At its inception, the now firmly established LGBT-oriented Diversionary Theater in San Diego was, in the words of founder Tom Vegh, little more than an “itinerant” company.
“We had to carry our props and our costumes from one inhospitable place to another” in those days, Vegh told KPBS reporter Angela Carone. Yet when they played their first show on a make-shift stage at a gay disco known as the West Coast Production Company, Vegh said the crowd was “electric.”
Today, Diversionary is a respected mid-level theater with a permanent home in University Heights and a workable annual budget of $500,000. The company is currently running a production of ‘Dooley,’ based on the life of naval officer Dr. Tom Dooley and his experience as a gay man forced out of military service in the pre-DADT 1950’s. But with the obstacle of obtaining community recognition and LGBT support behind them, the theater now faces a new challenge: winning audiences beyond San Diego’s gay and lesbian theater-going crowd.
Looking towards gay-friendly pop culture phenomena like ‘Glee’ and its wildly popular, openly gay character Kurt, new Diversionary Executive Director John Alexander states that pop cultural appeal may be the way forward for San Diego’s LGBT theater scene.
“Popular culture is not a derogatory term,” Alexander insisted. “I think what happened in the ’60s with the growth of the regional theater movement, was this need to create important theater that is serious…they forgot that you can reach people more with pop culture.”
