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Loud, proud, queer and here
Standup channels a Mormon bishop and feisty transsexual, among
others
Liz Nicholls
The Edmonton Journal
Thursday, January 13, 2005
EDMONTON - So, have you heard the one about the gay Mormon kid who
went off to theatre school in the Big Apple?
Good punchline, too. Nathan Cuckow returned to Edmonton in 1998 from
four mind-expanding years in New York to play half a pair of
conjoined twins with showbiz aspirations (Two Tall Too Thin) and an
Asian transsexual (The Hothouse Prince) -- not every Mormon parent's
idea of Hamlet, needless to say.
It gets better. Cuckow, a founding father of Kill Your Television
Theatre, devoted to the edgy, the raw and the contemporary, landed a
succession of ranting slackers, sexually ambiguous underachievers,
coked-up dope dealers and Shakespearean cross-dressers. He was the
co-author (and co-star) of last season's 3...2...1, about a couple
of Wetaskiwin hose-heads on a massive bender for reasons that
involve dark sexual currents. His Mormon folks didn't see it. "Not
their cup of tea," he grins. "Not that they drink tea."
And now this. Talk about your closet organizer.
In case you haven't heard the one about the gay Mormon standup,
you'll be intrigued, maybe giddy, possibly nervous, when Cuckow
takes the stage at The Roost tonight in his newly revised solo show
STANDupHOMO. When the run here ends, the show hits One Yellow
Rabbit's prestigious High Performance Rodeo in Calgary.
At 28, the Calgary-born Cuckow is the sort of serious, charming,
standup guy -- mannerly, wholesome even -- everyone's mom likes.
This makes him laugh. Needless to say, channelling a Mormon bishop,
a feisty transsexual and an obsessive Dr. Ruth type, among others,
through a gay Mormon standup in STANDupHOMO suggests major
contradictions. Cuckow is a virtual repository.
"Well, I certainly have a rebellious nature," he sighs. "I got
suspended every year from junior high. In my high school, I was
always on the brink of expulsion; the monotony, the boredom. The
only thing that kept me going was visual art. Drama was the same old
crap." He shrugs. "The world is just a larger high school. The same
status games, the same cliques, the same insecurities, the same
rigid class structure."
By 12 or 13, he'd stopped going to church. "My parents allowed me to
make the decision, but couldn't accept it." But when "the zombie bad
kid," as he describes his earlier incarnation, took off for the
Neighbourhood Playhouse in New York at age 18, his mom and dad
supported him "every step of the way." For one thing, he explains,
"they're Brits; they're more open-minded than most, albeit
middle-class Ralph-votin' Stephen Harper-supportin' Conservative;
they think Bush is doing a good job."
On the other hand, they also have nine other kids, so No. 7, Nathan,
wayward actor, doesn't flummox them. "I'm not the only oddball in
the family."
"New York woke me up," says Cuckow simply. "I just felt like I was
alive. ... It was all about new experience. I had my first
apartment. I was away from my family for the first time. It also
prepared me to pursue (theatre) as a career, how hard it is." He
worked in bars, in a Village card shop. He worked for Tony Randall's
National Actors' Theater on The Gin Game and The Sunshine Boys. He
went to shows.
But the thing Edmonton can teach you, better than anywhere else, is
how to make theatre happen. Our giant Fringe is a screw-you to the
usual showbiz excuses about waiting to be asked. "I never dreamed of
creating my own work," says Cuckow. "But I had great role models
here -- Stewart Lemoine, Darrin Hagen, Chris Craddock -- all
self-producing, creating their own work." Being recruited by Lemoine
for his The Hothouse Prince and Two Tall Too Thin was inspiring. "I
think his plays are so brilliant, so multi-layered, the language is
so witty and so eloquent."
His own plays, and his choice of repertoire, couldn't be more
different, to put it mildly. Kill Your Television's debut choice of
Eric Bogosian's SuBurbia, a raw play about stalled kids, with Cuckow
as a vicious, racist fomenter, was a tipoff.
You will have gleaned that the protagonist of STANDupHOMO is gay.
Cuckow resists the term as too confining. "I have a broad
perspective on sexuality; gay or straight, it's much more
complicated than that," he says. "The world wants to push into one
category or another. If it's gay, then that becomes your identity:
gay playwright, gay play, gay actor. I want to play all the roles
you don't think I can play.
