One evening after the show, Ricketts noticed a group of young Black boys waiting to meet him. "In that moment I realized how powerful art can be, particularly to queer Black kids," he said.

The Western Flyer, a state-of-the-art purse seiner when it was built in 1937, was chartered by John Steinbeck and his marine biologist friend, Ed "Doc" Ricketts, for a six-week expedition that would ...