SFGate.com – Robert Hurwitt
Given another decade, it may have to start lying about its age. Theatre Rhinoceros, San Francisco and the nation’s “longest-running professional queer theater company,” turns 30 this season. Founded in 1977 by Allan Estes, its first artistic director, and managing director Lanny Baugniet, the Rhino has long enjoyed a higher national than local profile as an incubator of new gay and lesbian plays, becoming the first gay theater to receive National Endowment for the Arts funding.
It’s celebrating with a look back, “Theatre Rhinoceros: The First Thirty Years.” Compiled and staged by current Artistic Director John Fisher, the show is billed as a revue of “original songs and scenes from three decades of new theater about the love that not only speaks but also shouts, sings and dances its name.”