All the Rage

by Brad Fraser

  I said, “Okay.”

  For two weeks I holed up in an upstairs-suite sublet that belonged to an actor who owed the theatre a favour—they’d gotten tired of my Y bills—trying to pull all the ideas and influences I’d been dealing with for the last eight weeks into some kind of theatrical form. When we started auditions the script wasn’t completely done and those hopeful actors only got fragments to read from. Paul suggested I bring Hilda in from Edmonton and tailor a part for her. I agreed, happy for the company.

  Eventually I pulled a cast together that included Bob O, an actor I’d met years before in Edmonton when he’d roomed with friends while touring the province in a Citadel-sponsored show; Karen Woolridge from Wolfboy, who played the anorexic performance artist Beehive; Lawrence King Phillips, the only actor from the original cast to survive the purge; future playwright Beverley Cooper as the missing sister who spent the entire show in a store window posing as a mannequin; Matt Craven, who went on to a career as a solid Hollywood supporting player; as well as a number of apprentice actors I’d inherited from Paul, who served as a chorus.

  The script told the story of Eddie, a stoned, possibly brain-damaged young man who is wandering through late-night Toronto searching for his sister, who has disappeared. He was yet another of those slightly addled characters with no filter that I’ve always loved so much. They allow for interesting digressions and expressions because they are not bound by the linearity of dramatized/literary thought. When the play begins he’s at the end of his rope, stoned on a rooftop, considering suicide. Beehive shows up, also planning to kill herself. They strike up a conversation, and the other characters—a gay hustler, a heavy stripper named Miss Why Not (played by Hilda) and others—get pulled into the loose narrative.

  This was my first time working with professional actors and encountering that odd resistance some have to doing the work required to get the show up. But I was persistent and clear in my vision, and after the first week things started to click. That was when I should’ve really let the actors loose and integrated their ideas into the show, but I was so arrogant about “my vision” that I only became more demanding.

  I ended up doing quite a lot of press and continued to develop my public persona, always wearing my leather jacket and making a point of smoking when I could.

  I was interviewed by Jon Kaplan, the theatre reviewer for the newish free weekly magazine Now, which was very influential in Toronto at that time. He was a charming, soft-spoken man who loved the theatre passionately. He invited me to coffee after the interview and of course I went. He made it clear he was interested in me sexually without ever being overbearing, and I let him know I wasn’t interested without ever being hurtful. It was all very civilized and very clear, and by this point I was quite adept at deflecting sexual invitations without giving hurt or offence. People today might suggest there was a power imbalance. I can testify that I have never, at any point in my career, felt less powerful than a theatre reviewer.

  * * *

  —

  I woke up one morning to find the glands in my neck were visibly swollen. My throat was slightly sore but I wasn’t in pain. I phoned the theatre to tell the stage manager to run the play while I cooled my heels in the Toronto Western Hospital’s emergency waiting room before seeing an older doctor and an intern. When I told them I had sex with men they shared a look, gave me a prescription for antibiotics and suggested I return at a later date to take a battery of tests for reasons that weren’t clear to me. I assured them I would, filled the prescription, slept for the rest of the day and forgot about them and the tests after the symptoms subsided.

  Shortly before the opening of Rude Noises, Hilda and I were drinking wine after rehearsal, going over the day’s work, and in the course of the conversation she stated that her breasts were her best feature. Since she was playing a stripper who tormented the lead character with enigmatic promises of sharing information concerning his missing sister, sexually molesting him all the while, I asked her if she’d be interested in exposing her tits in the show. Her eyes slitted thoughtfully.

  This was Theatre Passe Muraille. Nudity was expected. The male lead ended up revealing everything but his dick in the course of the show, so a female counterpoint was welcome. She agreed.

