- Opinion
- 06 Jun 07
Despite his initial misgivings, Bootboy is coming around to the idea of the Dublin Gay Theatre Festival.
I’ve had a very enjoyable couple of weeks re-engaging with the notion of gay “community”, by going to see nine different plays and shows in the Dublin Gay Theatre Festival, out of about 30 that were on offer over the fortnight.
As regular readers of this column will be aware, the concept of gay community has seemed oxymoronic to me for many years, not least because sexuality seems to be such a volatile, often anarchic force that I am not convinced it is solid enough to form a reliable (or even credible) pillar of identity for many people, so therefore building a community on such shaky foundations can be highly problematic. But then, I have been urbanised and anonymised and atomised out of so many decent god-fearing habits in my sojourn in London that I’m open to any and all suggestions now.
The Festival is, fascinatingly, the biggest of its kind in the world, with only two others in the USA, and it can also claim to be the only international gay theatre festival. It has been run on a shoestring over four years, and last year’s budget, to produce 20 shows, was a mere €27,000, including accommodation fees for touring productions from abroad. This was done without any Arts Council funding, and indeed without anyone from the Arts Council having attended the event since it started, although in the last couple of days I understand a small subsidy was granted to them, on appeal.
Although it’s been going since 2003, it’s my first time catching any of it, and I had really no idea what to expect. Well, perhaps that’s not strictly true. I was apprehensive. I have seen what happens when people try to create art to serve notions of ideology or political correctness, and have remained stonily unmoved when I sense I am being lectured to, or that my individuality is not being respected, or that it’s assumed that my intellectual and emotional responses should conform to a particular consensus. My stomach is especially prone to heaving when I am expected to swallow crap in the name of supporting my community. I won’t be told.
The worst manifestations of gay “art”, or indeed any ideologically driven art such as feminist, nationalist or socialist art, involve a degrading of truth, a lowering of quality, in lieu of a collusive collective “celebration”. Sometimes consciousness-raising and morale-boosting are important enough things to do that one can cheerfully turn a blind eye to the mediocrity of the content and applaud the admirable intent. But it has never appealed to me in terms of gay issues.
I remember the furore over the 1980 film Cruising in which Al Pacino’s character goes hunting for a serial killer in the leather scene in New York. The gay community despised it for its portrayal of gay people, the film was picketed in production, and boycotted by many for years. It offended the “gay community” because its portrayal of gay men seemed homophobic in intent, in that they weren’t happy and some were quite disturbed and disturbing. To my mind, however, it remains one of the most interesting and compelling films of that period, still unique in its exploration of the gay fetish scene, asking uncomfortable questions about the relationship between desire and violence. William Friedkin, the director, is currently working on the long-overdue DVD release.
Perhaps, sometimes, mutual reinforcement is necessary in a group, a sort of positive discrimination, and those who protested against Cruising were fuelled by an anger that there was so little positive representation of gay people’s lives elsewhere in Hollywood at that time. But the anger was misdirected. A mature community should welcome diverse and uncomfortable perspectives and critiques, and relish challenges to collective shibboleths that are mounted with integrity.
Of all of the art forms, however, theatre can be the most demanding, because one is trapped in one’s seat, and leaving in the middle of a performance is such a visible statement of disapproval that very few people have the nerve for it. Unlike a collection of short stories, for example, written by members of a particular community, one can buy the book and feel good for having supported the good cause, but one doesn’t actually have to sit down and read it.
However, of the nine shows I saw in the festival, I really enjoyed five of them, disliked one, and the rest were interesting enough, which to my mind is a very good result. Although I heard some people complain about the quality of a couple of home-grown productions, which I didn’t see, I was drawn to the international shows, and found myself energised, enthralled, delighted, aroused, and moved by the experiences.
Because what I witnessed in those plays was not a whitewash, (pinkwash?) nor a sentimental “let’s all wrap ourselves in the rainbow flag” group hug, but a challenging series of hard-hitting, truthful, sometimes difficult, sometimes hilarious, sometimes uncomfortable productions that explored the human condition, that were relevant to my experience of life as a sexual man, struggling with notions of identity and desire. Yes there were the fluffy light-hearted frivolous shows, like Gaydar Diaries, but of course they have their rightful place in any festival, and I confess I laughed.
There was a quiet moving one-man show, the lovely On the Sidelines from Manchester, and there was the searing and dark experience of Jack, the Lad – a trippy X-rated fairytale about a self-loathing rent boy and his punters – that was right up my alley and as close to the punchiness of Cruising as it’s possible to get.
The festival is at an interesting stage. Born from a palpable sense of community, supported to an impressive degree, it’s going to have to rethink itself over the next few years, now that public money is starting to trickle in. At the moment, having listened to some people in the wider theatre business in Dublin, it appears that the Festival is seen still as a community event; perhaps a bit amateur, self-absorbed and introspective, and not something that a major theatre would want to associate itself with, i.e. by putting on a gay-themed show to coincide with the festival, which would really open it up and put it firmly on the Irish – not just the gay – cultural calendar.
It does not yet have a firm, reliable reputation for quality, in that some stinkers are allowed through the net for reasons other than artistic merit, which can have quite damaging repercussions.
The challenge for the festival will be to move away from self-absorption and perceptions that the productions on offer are only of interest to gay people, and to persuade the wider theatre community in Dublin that what’s on offer is high-quality theatre that has a particular but accessible theme that is of interest to all. On the strength of what I saw this year, I don’t think they will have a problem.