• bridging_the_gap

    http://igg.me/p/257746?a=669276
  • Stacks Image 281

    Our 2011 Performance: Step Right Up!

    http://igg.me/p/257746?a=669276
  • Stacks Image 282

    Saturday, December 1, 2012 @ 2pm | The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center | 208 West 13th Street, New York, NY 10011

    http://igg.me/p/257746?a=669276
  • bridging_the_gap_the_quest_for_love_the_hug

    Our 2012 Performance: The Quest for Love

    Link
  • bridging_the_gap_love_lust_or_alone

    Our 2012 Performance: The Quest for Love

    Link
  • bridging_the_gap_courtroom_battle

    Our 2012 Performance: The Quest for Love

    Link
  • bridging_the_gap_the_trail_lawyer

    Our 2012 Performance: The Quest for Love

    Link
  • bridging_the_gap_lust_story

    Our 2012 Performance: The Quest for Love

    Link
  • bridging_the_gap_2012_epilogue

    Our 2012 Performance: The Quest for Love

    Link

Bridging the Gap: An LGBTQ Intergenerational Theater Project

In New York City, LGBT people from different generations have had few opportunities to connect. They have splintered into age-segregated micro-communities, robbing them of opportunities to weave a common history and share strategies both have used to survive and thrive. Bridging the Gap is a community-based intergenerational theatre project designed to address this problem. Everybody Act! is proud to support the 2013 return of Bridging the Gap.

Bridging the Gap's 2013 Performance: Food For Thought

Hungry for community? Celebrate difference in the LGBTQ community and challenge assumptions about age by attending Bridging the Gap’s free performance of our original play, Food for Thought. The 45-minute play was created by an intergenerational ensemble of LGBTQ folk ages 18 through 88 over the course of 12 weekly sessions. What could be more fun than exploring the place where food, family (biological and chosen) and sexuality meet?

WHEN: Saturday, December 14 at 2:00 PM
WHERE: The Jefferson Market Library, 425 Avenue of the Americas (at 10th Street), in the Willa Cather Great Room.
TICKETS: No reservations are necessary and admission is free.

PLAYING TIME: Food for Thought will run approximately 45 minutes without an intermission. The performance will be followed by an audience talk-back with the co-directors and the cast. Come join the celebration!
Watch our video on Kickstarter at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bridgingthegap/bridging-the-gap-2013-intergenerational-lgbt-theat

And join our Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/bridgingthegapproject
Bridging the Gap is made possible in part with public funds from the Fund for Creative Communities, supported by New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature and administered by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Bridging the Gap is made possible in part with public funds from the Manhattan Community Arts Fund, supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and administered by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

Bridging the Gap's 2012 Performance: The Quest for Love

About The Project

Bridging the Gap is a community-based project that uses theater as a means to bridge the generation gap in the NYC Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Transgender and Queer (LGBT) community. Younger and older LGBTQ people rarely socialize with each other and, as research shows, they may harbor negative preconceptions about each other. The years since the emergence of HIV and AIDS have seen a consistent increase in LGBTQ visibility and civil rights. But community members remain the targets of hate crimes, bullying, and discrimination. Two groups at opposite ends of the age spectrum remain particularly vulnerable: young people and adults over age sixty. Bridging the Gap brings these two groups together through the creation and public performance of an original theater piece.

After a successful pilot project in 2011, in which an intergenerational group of seventeen community members with varied levels of theatre experience created an original show that they performed for an audience of over 125 people, Bridging the Gap is back! Again, this year, Bridging the Gap will culminate in a free public performance and talk-back with the cast and co-directors.

Who is involved?


This project is an exciting collaboration between many people and organizations:
  • An intergenerational group of LBGTQ-identified individuals ranging from the ages of 17 to 23, and adults over the age of 60
  • 3 theatre artists, Jennifer Houseal, Kevin Ray, and Sherry Teitelbaum, will develop and facilitate the theatre workshops, as well as co-direct the original show
  • SAGE (Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders is a fiscal sponsor and is donating meeting space, in addition to recruiting group members
  • YES (Youth Enrichment Services) at The Center is a community partner and is donating our performance space, in addition to recruiting group members
  • Everybody Act! Theater in Education & Communities will provide administrative and artistic support
  • Community members, friends and family will attend the final event.