  I told Hilda just to go ahead with the nudity whenever she was ready. A few days later she pulled them out during a scene when Eddie is splayed out on his back and she’s straddling him. She swayed her breasts just over his face, her nipples nearly grazing his lips. It was a magical moment. She wept afterwards and the entire cast did that creepy, soft-shallow-clap “You’re so brave” thing while also hating her a little bit, knowing she’d just stolen the show. Whatever technique Hilda lacked as an actor she made up for with courage and one of the strongest drives to perform I’d ever encountered.

  The audience reaction on opening night was positive, and the actors got far more laughs than they’d expected. I attended in a brand-new pair of black leather pants I’d bought with part of the Canada Council short-term grant I’d received for a rewrite of Wolfboy. My short hair had grown out into a long-in-the-front-shaved-on-the-back-and-sides do. A number of people made a point of telling me how good I looked that night. I glowed from the attention.

  Paul Thompson’s reaction was ambivalent. I knew my style of working was the complete opposite of his and he bridled at the carefully defined physical and technical structure I gave the production. The press response was generally encouraging but hardly overwhelming. We sold quite well, and I had announced my arrival as a “promising young playwright.”

  Before the show closed Hilda and I decided we would seek our fortunes in Toronto. I flew home for a couple of days to return keys, pack up and say my goodbyes—there was a huge party the last night at my apartment that was so full of people it was literally shoulder to shoulder in every room. Representatives from all the groups I’d known in Edmonton were there.

  Someone made a lovely speech, probably Cam, I got a bit choked up and after they left I never saw most of them again.

  PART SIX

  WOLFBOY REDUX

  HILDA AND I TOOK A ONE-BEDROOM SUITE in an enormous Victorian house in the St. Clair and Dufferin area. We got the apartment only by convincing the wizened old woman who owned the place that we were married. Hilda suggested we share the bed, but I assured her I was fine sleeping on the couch.

  Hilda quickly found a job, as she had clerical skills. For me it wasn’t so easy. I applied for anything I was vaguely qualified for, but nothing came through for nearly a month. It became clear that my dental issues were keeping me from the more high-end jobs in retail or service. Eventually I found work as a waiter at New York Pizza at Broadview and Danforth.

  Some months earlier I’d sent a revised draft of Wolfboy to Urjo Kareda, who had recently taken over the Tarragon Theatre after founder Bill Glasgow retired, and he tracked me down in Toronto with his response. Urjo was a former critic who’d moved into dramaturgy and play development. While he didn’t love the play, overall he was very taken with the David and Bernie characters and their story. He’d also seen Rude Noises and thought I had promise. We arranged to meet.

  Urjo was a very large man and, facially, had a Charles Laughton thing going on. His mind was brilliant. He had a terrific sense of humour with a caustic edge that was dangerous. I liked him, but he made me wary.

  I’d gone into the meeting hoping I could persuade him to do a production of Mutants or Wolfboy. Urjo wasn’t convinced but told me the theatre was starting a unit designed to help playwrights develop new work and he invited me to take part. It would begin in the fall. Naturally I accepted without reservation. Not only would we be meeting monthly, but there was even a small honorarium involved.

  New York Pizza closed at ten thirty. The gay bars gave last call at midnight. Usually I managed to push the final tables out of the restaurant in enough time to hop on the subway and head downtown to
have a beer and look for some action. Other nights I wasn’t so lucky, thanks to lingering tables, and I’d have to take the extended way home.

  It was a long commute, and if one connection failed to work out, the wait for the next streetcar was a half-hour. The streetcar stop was right beside a trail near the St. Clair bridge that led down into David Balfour Park. Bob O, who knew everything about furtive sex in Toronto, had informed me that there was plenty of action down there at night, so how could I resist walking down the pathway that led into the dark ravine for a late-night anonymous fuck while waiting for my ride home?

  In August Hilda found out her younger sister would be moving to Toronto. Stuart Clow, who’d played Bernie in the Saskatoon production of Wolfboy, was also looking for a place to live, so it was decided we’d find a house we could all share. It took a few weeks, but we finally found a big place conveniently close to New York Pizza. My bed was a set of double doors laid on five milk crates, covered with a three-inch foam mattress, which led more than once to the doors opening during rigorous sex and landing me and whoever was with me on the floor.

