Ravenhill laughed when reminded of his words of 15 years ago. “Why do I have this strong sense that ‘writing gay’ is a project that is now totally over?” In 2007, he wrote a column for the Guardian, headlined “My pink fountain pen has run dry”, in which he said how “every time I try to write ‘gay’, I start yawning. Ravenhill has been a long-time critic about the cliched state of LGBTQ+ arts, which he said too often characterized gay men as either dark and deadly or light and fluffy. So (I’m) much more interested in how something like the LGBTQ thing can open up new exciting, fresh stories.” “But there’s also just something joyful and beautiful and artistic about it. “I guess there’s something political about (giving the female role to a man),” Ravenhill said. Ravenhill said he made the gender swap for artistic reasons rather than to hammer home any LGBTQ+ message. “I see that my 27-year-old self had a lot in common with Rodolfo and Mimi and their bohemian cohort.” “A group of flatmates struggling to pay the bills the arrival of a troubled but ultimately doomed newcomer the hovering presence of the older man with money,” he collected in the Guardian newspaper. The show, which runs until May 28, has parallels with his own life of 30 years ago, according to Ravenhill, who is now 55. Ravenhill’s production of Puccini’s tale of 1890s bohemian Paris life, playing at London’s King’s Head theatre, casts two gay men in the lead roles of poet Rodolfo and the central female character of lowly seamstress Mimi. We don’t have to say this is terribly socially important and here are the issues that we’ve covered.” is emphasizing the fun and joy of those things. “I’m not particularly interested in art as an agent of social change,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a telephone interview ahead of Thursday’s gala opening. Known globally for his 1990s megahit “Shopping and Fucking”, Ravenhill said LGBTQ+ arts must first and foremost entertain he even rewrote the official website description of his new opera by him to reflect that priority. LGBTQ+ theater should put art before politics and stop pushing a social agenda, said top British playwright Mark Ravenhill ahead of his “queer reinvention” of Puccini’s opera “La Boheme”.