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Under the fig leaf Queer theatre wakes up the mainstream by GAËTAN CHARLEBOIS "Could it be you'll be inviting some kids to try it?" Diane Sawyer to Ellen DeGeneres on ABC's 20/20, April 25
Well guess what, folks! Get away from the tube and come to the theatre and you'll see you can't make queers cry anymore. They're taking off the fig leaves and brazening it out. They're very angry, very funny and very sexy. And it's good theatre, too, because queers have been doing it since the Greeks. Gone are the coy winks and nudges--like what is the deal with Brick and Skipper in Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof? Mainstream queer theatre is louder and sometimes raunchy. Like Tony Kushner's drama Angels in America--to open at Centaur--and Nicky Silver's dark comedy The Food Chain, opening at the Saidye Bronfman Centre (SBC). These two productions--and SBC's recent Lips Together, Teeth Apart, comedian Lea DeLaria's recent visit, Ellen, the movies Bound and the upcoming Love! Valour! Compassion!, based on Terrence McNally's play--are part of an artistic critical mass. Gays and lesbians, who had always been in the arts, are demanding liberation in the form of the free expression of their selves. And they want to write about themselves in terms less hideous than some straights do (like Vivienne Laxdall's Karla and Grif). But why now? And why are straights listening? "I think it's AIDS," says Gordon McCall, director of Angels and Centaur's new artistic director. "It has caused an empowerment in the gay community and has put a face on people so that mainstream North America can see it." Sky Gilbert, one of the fathers of gay theatre in Canada and founder of Toronto's Buddies in Bad Times, as well as the star of The Food Chain, agrees. Indeed, crisis and urgency in theatre has a way of rendering ideas more universal. No matter what people thought of Arthur Miller's redness, they embraced his anti-McCarthyist The Crucible. And no matter what Broadway patrons thought of the war in Vietnam, they rushed to David Rabe's many anti-war plays (Sticks and Bones, Streamers). Centaur was one of a number of theatres in the city vying for the "Gay Fantasia" Angels (Bulldog wanted it too, before the company went belly-up). It's a magnificently lucid work ("spare," McCall says) which blends American forms with a gay sense of humour and liberal politics (sexual and otherwise). It suggests that the Reagan/Mulroney/Thatcher axis gave citizens permission to be uncompassionate and to parade cruelty under the banner of "family values." The Food Chain riotously discusses obsessions with food, sex and love. (Silver has called his very funny plays,"little pageants of woe.") But what all of the plays suggest--Crucible, Sticks and Bones, Angels and Food Chain--is that when politics and the personal collide, people do get hurt. Gilbert, however, has a bleak opinion about Angels's success. "I think there is a conservative moral ethos at work here with the play's popularity. It's popular because it is an easy way for straights to handle the subject of gay life: as long as gay men are dying..." McCall laughs at this and suggests that the play posits hope to audiences, straight and gay. But Gilbert, admitting that Angels is not his style of work, is still glad it exists. "Oh, I think it's very important. It's like Ellen DeGeneres; it's one small step for gaykind." Gilbert describes The Food Chain, conversely, as life-affirming. "Of course there is the underlying climate of living with AIDS, but it's also important to note that we live with AIDS. We get on with our lives and don't run around screaming, 'I'm going to die! I'm going to die!' "Though I could tell you of problems I have with Food Chain, I still think Nicky Silver is a very talented writer, " continues Gilbert. "I think he's the best of the group--Terrence McNally, Tony Kushner--and I think he's tapping into something more on the edge--very dark, very bitter, angry humour. There are elements of the play that are commercial. For instance, in the play, I'm a sexually obsessed gay man, but I'm also, for those who want to approach it in a different way, a big fat Jewish boy." Gilbert and I do agree at least on one thing: that theatre, to some extent, should be a transgressive art form, and that merely putting a gay man or lesbian in a play does not make it trangressive. Gilbert says, "We do plays where the dykes are very frank about talking about fisting and their cunts." So, yes, in terms of trangressive queer culture, Angels and Food Chain do pussyfoot. But they are both decades ahead of Karla and Grif in terms of truthful portrayals of queers and the companies presenting them are, after all, Centaur and the Saidye B. So by greeting these two works at their theatres, the straight anglo community may be saying that it's ready for voices from the queer community; that they are willing to see more than merely watch the freak shows. But what of Gilbert reservations that plays like Angels and Food Chain avoid queer love-making? Will we ever see a couple fisting on a mainstream stage? Well, people have a right not to delight in every sexual practice that exists. Sex is not universal, but love certainly is. "When I saw Angels in Toronto," says McCall, "I realized that beyond the big themes, it is a series of little intimate scenes about relationships and love." Bingo! Angels in America by Tony Kushner is at Centaur May 6-June 1. Box office: 288-3161. The Food Chain by Nicky Silver is at Saidye Bronfman Centre May 1-June 1. Box office: 739-7944 |
Diane Sawyer made Ellen DeGeneres cry on TV. Here was the most palatable of queer icons being asked what she felt about being called Ellen DeGenerate by Jerry Falwell, or if it was her master plan to convert straight kids. DeGeneres is neither Lea DeLaria nor RuPaul, she's Ellen. So she cried.