‘I’VE HAD MY TIME. NOW IT’S YOURS’
How Canada’s pioneering queer theatre artists are passing the torch to a new generation
There’s a moment in Matthew López’s epic, two-part, nearly sevenhour play “The Inheritance” in which the novelist E.M. Forster tells a group of young gay New Yorkers living in the 2010s, “I’ve had my time. Now it’s yours.”
The fact that it’s writer, director and actor Daniel MacIvor speaking this line in Canadian Stage’s new production of the play — which opens next week — has a wonderful meta-theatrical significance to it.
MacIvor, along with figures like Sky Gilbert, Brad Fraser and the late Ken McDougall, is one of the pioneering queer theatre artists who emerged in this country in the 1980s and ’90s.
Narrating sections of the play, MacIvor evokes the symbolic ghost of Forster, the closeted author of “Howards End” and “A Room with a View,” who died in 1970, well before the events of López’s play. But in another way he’s also passing the torch to new generations of LGBTQ artists, many of whom happen to be involved in this production.
“Let’s just say I don’t think I was completely cast for my acting skills,” admitted MacIvor in a recent interview. “I have the great honour of watching the play while I’m in the play. I’m allowed to watch it almost like I’m affecting it in a way; it’s a very active sort of watching. And I feel so engaged in the beautiful work they’re all doing.”
Director Brendan Healy, artistic director of Canadian Stage, also led the queer theatre company Buddies in Bad Times for six years. In a play about the legacy passed from one generation of gay men — those who survived the AIDS crisis — to another, it’s significant that he’s at the helm.
Healy is one of those inheritors of a tradition begun by his queer theatre elders. He says he thought of MacIvor as “the obvious choice” for the key role of Morgan, which was how Forster was known to his circle of friends in Edwardian England.
“But the bigger question was whether Daniel wanted to do it,” said Healy.
It was Daniel Brooks — who, before he died last spring, worked with Healy on one of his last shows, “Other People” — who convinced friend and frequent collaborator MacIvor to take it on.
“Daniel told me to do it,” said MacIvor, “but only if I felt I was going to come out at the end different — or changed.”
He’s not the only one coming out of rehearsals for “The Inheritance” changed.
Stephen Jackman-Torkoff, the incandescent star of Stratford’s recent, and unabashedly queer, “Richard II” (adapted from Shakespeare by Fraser), says he’s been spending most of the show’s rehearsal time soaking up all the wisdom of the artists around him.
“I’m enjoying watching everyone perform and I’m taking lots of notes,” said Jackman-Torkoff, who’s non-binary and uses they/ them pronouns. “I especially like watching Daniel. I keep thinking, ‘How is he doing that? Is it the British accent?’ He’s so different as Morgan that it almost concerns me.”
Jackman-Torkoff feels grateful to be in a room working with several generations of queer artists.
“It feels very important and necessary,” they said. “You can only learn so much by yourself. And it’s not just about learning from living people. There are references in the play to figures like (musician and composer) Arthur Russell and (poet and philosopher) Edward Carpenter. It makes you think about the lives you’re going to touch in the future.
“My character reads Forster’s ‘Maurice’ (his posthumously published gay-themed novel), and it’s nice to read about someone going through a difficult time and not feel alone. These queer experiences have been happening for years and years.”
Rehearsals for “The Inheritance” have been filled with lively discussions and lots of discoveries.
Gregory Prest, who’s part of the ensemble and wrote the recent queer-themed play “De Profundis: Oscar Wilde in Jail,” says he casually asked some of the play’s younger members where they went dancing.
“They told me they didn’t go out,” said Prest. “Apparently there’s one place, but there’s a 40-minute line and you have to pay. There’s a whole new generation that rarely interacts with queer people they don’t know outside of an app. Some have never been to a gay bar.”
MacIvor points out that Qasim Khan, one of the show’s leads, hadn’t heard of the queer counterculture movement called the Radical Faeries. So he filled him in on the group.
“Brendan makes sure that everybody gets all the references,” said MacIvor. “Nothing goes by that we don’t touch on and address.”
For his part, Healy likes that López’s play is so specific about a community and speaks authentically about many aspects of it.
“But at the same time the play speaks to all of society and is intended for audiences of diverse lived experiences,” he said. “It’s amazing to see a queer voice asserting itself in a story for the mainstream. This is the culture. This is something that the culture has to listen to.”
With a story like this being mounted on one of the largest and most prestigious stages in the city, and at a time when mainstream fare like gay teen romance “Heartstopper” is airing on Netflix, is a queer space like Buddies in Bad Times still relevant?
“Most of my adult life as a queer person has been dominated by the existence of a respectability politic,” said Buddies’ current artistic director, ted witzel.
“What I love about Buddies is it’s not a place where we practise respectability politics. There’s more like a disrespectability esthetic here,” he said. “Artists making work in this space are not generally fighting for acceptance into the status quo. Rather, we still exist as a thorn in the side of the status quo, as a space where we don’t have to play by generally accepted rules of politeness. This is a place to be a messy-ass queen, to critique our own critiques.”
Buddies’ latest show, “White Muscle Daddy,” which begins performances next week, definitely seems like such a critique. Raf Antonio’s play uses film and horror tropes to examine some disturbing aspects of queer desire and who gets to be part of the queer community.
The fact that most of the show’s creative team consists of artists of colour, women, trans or non-binary people contrasts with the title.
“The term ‘white muscle daddy’ represents one of the pillars of queer desire and, if you shorten it, it means ‘weapon of mass destruction,’ ” said Antonio, who’s non-binary, in a separate interview. “I wanted to say, OK, we might not be what’s represented in the title, but women, people of colour, trans people and other marginalized folks are part of the queer community.
“I don’t remember where I first heard this, but the ‘G’ in ‘LGBTplus’ really does take up a lot of space,” they added. “I hope other narratives can come forward, and a place like Buddies is a great place to put them on.”
One of the strongest recent plays that avoided presenting respectable portraits of queer characters was Paolo Santalucia’s 2023 play “Prodigal.”
“I was really interested in presenting audiences with an unlikeable person, someone who’s done damage to themselves and the people around them,” said Santalucia. “I wanted their queerness not to be a calling card for sympathy. You can be a bad queer person and make bad decisions based on your trauma.”
Santalucia, who’s partners with Prest, says he didn’t immediately feel part of a tradition of queer theatre artists but nevertheless was drawn to scripts by gay writers early on, including those by MacIvor.
“The plays I read in high school that I found thrilling, exciting and dangerous, the ones that made me want to pursue theatre were all by queer people, even though I didn’t realize that at the time,” he said.
“Before I even knew what the word ‘queer’ meant, I was drawn to a queer perspective on the theatre and the world. I think of plays like Morris Panych’s ‘Girl in the Goldfish Bowl’ and ‘7 Stories.’ And I think of Daniel MacIvor’s plays. I wouldn’t be an actor, I wouldn’t have the life I had now, if I hadn’t read his plays.”
“THE INHERITANCE: PARTS 1 AND 2” BEGINS PERFORMANCES FRIDAY AND MARCH 26 AND RUNS UNTIL APRIL 13 AND 14, RESPECTIVELY, AT THE BLUMA APPEL THEATRE, 27 FRONT ST. E. SEE CANADIANSTAGE.COM FOR INFORMATION. “WHITE MUSCLE DADDY” RUNS WEDNESDAY TO MARCH 31 AT BUDDIES IN BAD TIMES THEATRE, 12