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Culture Theatre

The Gay Heritage Project

THE GAY HERITAGE PROJECT by Damien Atkins, Paul Dunn and Andrew Kushnir (GHP Collective/Buddies in Bad Times, 12 Alexander). Runs to December 8, Tuesday-Saturday 8 pm, matinees Saturday-Sunday 2:30 pm. Pwyc-$37. 416-975-8555. See listing. Rating: NNNN

Five years ago Damien Atkins, Paul Dunn and Andrew Kushnir began collectively to explore the idea of what it meant for each of them to be gay and how the past influenced who they are.

The result is The Gay Heritage Project, an entertaining, thoughtful look at their individual lives and what specifics, gay and straight, have helped shape them as gay men.

The word “project” is a sign that the overview isn’t four-square and definitive it could be a lot longer than the 100-minute show now onstage at Buddies in Bad Times.

The three writer/performers rotate through a series of mostly solo episodes and songs, exploring everything from skater Brian Orser’s 1988 long program to The Golden Girls, from gay-straight alliances in Catholic high schools to gay action figures, and from gay Irish history to the Sissy Liberation Front.

Kushnir’s attempts to find Ukrainian gays are both funny and sad the Toronto Public Library browser offers him no help, and when he finally meets two gay Ukrainians in their homeland they reveal they have to stay under the radar. The two are amazed that Kushnir works at an openly gay theatre (Buddies) whose audience is both straight and queer.

Researching a gay man in Nazi Austria for a play he was in, Dunn compares the reviled man’s history with Dunn’s own growing up in Alberta. As the narrative merges the contrasted lives, the actor undergoes an awakening.

One of the highlights is a quick-moving slide show (projection design by Cameron Davis) of gay, lesbian and trans history, while another episode laments that AIDS took away a generation of people who were part of a metaphoric queer family that stretched back in time. The result? The loss of relatively recent inspiring, proud role models for these three 30-somethings as well as many others.

In addition to its laughs, there’s anger in the show, too, which Atkins puts front-and-centre in his thoughts on being a gay theatre artist. In another section about the infamous 1981 bathhouse raids, Dunn intrudes himself from the future to confront the Sun’s Peter Worthington on his paper’s handling of those arrested.

Another side of anger appears in one of the best, most nuanced scenes, in which political correctness, anthropomorphized as Gay Identity, is attacked by Gay Desire, Camp and Drag, who feel he’s been as dismissive of them as have right-wing straights. There’s a price tag, they point out, for Gay Identity’s new political power.

All three performers are aware of the privilege and maybe inevitable blinkers of being white males undertaking this quest for gay heritage. The comedy in a racially hued Reading Rainbow, a confrontation in the fictional Queer Stories Licensing Department and the varied riders on a heritage bus trying to come to a consensus mixes poignancy with laughter.

At one point each of the performers plays one of the others, relating stories of coming out to their families, often with unexpected reactions from the people who can be the hardest to tell the truth to.

If the work has a piecemeal quality, that’s the nature of the developmental process as well as the material. But under Ashlie Corcoran’s direction, these talented actor/singers inspire and amuse, amaze with the connections they make and make us want to hear more of their tales.

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