It’s a blazing flash of colour in a snowy landscape, the red-headed stepchild of respectable theatre festivals everywhere. For 32 years Rhubarb has been showcasing queer theatre’s nicest and naughtiest creators to audiences of every age, gender and orientation imaginable.
Over the years artists like Daniel MacIvor, David Bateman, Sonja Mills and Diane Flacks have graced Rhubarb’s stages, presenting original works that pushed the boundaries of contemporary theatre with frank, sexy and funny abandon.
Sarah Stanley was one such artist, performing challenging and accessible works that helped define Rhubarb’s eclectic personality. As Buddies’ artistic director (1997 to ’99) Stanley helped nurture new artists. She later departed to focus on her own work. She returns to the festival this year with The Failure Show or: A 13-Point Manifesto for the Consideration of Failure.
“It’s a piece I’ve been ruminating on as I’ve been doing my masters in cultural studies,” says Stanley. “I wanted to look at this framework of failure, its contribution and what it can tell me.”
Like so much of Stanley’s work, the Manifesto is both challenging and revealing. With headings like “Failure is beautiful,” “Failure is contagious” and “Failure is both it and its opposite,” reading Stanley’s 13 points will ring true for many.
“These are feelings we all have, and they impact so profoundly on people and the decisions they make,” says Stanley. “What I’m responding to is not only how I feel about my own failure, but the cracks in the pavement of the world I’m living in right now. There’s a sadness in that, and I’m deeply interested in what it teaches us.”
As she explores these themes both personally and socially, Stanley confounds expectations. “Success always gets the party, but failure is the drive of universal change,” she says. “Can we celebrate it as much as we do success?”
Certainly our own community’s history is ripe with both failure and success. But when we think of LGBT history, there are often numerous gaps in between, say, Stonewall in 1969 and the Toronto bathhouse raids and riots of 1981. Creators Paul Dunn, Andrew Kushnir and Damien Atkins elucidate our near and distant past with their latest Rhubarb offering, The Gay Heritage Project.
Using a theatrical technique called “vocal masque,” the trio hopes to give voice to people, instances and ideas from our own rich and varied history.
“These are scenes where we’re playing both people and animated objects,” says Dunn. “We’re still testing out the form and content as it develops. Vocal masque is like that, very much created in moments of improvisation.”
They began by examining their own cultural backgrounds as they relate to gay sexuality. Dunn began investigating life as a gay man in Ireland and Scotland in the years prior to his family’s emigration to Canada, while Kushnir focused on the Ukraine and Atkins on Australia.
With the help of historian Paul Halferty, they began to unravel gay history in a manner that was both revelatory and challenging. “I think one of the things that we’re being very diligent about is maintaining a personal connection to what we’re engaging with,” says Kushnir. “We’re not creating some neat bundle of heritage moments. We’re treating it as more of a verb than a noun, and asking what is it to search for heritage.
“What inspired me and Damien is that there was this sort of sense of not being alone. We’re overcoming the chasms that exist in our history, with one generation passing on ideas to another. But we’ve also connected with this feeling of being robbed in that we haven’t ever really had permission to pore over our history, in schools or even in our community now.”
RHUBARB $20 per evening; PWYC Sunday afternoons. Wed, Feb 8-19. Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. 12 Alexander. buddiesinbadtimes.com.
THE FAILURE SHOW premieres Feb 8 at 8:30pm in The Cabaret. The Gay Heritage Project premieres Feb 10 at 9:30pm in the North Chamber.
