Stonewall riots history comes to life in a NYC park with help from ‘talking’ statues and Tony-winning star J. Harrison Ghee

from the New York Daily News

LGBTQ history is coming to life with a little help from four “talking” statues and the voices of five Broadway actors.

In the recently launched “Talking Statues at Christopher Park” project, Tony-winning actor J. Harrison Ghee and theater stars Jenn Colola, Rosa Gilmore, Claybourne Elder and Conrad Ricamora lend their voices to the long-standing “Gay Liberation” statues in the West Village park, helping to illustrate the history of the 1969 Stonewall riots from a different perspective through audio clips accessed with a QR code on a mobile phone.

They tell of the origins 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 turning point in the fight for LGBTQ equality.

In New York, there are more than 30 sculptures across the city that already use the “Taking Statues” 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.

Read the full story from the New York Daily News.

Featured thumbnail via Eric Marcus.