Skip to main navigation menu Skip to main content Skip to site footer

Articles

Volume 34, Number 2 (2013)

Sky Gilbert, Daniel MacIvor, and The Man In The Vancouver Hotel Room: Queer Gossip, Community Narrative, and Theatre History

Submitted
February 20, 2014
Published
2013-06-06

Abstract

This essay outlines how the gossip surrounding Tennessee Williams’s visit to Vancouver in 1980 has influenced the narratives of gay communities and in so doing contributed to queer theatre history in Canada. Stories of Williams inviting young men to his hotel room and asking them to read from the Bible inspired Sky Gilbert and Daniel MacIvor to each write a play based on these events. The essay argues that Gilbert and MacIvor transcend the localized specificity of the initial rumours and deploy gossip as a tool to articulate a process of sexual and cultural marginalization, thereby fostering a dialogue with the past. This dialogue marks a crucial and pedagogical task in gay and queer theatre to address the on-going needs of an ever-changing community.