The Quest for Love
Bridging the Gap 2012 was made possible in part with public funds from the Fund for Creative Communities, supported by New York State Council on the Arts and administered by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Bridging the Gap 2012 was made possible in part with public funds from the Manhattan Community Arts Fund, supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and administered by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. The project is offered in partnership with SAGE (Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders) and the Center’s Youth Enrichment Services (YES). Additional support by Everybody Act! Theater in Education and Communities.
Enter the name for this tabbed section: 2012 Supporters

Thank You!


We couldn't have done this project without the support of these individuals and institutions who generously contributed to Bridging the Gap. To see the names, click the tab above that says "View the Names."
Enter the name for this tabbed section: View the Names!
Hilary Adams
Stu Barwick
Scot Colford
Alex DeFazio
Michael Gargan Curtin
Robert Houseal
Margaret Keenan-Bolger
Margaret McCarthy
Kristen Peterson
Lauri Rivetti
Anthony Setteducate

Bridging the Gap's 2011 Performance: Step Right Up!

On April 9th, 2011, Bridging the Gap culminated in a performance of Step Right Up! at The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center in New York City. Step Right Up! was an original play created and performed by the project participants.

Within a circus frame, the play investigated LGBT community issues in three main scenes:
  • Ring #1: The dominance of idealized male bodies within the community
  • Ring #2: Visibility and invisibility of LGBT people
  • Ring #3: An argument between generations about which faced greater hardships.
Between scenes, specially "queer circus" acts poked fun at LGBT stereotypes.
Stacks Image 435

About the LGBT Generation Gap


“Is there truly an antipathy between younger and older gay men? Are there conflicting interests?” Raymond M. Berger may have been the first scholar to consider the existence of a gay generation gap in Gay and Gray: The Older Homosexual Man. Berger reached no conclusion in 1982 when the book was published, but did cite that older gay men of the time were deeply marked by “the Great Depression, the Second World War, and the anti-homosexual witch hunts of the McCarthy era.” He also stated that the AIDS crisis would likely shape generational relationships between gay men in the future, noting, “It is intriguing to speculate about the dimensions this social phenomenon is likely to take.”

Over twenty years later, on the eve of Gay Pride 2009, New York Magazine published Mark Harris’ article “The Gay Generation Gap.” In the essay, Harris answers Berger’s question by detailing the friction between gay men in their twenties and gay men in their forties and fifties.
Harris sharply illuminates the silence generated by the gap, predicting that during the coming days of Pride, men from both sides of the gap would find themselves together in the same space and, “We will look at them. They will look at us. We will realize that we have absolutely nothing to say to one another. And the gay generation gap will widen.” Harris makes a heartbreaking conclusion noting that young gay men have no need for older gay mentors in modern times:

"For decades, gay men functioned as unofficial surrogate parents to the newly out and/or newly outcast … Today, though, the notion of a quasi-parental gay mentorship feels ancient, a trope out of Tales of the City."


Maybe a “mentorship” is not what is needed today as researchers have called for a new type of intergenerational relationship between LGBT generations. In their article, “Gay Youth and Gay Adults”, Scholars Janis S. Bohan, Glenda M. Russell, and Suki Montgomery investigated the gap not just between gay men, but between all LGBT youth and adults. Their research profiles the lack of understanding between LGBT teens and LGBT adults, stating that both adults and youth do not have a clear picture of each other’s life experiences and they have not had the opportunity to cultivate a means of communicating with each other in a meaningful way, concluding that “the absence of such an understanding hamstrings individuals in both age groups as well as the community and the movement as a whole."

In a later, condensed review of this research, “The Gay Generation Gap: Communicating Across the LGBT Generational Divide”, Russell and Bohan issue a call to action outlining both the assets and needs of LGBT youth and adults.