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Allan Morgan

David Oiye

Ilena Lee Cramer

Sarah Stanley

Greg MacArthur

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a room of one’s own

The End of Gay! It wavers off in the distance like a hazy mirage. We're not quite sure what it is, but something feels like it is drawing us irresistibly towards it. In a layperson's quick byte, Mr. Archer proposes that we should be steadily moving toward a time when labels such as gay or straight will be unnecessary and folk will just be in a general realm of sexuality, at one end of the spectrum or the other. For theatre would it mean that we would no longer feel the need to tell queer stories because "our stories would be everyone's story"? I somehow feel that no matter how much acceptance we gain in the mainstream milieu, my story will never be the same as the born again Christian truck driver from a square state (or oblong province). Now, being a professional queer person, as I have been for the past five years at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, I have smirked with the best of them as tales were told of the coming of the end of gay. We even hosted Bert Archer's book launch in our Cabaret. However, the implications of what he was suggesting didn't hit home until two curious events earlier this summer.

Here at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre we hold a highly successful fundraiser dance event every Saturday night in our cabaret space with proceeds going directly to support the activities of our theatre company. These dance nights are traditionally very gay, with all elements of the community showing up at one time or another. Around midsummer, we fielded several complaints that there seemed to be an inordinate amount of straight people at the club - in particular, straight women. Now, there have always been straight women coming to Tallulah's Cabaret. To paraphrase a hackneyed cliché: some of our favourite regulars are straight women. However, these complainants inferred that the club was "being taken over."

I wouldn't have thought anything about this (we have complaints about everything at Tallulah's from the brightness of the lighting to the what type of porn should be played - if any) however, I was in New York in July, for the first time in about six years and as is my wont I headed to my favourite piano bar in the Village, Marie's Crisis. Marie's Crisis (named inexplicably for Marie Antoinette) is not much of a bar to look at. One catty guidebook explains that "Marie's only apparent crisis is her decorating abilities." However the bar holds a special place in my heart as it was one of the first gay bars that I went to in New York when I first started going to the city in the early (loud date-obscuring cough here). It was here, on a Wednesday night, that I stumbled into the dingy basement bar, no bigger than someone's apartment living room to find four men sombrely clustered around a piano. Beside the piano was an older Filipino man with a toilet paper flower tucked behind his ear warbling a tremulous version of "Bill" from Showboat. Now, many seasons later, I pushed my way into that same bar. On a Saturday night the crowd was thick and they were singing the score from some "latest hit" show which was still running on Broadway. About the only thing that hadn't changed was the deliciously bad decor. However the crowd had changed. Suddenly the room seemed full of young women. Loud and boisterous women, some of them wearing those tacky "Happy Birthday" tiaras, and each one of them clutching the arm of some nervous, antagonistic straight man sporting the look of a game animal making the best of being cornered in a tough spot. It suddenly occurred to me that this was what those people had been complaining of at my own theatre. I too found myself fleeing my invaded space.

But I began to think: is this what the end of gay would mean? Is this the final goal, the point at which we want to arrive? The more we fight for acceptance, do we move closer and closer to a point where there is no definition between LGBT and straight? Would queer spaces disappear, replaced by more homogenous “mixed" spaces?

One might argue that, as we see more and more "queer" work presented by mainstream houses, there is less of a need for specific theatres devoted to presenting queer work. I would disagree. What one notices about the queer work presented by ostensibly straight theatre companies is the sameness to the plays. There is a recognition that they are being presented to their mainstream subscription audiences and, as such, the sharper edges are sometimes smoothed out, sometimes knocked off completely. Often, overt sexuality will be replaced with something suggestive (this can be as small as changing a kiss to a handshake, and as large as removing a scene of simulated sex) and, more frequently, we will see the theme of a same sex relationship undermined or relegated to the back burner, while a minor, but more conventional relationship, such as mother and son, will be brought to the forefront. Periodically one will see work, which began life as a queer play, battered and bowdlerized by straight directors, producers, actors, et al until one would be hard pressed to recognize it as a "queer" work at all. Ultimately, this observation refers, not just to the presence of queer characters or subplots, but rather to the telling of stories which reflect or translate queer lives onto the stage. Any distinct culture will have a need for its own storytelling. The argument can be made that the queer community represents a culture which, while based on sexuality, often transcends it (in the same way that the Jewish culture is often perceived as transcending religious beliefs). Like the need for queer spaces to socialize in, a need for a forum for queer voices will always be necessary, and the notion that that forum could be integrated into the mainstream seems rather ludicrous.