First-Person - Sheila L. Cavanagh on Queer Bathroom Stories

(photo by Drasko Bogdanovic)

72 Speak
by Sheila L. Cavanagh

Sheila L. Cavanagh is an Associate Professor in Sociology & Sexuality Studies Coordinator at York University. Her research is in the area of gender and sexuality with a concentration on queer, cultural, and psychoanalytic theories.  Cavanagh recently co-edited a collection  titled Skin, Culture and Psychoanalysis (2013), published by Palgrave Macmillan. Her first sole-authored book titled Sexing the Teacher: School Sex Scandals and Queer Pedagogies (UBC, 2007) was given honourable mention by the Canadian Women's Studies Association.  Her second sole-authored book titled Queering Bathrooms: Gender, Sexuality, and the Hygienic Imagination (UTP, 2010) is a GLBT Indie Book Award finalist and recipient of the CWSA/ACEF Outstanding Scholarship Prize Honourable Mention (2012). Her performed ethnography titled Queer Bathroom Stories premiered at the Toronto Fringe Festival (2011) and was given the Audience Pick Award. The play will be professionally produced at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre as a WorldPride Toronto affiliate event. 

Queer Bathroom Stories (QBS) is a verbatim play about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) experiences in Canada’s public facilities. Three talented actors play all 72 characters. They showcase much more than the secret sex life of the bathroom! A brutally honest display of gender politics in public washrooms, QBS is inspired by 100 interviews I completed for my book titled Queering Bathrooms: Gender, Sexuality, and the Hygienic Imagination.  The book is about the regulation of gender in public facilities and how the cultural politics of excretion is of significance to sexuality studies. 

On November 7, 2010 during the launch of Queering Bathrooms at the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto, I staged the first iteration of the QBS (then titled Queer Bathroom Monologues) to give the audience a flavour of the interviews. To my surprise, 150 people in attendance gave QBS a standing ovation. Thanks to the energy and enthusiasm generated by the reading, I decided to develop the script into a full-fledged production. I entered my name into the 2010 Toronto Fringe Festival lottery, was put on a waiting list and two months before the festival opened got the call: “Queer Bathroom Stories is in! Do you want the spot?” I was thrilled!  Then, the panic set in.  As a sociologist I had little experience in arts-based methods or performance studies. I had no director, no actors and had never staged a play in my life. To say this was a huge undertaking was the understatement of the year! But, I was haunted by a vision, coming from an interviewee about how the research might become part of a travelling “installation…an experience…through film or audio or…re-enactment or theatre”. Like the interviewee, I was intrigued by expositional and performance-based writing (for the stage, radio, and so on). It was important to capture the emotional and visceral components of the interviews. I had only ever published my work in academic and textual formats but saw the value of theatre. So, I threw caution to the wind and wrote what became the first version of Queer Bathroom Stories.

Review: (Toronto / Theatre) Queer Bathroom Stories

Tyson James, Chy Ryan Spain, Hallie Burt (photo by Dahlia Katz)

Fuck the Binary 
by Spencer Malthouse

A lot of things happen in public restrooms and it is time we discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of life behind the stick figures. Libido Productions Queer Bathroom Stories explores 100 experiences of gender identity and perception. The 70-minute production camply portrays these experiences with lots of humour and even more heart. 

I confess I am unfamiliar with Sheila Cavanagh’s academic work but I commend her writing for its cohesion and themes. This strength of the script is the diversity of the issues it explores. It does not paint all Queer people as victims but rather showcases the ups and downs of Queer identity. The play flows well, interspersing discussions of violence with heartwarming stories and Gay frivolity. The stories progress seamlessly and weave a profound picture.

Review: (Toronto / Dance) SKIN / Quicksand

L to R Roney Lewis, Sze Yang Ade Lam, Hiroshi Miyamoto, Paul Charbonneau and Matthew Montgomery (photo by Andrew Ribner)

The SKIN We’re In
Hari Krishnan’s double header asks the tough questions about who we are and where we come from
by Stuart Munro
@StuartMunroTO

Opening last night at Buddies in Bad Times, Hari Krishnan’s double header of SKIN & Quicksand is a powerful examination of lust, love, and cultural appropriation in a global community. Krishnan’s stunning choreography combined with Niraj Chag’s wonderful music and sound design combine to create a thought-provoking and highly engaging evening.

