Making Progress - America's Queer History in 12 Plays

The collection begins with A Taste of Heaven" which is set in the late 1800s where Jackson deftly draws from actual diary entries of F.S. Ryman, a writer of that time, to create a dynamic exchange between two young men attending college in Upstate New York

The play explores the pair's secret experimentation with an intimate relationship and offers a refreshingly candid dialogue from the Victorian era

From there, Making Progress traces the plight of gays and lesbians throughout the 20th century ...

In Armistice, World War I has just ended, and Charles and Sarah are excited to start a new life together. However, new friends and old acquaintances lead their lives in directions they never before imagined

Old Soul transcends the times, as a 1920s college student encourages his modern-day reincarnated soul to follow his true desires

The AIDS epidemic of the 1980s comes to life through an array of intriguing bar patrons in Happy Hour

Making Progress delves into a range of topics - from anti-gay military policy to sodomy laws to the doubts surrounding relationships - and evokes laughter and tears as it follows the gay community's path through history

A riveting portrayal of more than a century's worth of struggles that entertains, educates and celebrates the people who created the modern gay community

"I have created the plays collected in Making Progress out of what I believe is a need for the gay community to learn their own history. That particular history has been left out of our school history books, and although some very diligent historians have been digging up our past and publishing the results, too many of us ignore the importance of making a previously invisible history into a visible one" ~ Michael D Jackson