As a straight-identified white male in this world, there are few things that have ever felt off limits to me. When Ike first told The Inconvenience that he was channeling the prompt “War and the homefront” to write a historical remix about The Stonewall Inn riots, I’m not proud to say my immediate reaction was a tentative, “Sounds cool… so is this gonna be a gay play?” To which I received a choice mouthful of words that only Ike (as you will soon bear witness) can so singularly string together. The long and the short of it being: “No”.
HIT THE WALL is about people who are fighting for acknowledgement; they’re fighting because they have nothing left to lose. There is no absolute record of what exactly transpired on the night of June 28, 1969 that set the events at the Stonewall Inn in motion. There was no planning or organization behind the riot that ensued. It was a collective impulse that electrified a group of people who had been pushed beyond the breaking point.
The Stonewall Inn riots forced the gay rights issue into the public perspective, and loudly told those who would hate that the response would no longer be passivity. A one-night challenge from a seedy bar full of castoffs gave life to a powerful mass movement.
Regardless of how you interpret the show, acknowledge the challenge that it sets forth and celebrate it with us.