The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot: Reading and Discussion
Join us for this excerpt reading and author discussion of the original theater piece “The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot,” produced by the Tenderloin Museum.
The play dramatizes the events surrounding the eponymous 1966 event that catalyzed LGBTQ activism in San Francisco and worldwide. A groundbreaking hybrid of theater, site-specific interactivity, and living history, “The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot” was directly inspired by the San Francisco riot at a popular Tenderloin cafeteria, three years before New York’s more famous Stonewall Riots. Since the 2004 rediscovery of the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot by historian Susan Stryker, it has become an integral piece of the Tenderloin’s identity — and this play offers a singular opportunity for audiences to celebrate the individuals whose tenacious spirit spawned a civil rights movement.
“It’s an important story of the queer civil rights movement that started in the Tenderloin before spreading to the rest of the country.”
“There’s no way anyone is going to fall asleep—you can connect with these characters.”