SKIN, the first half of the evening, is divided into three smaller sections – “Apollo,” “Narcissus,” and “Eros.” Far from being three independent works, each section follows on the other, with the titular narcissist of the second part being the voyeur of the NSA tryst in the first, while all three point us (literally) to the married couple of “Eros.” Choreographer Krishnan quickly establishes a clear physical vocabulary in “Apollo” that highlights the power struggle between the newly-met lovers (Paul Charbonneau and Roney Lewis), using distinct shapes and gestures created by their hands and fingers. As each man struggles for dominance, their hands are always fighting each other – never in synch. This provided a remarkable contrast to the “married-in-real-life couple” of “Eros” (Jelani and Sze-Yang Ade-Lam). Ostensibly little more than two persons engaged in an act of passionate kissing, “Eros” finds simple beauty in the intricate motions of the couple’s hands, which always acted in harmony with each other. Only “Narcissus,” impressively performed by Gerry King, seemed out of place in this trio of numbers.

In a Word... Choreographer Hari Krishnan on Skin/Quicksand

The Blessing of Sexuality

by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

Bessie (NYC) and Dora (TO) Award nominee Hari Krishnan is the artistic director of Toronto based company inDANCE and a professor in the department of dance at Wesleyan University (Connecticut). As an award winning dance-maker, Krishnan is frequently commissioned for his avant-garde, subversive and transgressive choreography to create work on soloists and companies around the world. He holds a Master's degree in Dance from York University and is currently completing his PhD in the dance department at Texas Woman’s University.  Krishnan's research areas include queering the dancing body, colonialism, post-colonialism and Indian dance, contemporary dance and hybridization, globalization and the arts of India, Bharatanatyam in Tamil cinema and the history of devadasi-courtesan dance traditions in South India. He is a regular contributor to academic conferences and scholarly publications on cultural history and dance.

CHARPO: I’d like to start by talking about background and training and where it has taken you. Your dance experience is varied and your work reflects the variety of styles you have gathered along the route. How do you maintain a purity in your choreography that speaks to all audiences and cannot simply be dismissed as “colourful ethnic dance” or “folklore” (and I am thinking, in this case, that the “folk” may be the Gay community)?

KRISHNAN: My dance training is extensive, varied and eclectic. To be brief, my Eastern psyche is informed by Asian cultures including India, China, Singapore, Malaysia and Japan and in the West, I love the contemporary dance scene in Europe and I am obsessively addicted to the avant-garde performance arts scene in New York City  - all these influences go into the complex mix of the global language that I use as a choreographer. 

Both my practice and scholarship come from an eclectic array of dance styles, sensibilities, scholarly discourses, academic research, living/working in a variety of different places/contexts/cultures which constantly alter and shape my worldview.

My sexuality is a blessing, which organically informs ‘the very emotional/physical presence in my work’- particularly in Skin. 

I don’t subscribe to the concept of ‘purity’ in art. Every artist has been influenced by someone and in turn will influence someone else. The idea of purity panders to a dangerous, limited worldview, which fosters fundamentalism, discrimination, separatist politics and a polarized world. I’d rather aspire to excellence in art making with an uncompromising work ethic and through nurturing a healthy curious, critical, inclusive worldview of art and politics. My choreography subverts cliché and stereotype, challenging hetero-normative archetypes and critically dismantling superficial labels like ‘colourful’, ‘ethnic’, ‘exotic’, ‘folk’  through welcoming a complex process of open ended, progressive collaborations and activism.

