Bringing LGBTQ Youth Theater Into the Spotlight

Reviews the film, The Year We Thought About Love directed by Ellen Brodsky (2015). This is a documentary film about True Colors: OUT Youth Theater, the longest running LGBTQ youth theater troupe in America. The film follows eight troupe members and the troupe directors as they write, rehearse, and perform in a dynamic and humanizing production about the lived experiences of today’s LGBTQ youth. Overall, this documentary film provides viewers with a glimpse into the lives of a diverse group of urban LGBTQ youth. By following the narrative-performance processes, the filmmakers did not reduce the experiences of being urban LGBTQ adolescents to a sanitized academic discussion but rather captured the complex, intersectional identities of the troupe members, their challenges, and their sources of resilience. Although clearly such a film should not and cannot be expected to capture the full spectrum of experiences and challenges facing LGBTQ youth, viewers are encouraged to draw upon the knowledge they gain from the film to consider how it may apply to youth living in more suburban and rural communities, where the sociopolitical dynamics that give rise to resources like True Colors may be very different. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)