Reviews 2016
Reviews 2016
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by Damien Atkins, Paul Dunn & Andrew Kushnir, directed by Ashlie Corcoran
Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Toronto
January 6-31, 2016
“Who is entitled to speak for past generations?”
The Gay Heritage Project by actor/creators Damien Atkins, Paul Dunn and Andrew Kushnir premiered at Buddies in bad Times Theatre in November 2013 and has now returned for a second run before a cross-Canada tour. The title is initially off-putting – suggesting something more akin to a museum display than live theatre. The show, however, is anything but dry and dusty. Atkins, Dunn and Kushnir have done an heroic job of taking the facts and questions related to the notion of “gay heritage” and finding imaginative ways to give them theatrical impact.
As you enter the Chamber at Bud in Bad Times Theatre, you see that Kimberly Purtell’s set is a large white square playing area that curves up to a large white screen, narrowing as it rises, as if the playing area and the screen were part of the same cloth. Rolling upwards like films credits on the screen is a mission statement “What is Heritage?” from the UMass Amherst Center for Heritage and Society.
Two passages in particular are central to the concerns of the Project. The first defines the range of heritage: “Heritage is the full range of our inherited traditions, monuments, objects, and culture. Most important, it is the range of contemporary activities, meanings, and behaviors that we draw from them”. The second raises questions: “Heritage is, or should be, the subject of active public reflection, debate, and discussion. What is worth saving? What can we, or should we, forget? What memories can we enjoy, regret, or learn from? Who owns "The Past" and who is entitled to speak for past generations?”
Atkins, Dunn and Kushnir begin by telling us they are gay and state their national backgrounds – Australian for Atkins, Scottish and Irish for Dunn and Ukrainian-Canadian for Kushnir. All three are also Caucasian. This simple introduction contains all the questions that the three will explore. It is easy to identify one’s background in terms of nationality or race since these are directly inherited from one’s parents. But what can gay people be said to have inherited from the past?
It’s clear that when the three first embarked on the Project that they had different conceptions of what constituted “gay heritage” from what they do now. They satirize their own initial views by means of a fictional Gay History Channel hosted by Dunn. One scene shows a 19th-century Toronto stableboy who says he is “gay” and pines after another man. In steps a “Queer Theorist” played by Kushnir, who objects to the scene and the whole premise of the Gay History Channel. He says that the notion “gay” is a modern construction and there is no way that someone in the 19th century would have spoken of himself in that way.
The Theorist objects to the GHC’s entire premise that there is a line of Famous Gay People from the past, since few of them would have identified as “gay” in the modern sense or even as “homosexual”. If, as in several ancient societies, most notably in Ancient Greece, it was common for men to have sex with younger men, those men would hardly identify as “homosexual” and would have none of the negative repercussions of that word to deal with as would people in other places and times.
In another sketch, Atkins plays Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion and Toto in a hilarious recreation of the friends’ visit to the Wizard of Oz. Here, amid numerous sexual innuendos, they discover that the Wizard is none other than French theorist Michel Foucault (1926-84) from who most present queer theory derives. Foucault disturbs Dorothy and the “friends of Dorothy” (geddit?) by telling her that there is no such thing as “gay heritage” since all forms of sexuality are social constructs. If Dorothy wants a heritage, then she should choose one. So, clicking her heels, Atkins’ Dorothy chants “Choose your heritage” just as she did “There’s no place like home”.
It is thus ironic that Atkins, Dunn and Kushnir’s Project should get off to such a shaky start because of theories formulated by gays themselves. Yet, it is immensely to the trio’s credit that they acknowledge this issue and attempt to incorporate it into their presentation, and it sets the show on a much more sophisticated plane that the title suggests.
“So”, Dunn asks the Queer Theorist, “You mean we can’t talk about Christopher Marlowe, Tchaikovsky at al. as Famous Gay Men?” The answer is “No”, but Dunn has just finished mentioning them anyway. And so it is throughout the show. Atkins, Dunn and Kushnir discuss “gay heritage” but always as if it had a line drawn through it. They thus achieve what Foucault’s fellow philosopher Jacques Derrida did by striking through words in his texts – both saying and not saying an idea at the same time.
The trio’s approach is made explicit in later skit by Paul Dunn where he goes to a fictional licensing bureau for queer subject matter. He puts forward his proposal that he, Atkins and Kushnir want to put on a theatre piece about gay heritage. The licenser objects that all three are privileged, white, middle-class males. The fact that they are gay means nothing. A license for the Project is denied, although the licenser assumes they will go ahead anyway, and she tells Dunn that he is allowed to speak only of his own experiences. Thus we get the ultra-politically correct answer to the Amherst question, “Who is entitled to speak for past generations?”
But, as the licenser notes, the three go ahead anyway, the objection noted, and proceed with Foucault’s suggestion of “Choose your heritage”. At first glance, this seems like an extremely superficial response. At second glance, though, we see that it recommends what people, gay or straight, already do. Those who are allowed a choice choose among political, religious, philosophical and artistic heritages as a natural part of growing up. For gay people the question is to know what the past holds and to choose to make that part of life in the present.
