Queer Joy

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This article was published 22/09/2024 (380 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When Rob Kempson takes a walk down the street in Port Hope, Ont., he can barely turn a corner without seeing a recurring character: a daily dogwalker, a barista in a band T, an enthusiastic patron of the Capitol Theatre, eager to discuss what Kempson has planned for the upcoming season as artistic director in the municipality of 18,000.

“I think for some people, that’s intimidating and terrifying, and for others, it’s a really joyful thing,” says Kempson, a director and writer who grew up outside of Kingston.

“I’m in the joyful camp.”

Big-city living allows for anonymity: Kempson learned that when he graduated from Queen’s University and moved to Toronto. The smaller a community gets, or rather, the smaller it feels, a prospective resident must confront the reality of himself becoming a recurring character. When everybody knows your face, your gait and your affectations, they begin to construct their own version of your story, fashioning a pseudo-informed comprehension of what type of visitor they perceive you to be and whether you have what it takes to stick around and become a series regular.

Established norms belong in Beacon Hill barrooms, while well-meaning cranes can stick out like cocktail umbrellas.

Director Kempson, along with the entirely queer cast and crew of playwright Mark Crawford’s Bed & Breakfast – the opening production of the 52nd Prairie Theatre Exchange season – can likely relate to the parasols.

Making an unwanted exit from their metropolitan lifestyle, interior designer Brett (Kyle Golemba) and hotel manager Drew (Amir Haidar) descend on an unnamed small town outside the city to attend the funeral of Brett’s aunt, who in accordance with a classic sitcom trope, has bequeathed the bones of her grand old house to her nephew. In an attempt to afford themselves half-a-garage in Toronto, the couple considers a rural flip, but then they flip-flop, deciding with an air of quintessent quaintness to instead transform the manor into a B&B.

“It should be easy,” says Kempson. “What could go wrong?

Playwright Crawford, who grew up on a farm near Glencoe, Ont., tills the soil of his own experience of small-town queerness in building the story, which sets itself atop a zany foundation requiring the two actors playing Brett and Drew to also embody 19 other characters – such as their own parents and a gruff contractor named Doug.

“He’s never outwardly homophobic. He’s just uncomfortable with them. One of his lines is, ‘Not everything needs to be out in the open.’ He doesn’t say, ‘I don’t like that you’re gay.’ But he does say that without saying it and I think that’s the kind of homophobia a lot of queer people face. It’s someone who doesn’t want to actively hurt a queer person, but doesn’t want to have to confront a queer person or their own discomfort,” says Kempson.

“And I think that kind of homophobia is way more common. When we think about any sort of bigotry or hate, we often think about big acts, but I think the sort of seedy underbelly of it is actually in the casual and the seemingly innocuous stuff queer people, people of colour, Indigenous people and any marginalized group face day to day. But in the facing of that day to day, they are still living joyful, hilarious, fun lives. I think this play does a really great job at sharing both sides of that coin.”

In a relative rarity for a Canadian play, perhaps driven by its universal setting, Bed & Breakfast has been produced steadily since premièring in 2015 at the Thousand Islands Playhouse in Gananoque, Ont.

Kempson, who grew up in the area, was working there at the time.

“For me to see that play in my home community as a queer person, I was like, ‘This can’t happen here, certainly not in 2015,’ and what I was delightfully surprised by was that I was wrong. It brought out not only the queer community, but a whole bunch of other folks who were interested in plays and the content didn’t pull them away from it,” he says.

One thing Kempson enjoyed about the work before he was attached to it in a directorial capacity was the way it subverted expectations about both identity and genre.

“When you talk about a queer story on stage, chances are good that queer story is going to feature a traumatic coming-out or someone dying of AIDS. Chances are not as good that a story is going to be joyful. But I’ve got to tell you, as a queer person with a lot of queer people in my life, there’s a lot more joy than the other two,” he says.

Kempson, who also directed a June 2023 production of the work in Port Hope, says that’s a hallmark of Crawford’s output as a playwright, which has included Stag & Doe, Boys, Girls and Other Mythological Creatures and The New Canadian Curling Club, which played at the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre in February 2020.

“I think what I connect with as a writer or director or a creator in general is anything that allows me in as an audience member,” says Kempson.

“I think the job of a director, the job of a writer, the job of an actor, the job of any theatre creator is to invite an audience into the story. And if you don’t make that initial invitation, it doesn’t matter what your story is about. No one is there to witness it, right?”

If the No Vacancy sign is permanently lit, who in their right mind would ask to stay the night?

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com