(Excerpt taken from LA Stage Blog interview by Steve Julian | May 5, 2010)
In 1914, W. H. Warren and B. C. Brown offered their “acting” servicesto the Long Beach Police Department. They would hang out inside thepublic bathrooms at the beach and entrap men who agreed to have sex. This “social vagrancy” forms Tom Jacobson’s play The Twentieth Century Way he Twentieth Century Way as it looks at this month-long moment in history.
“This is the first instance of entrapment I had ever read of and it was two actors doing it. It seemed rife with metaphor.” Jacobson explains the metaphor. “Since they’re actors, we explore whether they were acting when they pretended to be homosexuals in the restrooms or when they were the policemen who entrapped the other men. Was their job an act? Or were they?”
Visit LAStageBlog to read the entire interview
