Play about men’s feelings structured like hockey game
Playwright Sunny Drake recalls coming up with the idea for his play Men Express Their Feelings while listening to CBC Radio. The Toronto Maple Leafs had just lost a hockey game and Drake was hearing a dejected fan describing his devastation.
“I wondered immediately: did he know exactly how he felt?” Drake tells the Straight by phone. “Was he standing in front of his mates and wondering what was the way to describe it? Or was he so choked up with emotion because so often, sports [is] a site where many men can express an array of deep emotions that are not acceptable in other places?”
Drake, as a trans man, has been studying masculinity for a very long time. And he concluded that a comedic play centred around hockey would be an ideal vehicle for exploring a theme that’s relevant around the world.
“Hockey, like masculinity, is fantastic and awesome at its best and then lethal and toxic at its worst,” Drake says.
In Men Express Their Feelings, two hockey dads and their sons are ordered to go to the dressing room after an explosive altercation. There, they’ve been instructed to talk about their feelings. One father is from a privileged South Asian background; the other is a very working-class white Canadian.
The play is directed by Cameron Mackenzie, founder and artistic and executive director of Zee Zee Theatre, which raises the voices of those on the margins.
“It’s structured like a hockey game,” Drake explains. “There are instant replays of various things that happen between the four of them, similar to a sports instant replay.”
In rehearsals, Drake says, Mackenzie and the team of actors—Quinn Churchill, Jeff Gladstone, Ishan Sandhu, and Munish Sharma—have been focused on creating the emotional equivalent of a hockey game.
The intimacy coach and choreographer is Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg, who is well known to Vancouver dance and theatre fans. And, yes, some of these instant replays will take place in slow motion, Drake reveals.
“I’m loving that we have brought Tara in for such a substantial role,” he says. “This is such a piece that really benefits from a strong physicality. Watching Cameron and Tara work together, they have such a fantastic rapport with each other and really bounce well off one another.”
In 2016, Drake was invited to the Vancouver-based Playwrights Theatre Centre Writers’ Colony, where he developed the first draft of his script. At that time, he worked with three cultural consultants, including Vancouver playwright and filmmaker Paneet Singh, who’s the cultural consultant on this production.
Another Vancouver resident who has offered enormous help has been dramaturg Kathleen Flaherty, who is also a veteran radio producer. She helped Drake adapt the original script into an audio play.
“So I’ve now adapted the adaptation back to the stage, which has been super fun,” Drake says. “It means this version premiering in Vancouver is a little different than the original version.
“People want to come out to the theatre and have some fun,” he continues. “That’s why I’ve chosen comedy as a means to tackle difficult topics.”
Zee Zee Theatre will present
Feelings at the Firehall Arts Centre (280 East Cordova Street) from March 18 to April 3.