"The cabaret bar at The Marsh Berkeley: It's a low-lit, convivial room where stories feel personal, laughter bounces off the bar glasses, and conversation lingers long after the curtain call. This fall, it's the stage for cultural firebrand and renowned playwright Terry Baum's Lesbo Solo: My Gay History Play, her chronicle, love letter, and rallying cry to gay revolution across five decades and counting."
"Lesbo Solo brings modern audiences along for the confusion, laughter, bruises, and joys of queer liberation as Baum lived it. The show's world-premiere presentation at the San Francisco Fringe Festival in 2024 was succeeded by a second engagement at World Pride in Washington, D.C., which drew rave responses, particularly from younger queer audiences who had never seen their history told with such raw intimacy. One described it as a thrilling moment of "having their history," a truly relatable story that resonates across generations."
"Onstage, Baum is equal parts storyteller, comedian, and griot. She opens with tales of her adolescence, when she dutifully attended synagogue and insisted she liked boys, even as her heart tugged her elsewhere. She weaves in mythologies like the story of Lilith, banished from the Bible into the Apocrypha, later reimagined as a feminist icon. Lilith became the namesake for Lilith Women's Theatre, the Berkeley-based feminist theatre company Baum co-founded in 1975 with two of her friends."
Terry Baum's Lesbo Solo: My Gay History Play unfolds in a low-lit cabaret at The Marsh Berkeley, blending memoir, myth, and comedy into a five-decade chronicle of queer liberation. The performance premiered at the San Francisco Fringe Festival in 2024 and followed with a World Pride engagement in Washington, D.C., drawing enthusiastic responses, especially from younger queer audiences who felt newly connected to their past. Baum performs as storyteller, comedian, and griot, recounting adolescent synagogue attendance, early romances, and the founding of Lilith Women's Theatre in 1975. The piece balances revelatory history, exuberant fun, and theatrical bravado that resonates across generations.
Read at San Francisco Bay Times
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