  I joined the Sherbourne Club, then Toronto’s hottest gym. I’d go every morning after breakfast; a quick subway ride and a one-hour workout before heading back home to write for an hour or two before going to the restaurant. This became a routine, and my body started to show perceptible growth and change. I loved this new-found discipline, and it showed in my writing habits. For the first time in my life I inhabited both my body and my mind at the same time.

  Nights off were for the bars. After a writing session I’d usually nap until eight, then eat a light supper, shower, shave, style my hair and do my bar crawl.

  Usually I was happy to hang out at the sidelines, watch the crowd, listen to the music and allow my imagination to roam, influenced by the beat and whatever the atmosphere was around me. It was a strange kind of being alone while being connected to others. I often had my best ideas and most profound breakthroughs in these conditions, where the act of partying somehow aided the stimulation of my imagination. This never happened when I was out with a friend, or in a group, which was another experience entirely. And if someone should approach me, the spell would be broken.

  As my body changed so did the attention that was paid to me, but that didn’t necessarily lead to more sex. I’d quickly learn some people were intimidated by what they admired. I also learned some people didn’t find me at all attractive no matter how much I pumped up. At first, leaving the bars on my own depressed me, but I eventually became accustomed to it. Experience taught me it was better to leave alone than with someone I’d settled for but wasn’t truly attracted to. I may never have been having as much sex as I felt I deserved, but I seemed to be having more sex than a lot of people I knew.

  In early September Hilda and I flew back to Edmonton to rehearse Theatre Network’s production of Wolfboy. Hilda was staying with her mom, and I had a room in a house Kate Newby shared with a bunch of other U of A theatre students.

  Kim Coates would play Bernie. Kim is now well known, not least for his amazing work in Sons of Anarchy. I’d met his winning girlfriend and later wife, Diana—whom I loved immediately because she raved about the play—at the Wolfboy opening in Saskatoon the year before, and we’d hit it off. She’d mentioned that her boyfriend, Kim, would have loved it. A year later, in Toronto, his name came up for Bernie. Theatre Network had no money to fly him in for an audition, so we met and he read for me in the living room of our commune. I hired him on the spot. Lawrence King Phillips from Rude Noises played David. My ardent supporter from Walterdale, Vivien Bosley, was playing the ill-fated psychiatrist part, Hilda the nurse again, and a couple of local actors were cast as the father and Annie.

  As usual, after a couple of days I got impatient with the pace of rehearsals. I found Stephen Heatley’s style of direction far too intellectual and talky. While I understood the necessity of understanding objective and conflict, I also knew a lot of these issues were far better realized after the staging of a scene.

  But what I was really wrestling with were my own failings. Despite repeated efforts to revise the play—which I had shortened to two acts—the ending still eluded me and major parts clunked.

  My relationship with Stephen became prickly. After the second week I realized my attitude wasn’t helping and I withdrew until the final technical week, which now also involved a great deal of press. An appointment had been made for Stephen and me to be interviewed on the radio for a local arts program. We met the interviewer at a nearby diner for a pre-interview, and it was quickly clear to me that she and Stephen were great friends. She asked about conflict between writer and director, and I was honest and diplomatic about the need for disagreement in the creative process. I thought all was cool, but just as we were about to enter the studio the interviewer turned to me and whispered something to the effect of “Of course I’ll ask you questions but, really, I don’t think you have much that’s interesting to say,” and with a smile ushered me into the booth.

  I was a mess during the interview, halting and uncertain of my answers. This was the first time I’d been intentionally sabotaged by a journalist just before being interviewed, but it wouldn’t be the last. I learned early that the press wasn’t always my friend. It was an important lesson and I never forgot it. I felt much less sullied a few days later when Kim and I each posed shirtless as the local right-wing newspaper’s Sunshine Boys.

