Gay stories that need to be told
The Gay Heritage Project Until March 19 | The Cultch Historic Theatre Tickets and info: thecultch.com
The idea of gay heritage is a complex one. The challenge of collecting Vancouver’s gay history was underlined by writer Kevin Dale McKeown — Canada’s first openly gay columnist — in a speech at the small preshow party before the opening of The Gay Heritage Project at The Cultch Wednesday evening.
Standing before an intergenerational crowd, McKeown recounted the story of trying to find out details about a legendary underground club he had heard of that had been run by a black lesbian and her drag queen “beard” husband way back in the 1940s or ’50s. Nobody remembered the names or the details except legendary Vancouver big band leader Dal Richards. But before McKeown could sit down with him to get the whole story, Richards died in January at the age of 97.
The loss of a largely hidden history of struggle and sacrifice only scratches the surface of what The Gay Heritage Project sets out to explore.
In this Buddies in Bad Times production, Toronto performers Damien Atkins, Paul Dunn and Andrew Kushnir ask a lot of difficult questions. How do you trace an identity to back before there were even words to express what it was? How do you find a heritage for an identity that many agree isn’t really one thing at all, but part of a multiplicity of ways of living, loving and being?
Through a dizzying number of short monologues, the show goes to great lengths to contextualize the struggle to find a gay cultural heritage, settling on both the impossibility of their quest and the necessity. The result is an energetic and educational hour and 45 minutes of theatre.
With both humour and heart, Atkins, Dunn and Kushner embody a huge cast of characters to bring to life not only Canada’s gay history but the very nature of queer identity itself.
To find answers, they go to everyone from Margaret Atwood to French post-structuralist philosopher Michel Foucault, from their own mothers to Peter Worthington, the editor-in-chief of the Toronto Sun when it infamously threatened to release the names of those charged in the 1981 raids on bathhouses.
In the hands of less charming performers, some of the conversations about intersectional identity might have sounded like lectures. Acknowledging the complexities of oppression and privilege can tie the whole question of gay identity into knots that can be hard to make theatrical. But the trio are magnetic stage presences with excellent comic timing. They’re also undeniably talented vocalists, making beautiful work of a songbook that spans genres from haunting Irish folk ballads to contemporary pop.
Some bits work better than others. There’s a scene that takes place on a metaphorical “gay bus” between different people embodying different identities, all played by Atkins, that feels a little less powerful because it calls more on types than fully realized characters.
But, despite its imperfections, even this scene felt refreshing in its honest exploration of how queer identity extends far beyond its most visible members — able-bodied, middle-class white gay men (which, Atkins, Dunn and Kushnir acknowledge, includes them).
The Gay Heritage Project highlights many stories that need to be told. In our country, the fight for equality has had many battles and many heroes. And this show manages to go far deeper than anything else I’ve seen