Stonewall history comes to life in Talking Statues at Christopher Park

LGBTQ history is coming to life with a little help from a talking park, four bronze statues and the voices of five beloved Broadway actors — including a Tony Award-winning, history-making star.

In the recently launched “Talking Statues at Christopher Park” project, multi-hyphenate actor J. Harrison Ghee gives life to the tiny piece of land in the heart of Manhattan’s West Village that has been an integral part of queer and trans life in the city both before and after the 1969 Stonewall Riots.

Four other Broadway actors — Jenn Colola, Rosa Gilmore, Claybourne Elder and Conrad Ricamora — now lend their voices to George Segal’s long-standing “Gay Liberation” statues, helping to illustrate Stonewall’s history from a different perspective.

Two 6-minute-long audio clips can now be accessed by anyone with a mobile phone. Visitors only need to scan a QR code to receive a call, which allows them to hear from the talking figures.

“Talking Statues” began in Copenhagen 10 years ago and is now present in cities across the U.S. In New York, there are more than 30 sculptures that already use the technology, but the Christopher Park project is the first in the nation to directly address LGBTQ history.

The installation is the result of a collaboration between two award-winning organizations dedicated to preserving and honoring the city’s rich LGBTQ history — the hit podcast “Making Gay History” and the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project.

Tom Viola, executive director of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, also contributed to the project by finding a casting agent. His organization covered the associated costs in resolving the “complex puzzle” of coming up with a “very diverse group of people to represent these five roles,” says Eric Marcus, the founder and host of “Making Gay History.”

The role of Christopher Park itself went to Ghee, who made history last week as the first nonbinary actor to win a Tony Award for their portrayal of Jerry/Daphne in the musical “Some Like It Hot.”

They tell the early history of the country’s first national monument dedicated to LGBTQ history, as well as the violent clashes between patrons of the Stonewall Inn and New York police that marked a new moment in the fight for LGBTQ equality.

The four other voices, played by openly LGBTQ Broadway actors, bring life to the models who were brave enough to let themselves be immortalized in Segal’s realistic sculptures in the late 1970s.

The two women represented in the statues — Leslie Cohen and Beth Suskin — were a real-life couple, while the two male models were not romantically involved. One of the men, the late David Boyce, was a friend of the artist. The identity of the other man is still a mystery, says Ken Lustbader, co-founder of the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project.

When commissioned, it was specified the “Gay Liberation” statues “had to be loving and caring, and show the affection that is the hallmark of gay people.” They were also to include equal representation of women and men.

However, the monument, which found its permanent home in Christopher Park in 1992, has since been criticized by some members of the LGBTQ community, who have taken issue with its lack of representation — which is something the four talking statues can tell you all about.