Having finally overcome the main theoretical arguments against what they are doing, the trio proceed to explore gay people and themes in the past in a wide variety of ways. In order to deal with the “Famous Gay Men” problem, Kushnir has several segments where he pretends he is playing with the latest Canadian Gay Action figures. Starting in the early 20th century and moving forward each segment lists the names of Canadians who took important steps in increasing the rights of gay people in Canada.
To deal with the problem of white people appropriating the stories of other cultures, Dunn introduces a book club where we hear various people recommend books about famous gay people in China and among the First Nations. But the ultimate rebuff to theoretical notions about who can tell what stories comes at the end. “How I came out” is probably the ur-story of gayness and belongs to no one but to the individual concerned. Yet, Kushnir acts Atkins own coming out story, Dunn acts Kushnir’s and Atkins acts Dunn’s.
The meaning of this overturning of the rules that the trio have been dealing with so carefully throughout the show represents the realization that theorists can say whatever they like but all three are actors who as a profession, play roles and those roles can include stories of the lives of other actors, and by implication, of anyone they choose to embody. Indeed, the show has already demonstrated this since all three have already played women, non-whites and straights in the course of the action.
Each of the three actors is allowed at least one big moment, but Kushnir is the only one who as a narrative that threads its way through the sketches. It involves his attempt to disprove his mother’s claim that there are no gay men in Ukraine. Kushnir’s big moment and the high point of the entire show is his fantastic traversal of snippets of popular song from Cole Porter and Noel Coward through Broadway shows and disco right up to Lady Gaga, whose “Born This Way” seems rather to refute Foucault’s claim that sexuality is a social construct. This kind of thing is likely what most of the audience expected from the show and Kushnir delivers the medley with great energy and style.
Dunn is generally given more downbeat themes that contrast with Kushnir’s optimism. In one skit he is visited by an ancient Roman who is part of the “It gets worse” campaign. The visitor points out that at one point homosexuality was so accepted in Rome that the Emperor Heliogabalus (d. 222ad) married the athlete Zoticus at a public ceremony. But by the time of Marcus Philippus (d. 249ad), men were being persecuted for homosexual activity. The point Dunn makes is that great as the advances in gay rights have been, they never should be taken for granted. Dunn’s finest moment is biographical where he parallels his moving to Montreal to become an actor with the story he was reading at the time of a survivor from a Nazi concentration camp who was imprisoned for being gay. Flipping instantly between his own story and the survivors, Dunn realizes his new sense of freedom contrasts with the survivor’s lack of it and how this knowledge helped to politicize Dunn.
Atkins portrays himself halfway between the upbeat Kushnir and the downbeat Dunn. He has two particularly hard-hitting showstoppers. In one sketch he is a contestant on fictional gameshow and delivers an increasingly vehement rant on “What I Hate about Being a Gay Actor”. Atkins uncovers many things we have heard about but never put with such clarity and anger, such as the fact that directors still reject a gay actor for a part for being “too gay” while never rejecting a straight actor for being “too straight”. What part of being a professional actor do they and the public fail to understand?
In the second sketch he again plays himself, this time giving a victim impact statement at a trial where the HIV virus is on trial as a mass murderer. How can Atkins be a “victim” when he does not have HIV nor has ever known anyone who does. For theatregoers a generation older than Atkins, his impassioned reply is extremely illuminating. To be gay and in his 30s, Atkins realized that that AIDS had cut a huge swath through the previous two generations leaving him and others of his generation to grow up in a vacuum, without mentors, without elders, to help them understand better what gay life could or should be like. Atkins emotional speech is an important corrective for those who think that the younger generation has grown up untouched by AIDS.
Never have I seen a performance piece essentially about information presented in such a gripping, entertaining and highly theatrical way. Much of this is due to the three immensely talented performers involved. But since the show consists entirely of short sketches credit for the cohesion of the show must go to director Ashlie Corcoran, who so deftly gives the sketches an overall shape and rhythm. Nevertheless, at one hour and 45 minutes, the show is at least 15 minutes too long. Several sketches are redundant particularly on the questions, “Who owns "The Past" and who is entitled to speak for past generations?” This was clearly a major concern for the threesome but they could have dealt with it handily in just a few key scenes before they cleverly dispose of it.
The Gay Heritage Project is certainly a much more probing and much more humorous show than the title would lead you to believe. In fact, it is so concerned with the question of representing heritage in general it should appeal to wider audience than gay people and those who wish to know more about them. Still, gay people will feel proud that Atkins, Dunn and Kushnir have undertaken this project and present it with such marvellous panache.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photos: (from top) Paul Dunn, Andrew Kushnir and Damien Atkins; Paul Dunn, Andrew Kushnir and Damien Atkins. ©2016 Guntar Kravis.
For tickets, visit http://buddiesinbadtimes.com.
2016-01-08
The Gay Heritage Project