Robert A. Schanke frames his narrative about queer playwright Cal Yeomans as one of recovery. Schanke's narrative relies heavily on the collection of Cal Yeomans's papers, donated to the University of Florida, which Schanke supplements, when necessary, with interviews from Yeomans's many friends, lovers and colleagues. Addressing Yeomans's itinerant lifestyle, Schanke attempts to recover the queer playwright's struggles with his sexuality and mental illness, two controversial topics that make the rediscovery of this narrative equally relevant to the queer community and theatrical historians. Consequently, counteracting the censorship that Yeomans faced becomes the main focus of recovering such a fractured and, at times, contradictory history.
Schanke's blatant references to sexuality are intended to counterbalance the censorship that Yeomans faced. Integrating many references to BDSM practices, oral and anal sex and watersports nonchalantly into the text, Schanke emphasizes Yeomans's many sexual partners before and after he was diagnosed with HIV. As Yeomans became surer of himself, he became less interested in what he saw as the repressive tendencies of gay playwrights such as Harvey Fierstein and Matt Crowley. Instead, he began to focus on capturing the truth of his sexuality amid struggles for gay liberation. Silencing, censoring and banning Yeomans's plays seems to be connected with the perpetuation of homophobia that developed during the early years of the AIDS epidemic.
Schanke is also not hesitant to explore Yeomans's struggles with mental illness. Although Yeomans's diagnoses might now be considered outdated, the challenges that he faced were reflected in both personal and professional life. As Yeomans was diagnosed at different points in his life with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and manic depression, Schanke queries how these mental states affected Yeomans's creative abilities without passing judgement. At the same time, Schanke is quick to relate how paranoia was an important factor that dictated many of Yeomans's creative and personal decisions.
Schanke's research serves as a reminder to the gay community not to be ashamed of or hide our identities. Many of Yeomans's plays, including the popular trilogy Sunsets: Three Acts on a Beach, were unique in both their experimental form and explicit use of sexuality. Just as Yeomans rebelled against the dictates of conventional theatre, Schanke crafts an atypical theatre history, where the human elements of Yeomans's life balance his contributions to queer theatre. In response to Ellen Stewart's many comments about what she saw as the inappropriate nature of Yeomans's writings, he wrote, ‘Our sexuality is the aspect of our humanity that makes us different from the rest of mankind … As you well know gay men are quite effectively being silenced these days’ (p. 150). Without Schanke's interest in exploring such a controversial and complex history, how long would Yeomans's papers, a substantial and important archive of queer identity, have remained untouched?