Review: (Toronto / Theatre) Hackerlove

Love and Sex in an Internet Age
Or How I Was Hacked by an Ideologue
by Jason Booker

At one point in Sky Gilbert’s latest, Hackerlove, a character comments about how government regulation of the internet proves that the interweb’s purpose has changed. Instead of being about the free-flow sharing of information that it once was, the World Wide Web has been taken over by e-commerce. While some legalities need to be enforced – like unauthorized use of a person’s work or the plotting of a real-life crime – does society need to regulate permissible web-content, including contentious subjects like secretive and graphic depictions of war, bestiality (as suggested in Gilbert’s dialogue) or child pornography? Or do we permit the modus operandi of our interconnectivity to shift?

Shifting: that’s what Gilbert’s play does best. It fantasizes a relationship between Bradley Manning, famous for leaking numerous classified American military documents in 2010, and Adrian Lamo, the man who reported him to officials.

Review: (Toronto / Theatre) Me Talking to Myself in the Future

(photo: Frédéric Auger)

Of Two Minds
by Ramya Jegatheesan

If there’s one word I would use to describe this play, it’s psychedelic. This is bad news if you’re sober. 

Marie Brassard’s Me Talking to Myself in the Future is an invitation into Brassard’s inner consciousness. This journey is imagined and realized through atmospheric music created by musicians seated on-stage (one of them really should turn down his screen light) and a towering screen projecting 16mm video footage reminiscent of 1960s art house films. Brassard speaks in lulling hypnotic tones as she spins her tales. 

I was of two minds about this performance piece. 

Review: (Toronto / Theatre) The Wanderers

Omar Alex Khan, Kawa Ada (photo by Dahlia Katz)

The Wanderers: A Lesson in Emotional History
by Keely Kwok
@kwokles 

The Wanderers follows an Afghan family’s journey through the years as they flee from war, grapple with a new life in Canada - as well as their relationships with one another - and are haunted by a mysterious and inexplicable presence that brings to the foreground all the sorrow and devastation they thought they had left behind. 

The family’s story consists of five parts: three interactions sandwiched between two monologues that span over nearly 40 years. Now, I will be the first to admit that I am not a huge fan of monologues. I do however have a newfound admiration for the brilliant actresses who delivered them. Like the beautifully bold Dalal Badr who plays young Miriam on the eve of her 14th birthday as she desperately tries to save herself from The Wanderers. Badr is mesmerizing on stage. As Miriam, she has this twinkle in her eye like she knows something you don’t. And she’ll give you a hint but you have to figure the rest out for yourself. In Part Two, Badr also plays another 14-year-old girl named Alice who has CIPA, a condition where you cannot feel pain, heat, cold, or any other nerve related sensation. Same age. Same actress. Entirely new performance. Where Miriam was bold and forthcoming, Badr plays Alice with heartbreaking despair and desolation. Likewise the character of Marie, played by Melanie Janzen, closes the show and emotionally bears all in a performance that can only be described as monstrous. And I mean that in the best way possible. Janzen is an I-am-woman-hear-me-roar actress who demands your attention with her ferocity. Oh and she’s an absolute riot with great comedic timing. 

Review: (Toronto) A Conversation With Edith Head

A Conversation with Edith Head
by Gregory Bunker

Derriere not up to snuff? Could your bosom be doing more for you? Get some sage fashion tips from Hollywood costume legend Edith Head.

Written by Paddy Calistro and Susan Claassen, and produced by Joanna Syrokomla and CAFTCAD, A Conversation with Edith Head makes its Canadian premiere at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre this weekend only.

The year is 1981 – the year of Miss Head’s passing – and she’s (Susan Claassen) recounting some of the highlights and not-so-highlights of her time in Tinseltown. With a career spanning almost 60 years dressing Hollywood’s top actors and winning eight Academy Awards doing it (the most any woman has won), there are stories to tell.

Review: (Toronto) Manon, Sandra and the Virgin Mary

(photo by Cylla von Tiedemann)

Icons, idols and disillusionment permeate the space at Buddies.
by Christian Baines

Intertwining sexuality with religion is a well-worn concept, but Michel Tremblay forges a particularly thought-provoking and perhaps even literal connection between their acolytes. The pious Manon has spent her adult life in servitude to Catholicism, her beloved rosary and every virtue she holds dear. Transvestite Sandra wants to fuck, embracing his gracefully un-aging cock, the one organ he can rely on in the face of an increasingly cruel mirror.

