TALKING TURKEY ABOUT QUEER ARTS
Standup comic promises the ‘ really hot kiss’ in her play won’t remind you of smooching your grandmother
As a standup comic, Jan Derbyshire was the ultimate road warrior. She didn’t stop performing until she was into her ninth month of pregnancy. When her daughter Kacey was born, Derbyshire was finally forced to stop standing up and sit still long enough to put her thoughts on paper. Ever since then, Derbyshire has dedicated all her writing to her daughter — who turns 21 three days before mom’s new comedy about lesbians contemplating marriage opens at the Roundhouse as the centrepiece of Vancouver’s Queer Arts Festival.
Turkey in the Woods stars Derbyshire as Hale, the commitment- phobic half of a lesbian couple. “She goes for Thanksgiving dinner and it’s not at the family home, it’s in the middle of the woods, near a rifle range where they’re shooting turkeys. It’s dysfunction with a capital D.” Reunited with the family, a lack of clarity ensues along with “a really hot kiss.”
Sitting on a bench overlooking English Bay, Derbyshire tells The Sun, “I just wanted to write a kick- ass love story and there’s a really hot kiss in it, a really hot kiss, because normally when you see women kiss on stage it’s kind of like how you kiss your grandma.” The play, directed by James Fagan Tait, also features Morgan Brayton, Cherise Clarke and Suzie Payne.
An elite improviser who was born and raised in Calgary and studied with TheatreSports creator Keith Johnstone before moving to Vancouver in her mid- 20s, Derbyshire’s standup career was eclipsed by her postpartum literary career. The one- woman comedies Derbyshire developed and debuted in Vancouver were as good or better than the funniest and most acclaimed solo shows being done by anyone anywhere in Canada. Then Derbyshire moved to Toronto where life took a series of twists and turns that led her off the stage and out of the public eye for several years.
She shared her stories of how things went south in the solo show she performed in Vancouver during the Olympics, which she called her most autobiographical work to date. That play was called Funny in the Head and chronicled a standup comedian’s fall into the psychiatric system. “There’s no such thing as autobiographies, just art and lies, but that’s a pretty close autobiographical show.” Getting briefly autobiographical for The Sun, Derbyshire says she’s blissfully unmarried to her partner of eight years, artist Dana Ayotte.
Derbyshire does have a marriage on her resume. She hates the term “ex” and opts for “was- band” to describe successful local TV director Mike Rohl. “We should never have gotten married, but we had a baby, and she came out a genetic Yahtzee.” Their daughter Kacey is a successful Vancouver actress who had a recurring role in The Killing.
Derbyshire’s purging a few of her Toronto- based demons with Sorry Toronto, Really I Am, a new play that launches in that city in September, and she’s debuting her next solo show in Vancouver in January as part of the PuSh Festival.
She just completed work on a short film she wrote, directed and performs in called Sanity for Beginners that premieres at Out on Screen and she’s getting a Master’s Degree from the Ontario College of Art and Design in “Inclusive Design.”
Turkey in the Woods was hatched two years ago at the Queer Arts Festival where it was featured in Clean Sheets — a new play development series run by Screaming Weenie featuring “the best new queer plays from across Canada.” Derbyshire says Queer Arts has presented several solo shows, but this is their first non- oneperson play.
This year, Clean Sheets takes place Wednesday, the night after the festival’s opening gala, and features new work by Toronto’s Steven Gallagher and Vancouver’s Judy M. Miles.