The Triangle Theater Company was founded in 1980 by David M. Hough in Boston, Massachusetts. Triangle Theater was created with the mission to establish a place for theater by and about gays and lesbians. The company was a member of the Gay Theatre Alliance, created in 1978 by Terry Helbing to help develop and promote gay and lesbian theatre across the country.
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History
In 1980, David M. Hough was a college graduate, unsuccessfully searching for theaters producing performances that reflected his life and sexual orientation. In an effort to change this, he placed an ad in a newspaper describing his project and found a half-dozen folks who wanted to start a gay theater. As a result, the Triangle Theater Company was born. Hough decided to name the company after the symbol used to designate homosexual men in Nazi concentration camps, mainly because the pink triangle was not publicly recognized as a gay symbol. When created, the Triangle Theater was and remained for several years the only gay-identified theater in Boston. David M. Hough cited the lack of gay and lesbian character representation in popular media and performing arts as the motivation for forming the Triangle Theater Company. His idea was not to separate gay people from the culture at large but to give voice to an underrepresented community.
Development
Although its first year was rather slow (only four people auditioned for a six-person show), within a few years, The Triangle Theater rapidly became a real success with 200 actors regularly turning up for auditions. In 1987, when the Triangle Theater seemed to have found a permanent home in a union-owned South End building, Hough stepped down from the artistic director post, considering it was the right time to leave. The company continued to develop by promoting minorities' works and producing plays equally written by men and women, from all origins and walks of life.
Closing
After a disagreement with the building’s owner, the Hotel Restaurant Institutional Employees and Bartenders Union (Local 26), the company lost its theater where most of its productions had been staged. The company rented space at the Institute of Contemporary Art for its March and June 1996 productions, but found itself unable to locate a new theater to stage their productions in the long-term. As a result, the Triangle Theater Company closed in 1996. Former Triangle members quickly joined and formed another theater company by the name of Open City.