The same year saw the premiere of Love's Fire, a compilation of work by seven writers--Tony Kushner, Marsha Norman, Ntozake Shange, Eric Bogosian, John Guare, Wendy Wasserstein, and Finn--each of whom wrote a segment interpreting one of Shakespeare's sonnets. Finn's piece, Painting You, based on Sonnet 102, which is almost entirely sung, takes a light-hearted look at a gay artist having trouble capturing his lover on canvas. Perhaps because of its unusual structure, the play has received mixed reviews, ranging from delighted to bewildered.

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Finn's most recent venture is Elegies (2003), a musical remembrance of loved ones, colleagues, and pets who have died over the past twenty years. Once again Finn takes painful topics, including the loss of his beloved mother and the devastating toll of AIDS among his friends, and creates a celebration of life that critic Stephen Holden calls a "moving and exuberant song suite."

Throughout his career Finn has been compared to Sondheim because of the wit and urbanity of his writing. He has his own distinctive voice, however, and speaks with understanding about confronting life in all its complexity with sadness and joy, dilemmas and hope intermingled.

The musical has been a significant aspect of American gay male culture, manifesting itself both in diva worship and, more recently, in the presentation of openly gay characters and shows written by gay writers primarily for gay audiences.

There has always been homosexual involvement in American musical theatre and a homosexual sensibility even in straight musicals, and recently the Broadway musical has welcomed openly homosexual themes and situations.

Accomplished actor and singer John Barrowman has won plaudits as a musical theater star, as well as for his roles in film and television.

In addition to being a prize-winning playwright, Tony Kushner has become a celebrity spokesman for gay politics and AIDS activism.

As one of the key figures that western civilization has used to define itself, William Shakespeare stands in a complicated, fiercely contested relationship to homosexuality.

One of the most innovative talents of the musical theater in the second half of the twentieth century, Stephen Sondheim has only indirectly reflected his homosexuality in his work.