DENVER — June is pride month -- a time to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community.
Inside the King Center in Denver, a long-awaited musical that explores the community's history is finally hitting the stage.
Starting Friday night and going into Saturday night, the Denver Gay Men's Chorus will perform "Unbreakable" three times. Tickets are still available.
"The long delay is finally over, not without its challenges, but here we are and it's going to happen tonight," said James Knapp, the Artistic and Managing Director of the Denver Gay Men's Chorus.
"Unbreakable" is described as a historical musical that uses song to tell the history of the LGBTQ+ community over more than 100 years.
"It is a historical musical documentation of a lot of history you probably don't know about and should know about," Knapp said.
The musical styles include Broadway, pop and classical, among others, to describe how the community has evolved.
"You'll be hearing a historical re-visitation of the executive order of President Eisenhower in the mid-fifties when he put out an executive order that terminated 5,000 federal employees that were gay and lesbian," Knapp said. "Then there's a movement about HIV/AIDS, which happened in the early eighties, called 41."
Knapp explained that he feels it's important to allow the singers and artists to think about their personal experiences when performing.
"I encourage and invite our singers to pull upon their personal experience of homophobia, of being physically and verbally attacked," said Knapp. "Because it makes the music that much more real and makes it personal. It doesn't come from the musical page. It comes from the musical soul."
Overall, he hopes that this musical provides education.
"I hope that the people that experience this will not only have a great curiosity of finding out more information about the individuals and the historical things that happened, but they'll be so inspired that they'll share these stories with other people because it's that domino effect, it's that ripple effect of boom -- here is the information, and where does it go?" Knapp said.
For the musical "Unbreakable," it was originally supposed to be performed in June of 2020, but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This year marks 40 years of the Denver Gay Men's Chorus performing.
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