Sometimes an interviewer has to work very hard to draw information from the subjects of a story. It can require the sensitivity of a therapist, the easygoing ways of a best friend and the analytical focus of a detective.
Well, that’s certainly not the case for this story. It seems that when you get Hugo Dann, Tanya Davis, Adam Reid and newcomer Aisha Sommer together in one room to talk about queer theatre, the interview practically conducts itself.
The players arrive at the Barrington Street meeting place, dripping and shivering from one of this summer’s many flash downpours. They represent a broad range of ages from Dann, who’s 54 and a veteran on the Halifax theatre scene, to Sommer, who’s 17 and about to premiere her first play at the festival. Reid, 32, is the director of the Queer Acts Theatre Festival, and Dann, Sommer and musician/poet/performer Davis (32) all have shows in this year’s line-up.
They’ve come together to talk about the importance of having a theatre festival included in the Pride Week activities, but end up touching on a wide variety of subjects from Magic Mike—“The audience was made up of a lot of screaming ladies and a few groups of gays”—to the pros and cons of performing in one’s own work.
A good portion of the interview is spent on exploring the meaning of the word “queer,” in all its glory. And the definition appears to be much broader and more inclusive than one might expect.
“I hated the word. I only thought that it meant negative things,” says Sommer, a remarkably poised and expressive teenager who has recently come out to her friends and family. “But then we looked at it as just meaning ‘unusual’ or ‘different.’ After exploring that definition in our theatre workshop, I fell in love with it.”
The workshop she refers to is Acting Out!, an intensive two-weekend program put on by DaPoPo Theatre Company back in June. It encouraged queer youth to come together and explore their identities through theatre, dance and music, and was the incubator for a youth theatre component in this year’s Queer Acts fest.
The “queer” conversation continues with Dann pointing out the broadly-encompassing nature of the word. “Its advantage as an identifier for the community is that it’s non-gender-specific and non-sexualized. It can just mean standing outside the mainstream.”
“You can be straight but queer,” explains Sommer. “There were people in the workshop who identified that way.”
Davis and Reid chime in with comments about its inclusivity, about how it can take in so much more than the LBGQT label. Davis says, “I like to look at is as a kind of opening up. The meaning becomes more complex and inclusive, not less.” Ditto for Reid: “I like it because it doesn’t just encompass sexuality. It takes in any viewpoints that are out of the norm, including sociological or political.”
Talk turns to the important contribution that the Queer Acts Theatre Festival makes to Halifax’s Pride Week schedule.
“Life looks at itself through art. It’s a place where a community can tell its stories,” muses Dann. “It also broadens a Pride festival so that is not something solely defined in people’s minds by the parade.”
For Davis, who explains that there’s a mainstream in the gay community, Queer Acts is another way to embrace left-of-centre queerness. “It’s a great way to inject a little bit of queer into Pride,” she says. “It’s a way of expanding a festival that already has a lot of gay-friendly things going on.”
Queer Acts, held at the Bus Stop Theatre on Gottingen from July 19 to 22, is entering its fourth year and has grown to include six shows and a couple of epic parties. It is a place to premiere what Davis calls “super-fresh works” as opposed to set-in-stone pieces, and artists love the opportunity to get instant feedback from the audience.
And, as Reid points out, for the first time since its inception, the shows are all by local theatre artists. “We’re trying to be as many things to as many people as possible: lesbian, gay, trans. We’ve got emerging artists like Sommer and veteran artists like Hugo and Bryden [MacDonald]. The idea is to highlight the talent that we have here in our own community and to show that our community has created really strong queer artists.”
As the group disperses onto the now-sunny Barrington Street, Dann pauses to sum up the crux of the discussion.
“Culture is the most powerful force in the world, and that is why Queer Acts is so important.”
Kate Watson is The Coast’s theatre reviewer and a freelance journalist.
This article appears in Jul 19-25, 2012.
