Over the weekend, the Montana Repertory Theatre hosted its second annual “Say Gay Plays”, an “evening of queer theatre to benefit the (LGBTQ+) Center” in Missoula, Montana. The show was a collection of eight staged readings of roughly 10-minute plays, sourced from various contemporary playwrights, interspersed with speeches from local speakers and activists. 

If you’re unfamiliar, a “staged reading” isn’t a fully produced show with costumes and props but has the actors read from scripts and music stands like a radio play. Staging varies within this format, as actors often move around, gesticulate, and sit down in a chair to indicate they are “offstage”. This is a fun and (more significantly) cheap way to do theatre and this format is how so many new works get shown and eventually produced. 

I’m thrilled to say the event was a success! Money was raised. Voters got registered. People were gay. Most importantly, the audience filled the house and had fun. This success makes it feel unfair to critically examine it as a work of art, but it was still an event that provided an experience and had things to say. Even within the format of staged readings, a show can be more good or less good. So I want to talk about it. 

Have you heard of “the fourth wall”? The fourth wall is that imaginary barrier between the audience and the performers. Like, if the play take place in a house you see three walls from the set but the “fourth wall” doesn’t get built, otherwise you’re just looking at the outside of a house. This theatrical trick is primarily “enforced” through strict rules of the show like “don’t acknowledge you’re in a play”. Actors talk to each other and don’t look at the audience, or when they do they imagine that they’re looking out a window or something, and it gives the illusion that these characters are real people that we happen to be spying on and not actors in a play.

This varies of course. Shakespeare has Hamlet speak to the audience, but Hamlet as a character isn’t aware that he is a character in a play written by the real world guy: Shakespeare.  This is hugging the fourth wall but it’s still within the fantasy that we are a part of the narrative, like we are the character’s conscience or we’re God or whatever. As a staged reading, performers aren’t in costume and we see them reading from scripts, so this is already an event where the fourth wall is not strictly or consistently maintained nor is it the focus. What this does to the event as a whole is provide a way for the audience to shift in and out of modes of theatricality. Our imagination can get sucked into a story while also being constantly reminded that it is just a story. 

Seeing Michael Legg, the presenter and director of some of the plays also onstage reading stage directions and reacting to the performance like us, the audience, makes it feel like hanging out with friends. This onstage awareness that “this is just a play” brings the audience and performers together in delightful ways that we don’t typically experience when purchasing and consuming a show. 

However this comes with some drawbacks. A couple of the plays, “Montana” by Emily Feldman and also “COUCH-SURFING”, by Emilio Williams, have characters acknowledge they are in a play for comedic effect. They “break” the fourth wall. It’s potentially funny for a character to acknowledge the 4th wall because we take that narrative immersion seriously (we don’t want someone pulling out their phone and texting while Hamlet is giving a soliloquy) and if a character upends that narrative seriousness then we release that 4th wall tension with laughter. That’s why Deadpool makes billions of dollars by having Ryan Reynolds play himself while being aware he’s in a superhero movie.

In “Montana”, a character is giving her heartfelt monologue to the audience but it turns out the other character heard it the whole time and can speak to the audience as well.  “COUCH-SURFING” has the characters point out the cliche of using a couch to indicate to the audience that “we are in a living room” before going right back to the narrative. This would typically remind us “oh yeah, we’re watching a play, how silly of me to forget that, ha ha”, but when the plays are done as stage readings, these jokes don’t land as hard. The audience doesn’t have the tension they typically would if these plays were fully produced and immersed us within the narrative by inviting us to observe what’s going on instead of having a literal onstage narrator tell us what’s going on. So with less tension, less contrast, there was less comedic potential. 

But would providing spectacle detract from the mission and points that the speakers want to get across? For instance, if these were fully-produced short plays that immersed the audience in a narrative and then had a speaker come out to chat about how awesome the LGBTQ+ Center is, would we think they’re doing some kind of bit? If we are reminded “Oh yeah, this is a charity show” would it be difficult for us to get sucked back into another play? If the event had more glitz, would that ironically keep our activists and their messages behind an invisible glass wall where we look but don’t touch? Where we view liberation as a spectacle but not as something we directly engage with? I understand the impulse that sharing our struggles with the audience between plays is how we can educate them that plays like these are necessary, but in my opinion, a good show justifies its own existence simply by being something people want to see. 

So you can accuse me of being unfair but in my opinion some of these plays were clunkers. “Montana” was cute, but used a time jump to skip over what should have been the climax so it stayed cute without being remarkable. “Our Own F*cking Play” by Esho Rasho was cliche, its politics were treacle, and the story ended before it got to a climax. “Morning Routine” by SMJ had some nice moments and was relatable but also suffered from lacking a proper climax. “COUCH-SURFING” by Emilio Williams was genuinely funny at times and had somewhat of a climax but it was resolved by happenstance and not from any character changing their behavior. I don’t have any kind opinions about “The Dungeons and the Dragons” by Kyle John Schmidt, so I’ll just say it reminded me how good “She Kills Monsters” is.

“Boy Talk” by Erik Gernand was pretty solid, and it felt more like its own complete play instead of the opening scene to a larger show. The characters actually have a conflict with meaningful stakes that they resolve before the play ends, and even though the ending is ambiguous, we went on some kind of journey and can imagine how these characters might resolve the future conflicts we don’t see. Yes, committing to shaving your beard can be tough. Yes, playing board games with your friends can provide a safe space. Yes, being an awkward lesbian is fun. But when these plays also invoke heavy themes like the government censoring us out of existence, (while also not explicitly referencing the parties responsible or their actual ideologies), then I’m left wanting.

