Gayfest, Quince Productions’ annual festival of LGBT-themed theater, is back for its sixth year next week.
This year’s productions are focusing somewhat on troubled and fraying relationships, like in “My Favorite Husbands,” a comedy about a drag queen who wants to crash an ex-lover’s wedding to a Republican lawmaker, and “Harbor,” a comedy about the shifting nature of family.
Other productions explore darker and more dramatic relationship territory.
“Wolves,” written by Steve Yockey, is about a young city dweller, Ben, who freaks out when his roommate, Jack, brings home a big bad wolf for a one-night stand.
Director Michael Osinski said that the drama between Ben and Jack comes from their being ex-boyfriends as well as roommates.
“Ben and Jack had dated,” Osinski explained. “After they broke up, they decided [that], because it’s hard to find roommates in the city and affordable rent, they would keep living together. So as a result the relationship has turned into exactly what you would think it would turn into.”
Osinski said there’s jealousness, awkwardness and maybe some unresolved feelings.
“It’s gotten to the point where Ben is so closed off and isolated that he sees the world outside as if it were a big dark forest and only takes it semi-seriously,” he said. “So when Jack says he’s going to go out and find some guy to bring home, Ben is like ‘You can’t do that. The forest is full of wolves.’”
Osinski said the play blends comedy drama and fantasy.
“Steve Yockey’s plays tend to be comedic but in an otherworldly sort of way,” he said. “Very often, they’re funny and charming and a little bit kooky, then suddenly very dark, which I believe is the case of this play. He describes it as a predatory fairy tale and I’ve been describing it to people saying it’s sort of like if you took the TV shows ‘Once Upon A Time” and ‘American Horror Story’ and put them together, and threw in a bunch of gay characters.”
Michael Manley, who plays Wolf in the play and also stars in “Harbor,” said that the fantasy and comedy elements add depth to the story.
“It definitely lives in this darker world but I think the moments of humor you find throughout the play really give it dimension and keep it from being a scary and foreboding story,” he said.
Manley noted the Wolf character isn’t the adversarial antagonist that his name would imply.
“He really represents a lot of people,” Manley said. “He’s really dynamic and challenges me an as actor to deal with a lot of things that people in our modern society are [dealing with], especially single people and what they go through and the various ways you can search for connections, both physical and emotional. Some people will see him as this bad, dark character but I think there are many sides of him. Throughout the course of the play, you are going to find those places where he is very sensitive and caring, and where his true intentions lie. That’s one of the things I love about the play itself: It takes the audience on a journey [in which], at any given point, each character on the stage will potentially be the bad person.”
“[Wolf is] definitely not the bad guy,” Osinski agreed. “Wolf is a sensitive, charming guy, not exactly what Jack was looking for in a guy. In some ways, Jack possibly may find love in this play but then something happens and that’s when it gets weird and otherworldly because Ben can only see outsiders as attackers. So Ben doesn’t see who Wolf is very clearly.”
While Yockey’s plays tend to have an underlying message, they usually are more entertaining than they are preachy, Osinski said.
“I think it starts out as being entertainment but there is sort of a message at the end,” he said. “I like that Yockey isn’t hammering people over the head with it, the idea that I wish that our community were more open and I wish people were less judgmental. When communities tend to get that way, it’s no wonder that people go crazy or isolate themselves and can’t see reality in an objective way.”
“I think there are messages to be found,” Manley added. “They’re different for each person depending on what they need. What I took away from it is how important human connections are and the toll that isolation can take on people.”
Another love triangle showing up at Gayfest this year is courtesy of “MMF,” which follows a polyamorous trio dealing with the fallout of its nontraditional relationship breaking up.
Director Shamus McCarty said he thought the play was a comedy at first glance.
“I read it as a sitcom in that sense that people talk about serious things and they do it with a grin and a laugh,” he said. “When I talked to David L. Kimple, who wrote the play, I found out that the play absolutely isn’t [a comedy]. Ultimately, the subject matter revolves around this triad relationship that ends because one of the three partners leaves. That’s where the play starts. But the way they talk about it and remember is often very funny. Ultimately, it’s about the end of a relationship but I think it’s a very funny play. When [one] leaves, the other two characters stay together. Hilarity and drama ensues.”
McCarty said this play explores the dynamics of a relationship when the sexualities of the three people in it aren’t specifically spelled out.
“Something I think is interesting about this play and about the conversations about sexuality and gender that are happening right now is that it’s all about how we identify,” he said. “I am a queer man and that’s what makes it so. The only time sexuality is directly addressed in the show is when Jane, the female character, labels the two guys gay at one point during an argument. Besides that it’s, ‘We’re us. We entered this thing,’ so the three of them don’t spend a lot of time identifying the terms of their relationship and I find that fluidity interesting. Like, what rules are there when you don’t set any rules?”
Quince Productions presents GayFest Aug. 12-27 at Studio X, 1340 S. 13th St., and Louis Bluver Theatre at the Drake, 302 S. Hicks St. For more information or tickets, visit www.quinceproductions.com/gayfest.html.