Photo by Davide Laffe
Storytellers
Michael Shayan
Meet one of the artists, disruptors, educators, groundbreakers, innovators, and storytellers who all helped make the world a better place for LGBTQ+ people.
“It’s strange to look up and realize you’re living a lifelong dream,” says Michael Shayan, a queer Iranian-American Jewish writer and performer. But in 2023 he made it happen when he premiered his solo show Avaaz at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, Calif., with the help of an award-winning team led by Tony-nominated director Moritz von Stuelpnagel. In Avaaz, Shayan plays his mother and shares the story of her escape from Tehran to “Tehran-geles,” California, during the Iranian Revolution.
“With Avaaz, I tried to write what I thought would be an impossible challenge; I wanted to push my limits as a writer and performer,” says Shayan. “I’m a maximalist — I try to give my audiences the same intensity of feeling you’d get at a Beyoncé concert or from trying to get tickets to one. I use extravagant humor and larger-than-life characters to tear into my most impossible questions and deepest pain.”
Avaaz wasn’t Shayan’s first big success in the industry. In 2023 he received an Emmy nomination for his writing on the Max series The Book of Queer, where he also served as a consulting producer. He worked on the Emmy-winning We’re Here as well.
In March, Avaaz will premiere on the East Coast at the Olney Theatre Center in Maryland. Shayan also wrote a new play for Audible about a group of addicts stuck on a gay cruise from hell called Cruising, which will premiere early next year.
Reflecting on his success, Shayan says, “I come from a culture where people like me can’t exist, and art gave me a way to imagine new possibilities for myself, my family, and my intersectional communities.” He adds, “I hope that my queerness, my Iranianness, my Jewishness ripples out into the world with my work and helps empower others to make their own ripples.” @michaelshayan
Storytellers
Randy Wicker
Meet one of the artists, disruptors, educators, groundbreakers, innovators, and storytellers who all helped make the world a better place for LGBTQ+ people.
Photo by Brendan Fay
Over the last 65 years, LGBTQ+ advocate, journalist, and archivist Randy Wicker has achieved many firsts. In 1962 he organized a radio broadcast that caused the Federal Communications Commission to rule that homosexuality was a legitimate topic for on-air discussion. In 1964 Wicker organized the first public demonstration for gay civil rights in the United States, which took place in front of the U.S. Army Induction Center in New York City. Also in 1964, he was the first out gay person to participate in a live television show when he answered calls on The Les Crane Show.
“I’ve always been a truth-telling journalist willing to confront power and champion unpopular causes,” says Wicker. “That is what motivated me to join the New York Mattachine Society in 1958 and be the first self-identified homosexual to speak out on radio in 1962.”
Now 85 years old, Wicker shows no signs of slowing down. This year Wicker launched a petition to remove the statue of Gen. Phil Sheridan from Stonewall National Park — because of Sheridan’s massacre of Indigenous people. He also served as a grand marshal at this year’s NYC Pride March.
Recently, he donated his archives to the National LGBTQ+ Archives. “My archives are titled ‘The Randy Wicker & Marsha P. Johnson’ archives since Marsha P. Johnson lived with me for over a decade and was the house mother of my extended gay family,” says Wicker. “Twenty-five years of my Christmas letters contain many stories about her.”
Though much progress has been made thanks to Wicker’s work, he is adamant that the fight continues, especially in other parts of the world. He notes that “genocidal hatred and religious intolerance” run rampant in many societies. “We must help LGBTQ+ people overseas improve their circumstances!” @randolfewicker