Mashing forms and exploring identity, as rEvolver Festival returns with live performances
Gender? I Hardly Know Them mixes sketch comedy and true monologues to spread “Prairie queer joy”
Elena Belyea and Syd Campbell. Photo by Nico Humby
Upintheair Theatre presents the rEvolver Festival from May 25 to June 5. Gender? I Hardly Know Them runs at the Vancity Culture Lab from May 26 to 29
WHEN ELENA BELYEA and Syd Campbell joined forces to form a sketch troupe, it was a genre neither had worked in before. Belyea had experience writing theatre works, and Campbell came from the improv world. But when the nonbinary pair met creating the premiere of Belyea’s comparatively serious play Cleave in 2018, both shared a sense of goofy, satirical humour behind the scenes—and a desire to bring laughs to the subject of growing up queer in Alberta.
Cue the unconventional sketch show Gender? I Hardly Know Them, one of many genre-crossing shows at this year’s rEvolver Festival. It comes replete with punchlines about truck-window pickup lines, “woke” banks trying to sell Pride culture, denim, and of course the use of pronouns. There’s even a song about Conservatism (with or without Jason Kenney) and how rough it is on the queer folk of Alberta.
“I would say Prairie queer joy is something we’re trying to centre in the show,” Belyea tells Stir over the line from Edmonton, where their show won raves at the pre-pandemic Fringe Fest. “When you’re a young queer person, the only role you see represented is the person on screen having a terrible time and a terrible life.
“We’re really intentional about comedy being the medium,” Belyea stresses. “One of the things we’re really mindful of is that queerness, especially in the context of a Conservative backdrop, is normally portrayed as isolating and traumatic. We’re interested in providing an alternative to that.”
The risk that Belyea and Campbell took with the show was interweaving deeply personal monologues about their own struggles to embrace their identities. (Belyea says they were inspired in part by Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby’s celebrated Nanette, which melded monologues with standup into an unconventional form all its own.)
“My experience was going to Catholic high school, and I was so closeted when I was there,” Belyea relates. “I’m 35 now, but it really took me until I was in my 20s to start feeling comfortable and self-identifying with my friends and family here.
“The biggest thing for both of us with this show—and everything else we do—is: What is the thing I would offer to teenage me that would have probably saved a few years of teenage angst?’’ the artist adds.
Belyea reports that the pair was worried, before its first show in early, eve-of-pandemic 2020, that audiences who came for a sketch troupe would be put off by the heavier, authentic monologues amid the evening. Then the exact opposite happened.
“That ended up being the thing that they really responded to,” Belyea says. “They said that the monologues were kind of the anchor points that helped them understand our lived experiences and what we’re poking fun at….So it's still quite funny in some places, but also vulnerable.”
Curator Lili Robinson
This year Lili Robinson, one of two resident curators for Upintheair’s 2022 rendition of rEvolver, has noticed a range of fearless new hybrid forms being used to explore the theme of identity. The artist points to Siobhan Barker’s Harvesting Ancestral “Tea-chings”, which merges traditional storytelling with a cooking show, or Holy Moly, what Robinson describes as “a theatrical jazzercise session”.
Drawing from true personal experiences, and searching for connection: Robinson has seen those as other commonalities that link shows in this year’s fest as it returns to live performance (with a few online offerings). The event has always offered a professional stage for emerging artists to experiment—and Robinson wanted to bring even more marginalized voices to the fore this year.
“We also have an online reading series, and all four of the pieces are delving into really specific lived experiences,” Robinson adds.
The theme that resonates most, in these post-pandemic times, however, is interdependence and the importance of community, referenced across the board in the festival that will be staged across spaces at The Cultch for the rest of this month.
“One of the really clear themes is how we need each other and how connection of different kinds are really crucial right now,” the theatre artist explains, pointing to Passenger Seat, about six people navigating and coming into contact on the Vancouver Expo Line, as one example. “There are all these different ways of coming together to get through difficulties.”
Robinson points out that’s another integral role of rEvolver itself: to bring together emerging artists—especially at a time following a period of pandemic isolation.
For the duo of Belyea and Campbell, that reconnection and thrill of bringing laughs to the stage again is filling them with inspiration to take Gender? I Hardly Know Them even farther. A national tour and web series are in the works.
“It’s so-o-o-o fun to perform,” Belyea enthuses. “I can think of no other show where I feel so amazing.”
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