Would you identify your show as 'gay' or 'queer'? What makes you define the show with this label?
Deffo queer, I always want to flag that up to the audience. I feel that gay theatre very often has a tone between teen drama ("Why doesn't that cute guy call me?) and drawing room melodrama ("Josh, I think we should try an open relationship).
It's like when women who experienced the sixties say that the sexual revolution was a one way street, that the pill simply allowed and men to fuck whomever they want with no real responsibility. Gay theatre sort of does that doesn't it? Provides the excuse for you to put your baseball cap on backwards, cruise your cast mates, break up with your boyfriend, and dedicate the summer to taking selfies of you and yr new squeeze hungover at Starbucks, before the whole thing explodes in a fireball of bad drugs and Kat Von D highlighter, like the season finale of A.N.T.M.
What differences do you see between the labels 'gay' and 'queer'?
I see gay as, "I am a person of gender A who is primarily attracted to people also of gender A, in contradiction to the social and cultural norm that I should be attracted to a person of gender B, and this has been my major dislocation from society.
I demand reparation for that dislocation and concurrently celebrate it when I say I am gay." How can I, as a person who has no concrete gender, who does not comply with the sex I was assigned at birth (and so can't date/fuck/love people of the "opposite" gender) be gay? Gay needs opposition, it needs binary gender to function.
Queer isn't seeking fixity, queer is questioning, queer is saying, "Okay so
you're a trans male drag queen who is pregnant with a baby you are carrying for your two gay best friends - do you want to go to the movies?" You don't actually have to be gay to be queer, that's the kooky thing.
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| credit: Attila Kenyeres |
The problem is of course, eventually queer will reach a point of stasis, and marketability and then we'll all have to go off further into identity politics and fashion more new language, once the Halifax has started offering Queer Mortgages.
Why do you think I am asking this question, particularly of your show?
Because of my immense sexual charisma surely?
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