with their children, arrive for the festivities, things take a decidedly stormy turn. Literally. Little does Beatrice realize, but it is the eve of the great hurricane of 1938, an event which changes Fire Island in ways that reverberate to the present day.   

The running time is two hours and thirty minutes, including intermission.

TOSOS’s 50th Anniversary Season will also include a reading series of six plays by LGBTQIA+ artists; multiple fundraising events that are open to the public, like TOSOS’s annual cocktail party (May), Pride party (June), and Gala (October); and the company’s second full production of the year, the reimagination of Doric Wilson’s Street Theater, to be staged at The Flea Theater in July.

“When playwright and gay rights activist Doric Wilson founded TOSOS, it was the only group in NYC devoted solely to the LGBTQIA+ experience. Fifty years later, though we’ve gained greater acceptance and have made many social and political advances, the voices raised to normalize bias and criminalize our existences are louder and more dangerous than ever," said Artistic Director Mark Finley. "TOSOS strives to tell our untold stories and maintain our place in theatrical and social history. The LGBTQIA+ community has always been here, and we’re not going anywhere.”