Political Stages: Toronto Gay Theatre from Criminalization to Queer Protest

Famously rejected in Toronto, Fortune and Men’s Eyes, John Herbert’s autobiographical prison drama, based on his incarceration for “gross indecency”, became an Off-Broadway hit when it premiered in New York City in 1967. Less than twenty years later, Sky Gilbert’s Drag Queens on Trial premiered in a Toronto transformed: by 1985 the gay and lesbian community was at the vanguard of politics and activism, and Gilbert’s theatre company, Buddies in Bad Times, was establishing itself as a vital space for queer performance. Against a backdrop of profound cultural and social transformation, Political Stages examines the role of theatrical performance – and of openly gay, politically engaged playwrights – in the emergence of gay liberation and the development of the Alternative theatre movement in Toronto. Adopting a cultural materialist framework, J. Paul Halferty traces the history of gay theatre in Toronto through close analysis of four key productions: John Herbert’s Fortune and Men’s Eyes (1967), the Tarragon theatre’s production of Michel Tremblay’s Hosanna (1974), Robert Wallace’s No Deposit, No Return (1975), and Gilbert’s Drag Queens on Trial (1985). Halferty’s richly detailed treatment of the biographical, social, cultural, and political contexts shaping each work’s production and reception positions these plays as salient examples of gay theatre’s transformative impact on the city, its theatre, and its politics. Charting the dynamic relationship between gay politics, gay theatrical production, and the ideological and artistic commitments of alternative theatres, Political Stages provides a fresh perspective on the political evolution of Toronto’s queer communities.