Blue Ticket
by Maureen (Mo) Longworth
This project began with whispers in a lunch cafe when I first arrived in Juneau in 1992. Welcoming women from the LGBTQ community explained that gay and bisexual men were still underrepresented in Juneau ever since they were secretly sent away in the sixties.
Having relocated from the San Francisco Bay Area where gay pride was publicly celebrated, I began my quest to uncover Juneau’s LGBTQ roots. I gradually interviewed over fifty people who were here in the 60’s, who each had their own angle on this historic period.
As the story grew and the perspectives varied it became clear that the best way to weave the unraveling past was in a historical fiction play. The plot unfolded as a mystery romance set in Juneau in 1963.
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Blue tickets, as suspected gay men were called, disappeared one by one from our Juneau landscape in the sixties. Our social-political inequality is built on such unmentioned cornerstones of history.
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To view a video that includes more information about the history of the play along with several scenes from a live Juneau performance please watch this video.
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The video below shows a performance of the entire play.