"I'm not afraid to use the word gay about myself," he says. "Well,
I'm certainly not straight." But he prefers the term queer. "Anybody
can be queer. It's a mindset. It's counterculture, it's
non-mainstream, alternative. What it's not is conservative,
missionary position sex. ... People shouldn't be divided into gay or
straight; it should be smart or dumb."
The show had its origins in a 10-minute monologue, P.S. I'm Gay,
Hagen persuaded him to take to Loud N Queer, a festival that
celebrates sexual diversity. "It had a standup feel to it," says
Cuckow. "Usually I loathe standup; it makes me cringe -- although
there are brilliant ones, Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Bill Cosby."
After the show, he and Hagen debriefed. "He said, 'You should do a
standup show and call it STANDupHOMO.' We laughed and laughed."
Gradually, with help from director Kevin Sutley and more recently
One Yellow Rabbit's Michael Green, a big Cuckow fan, STANDupHOMO
played with the double entendre in "standing up," as Cuckow puts it.
"It's the idea of telling a universal story of someone standing up
for themselves, out of the closet of pressure from religion and
parents where sexuality is repressed, to say Hello. This is who I
am. It's about memory, identity and perspective."
Since it's conceived as a standup comedy routine by a gay Mormon who
conjures his Mormon bishop dad, among others, and plays in a gay
club, STANDupHOMO is apt to strike audiences as autobiographical. It
isn't, says Cuckow, who calls it "personal but universal." It's
never going to tour to Mormon youth groups, but it doesn't single
out that church for particular abuse. "It's potentially offensive to
everyone; nobody's safe," he says. "Even the mentally handicapped."
The imminence of gay marriage ("every generation becomes more
tolerant of diversity") and the hostility that the George W. Bush
victory seems to signal ensure the show is just as topical as in
2002, maybe more. "The only good thing about Bush winning is four
more years of good comedy."
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Cuckow a real
stand-up guy
STEVE TILLEY, EDMONTON SUN
Thursday, January 13, 2005
No, Nathan Cuckow will not be changing the name of his one-man show
to STANDupMORMON. But the local writer and performer, who has
received mucho critical acclaim for his funny, searing 2002 Fringe
hit STANDupHOMO, is delving deeper into peril-fraught religious
terrain with a reworking of the original.
"They're a very tolerant religion," Cuckow says of Mormons. "Their
stance is you can be a homosexual and be a Mormon, as long as you
don't have sex."
Whoa, wait a second ...
Running tonight through Jan. 22 at the downtown Roost Niteclub,
STANDupHOMO - the 2005 edition - adds a new level of nuance to
Cuckow's closeted alter-ego by making the character Mormon. As
Cuckow himself is. Or was, until the age of 12 when he stopped going
to church.
But STANDupHOMO isn't necessarily autobiographical, although
certainly much of it is based on the 29-year-old's life and
experiences.
It began much more simply, in fact, as a 10-minute monologue for the
Loud 'n' Queer festival in the late '90s, based on an idea hatched
by Cuckow and scenester Darrin Hagen: a gay standup comedian.
When Cuckow was asked to expand it to a full show for 2002's
NextFest and Fringe festivals, he applied another degree of meaning
to the silly but catchy title.
"What really jumped out for me was the idea of it being a story of
someone standing up for himself," he said.
"I think the show is about being who you really are, despite
religious, social or family oppression."
While STANDupHOMO in its original form wasn't broken, Cuckow has
spent the past couple of years doing some periodic fixing.
After its run at the Roost, Cuckow is off to Calgary to do the show
at One Yellow Rabbit's High Performance Rodeo, where he says there's
a chance his Calgary-based family might come out to see the show.
It's a prospect he finds a little nerve-wracking, as Cuckow's clan
are Mormons of the very much unlapsed variety.
"That's something that's caused me a lot of inner turmoil, accepting
and preparing for it," he said.
He's sure they can handle the show itself - "they've dealt with a
lot worse in their life than my little gay play" - he just doesn't
want any nastiness that might be directed his way to spill over onto
his family.
But then again, nastiness is something that Mormons are no strangers
to, Cuckow said.
