Q&A: The Gay Heritage Project

Damien Atkins, Paul Dunn and Andrew Kushnir in The Gay Heritage Project. Photo by Tanja-Tiziana.

Is there such a thing as gay heritage? Creator/performers Damien Atkins, Paul Dunn and Andrew Kushnir seek to connect past and present in their new play The Gay Heritage Project, on stage now at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre.

Here, we chat with with Dunn and Kushnir about what the collective discovered on their journey.

Theatromania: Tell us about The Gay Heritage Project. What inspired this work?

PD: Damien, Andrew and I have been developing The Gay Heritage Project for five years now. In 2008, I came to them with an idea to create a piece of theatre that would explore the question of whether or not there was a direct link between us and the gay people who’d come before us, a link that transcended our own individual cultural heritage. I had recently read The Men With the Pink Triangle by Heinz Heger (about the Nazi’s treatment of homosexuals), and was curious about the particular outrage and yearning it had triggered in me.

AK: We chose to articulate our exploration as one of gay heritage, rather than simply gay history, because we want to make a connection between the past and the present, and to be able to look to the future as well. To situate ourselves as gay people in time, take a look at what has been passed down to us, and what might be passed onto future generations.

Theatromania: How would you describe the production in a few sentences?

AK: We’ve approached the word heritage as a verb rather than a noun, an activity to be undertaken with an audience. The play is much more about the three of us seeking out a kind of gay soul and imagining how it might transcend historic, geographic, even linguistic limitations. In that spirit, we’ve created a theatrical experience that blurs the line between performer and audience, one that hopefully creates a sense of community in the room.

PD: The piece has a highly-physicalized performance style, it’s rapid-fire, kaleidoscopic, populated by over 110 characters. This makes for a lot of humour but also creates a lot of space for the audience to participate imaginatively.

What are some of the challenges you’ve encountered during this process?

PD: When we started, I had a somewhat naive notion that we could draw up a list of great gays, or great gay moments throughout history, and point to it and be able to say “this is our heritage”. Then we came up against Queer Theory, and the notion that “gay” is a relatively new phenomenon. Whether we fully buy that argument or not, it complicates matters. There is also the challenge of representation. Our community is incredibly diverse, we cannot speak for all, nor do we try to, but how do we acknowledge that diversity, and respect it, without appropriating the voices of others? Instead of trying to avoid or tip toe around them, we bring them right into the piece and deal with them directly. Not only does this enrich the content, but we hope it will make for a more open and honest dialogue with our audience.

Theatromania: Can you share some important learnings from this experience?

AK: Gay heritage is a very elusive thing. Maybe it can only exist through a collective act of imagination, an act of theatre. And that’s not to diminish it in any way because the feelings that get evoked by it are very real and valid. I think Paul, Damien, and I wanted to initially create something for our community. We discovered along the way, that even with socially-minded work, the stakes are extremely personal. We wanted to feel less isolated, a little less adrift in the tide of history. We were in search of a kind of healing. And over the past five years, we’ve run into a lot of people asking themselves the same questions about legacy, inheritance, remembrance. It feels like a cultural exploration of this nature is of the moment—and we didn’t quite know that when we started out.

Theatromania: What do you hope audiences take away from it all?

PD: From the start, we have proceeded through this exploration from a personal place. Our material is grounded in our personal experience to it. In that way, we hope that anyone who sees our show feels that they can relate, that there is something for them. Ideally, we want the members of our community who see The Gay Heritage Project to feel just a little more connected to each other and to our shared past when they leave the theatre, and to be inspired to engage in a quest for a heritage of their own.

AK: If they are like us in any way, if they’ve experienced that yearning for a connection through time and space, we hope that some part of them might be satisfied by our efforts, and that they feel a little less alone.

The Gay Heritage Project runs until December 8 at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. Visit buddiesinbadtimes.com for more information and to buy tickets.