Plays don’t have to end with a neat little bow. Some of the best stories have open endings where you are left to wonder what might happen next. But after the fourth play that ended with the theme “things are tough but let’s hope for the best”, I couldn’t help but notice a pattern and wonder what that says about queerness as a whole. Many of the plays gave me the sense that we are utterly powerless to change the things that are actually causing our suffering, so we might as well just focus on problems that are easier to solve. This pontification is nice and comfy but damnit I crave action! I don’t want to watch high schoolers talk about how they want to stick it to the man; I’d rather watch high schoolers stick it to the man!

This isn’t to say these shows are worthless or bereft of good qualities. As I said at the top, it was a generally entertaining night of theatre, and the plays served their purpose: getting the theater community together to have some fun, listen to some speeches, and donate to the local LGBTQ+ Center. Most importantly, actors got to play roles that they wouldn’t in more traditional settings. In Legg’s speech at the top of the event, he said “representation matters” which was met with genuine applause. The act of doing the plays was enough to provide catharsis to the community. 

However, in my personal gay-ass opinion, I just think we can pick better material- i.e. better representation – and we won’t get there if we pretend everything is equally good just because it agrees with our politics. And that’s not to say that subpar scripts can’t be made into good shows. It would just require a full production with actors who are memorized and get to play with the text on their own terms. The staged reading format is a cheap way to produce shows, but the quality of these kinds of shows only goes as far as the writing. These are the limitations of staged readings, as theatre has so much more to offer when it’s properly funded. Scripts become good plays when they are allowed to be played with.

The only play that wowed me with its writing and use of themes also happened to be the only one that directly invoked race: “Words the Wind Carried Me”, written by Kamilah Bush, and directed by Michael Legg. The theme of race wasn’t just from the setting as a period piece in the Deep South, or how the actors were both black, but the play also straight up referenced reconstruction. This distinguishes itself as the most overtly political story in a night where most of the bigotry is depicted as cultural or omnipresent instead of a part of a specific political movement. However this rich theme was just an aspect to a multifaceted story about a woman reconnecting with her lover after serving in the Korean War.  In fact, it’s only play of the evening where one’s queerness wasn’t the primary source of drama but an aspect to a larger story, allowing us to focus on what makes the relationship unique. The characters aren’t just southern sapphic black ladies but have differing opinions on what it means to take care of each other and how to navigate their responsibilities as adults. Their love was the focus; not the queerness of their love. It is also the only play where characters were sincerely spiritual. 

The wind was its own character, with stage directions (read beautifully by Michael Legg) describing the sweeping gusts and gentle breezes, taking as much significance as the dialogue. This wind is a wonderful stage device because on the surface, it’s visceral and interesting in its own right. It’s just nice to have the elements in any story. But as a metaphor its excellence comes from its many interpretations. I don’t have the lens to examine what the wind specifically says about blackness or the Jim Crow South, but as a queer person in a lesbian relationship I personally view it as symbolizing love & destiny. In this play, the wind was the true all powerful force, even in the face of the American military, racism, homophobia, and the Christian hegemony. That this natural force is what ultimately speaks to us and guides us above all else, is touching and genuinely empowering. The play doesn’t ignore the societal conflicts that directly impact our interpersonal relationships and make our lives more difficult, but it also doesn’t wallow in that conflict or pretend there’s nothing left to be done so we might as well suffer. In my opinion, it’s the only short play from the evening that could work as its own complete story.

It is downright hilarious that most of the other shows were luke-warm, meandering, or disempowering and it turned out that it’s cuz they’re also white-coded. But this reached poignancy when one of the actors in “Words the Wind Carried Me”, Lizzie Mills-Low gave a speech afterwards urging the white liberals in the audience to commit to pushing back against ICE and to stop ignoring people of color when they raise concerns years before it directly affects white people. 

To put an extremely fine point about the intersection between racial and queer liberation, the only individual publicly targeted by Montana’s “Drag Ban”  was Adria Jawort, a two-spirit woman. 

When I first moved to Missoula from Bozeman, I chatted with Michael Legg about the state of the Montana theatre industry and my disappointment in how MT theatre companies didn’t step up against bigotry by:

1. Actually making statements about the real world politicians who target and harass queer performers or

2. Go on strike until their conservative audience members and donors stopped voting Republican or

3. Organize a protest at the capital/provide resources for people going to the capital or

4. Make a definitive statement about how drag is defined so that it could be referenced when debating Republicans or

5. At the very least, refuse money from the Gianforte Foundation

Legg (like so many other artistic directors I’ve spoken to) said that there are limitations to political speech as a nonprofit. So MTRep can’t get explicitly political, but Michael says the art they make and the things they say are the work. Activism through expression. I have opinions about this, (least of which is because it’s factually incorrect) but even if the point of “say gay plays” is to produce work that the administration is trying to censor, then how much work are these plays doing when they’re in a state of infancy? I’ll give credit that with “Say Gay Plays” a lot of gay is being said but in my opinion it would be better to DO gay plays. Though in fairness, I haven’t seen any other shows at the Rep cuz I’m too transgender to afford tickets, so if there are openly queer characters in other plays then please let me know; I’d be delighted to hear that.  

The event as a whole served as ideological pageantry for the audience and producers to be as performative as the shows onstage, with lots of polite laughter at otherwise unfunny jokes and cheering friends on for taking up goofy personas or acting as a kind of queer character they typically don’t get to inhabit during regular curriculum or in other venues. But in that vein, the best performances are sincere, and the primary vibe was sincerity. So the act of being gay in public, let alone on a publicly funded platform like the PARTV Building, is itself a form of activism when that act is directly attacked by the government. The night was filled with an uplifting and exciting energy that gave many people (including myself) hope for the future. I have my constructive criticisms, but this is only the second year of the program, and I am pleased with its results so far. Now let’s do even better by picking plays that are as good as our politics.