"Mormons have been persecuted for their beliefs, they're looked down
upon as a cult or non-Christian because they have different
beliefs," he said.
"I think all forms of bigotry are essentially the same thing. I
don't think there are any distinctions."
Which again comes around to the message of universal tolerance, or
the plight surrounding the lack of same.
Cuckow says we seem to go out of our way to find means to segregate
ourselves and others, especially when it comes to sexuality.
"I think the separation of people between gay and straight is
actually irrelevant," Cuckow said.
"It should be smart and dumb."
STANDupHOMO plays tonight at 8 through Jan. 22 (except Jan. 17) at
the Roost Niteclub, 10345 104 St.
Tickets are $12 ($10 for students and seniors) and are available at
the door or in advance at Tix on the Square, 420-1757.
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Making with the zingers
After two years of development, Nathan Cuckow¹s Fringe hit
STANDupHOMO makes a timely return
By Eva Marie Clarke, SEE Magazine
Thursday, January 6, 2005
Ask Nathan Cuckow about the Mormon view of
homosexuality and he takes a fortifying swig of his coffee before
launching into a thoughtful albeit strong rant.
“I was watching Larry King, and they had [Gordon B. Hinckley] the
president of the Mormon Church being interviewed, and King actually
asked what the stance was on homosexuality. [Hinckley] said that
they are not anti-gay, but they are pro-family. It’s the great
talking-in-circles, and it made me laugh because in essence it’s
saying that gays are not pro-family because they don’t reproduce!
Just because you have a child doesn’t make you a family, that’s
something you work on, you become a parent through your
actions. It’s bullshit! But it’s like any religion: you have
wonderful Mormons, and Mormons who aren’t so great. I have very
open-minded parents, and that probably comes from the fact they
weren’t born and raised in the Church; they came to it later in
life.”
A really good idea
Cuckow’s 2002 Fringe hit STANDupHOMO—wherein a gay, Mormon comedian
takes on the attitudes of the religious bastion opposing
homosexuality—had its roots in two other venerable Edmonton
events—the Loud ’n’ Queer festival and Nextfest. “When I first
arrived in Edmonton back in 1998, Darrin Hagen approached me about
writing for Loud ’n’ Queer, and I wrote a 10-minute monologue that
was kind of stand-up comic based,
even though I had no intention of being a stand-up comedian ever,
and it was well received. Darrin said why don’t you turn it into a
one-man show and call it STANDupHOMO? We laughed, and then I
thought, ‘That’s a good idea.’ But I wanted the show to be more than
just a queer standup comic—the idea of somebody standing
up for themselves, that double entendre was what was interesting to
me. I just took that as my starting point and went from there”.
Just “going from there” meant a
performance at the 2002 Nextfest, then a full debut at the Fringe,
an experience which Cuckow says
was a bit intimidating “It was my writing debut. Sure I had written
stuff for Loud ’n’ Queer, but as far as a play that I was performing
in and that was being produced, that was my debut. The learning
curve was huge. I have tremendous respect for anyone who
creates, writes work, and puts themselves out there like that. It’s
incredibly intimidating and I had the good fortune to be supported,
to be embraced by the Edmonton’s theatre community. It was
nice—decent houses, decent reviews. What more can you ask
for? [One Yellow Rabbit’s] Michael Green saw the show then and
that’s where we made our connection”
STANDup HOMO may have appeared to pull the
traditional post-Fringe disappearing act, but over the past two
years, the play has continued to have a life. “I’ve been in a period
of
redevelopment. There was a stint that I did in Calgary with Michael
Green, we worked on it a bit together, and then I came back up and
continued working on it with Kevin Sutley, the director. In that two
years of redevelopment, I’ve gone all over the map with the
piece. For a while it didn’t even resemble what I had initially
done, which was very frightening but also interesting as
redevelopment. As the process has continued, I’ve sort of come full
circle and am now back to where I started. It’s gone somewhere
completely
different—structurally it again resembles the original—but I’ve been
able to include the pieces from the developmental process—make the
characters deeper, make the connections deeper; try to communicate
on a more mature level perhaps. I think it’s funnier too. There’s
more humour. That was something I was definitely concentrating on,
the actual standup routine. Definitely more humour!”
