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Although a revered classic of gay literature, James Baldwin’s “Giovanni’s Room” was always held tightly by the author and his heirs. They have never allowed anyone to adapt it.

Baldwin published “Giovanni’s Room” in 1956 and in the 1970s attempted to develop it into a movie, but the project fell apart.

It is the namesake of the beloved Philadelphia bookstore that opened in 1973, now the oldest gay bookstore in the country. It has been unofficially adapted into countless versions, including a dance earlier this year in Leeds, England.

“Giovanni’s Room” by Quintessence Theatre, now in previews at the Sedgwick Theater in Germantown, is the first sanctioned by the estate of James Baldwin.

“It’s the first authorized version,” said co-writer and director Paul Oakley Stovall. “As we’ve been rehearsing, people are coming out of the woodwork: ‘I did one, but I didn’t tell them.’ You know? This is the first authorized world premiere by the estate.”

Stovall and co-writer Ben Sprunger tried to keep as much of the novel’s complexity in a relatively brief two hours. The story, about an American couple traveling in Europe as the man gets involved in the Paris gay scene, is as much about LGBTQ identity as it is about American privilege abroad.

“It’s about American exceptionalism, where capitalism can drive us,” Stovall said. “How Americans will go to other countries and use it as their playground and destroy it and leave people poor and struggling. It talks about women’s rights or lack thereof. A woman couldn’t get a credit card without a husband until the 1970s.”

“[Baldwin] was so far ahead of his time,” he said. “You can’t tell the whole novel. You just can’t. We can talk about trauma and what we do to try to erase our trauma, ignore our trauma. It’s like a parasite. It feeds on you trying to ignore it.”

A novel begging for the stage

Stovall and Sprunger, who both came out of Chicago’s About Face Theatre and the city’s avant-garde theater scene, lean on their experimental theater chops to compress as much of the novel onto the stage as possible. In the titular room, where through sex the protagonist, David, feels liberated, his mind floats.

“Giovanni’s room becomes a place where magical things happen. That’s how we can bring the other characters from his past in,” Stovall said. “This room and his drinking, his isolation where your mind can play tricks on you. All the things you try to push out will come sweeping back in.”

Sprunger has been trying to bring “Giovanni’s Room” to the stage for almost 20 years.

“Around 2007, I decided to see if I could lift the dialogue directly from the novel and just piecemeal it all together and make a reader’s theater presentation out of it,” he said. “At that time, I looked into the rights and was told, ‘No.’ In a very nice way. They were just kind of, like, ‘You’re not a playwright.’”

Sprunger is an actor on stage and television, including appearances on such shows as “Will & Grace” and “Chicago Fire.”  He put “Giovanni’s Room” in a drawer for years until he teamed up with Stovall, an established playwright, who rebuilt the script from the ground up.

“Characters were speaking their inner monologues and there was all this narration instead of dialogue. It was very presentational. It wasn’t very active,” Sprunger said. “Paul was, like, ‘We’re going to make it active from the get-go. We’re going to come out of the gate at 70 miles per hour.’”

Sprunger and Stovall workshopped the play on stage in Chicago, but still without approval from the Baldwin estate. That came when Quintessence Theatre came on board. Artistic director Alex Burns said Baldwin’s novel was practically begging to be on stage.

“‘Giovanni’s Room’ is one of my favorite books, personally. It was awesomely impactful for me as a young gay man figuring all of that out for myself,” he said. “I had always imagined the scenes of Baldwin’s novel on stage. His writing is so vivid. The pictures he paints with words are inherently theatrical. It seemed like a natural thing to do to put it on stage as a play.”

Burns took on the role of approaching the Baldwin estate for its authorization, which was promptly granted. Although the estate did not offer a reason why, Burns believes it might be because the play now had both a well-established playwright and director on board, and would be produced by a well-established theater company.

It may also be because of a turnover of leadership at the Baldwin estate. Burns said the organization may be looking to put more of Baldwin’s legacy into the broader culture and media.

“Eileen Ahearn, who had been in control of it for generations, had passed away,” Burns said of the estate’s longtime administrator, who died in 2023 at age 75. “The family also was shifting in terms of its vision of what James Baldwin and his work would look like in the future. So it was an opportunity.”

Baldwin died in 1987. Over the past several years, his work has appeared in films, including the 2016 documentary “I Am Not Your Negro” and the 2018 feature film “If Beale Street Could Talk.”

The Baldwin estate sent Burns a letter of approval with some hidden surprises.

“The letter was fascinating. It said: ‘We’ve just discovered what we believe to be a stage adaptation by Baldwin of ‘Giovanni’s Room,’ which is going to be coming out soon,’” Burns said. “So the estate might have its own play coming.”

Quintessence Theatre’s “Giovanni’s Room” is in previews. Opening night is June 7, running until June 22 at the Sedgwick Theater.