While I appreciate the desire to promote inclusivity expressed by the participants interviewed for this article, in a world where gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans people continue suffer discrimination and violence, expanding the term “queer” to include straight people is counter productive. Static identities are inherently problematic but in conventional usage, “queer” is useful as a term of reference for a specific history and the culture that has been developed by those directly affected by this history. When the meaning of “queer” is diluted in a misguided attempt to help disaffected straight people feel cool without really risking much, the ongoing challenges faced by the GLBT population may be overlooked.
Eyeroll at the previous comment. And it’s “LGBTIQ” if you’re so worried about the gay community being offended. I am glad we live in a world where straight people can be defined as “queer.” I think your outrage is misplaced. We need to live in a world that it more inclusive, not exclusive.
No outrage, just irritation. Like I said, preoccupation with identity is problematic (e.g., FYI, that acronym you cited changes weekly). As it happens, I identify as queer because I’m bisexual (out for 20+ years) and look and act like a dyke (and pay a price for this in the form of regular public harassment and intimidation). In some places, including here, being queer can result in losing custody of children or being beaten to death. As a way to draw attention to the persecution of a minority, publicly identifying as queer can be a powerful thing. But when a sign can mean anything, it ends up meaning nothing. Ask yourself, are you male, a member of a visible minority, or queer? Perhaps you just can’t relate…. Perhaps you’re just a troll who likes to pick fights with strangers. I couldn’t say.
I was more just shocked you chose to pick on a quote by someone from the Queer youth workshop. I can’t put myself in your place, but I think that re-defining “Queer” is a good thing, and the fact that it’s young people redefining it is an amazing thing.
I had the impression that the desire to open up “queer” was shared among all the participants in the interview but I’m not surprised that a teenager would express such a naive view. Youthful idealism is a beautiful thing but it can’t erase the ugly reality of homophobic and gender violence.
I’m not about to start deciding who can and can’t call themselves “queer.” Anyone who chooses to identify as such is at least an ally, and that’s good enough for me. What’s the downside? The more people in the queer club, the more people fighting against the violence and discrimination suffered by LGBT people (and I and Q and A and whatever other letters). I am queer and I say the more the merrier.
Wow, this… I want to say “this conversation”… but it seem more like “an argument”… hmmm…. this… statement of perspectives?
This ‘statement of perspectives’ comes very timely for me. Tonight, I was on a bit of a tear, and I said something that I thought was super edgy. I said “I identify with the word “queer” ”. I thought I was going out on a limb and being all “pushing the boundaries of things”… and then I come home and see an article about it. Way to push the envelope, me.
For context, I am a 32 year old straight guy. You got me bang to rights that I’m “disaffected”. Although I would like to think that my ‘disaffected-ness’ is not really why I feel I want to be in the club.
In highschool I used to joke I was a lesbian trapped in a man’s body (before I heard what’s his nuts – izzard – before I heard eddie izzard say it, I might add.) I started doing drag when I was 17. I really enjoy wearing ladies clothes. I shave my armpits (once every two or three weeks…) I’m an actor. I suck cocks… Okay, I don’t suck cocks, that was a joke. But I’m generally pretty gay, except for the cocks thing.
I know lots of people in the gay community. I tend to be a bit of a homebody, but if I ever do go out, it’s to a gay bar or club (honestly, you want me to go where to dance? The dome? The fucking Pacifico? Pfft. You go to the Pacifico and tell me that you would wish anyone of your good friends to have to hang out there for a night. Yeah, me neither.)
I just don’t like a lot of “normal” people – you know, the ones you find most places. “Normal” people don’t fucking get or appreciate me, and they themselves are generally not as exciting or interesting or have fabulously raunchy senses of humour. There is a way higher ratio of fabulous-ness where the gays gather.
I’ve started wearing a rainbow coloured wristband with some of my quirkier outfits. The outfits aren’t “right” without the armband. I feel that – for the mundanes – it puts me in context. I am kind of happy go lucky, and a bit strange. I feel like people who don’t really know me can meet me and see the rainbow arm band and think “Oh, that makes sense, he’s gay, ” – it makes me make sense to other people in the way I want to make sense to other people. That’s fine to me that they think I’m gay… and the kind of gay that would wear a gay looking armband. If they want to get to know me more, and if it came up, I would say “no, not gay, I’m straight, but I love the gays”. And if I hear people yell things at me from their cars, that’s fine for me too. If some one wants to hurt me because of my rainbow coloured wristband… well… no, then, I’m totally straight.
You’re right. I’m never going to lose a kid for identifying with “queer”. And up until tonight, I didn’t think that identifying with ‘queer’ would make sense… But I’m happy to find out that some people think that’s it’s just dandy that I be queer. I would like to be on the team.
I think the gays are better than most all other groups of people that have flags.
You’re right, to let someone like me call myself “queer” is massaging a word that makes a reference to a specific culture with its history… but it’s a culture that is changing and growing. “Now” is part of the history of that culture… and later, what people mean when they say a word may change, but the word will have just accumulated more of it’s own history
…And you know what? If we’re going to start being irritated about our words changing… guess what? This guy right here? This fucker is *gay in the traditional sense*. That’s right. I’m the word “gay” before it had anything to do with anybody’s genitals. I’m a really happy-go-lucky, dancy, huggy, singing guy. Gay like you could use it in 1930. I’m that kind of gay.
In fact, I just busted dad’s ol’ OED on the subject.
Gay:
(a) Of persons, their attributes and actions. Full of and disposed to joy and mirth; manifesting or characterized by joyous mirth; lighthearted, exuberantly cheerful, supportive, merry.
(b) Of a horse. Lively, prancing.
(c) With an implied sense of depreciation: Airy, offhand.
(d) In poetry: Applied to women as a conventional epithet of praise.
Holy shit, I had to hold a magnifying glass to read that, Gah. *blink blink blink*
Of those four options, I am a fucking shoe-in for number (a). That kind of describes me insanely well (on my good days).
So if anyone should be irritated, it’s me and other cheerful straight guys who have to resort to referring to themselves as “light hearted and care-free”. Fucking homosexuals and their co-opting my happy word. I’m going to fight to take back “gay”. And then maybe I’ll let the homosexuals in my club, maybe… but only the gay ones.
-Yahaboobay
Thank-you to you all for your thoughts. On reflection, it seems that the term “queer” has become politically irrelevant for me. I’ll stick with “feminist”. Happy Pride, people, whatever that means.
As one of the participants in the interview, I’d like to respond in more depth. No doubt due to conditions of space, the article was able to highlight only a portion of the views expressed during a very lively half-hour conversation. As the interview took place some weeks ago, I won’t even attempt to reproduce what my inspired and inspiring colleagues said, but I will share a little about my own personal reasons for identifying as Queer.
I have been using the word Queer to since the late 80s, when it was taken up as part of a confrontational protest movement, exemplified in groups like ACT UP, Queer Nation, and the Lesbian Avengers. This movement was fighting for AIDS treatment and the rights of people living with or affected by HIV/AIDS, for LGBTTI2SQ* rights, and it was anti-oppressive and anti-patriarchal down to its henna-dyed roots. In that era of massive death and fanatical persecution, the focus was very much on reclaiming the word from our oppressors (a fine old, anglo-saxon word, “qver” that meant, among other things, “strange”). Since I’ve introduced yet another variant of the acronym, let me add that – as confusing as it may be to some, I think it’s one of our community’s strengths that we continue to engage in exploring anti-oppressive, inclusive ways to communicate our identities.
In the intervening years, I’ve refined my personal definition, influenced by my own multiple identities (gay, aging, artist, activist, poor, etc.), and by a definition given by Brendan Healy, the current artistic director of Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in Toronto. Brendan’s definition rejects assimilation, essentialism, and celebrates diversity.
I understand that to mean, for me, that I reject the assimilation of any of my identities into a corporate, globalized, mainstream mono-culture; I reject any attempt to “essentialize” my sexual or gender identities (various and fluid) into a defining niche for social or corporate marketing (like the awful designation MSM, men who have sex with men), and that I celebrate all non-harmful, non-oppressive sexual and gender identities and modes of expression.
Honestly, that is a very challenging identity to live in to, and if a person who identifies as primarily heterosexual wants to walk this long and interesting walk alongside me, I will welcome and delight in their company.