Bent: The Play (Applause Books)
ISBN:9781557833365 read summary

Even when only read from a script, this play is an astounding experience. It's full of information about the appalling conditions of homosexuals in the Holocaust and opens one's eyes to so much that was barely known before the play's release in 1979. The story is heartbreaking yet is a very rewarding read which holds the reader's attention from the first page to the very last. I recommend seeing the play and I'm sure the movie (which I have yet to see) is very good, but I highly recommend reading this unforgettable script also.

Beautiful piece of literature...full of tension, conflict, struggle and yes...love. This is a work you won't forget reading.

This enduring play is a gripping, fascinating view of a sumptuous alternative lifestyle rum amok. Torturing oppression and purification of the Nazi party and Secret Police rip and tear in to the decadent , wild , elegant "gay" world of late Weimar Republic Berlin. Imprisonment, abundant hypocrisy, betrayal and mutilation end up in a wild chase for freedom by Max, a "gay" socialite and his lover. After they are captured, Max's soul is destroyed by Nazi interrogation and his will to survive increases. The climax and resolution echo the power of faith, love and friendship after pain, Nazi manipulation and knotted value systems are stripped away. Great for studio acting classes, any level of production.

It has been well over a month since I ordered this script, the audition has come and gone, oddly enough the script has yet to arrive!

Bent is a powerful play about the treatment of gays during the years that the Nazi powers controlled Germany. The play starts with two lovers who are arrested and sent to a concentration camp. There, one of the lovers dies. The survivor however continues to cling to an existence and meets another gay prisoner. They move rocks back and forth across a courtyard all day. The men fall in love, despite the fact that they are in a hopeless situation and are constantly guarded and watched as they gradually starve and are worked to death. The play shows us that love may emerge from the human spirit in even the most bleak of times and places. This drama is well written and very moving. It is an important piece of gay literature, dramatizing a terrible chapter in gay history that is often forgotten and hidden.