Theatre Rhinoceros

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[edit] The Golden Years

Theatre Rhinoceros was founded in the spring of 1977 by Lanny Baugniet (who became the theater’s General Manager) and his partner Allan B. Estes, Jr. (who became the theater’s Artistic Director) as a non-profit theater company dedicated to the production of plays by and about gay men and women. Their first production, mounted in August 1977, was Lanford Wilson’s The Madness of Lady Bright, at the Gay Community Center (then located at 330 Grove Street in San Francisco), produced by Baugniet and directed by Estes. That first season continued with Gays at Play, Stone Rhino, Gayhem, and David Guerdon’s The Laundry, directed by Baugniet. The operating budget for that first year was $3,900—an amount which doubled every year for the company’s first seven years of operation to $250,000 for its 1983-1984 season. The 1978-1979 season opened with a revamping of Gays at Play, which was comprised of LeRoi Jones’ The Baptism (directed by Estes) and Fred Puliafito’s Para de Noya (directed by Baugniet) —but it was the monumental success of the next production, Doric Wilson’s West Street Gang (performed at the South of Market leather bar The Black & Blue) that won the company’s first Cable Car Award and enabled the company to establish residence in its first home at the Goodman Building at 1115 Geary Street. The season concluded with Male Rites, which included C.D. Arnold’s Downtown Local, Robert Chesley’s Hell, I Love You, Lanford Wilson’s The Great Nebula in Orion, and Cal Yeoman’s Richmond Jim, which production also toured to New York. The 1979-1980 season was dedicated to a festival of plays by Robert Patrick which included See Other Side, Fred and Harold, The Loves of the Artists, Haunted Host, Kennedy’s Children, T-Shirts, and My Cup Ranneth Over. The season concluded with Doric Wilson’s A Perfect Relationship. By this time, Baugniet had written successful grants for the fledgling theater company from the City & County of San Francisco, the California Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts—and he had formulated a successful subscription campaign that was second only in numbers to the American Conservatory Theater in the San Francisco Bay Area. The 1980-1981 season consisted of Doric Wilson’s Forever After, Joel Schwartz’s Power Lines, Noel Grieg’s The Dear Love of Comrades, Harvey Fierstein’s The International Stud, Victor Bumbalo’s Kitchen Duty and American Coffee, and Arch Brown’s News Boy. Theatre Rhinoceros also opened its studio theater during this season with Cal Yeomans' The Line Forms to the Rear and Dan Curzon’s Beer and Rhubarb Pie, and had hired its third full-time employee Raleigh Waugh as Technical Director. The 1981-1982 season opened with C.D. Arnold’s Dinosaurs, the final production at the Goodman Building, after which the company moved into its quarters at the Redstone Building at 2926-16th Street, where it remains to this day (the theater is now in its 30th season, the nation’s oldest continually operating gay theater company). The inaugural productions in the company’s new theatre were Harvey Fierstein’s Fugue in a Nursery on the main stage and Robert Chesley’s Stray Dog Story in the studio. The remaining main stage productions for that year were George Birimisa’s Pogey Bait, Doric Wilson’s Street Theatre, Noel Coward’s Design for Living, and a revival of T-Shirts. The 1982-1983 main stage season consisted of Robert Graham’s Sins of the Father, Jane Chambers’ My Blue Heaven, Arthur Laurents’ The Enclave, Victor Bumbalo’s Niagara Falls, C.D. Arnold’s King of the Crystal Palace (one of the first produced plays to deal with AIDS), and a revival of A Perfect Relationship. The 1983-1984 main stage season included Bill Russell’s Fortune, Tennessee Williams’ Vieux Carré, Jane Chambers’ A Late Snow, Richard Benner’s Crystal Blaze, Adele Prandini’s Safe Light, Lanford Wilson’s 5th of July—it was during the run of this play that Estes died of AIDS—and Richard Gray’s Bad Drama. After Estes’ death, Baugniet turned the theater over to his staff and retired into private life. Including studio productions and staged readings, he had produced over one hundred titles for the theater company. His papers are housed at the LGBT Historical Society in San Francisco and the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley.