the unbearable lightness of being queer
As I’m leaving the bleachers I overhear a well-coifed
elegant older woman in impeccable summer attire say to her friend “tasteful.”
She liked the show, because it was, tasteful? I’m perplexed. I’ve just spent
two hours out doors, something I try not to do unless I have a very good reason
and a lot of mosquito repellent on hand. The show in question has made me
laugh, cry, and shrink in bewilderment upon realizing, yet again, this late in
the day, that yes, we really do still need plays like this in order to help
people understand that being different doesn’t mean we should be punished. The
Trillium foundation certainly agrees, having given the theatre one hundred and
four thousand dollars to explore diversity themes ranging from queer identity
to disability issues. We’ve come a long way, but we have miles to go before we
sleep.
Go girls!! Trilliums (AS IN FOUNDATIONS)
have always been my favorite flower.
But I'm often torn between the pristine
white ones and the rather ‘queer’ looking
pale purple genre.
The current 4th Line Theatre production of
acclaimed enfant terrible playwright Sky Gilbert’s St. Francis of Millbrook, opened last week and it is a wildly entertaining
cultural phenomenon to behold. Under the superb layered direction of Kim
Blackwell, a succession of heavily populated scenes, inhabited by professional
and skilled amateur thespians, reveals Gilbert’s knack for immaculate structure
in the midst of narrative mayhem. Admittedly,[1]
Gilbert has constructed this commissioned piece for a very particular audience.
And yet, the myth of cottage country small town spectatorship[2]
runs rampant as one watches onlookers from a variety of predominantly white
middle class, and beyond, experience respond favorably to this lush panoply of
very queer consciousness as it makes its way through a forest of
heteronormative desire.
Ellen Ray Hennessey in a lead role superbly guides a wonderful
ensemble through a fabulous and familiar story of growing up gay in a rural
community. Gilbert’s script has
combined the perfect cultural elements, both past and present - and future. The
nineteen sixties, the truly memorable iconic music of that era, Madonna’s
presence in a growing nineteen nineties post modern environment where sex
symbols begin to acquire religious status, commingle in this musically adept
ménage. Class, gender, and sexuality blend discursively as aging hippies make
multi-cultural pleas for acceptance, culminating in a significant nod to race
with a moment of Yoko Ono celebration as the icing on the multi-faceted cake.
All of the critical socially conscious parts are there to create the whole, and
even though Gilbert has tailored the piece for audience members who may very
well need tasteful theatre in order to placate them into the shady naturalism
of queer identity, there are still all the trademark bad boy elements and the
kitsch campiness he is famous for. Gilbert pushes the envelope perhaps as far
as he can in a culturally savvy production replete with pickup trucks, white
horses, endearing pig narratives, and the odd barn swallow (what do I know from barn swallows!) gracing
the stage here and there in non equity unscripted roles. The natural beauty of
Fourth Line continues to reside in the unexpected quality of nature that graces
any given performance. And the overt queerness of this particular script makes the whole
idea of nature sing sweet with contrast and coming home/coming out
warm-heartedness.
NATHANIEL BACON
Nathaniel Bacon as Luke brings a fresh and physically adept vitality to the role that blends youthfulness, naivete and a sincere love of nature that renders the meadows and the barnyards somewhat more camp than one might have expected. (see my own poetic rural drag narrative written when I was a stage manager and a walk-on farmer's wife in drag at Fourth Line Theatre several decades ago at http://batemanpoetry.blogspot.com/)
William Foley and Sherri McFarlane as Luke's parents shine as they battle the timeworn dilemma regarding how they can manage to love a gay son and stay together. McFarlane possesses a serene power as the stalwart subtly courageous matriarch while Foley delivers a skillful study in reactive disgrace and thwarted tender paternalism due to the iconic presence of hockey woven into the script.
SHERRI MCFARLANE & NATHANIEL BACON
WILLIAM FOLEY
But is any of this tasteful? Well, no, any interrogation of queer identity
worth its salt leaves tasteful at the doorstep when it includes the violence
too often inherent to growing up gay in a small town, or any metropolis, big or little, where
so called loved ones become so conflicted by the emerging identity of their
offspring that they revert to physical aggression. There is nothing tasteful
about homophobia, on stage or off, and that’s the way it should be. I would have
liked to have seen the mythic affects of tastefulness pushed a little further, but
that’s just my own take on bad boy consciousness. Fourth Line, Kim Blackwell, Robert Winslow (Artistic Director), and Sky Gilbert must be commended for bringing
together a seminal production in the growing history of queer theatrical
enterprise. In the same audience where I overheard the “tasteful” remark I also
heard someone express their surprise that this kind of social issue still needs
to be put out there for audiences to 'learn' from.
Drive on out to the country and see this saintly little gem. It will make you feel good about feeling bad. It takes queer and freshens it up with a whiff of country air, and there’s even a bit of skin to behold, not too much though. One wouldn’t want to exceed the limits of tastefulness now, would one?
Drive on out to the country and see this saintly little gem. It will make you feel good about feeling bad. It takes queer and freshens it up with a whiff of country air, and there’s even a bit of skin to behold, not too much though. One wouldn’t want to exceed the limits of tastefulness now, would one?
ROBERT WINSLOW & KIM BLACKWELL
SKY GILBERT
Spencer Harrison’s gorgeous Circus Tent, as part of his PhD
thesis examining homophobia and queer identity, was set up for the media
opening and queered the event even further as Harrison’s own experience as a
country boy growing up gay continues to manifest itself within his practice as
a visual artist. More on that in an upcoming blog post!
[1] In a panel
discussion before the media opening of the play Gilbert described his early
meetings with Robert Winslow (Artistic Director) and Kim Blackwell (Director & Associate Artistic Producer)
that included ways in which queer subject matter might be represented within
the company mandate focusing upon community stories
[2] the whole
notion of spectatorship has been interrogated and called into question in a variety
of texts that examine demographic and the assumptions made about audience
appeal and accessibility - briefly, for the purposes of this ‘review’ and this
production, it can be argued that the people any given script is tailored to,
‘despite’ their location within a rural area, frequently come from very
sophisticated, affluent backgrounds, and even when they don’t, it can be a very
subjective and diverse experience for ‘them’ to view ‘us’ whether they are watching a play
in the country or the city
