Sir Ian Murray McKellen is an English actor. With a career spanning more than sixty years, he is noted for his roles on the screen and stage in genres ranging from Shakespearean dramas and modern theatre to popular fantasy and science fiction. He is regarded as a British cultural icon and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1991. He has received numerous accolades, including a Tony Award, six Olivier Awards, and a Golden Globe Award as well as nominations for two Academy Awards, five BAFTA Awards and five Emmy Awards.
Edgar Montilion "Monty" Woolley was an American film and theater actor. At the age of 50, he achieved a measure of stardom for his role in the 1939 stage play The Man Who Came to Dinner and its 1942 film adaptation. His distinctive white beard was his trademark and he was affectionately known as "The Beard."
Robert Gant is an American actor. He is best known for his role as Ben Bruckner on the Showtime series Queer as Folk.
Stonewall is a 1995 British-American historical comedy-drama film directed by Nigel Finch, his final film before his AIDS-related death shortly after filming ended. Inspired by the memoir of the same title by gay historian Martin Duberman, Stonewall is a fictionalized account of the weeks leading up to the Stonewall riots, a seminal event in the modern American gay rights movement. The film stars Guillermo Díaz, Frederick Weller, Brendan Corbalis, and Duane Boutte.
Gary Beadle is a British actor.
Simon Tseko Nkoli was an anti-apartheid, gay rights and AIDS activist in South Africa.
John R. Gordon is a British writer. His work – novels, plays, screenplays and biography - deals with the intersections of race, sexuality and class. With Rikki Beadle-Blair he founded and runs queer-of-colour-centric indie press Team Angelica. Although he was a "white person from a white suburb", according to Gordon, in the 1980s he became deeply interested in black cultural figures such as James Baldwin, Malcolm X and Frantz Fanon, and they have influenced his work ever since.
Michael Grumley was an American writer and artist.
Paul Keating is an English actor. He has been nominated twice for an Olivier Award for his performances on the West End stage. He began acting at the age of 12, appearing as Gavroche in Les Misérables at The Palace Theatre for 10 months.
Robert Chevara is a British director and writer. He was born in London to a single parent Mother.
Sean Michael O'Connor is an English producer, writer, and director working in theatre, film, television and radio. He was the editor of the long-running BBC radio drama, The Archers from 2013 to 2016 and the executive producer of EastEnders from 2016 to 2017.
Phyllis Akua Opoku-Gyimah, also known as Lady Phyll, is a British political activist known for her work for racial, gender and LGBT+ equality. She is Co-Founder and Chief Executive of UK Black Pride and former executive director of Kaleidoscope Trust.
Michael Bronski is an American academic and writer, best known for his 2011 book A Queer History of the United States. He has been involved with LGBT politics since 1969 as an activist and organizer. He has won numerous awards for LGBTQ activism and scholarship, including the prestigious Publishing Triangle's Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement. Bronski is a Professor of Practice in Media and Activism at Harvard University.
The LGBT community in London is one of the largest within Europe. LGBT culture of London, England, is centred on Old Compton Street in Soho. There are also LGBT pubs and restaurants across London in Haggerston, Dalston and Vauxhall.
Larry Duplechan is an American novelist. He is best known for his novels Blackbird, adapted in 2014 by Patrik-Ian Polk as a film starring Mo'Nique and Isaiah Washington, and Got 'til It's Gone, which won an award in the Gay Romance category at the 21st Lambda Literary Awards.
Fit is a 2010 film written and directed by Rikki Beadle-Blair, and commissioned by the Gay Rights Charity Stonewall. It is adapted from the 2008 play of the same name about the everyday lives of a group of both gay and straight millennial students taking drama and dance class. The original play had been developed in 2008 to address the growing problem of homophobic bullying in British schools, and was especially created for KS3 students, with a specific focus on learning objectives from the National Curriculum including PHSE and Citizenship. The film itself was opened in the form of an introductory chapter, with six interlinking chapters of fifteen minutes, each focusing on one of the main characters in a first-person perspective of their life, views and problems. The DVD release of Fit also contained five video diaries for each of the characters, giving students and other viewers the opportunity to listen to the characters talking more in-depth about their feelings and the situation they are facing.
Maud's was a lesbian bar at 937 Cole Street in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury District which opened in 1966 and closed in 1989. At the time of its closing, which was captured in the film, Last Call at Maud's, it was claimed to be the oldest lesbian bar in the United States. Its history, documented in the film and other media, spanned almost a quarter-century of LGBT events.
Strawberry Fields is a theatre play written by Stephen Poliakoff and staged at the Cottesloe, National Theatre in March 1977. Strawberry Fields was the first ever National Theatre production at the Cottesloe, the NT’s ‘black box’ studio theatre.
Raphael Khouri Is a Jordanian queer, transgender documentary playwright, journalist, activist, and theatre artist.
Iman Qureshi is a London-based writer, awarded the PAPAtango prize for new writing for her play 'The Funeral Director' in 2018. Her work explores themes of race, gender, and sexuality, and she has spoken openly about her identity as a Muslim and her desire to create community and political change through her work.
