A Public Display of Affection is currently being presented by Studio180Theatre in the Studio at Crow’s Theatre.  Jonathan Wilson plays himself in monodrama-documentary directed by MarkMcGrinder about Gay life in Toronto before, during and after AIDS.

It’s an eighty minute tour de force.  These evenings where a single actor just gets up and does their thing in front of an audience for an hour plus are really pretty remarkable and when the play is well constructed and addressing real issues it can be pretty powerful.  That’s the case here.  There’s usually a framing device; why else is this dude talking to us?  Here it’s billed as part of a Queer Elder Speaker Series with doyen(ne)s of the community selected by a committee of rather academic younger gays to educate the current generation about their history.{1}

So we work our way through Jonathan’s life story in Toronto beginning in 1979 with him as a teenager from Oshawa who has run away to the big, sinful city.  The Gay scene, centred on Yonge north of Dundas, is rough.  Murders and beatings are routine events and the Toronto cops are more interested in beating up gays than solving murders of them.  You know their motto: “To serve and protect the rich and powerful (and ourselves of course)”.  Same old, same old, only the fine details change.

So life is dirty and dangerous but it’s also joyous in a transgressive way with dance clubs and nude beaches and the sense of community that only happens when there are external threats.  Then comes AIDS [2]; the great cull of the gay community, and with it both loss and survivor guilt; “coffin dodgers”.  Jonathan drops out of the scene, eventually working for an insurance company “where a cabal of lesbians from underwriting” introduce him to theatre and acting which leads to his enrolling at the school then known as Ryerson.

And then comes the post AIDS Gay scene in Toronto; both real and fanciful.  Gay marriage is legalised (real).  Allbright Investments propose a 100 storey high rainbow bridge condominium spanning the intersection of Church and Wellesley with prices starting in “the low 900s” and a few rent-to-income units in the sub-basement (possibly/hopefully not real).  Gays, provided they are middle class enough, are now fully participating members in the Toronto rat race!  Such is progress.

I’m just skimming the surface of a very funny and accomplished performance that manages to to satirise most every aspect of both being Gay and living in Toronto.  It’s mostly Jonathan of course but his performance is greatly enhanced by clever projections, lighting and sound (Denyse Karn, André du Toit and Lyon Smith).

Obviously it’s a Gay themed play it has much to offer beyond that community.  I thoroughly enjoyed it (and I’m not even bi).

A Public Display of Affection runs in the Studio at Crow’s until April 20th.

Photo credits: Dahlia Katz.

fn[1] Being “living history” is weird especially when one’s lived experience isn’t what )younger) academics have convinced themselves it was.  I had this experience recounting some experiences of the Anti-Apartheid Movement in Durham in the 1970s.  There was a real reluctance to accept how complicit the university (and wider British society) was with apartheid in that era.

fn[2] Round about 1979; before anyone had heard of AIDS, an acquaintance of mine went travelling in central Africa.  He showed up seriously ill at the British Embassy in Morocco who medi-vaced him to the Tropical Diseases hospital in London.  Essentially, he had no white blood cells.  He died a few days later.  I’ve pondered on this ever since.