Bonus Feature: First-Person - Susan Claassen on A Conversation With Edith Head

Edith Head and Me!
We can honestly say that A Conversation with Edith is based upon the words and thoughts of Edith Head - the 'Edith-isms'.
by Susan Claassen

Susan Claassen is celebrating her 34th anniversary with the Invisible Theatre (IT) and has been  a resident of Tucson since 1972. As Managing Artistic Director, she has produced more than 350 productions and directed more than 50. Susan Claassen has been a member of Actors Equity Association (the professional actors’ union) since 1969. Some of her most memorable roles have been Bella in Lost In Yonkers,  Alice B. Toklas in Gertrude Stein And A Companion, Hannah in Crossing  Delancey, Shirley in Shirley Valentine and Trudy in The Search For Signs Of Intelligent  Life In The Universe. In addition to her work with the Invisible Theatre she has been a consultant and director for the Waterfront Playhouse and The Red Barn Theatre in Key West, Florida, and directed I Won't Dance at New York’s famed Rainbow and Stars Cabaret and St. Paul's prestigious Ordway Theatre. Ms Claassen is a national board member of PEOPLE FOR THE AMERICAN WAY–A Constitutional Liberties Organization. She is the recipient of the 1985 Governor’s Award for Women Who Create, the 1993 Humanitarian Torch Award for her efforts on behalf of people living with AIDS and a 1996 Distinguished Service Award from the State Federation for Exceptional Children for her commitment to arts education for special populations. Susan was the 1999 City of Hope “Spirit of Life” recipient, and performs as a clown in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. She was recently selected as one of Tucson Lifestyle’s 10 Most Admired Women and one of Tucson’s Ten Best People.

I first got the idea to create a theatrical presentation when I was watching a television biography. I contacted Edith' Heads estate and they granted me permission to pursue this project. I madly read anything I could find and when I came upon Paddy Calistro's book, Edith Head's Hollywood, I decided to attempt to locate its author. I called telephone information for where I thought Paddy lived, and voila, she was listed. I placed the phone call and it was kismet. At our first meeting in Los Angeles we knew the connection was right and we agreed to collaborate. 

With Paddy’s connections we received the blessings of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. They prepared a reel of film clips of Miss Head’s appearances. I was able to study her physical traits. The way she walked, a tilt of the head, how she gestured - really, how she carried herself.  I also studied her speech patterns and rhythms.  She had been a school teacher so she had a distinct way of speaking - clipped and to the point! I work with a voice and movement coach in order to constantly perfect the details of her mannerisms and vocal qualities. My studying is ongoing.

Review: (Toronto) The Gay Heritage Project

Damien Atkins, Paul Dunn (photo: Guntar Kravis)

Gay Heritage Moments: a concept for a new show?
But they don’t quite add up to a whole
by Jason Booker

Enthusiastically performed, amusing and touching by turns, The Gay Heritage Project is a great idea on paper. It aims to depict the people that have come before now, the events and actions that have shaped Gay history or the Gay identity up to the present day. The show, however, gestating for the past five years with performer-creators Damien Atkins, Paul Dunn and Andrew Kushnir, never quite figures out how to string all these ideas together – the parts are very strong but the whole doesn’t match.

The evening runs a little long and requires a stronger structure than these rough five acts each with an elusive title. And, of course, any time artists count off how long until the end of the show for the audience, the play feels two or three times longer than without the reminder. Often, these creative moments feel like sketches more than significant scenes, as there is no through-line or architecture. As a result, the lively and entertaining pieces assault the senses, the mind and the memory without offering a new voice or opinion, or even a final takeaway.