All change
The 29-year-old Cuckow affably admits he’s also undergone a personal
maturation since the show’s debut. “I think the religious
perspective in the show was angry and one-note. I now have some
distance from that time and have matured some. My approach is to
be more balanced in the approach, to show what somebody can find
that is good in religion and try to have a bit more balance. Also, I
have a Mormon background, my parents are Mormon so I have tried to
bring in more of that conflict, more specifically towards Mormonism
rather than religion—the stand-up character attacks all kinds of
religion, but I think that the fact he’s a closeted Mormon deepens
the character and deepens my personal investment in him. It is
fiction, it isn’t autobiographical, so I was looking for ways I
could involve myself in the storytelling, take it a bit deeper”.
Cuckow grew up in Calgary before heading off to the
bright lights of New York back in 1994. He studied at the American
Musical Academy and after graduation, joined the NYC theatre
community as a backstage crew member for the late Tony Randall’s
National
Actors’ Theatre. “I worked on The Gin Game and The Sunshine Boys and
had the opening night party at Sardi’s. I was part of that thing. It
was pretty cool. When I went to New York I didn’t even know what
Sardi’s was!”
However, getting an onstage career started was a
different matter, and fate stepped in in the form of Chris
Fassbender, with whom Cuckow had made friends at theatre school.
“Chris came here and started his professional career and when I was
getting ready to shake things up, go back to Canada, I was
considering Toronto, I was considering Vancouver, and Chris invited
me to the Fringe Festival, and I came to do his show All in the
Timing, met a whole bunch of people and saw it was a great place to
learn, a great place to grow and develop, so I stayed”.
Work with Teatro La Quindicina and a
Sterling-nominated turn in Kill Your Television’s SUBurbia
established Cuckow as a familiar face on the Edmonton boards. He
says events like Workshop West’s Kaboom Festival have contributed
greatly to his development as a writer and performer. “A piece that
was really influential in the redevelopment of STANDupHOMO was Marie
Brassard’s Jimmy. That just blew my mind. It was a gorgeous,
gorgeous piece that to this day still affects me.”
More recently, Cuckow received another Sterling
Nomination as the co-author of 3… 2… 1 with Chris Craddock—a play
which trod ground similar to that of STANDup HOMO, despite his
intentions. “I really wanted to do something that wasn’t gay and
didn’t involve
religion. Funnily both of those came up! But you write about what
you know ultimately and it really happened organically with 3… 2… 1
we just all of a sudden realized that those were logical choices for
the characters. Where we are, Alberta—those things are
issues. It had less to do with us, and more to do with the actual
storytelling. It didn’t come from a place of ‘we need to make this
point’ it came from what’s necessary for these characters”.
Outside the boxes
Although STANDup HOMO takes on queer issues, Cuckow says he finds
labels frustrating even though they can work to an artist’s
advantage “As far as sexuality is concerned, gay and straight are
just incredibly limiting and unrealistic. I think sexuality is so
much more complicated. To be truthful, what appealed to me about
creating a queer piece of theatre was you immediately have a
built-in demographic. That was a conscious decision. I am going to
create a queer piece that will hopefully attract gays and lesbians,
sort of a built in audience. One of the appealing factors was that I
look at it as an advantage to be able to perform at a queer
festival, a theatre festival, a comedy festival—it’s to my benefit
to have different options and not be limited to just theatre, but I
do feel that it’s silly to live in a time in this day and age that
still separates things into boxes. I find the label Queer more
fulfilling that I do Gay, Queer is anything other than straight.
It’s an all-encompassing movement”.
So far 2005 seems to be pointing Cuckow well on the way to achieving
his goal of working at a national level—touring, collaborating with
other artists, creating new work. He’d like to go back to New York
with his show—a visa mishap scuttled a trip to
the New York Fringe last year—but he isn’t so sure he wants to brave
the current political climate. However, his six years in Edmonton
have, he says prepared him to build a career bigger than he imagined
at the beginning “I’m doing things now that I never dreamed I would
have done in New York. I never dreamed of self-producing, I never
dreamed of writing. I was all about chasing the gig there, and
Edmonton opened up so many possibilities for me. I’m really
thankful.”
EVA MARIE CLARKE
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