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Allan Morgan

David Oiye

Ilena Lee Cramer

Sarah Stanley

Greg MacArthur

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Kris Nelson

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Cover photo:
Allan Morgan
Hosanna, 1983

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editorial: queer(ies)

Where has all the Queer Theatre gone? It doesn't seem to be in Vancouver. While I've seen in this city a few queer-themed plays; worthy mountings of gay Canadian classics and interpretations of 'shocking' plays from the world stage, I wouldn't call this theatre 'queer.' There are queers in it - rent boys, trannies, clean, upstanding men and women kissing their gay partners - but the work, the message isn't essentially queer, it's queer-themed. This queerthemed theatre is produced well and frequently in Vancouver (and presumably across the country) but what seems to be missing is a mission beyond storytelling, what seems to be missing is a mission of opposition.

While I was coming out in the late 90s, I was also discovering gay Canadian theatre. What was overwhelming to me was how dangerous these plays seemed to be. I'd imagine the leather plays, the AIDS plays, the erotic plays, the dancing-foam-vagina performance art being staged and be amazed that they were produced - they were naughty, unapologetic and burned with a fuel that (I later learned) challenged and charged the community. This work spoke through dangerous and unknown elements, the more unsavory and 'queerer' elements of the LBGT world to break open our notions of propriety, give voice against injustice and demonstrate alternatives to the mainstream. This was a theatre of change, a theatre raw and howling. This theatre might be finished.

Case study: I'm a young, gay, white man in theatre. Being queer isn't my struggle. My queer experience is a part of, but not essential to the questions I want to pose with my work. My queerness is not my calling card, and it's not part of my need to build an identity as an artist. Am I part of a new generation that's moved beyond its sexuality? Seeing a same-sex kiss on stage fifteen years ago was revolutionary, a demand for the inclusion of queers into the rest of society. Now, that same-sex kiss has a different power, it confirms the battle those revolutionary queers had to fight - the battle that has cleared the field for me - by acknowledging that same-sex love on stage is within the realm of the permissible. In other words, it says: we're here, we're queer, and maybe we're used to it. So, am I right? Has queer theatre died? Have we worked our way into the mainstream only to find out the public is no longer interested? Did the revolution work too well?

Possibly.

What if we change the definition? For me, Queer Theatre is theatre that challenges, moves and breaks the status quo; Queer Theatre rallies us around a story to examine our world. It asks us to delight in this world and tells us when to fear it. I want a theatre that comes from a place on the outside, on the fringe, that comes from queerness. And this queerness doesn't need be exclusively homosexually queer; it can be queer because of its bravery, risk, and ability to astound. It can be queer because it interprets from what's different, unacceptable and taboo.

I still want to hear queer voices, I need Canadian theatre to include the rabble of barrier breakers and outsiders that defined and defines our queer theatre. So, with this desire, I want to know what established and emerging queer artists have to say about where our theatre in Canada is - if it's alive and I'm not seeing it, if it's cocooned in metamorphoses. I want to find out how queer artists are defining their own theatre, how they take stock of the path they've traveled, how they are part of its continuing evolution. Most of all, I want to uncover how queer artists identify what about queer theatre is still essential, vital and necessary in our world.

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transmissions is a publication on "theatre, art and ideas", dispatched by Rumble Productions Society in print and via the Internet. The views expressed in transmissions are those of the editors and writers. All rights reserved. Letters to the editor are always welcome.