Review: (Toronto) Pig

l-r Blair Williams, Bruce Dow, Paul Dunn (photo: Jeremy Mimnagh)

Buddies’ Pig Serves Up Nothing but Slops
The only thing butchered in this slaughterhouse is goodwill.
by Christian Baines

Pig has all the ingredients of a yet another quality Buddies production in 2013, including committed, well defined performances and a clever director’s hand. These elements occasionally earn it a good laugh – even the odd twinge of fear. It’s too bad the play itself is a steaming pile of slop.

Imagine for a moment that Eli Roth has just stumbled upon the world of gay BDSM and thought ‘Hey, isn’t this just the coolest shit ever? This’ll shock the kids!’ He then starts waving it around, expecting praise for how cutting edge he is without paying the slightest attention to character or plot development. So it is with the script of Pig. There’s never a glimpse of the motivation driving either the sadists or the masochists in Tim Luscombe’s indecisive and irredeemably anti-erotic tale. 

Review: (Toronto) Of a Monstrous Child: A Gaga Musical

Gavin Crawford (top) and Kimberly Persona (photo: Alejandro Santiago)

Ecce Homo’s homage to the diva is its own brand of fame monster

by Christian Baines

What a strange and fascinating construct is Of a Monstrous Child: A Gaga Musical. Almost as strange and fascinating as its central icon, whose song catalogue now seems destined for a shelf life well beyond that of her peers. Side note to author Alistair Newton, who has pre-empted the inevitable West End jukebox abomination with something far more insightful and interesting – for this, Sir, musical theatre fans everywhere should thank you sincerely.

Nobody should step into Of a Monstrous Child expecting to hear a simple regurgitation of hits. It’s not even a ‘musical’ in the traditional sense (though if the show wishes to brand itself as such, that’s good enough for me). Rather, it’s a powerful deconstruction of the nature of art, icons and contemporary celebrity that skilfully uses Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta as its case study. 

Review: (Toronto) Arigato, Tokyo

Daniel MacIvor, Tyson James photo: Tanja-Tiziana

MacIvor’s Postcard from Japan is picture perfect.

by Christian Baines

Daniel MacIvor’s Arigato, Tokyo is something of a creeper. Opening with the first of numerous cryptic monologues performed by the bewitchingly androgynous Etta Waki (Tyson James), it quickly finds focus in following Carl Dewer (David Storch) on a book tour in Japan, where his novel, he is told is loved not for its comedy, nor its observations on love, but as a melancholy work of ennui. A hard partying cynic on a strict, if insatiable diet of sex and cocaine, Carl is accompanied by his ‘good baby sitter’ minder, Nushi (Cara Gee), who may have a far more personalized style of care in mind for her Canadian charge. But she’s not the only local whose eye has settled on the cynical author.

From this cast of somewhat unsympathetic, yet utterly compelling characters, MacIvor spins an aesthetically rich and satisfyingly disquieting story about the unwavering, ubiquitous human desire to be with the wrong person. Carl searches for a fix to his own self-destruction in people who are potentially more destructive still. Storch does a terrific job of bringing this to life onstage. The palpable vulnerability that underpins his performance (and he’s on stage for almost every scene) rises to the challenging task of bridging our empathy to this embittered ex-80’s coke fiend.

News: (Toronto) Buddies Goes Back to Normal in 2012-13 season

Buddies in Bad Times artistic director Brendan Healey has announced the company's new season and among the highlights is a return of the critically acclaimed The Normal Heart, produced by Studio 180 Theatre.

l-r Jeff Miller and Jonathan Wilson
(Photo credit: John Karastamatis)

With the season the company continues to fulfill it's mandate of offering Queer visions of the world and that is clear from the first outing, in September, when the house presents Obaaberima, a work about a Ghanian imprisoned for a violent crime and who feels he must tell his story to his cellmates. Also notable in the lineup is the return of Daniel MacIvor with his work Arigato, Tokyo; a new work from the company's founder, Sky Gilbert (A Few Brittle Leaves) and Queer performance company Ecce Homo's Of A Monstrous Child: a gaga musical.


Read the press release: