Bash’d, a two-person gay hip-hop opera, written and performed by Edmonton’s Chris Craddock and Nathan Cuckow, grew out of a spike in gay bashings in Alberta, Canada. These bashings took place in 2005 and coincided with former Alberta premier Ralph Klein’s last-ditch battle to stop gay marriage in the province.

Klein’s reign is one for the history books now, the bashings are mere statistics in the hate-crime folder and same-sex marriages have been legal in Alberta since July, 2005, but ever since it premiered in Edmonton in October, 2006, Bash’d has been unstoppable.

It was the most-talked-about and critically lauded production at Toronto’s Fringe Festival last July. A month later, it was so enthusiastically received at the New York International Fringe Festival that a Variety review recommended an immediate transfer to an off-Broadway venue as is.

Bash’d is now back in Toronto for a return engagement as part of the Next Stage Festival at the Factory Theatre. Craddock and Cuckow head to Calgary next to perform in the High Performance Rodeo, the eclectic arts festival organized by One Yellow Rabbit. Although a venue is yet to be named, a three-month off-Broadway engagement of Bash’d begins in June.

Such clear sailing for a show that covers turbulent social history and, demographically and creatively, has seemingly irreconcilable elements. The mainstream gay community has resisted hip hop for what it perceives as its rampant homophobia. The worlds of hip hop and opera operate on different musical principles and appeal to different economic groups. The show is both acerbically comic and lump-in-throat tragic; it’s fiercely original but samples countless musical sources.

To complicate its artistic pedigree further, the hard-core music for Bash’d is by Aaron Macri, the Edmonton composer responsible for the boy-band spoof BoyGroove. It’s directed by Ron Jenkins, a Siminovitch Prize short-listed dramaturge and director with a penchant for such heavy-hitting plays as Apple (breast cancer) and The Blue Light (fascism). All involved started from the same place at least: an appreciation for hip hop.

“At its creative best, hip hop is protest music, coming out of the black population that’s horribly oppressed and marginalized,” Craddock says. “It’s a voice for the outsider and in its purest form it still is.”

“Along the way,” jumps in Cuckow, “hip hop got hijacked into the glamorization of violence, misogyny, consumerism, homophobia.”

Although both are hip-hop experts, neither would call himself a rapper. “I do think there’s a cultural distinction between what we’re doing and being actual rappers,” Craddock insists. “Sometimes when a rapper insults another, he’d say that guy is an ‘actor.’ That’s who we are. We are actors.”

The story these two actors tell follows a familiar coming-out, moving-out narrative. Dillon (Cuckow) leaves a homophobic father to start a new life in a gay metropolis. He meets, falls in love and marries Jack (Craddock), a seasoned city boy. Their flaming-pink wedded bliss is violently interrupted when Jack is gay-bashed. To settle the score, Dillon seeks revenge on random straight men.

The simplicity of the story (at least until the gay-avenger plot twist) belies the range of emotions the two sustain for 55 energetic minutes. “When we say it’s opera, we sort of mean it,” Craddock says. “The love is love, the violence is violence and the revenge is revenge.”

That revenge fantasy - or fulfilment - has lent Bash’d an added political message south of the border. American audiences and critics saw more in this Alberta-spun show than a story of violence against homosexuals, turning it into a commentary on the state of a nation at war with itself and just about anybody else who gets in its way.

“It’s a fact that after 9/11 a lot of Americans were so enraged and craved revenge,” Cuckow explains. “It didn’t matter who it went to; they were willing to let their government invade a country under false pretenses. It’s a lose-lose situation. Violence begets violence.”

In typically positive Canadian spin, the two see their show less as touting vigilantism and more as advocating empowerment. “We’re not attempting to incite violence,” Craddock says. “But I do think that gay people could be more politically active.”

Cuckow and Craddock themselves are role models in gay-straight harmony. It’s a testament to their performances that audiences assume the two are romantically involved. Craddock is, in fact, straight and about to marry his girlfriend. That doesn’t stop both men from viewing their working relationship as a marriage - a same-sex, different-orientation marriage.

“And like any marriage, you fight sometimes,” Craddock offers. When that happens, Cuckow adds, “You either make it work or get a divorce.”

Source:
Globe and Mail