The gay liberation movement has defined the closet as a smothering, imprisoning space. But it can also be, during moments of transition and danger, a sheltering and even a freeing one.
Or so we’ve learned this past year from Theater in Quarantine, the shoestring East Village company that since April 2020 has been producing marvelous live work from the 4-foot-by-8-foot box in which Joshua William Gelb used to store his winter coats.
In dozens of plays, performance pieces and dance theater amalgams, Gelb and his collaborators have been repurposing spatial and safety restrictions to build a valuable new outpost of the avant-garde.