This one’s for everyone
Universal Pride Festival will appeal to queer and straight audiences, writes Ethan Sills
Auckland Pride Festival — the annual celebration of all things rainbow — returns for another two week takeover of venues across the Super City and while the Big Gay Out and the march remain cornerstones of the festival, it’s the many theatrical and literary events that allow queer voices to be heard loud and proud.
Given that he’s working on three diverse plays exploring drag (There She Is), a love for pop music
(Karaoke Boyz) and safe sex in the modern age
(Status), playwright and comedian Tom Sainsbury is perhaps the busiest man of the festival but says it’s an honour to be involved with Pride and how it represents the community.
“People should be making their own stories and sharing them with the world to let that humanity come through,” he says. “It’s important in the sense that there’s a whole series of artforms dedicated to one subculture of people. They have a real ownership over it. It’s their stories being told to them.”
Pride regular Night of the Queer brings together dance, cabaret, burlesque and aerial performance. This year’s show features characters inspired by the Greek gods, and has a female love story running through its heart.
For co-artistic director Rebekkah Schoonbeek, this was part of a conscious effort to recognise everyone. That means including a straight character because, as Schoonbeek says, you “can’t have a diverse community if you are blocking out everyone who is different to you”.
In a similar vein, Homos, or Everyone in America is billed as a gay love story with universal appeal and a “post-gay survival guide”. Actor Harry McNaughton says queer and straight audiences will see themselves in it.
“It’s written well enough that it translates out of its community,” he says. “The relationship is so intimately observed that I think it’s fascinating for everyone who’s been in a longterm relationship.”
He believes the notion that niche plays only attract niche audiences is rubbish and exploring any concept with enough compassion broadens the appeal.
In recent years LGBT culture has become more mainstream. This year’s Oscars race has been labelled the “most LGBT inclusive ever”, Less,
by Andrew Sean Greer, won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and TV shows like American Crime Story, Queer Eye and RuPaul’s Drag Race
continue to win ratings’ wars.
However, as queer characters become more prominent in the arts, there are concerns about LGBT representation. Terms like “gayface” and “pink-washing” have emerged to describe how straight actors and writers tend to dominate gay and lesbian work.
Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody has become the highest-grossing LGBT-centric film of all time but many voiced concern about the toneddown retelling of Freddie Mercury’s life.
Peter Wells, who created the SameSame But Different writers’ festival, says queer authors tended to have their identities swamped in mainstream writers’ festivals.
“Celebrating queer voices adds to the richness of our culture overall, allowing unheard voices to particularise dilemmas and feelings so more people can empathise and understand,” he says.
But many of the artists participating in Pride felt a line should not be drawn between straight and gay writers and actors. Emerging author Ruby Porter, who speaks at SameSame, feels it would be boring if straight authors were too afraid to write queer characters.
As a kid it felt isolating to watch stuff where there would constantly be straight people, she says. “I remember when there were queer people, it felt nice and natural.”
The debate wasn’t something that crossed the mind of author Nicholas Sheppard. His debut novel, Broken Play, grapples with the concept of an All Black coming to terms with his sexuality. To Sheppard, the themes he explored, namely around unrequited love, felt universal.
“All you can do is create a character who is as realistic as humanely possible and after that, it’s free for people to interpret as they like,” he says. “There’s nothing to be lost from heterosexual authors, in an authentic, honest and optimistic way, trying to depict queer characters. I don’t see any negative to that.”
Yet for McNaughton, the conflict of playing someone you can’t directly identify with was one he contended with for the four years he played Shortland Street’s Gerald Tippett. While the flamboyant receptionist was originally pegged as “every Christian’s gay stereotype”, McNaughton’s protests saw Gerald reimagined as asexual.
He says it required a lot of consultation from him and the writers to accurately portray a member of that community and he was keenly aware of the responsibility involved. While McNaughton feels it’s not helpful to “impose rules”, productions should aim to cast within the community when possible.
Though Tom Sainsbury knows of gay actors who have struggled to land straight roles, he says a division between straight and LGBT actors would be a slippery slope.
Schoonbeek, whose show features gay, lesbian, transgender and gender-fluid performers, hopes to one day see Pride speaking for every part of New Zealand.
“We want to put on an awesome piece of theatre that audiences can relate to and where they can enjoy being entertained for a night, knowing they are supporting something that will in a couple of years’ time just be an amazing event for everyone,” she says. “It will be seen as an accepted thing, it won’t be something we need to fight for. It will just be.”