  More articles about the mysterious disease began to appear in the gay press. The numbers weren’t alarming, but the whole thing was odd and gave me a chill when the stories suggested it could be tied to using pot and poppers. I didn’t use those substances as habitually as some I knew, but I wasn’t exactly teetotal either.

  The show opened to a full house. I paced the lobby, drinking beer and listening for laughs. My family afterwards seemed both vaguely proud and vaguely embarrassed by what they saw. When I asked her opinion my mother said, “Oh you know me, I like light theatre.” Randy loved it. Kate and others of my contemporaries said good things. But the reviews were mixed. Most quite rightly balked at the script’s failings, but others were clearly uncomfortable with the homoeroticism. This muted reaction was balanced a few weeks later when the Vancouver production of Wolfboy opened at Touchstone Theatre to some acclaim.

  Quite a lot of that acclaim was directed at the actor John Moffat, who played David. I’d heard his name a few years earlier, because he’d been Bob O’s lover in their acting-school days. John and I were about the same age, and he was being touted as one of Vancouver’s most interesting actors. From all reports, his portrayal of David was masterful. From other reports, he was also hot. I hoped to meet him someday.

  The Edmonton and Vancouver productions generated quite a lot of press but very little cash. Broker than ever, I picked up extra waiting shifts when I could and spent my nights writing various projects, few of which saw the light of day.

  * * *

  —

  There were seven participants in Tarragon Theatre’s Playwrights Unit in 1981/82 including future filmmaker Atom Egoyan and one or two others who would go on to have successful careers as writers.

  It quickly became clear to me how different Urjo and I were in our aesthetics. While he admired the raw wit of my work, I could also tell he was threatened by it. He preferred stories made safe by a filter of nostalgia. Most of the plays I saw that he’d influenced ended with a monologue that elliptically stated what the play was all about. My reactive, pop-culture-influenced work seemed to leave everyone in the group a bit mystified, and my willingness to nosedive into bad taste both disgusted and delighted them.

  This was my third experience of being one of a group of playwrights who’d been brought together to support one another’s work. The conversations were wide-ranging and quite often annoyingly academic. I suppose on some level we were all competing for Urjo’s approval and the chance of a future at the Tarragon. Wit
h four productions under my belt I was one of the most produced playwrights in the room. At twenty-three I was also one of the youngest.

  Clarke Rogers had taken over as artistic director at Passe Muraille when Paul Thompson left at the end of the previous season. Clarke was a character: rusty-haired, freckled, painfully thin, more than a little manic—often from drugs—but he was also well-spoken and challenging. When he rolled a joint on his desk during our first meeting in his office, lit it and passed it across to me, I knew I’d like him. A couple of seasons earlier, Clarke had been the youngest artistic director appointed in Canada when he was chosen to helm Theatre Calgary. Apparently the experience hadn’t been a positive one. “I told those motherfucking cowboys to shove their parochial American attitudes up their asses,” he said. “I make real theatre.” He had returned to Toronto and directed the milestone original production of Judith Thompson’s excellent play The Crackwalker.

  A short time later we sauntered over to the Epicure, a bistro on Queen Street East, to consume many beers and share many laughs. Clarke made a lot of promises in that first meeting: productions, residencies, junior AD positions—all of which excited me no end.

  None of those promises were kept. I learned on further acquaintance that Clarke ran hot and cold, sometimes your best friend, sometimes weirdly accusatory and paranoid. I don’t think his drug problems were yet as bad as they’d become, but they were there.

  Meanwhile, rejections of Wolfboy poured in from theatres everywhere. I’d recently signed with Ralph Zimmerman’s Great North Artist Management, which was one of the few agencies at the time that represented scriptwriters. I hoped this would open doors, but all it did was reap me polite no-thank-yous. The rejections often sent me into a pit of self-hating despair where I’d wander from bar to bar until I was so drunk I’d go home with anyone who asked me and do pretty much anything they wanted to.