Theatre fest puts queer stories onstage

Two sets of scene partners will bring stories of personal and national queer liberation to the stage this week as part of Past, Present, Future, a mini festival of original LGBTTQ+ works at the Gargoyle Theatre.

The four-day event kicks off Wednesday at 7:30 p.m., with the world première of Ottawa playwright Lawrence Aronovitch’s Dancing With the Past — starring Winnipeg’s Jeff Rivet and Ro Rogalski — and a restaging of Winnipeg playwright Ethan Stark’s romance A Work in Progress, featuring local actors Sadie Kornovski and Mady Richard.

Winnipeg’s première of Dancing With the Past will launch a nationwide Inspire tour, produced by the global advocacy organization International Day of Pink in association with the Gargoyle, the federal government and Via Rail.

The tour will head to Alberta, British Columbia, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island before visiting Ontario and Quebec in the spring.

“Our whole production has to fit into a suitcase, which is a fun challenge,” says director Chase Winnicky, who collaborated with Aronovitch on the 1970s-set two-hander, which draws on a chapter of Canadian queer history marked by institutional suppression and community-led upheaval.

Aronovitch’s script turns back the clock to the turn of the age of disco, when discrimination against queer Canadians was written into the Criminal Code. The action is set in a period defined by the 1971 We Demand protests — a series of political actions which were considered the first large-scale pro-LGBTTQ+ demonstrations — and the devastating police crackdown on queer bars, bathhouses and other gathering spaces in the leadup to the 1976 Winter Olympics in Montreal.

“For a short period in late May and early June, all the baths in Montreal were closed,” reported the groundbreaking queer publication The Body Politic, quoted in 2009 by the queer website Xtra. “For a lot of men in Montreal, their first experience of the great Olympic ‘clean-up’ was the sight of a policeman’s axe crashing through the door of their room at the baths.”

“This year we commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Olympic raids, but also how this series of events shaped Canada and our community,” says Jeremy Dias, a producer with International Day of Pink.

Dias says that over the course of the Day of Pink’s two-decade existence, it’s become more pressing to educate audiences about radical queer Canadian history, especially as those who experienced the events depicted in Dancing With the Past approach old age.

As governments across the world and at home in Canada are debating the merits of queer education — Dias points to Alberta’s controversial Bill 25, which claims to “remove ideology” from school by policing curriculum and banning books — the production’s road trip has become even more important.

“Bill 25 has made it nothing short of illegal to talk about queer stories and trans history. The decline in queer and trans spaces in Alberta is a new phenomenon, and we are responding as best as we can,” says Dias.

Winnicky, a queer performer, director and intimacy co-ordinator, doesn’t take the responsibility of sharing stories such as Dancing With the Past lightly.

“I very much love being a part of the LGBTQ+ community, so telling our stories is really important to me,” he says. “Having the chance to reach students and teach them about what our community has overcome is too. It’s so important for students who are either out or in the closet to meet queer adults in spaces like theatre.”

“High school was a really hard time for me,” adds Winnicky, who will appear in Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre’s William Stephenson portrait Intrepid and is set to direct Winnipeg Jewish Theatre’s reading of Bordr — a queer drama set in the war-torn Middle East — this spring.

“When you feel othered yourself, to experience people from communities you might relate to allows you to see what your future can look like outside the confined of school. That’s so valuable to our youth, and (this play) is a wonderful opportunity for people across Canada, regardless of the province, to reflect.”

Written by Ethan Stark, a past winner and multiple runner-up for the Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival’s Harry S. Rintoul Award for best new Manitoba play, A Work in Progress tells the story of reunion for Mia and Emma, “two childhood best friends turned first loves turned almost strangers.”

Each show begins with Dancing With the Past, followed by a short intermission and A Work in Progress.

Tickets are $25 to $40 at thegargoyletheatre.com.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com

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