VolunQueers

D. and I are volunqueering (seriously) all weekend long at Exposure, Edmonton's queer arts festival. We were brought on as bloggers, so we basically attend events and then blog about our experiences. Our posts will be featured on the festival blog, but I'm also going to post my blogs here on Kyle Time. This is the first entry I wrote after attending a panel discussion with Brian Francis and Cindy Baker entitled On Queer Bodies. -- K.

Two reasons spurred me to attend On Queer Bodies. 1) I have a queer body and 2) I heart Brian Francis.

Interest: piqued.

Moderated by Kristy Harcourt, the panel discussed concepts including: the intersection of queer identity and work; the influence of media on identity; and the effects of coming out.

Brian and Cindy (Baker) offered stimulating and, often, humorous observations. My favourite “Cindy thought” was how her art has made her more confident and comfortable with herself. The experience of art is such an important teaching tool and her stories reflected that.

My favourite “Brian thought” was on the lack of literature concerning boys navigating adolescence. He talked about knowing everything about being a 13-year-old girl from Judy Blume, but not having the same knowledge of boys. I later told him that I strongly identified with that and wished Fruit had been around ten years ago.

When things opened up to the floor, the conversation often drifted from the question-at-hand, but the resulting discussion was totally engaging. Talking about the need to connect to queer images inspired us to share our experiences with LGBT representation in popular media. A lot of people had visceral reactions to Queer as Folk and The L Word. For many, those shows served as reminders of what we aren’t, but, for some, interactions with mainstream media prompted important conversations with family, allowing for relatability to queerness.

My favourite question was when Brian pondered whether Jack (Will & Grace) would really wear khakis, or was someone so queeny GAP-clad for palatability?

All in all, we laughed, discussed, and left thinking. In a room full of strangers, I was allowed the exposure (!) to ideas on fat theory, trans issues, and belonging that I’ve not considered.

Cheers to exposure for another fabulous, fun, and informative event!

Wacky Wednesdays

Today D. and I ventured out to the West Edmonton Mall for a little getaway from academia.

Growing up in Regina, I went to WEM practically every year for one class trip or another, so the whole thing was pretty old hat for me. But D. was pretty much astonished as we landed upon wing after wing of stores, the ice rink, the water park, Galaxyland, etc.

We only did a little bit of shopping, relatively speaking, given that there are 800 stores. And by we, I mean me. I'm spending December/January in Winnipeg this year so I was determined to get a proper winter jacket. I found an awesome Canada Goose coat (I know, I know, equivalent to a month's rent, but so worth it!), but then also ended up finding a great trapper hat and some classic salt-and-pepper sweatpants from Roots. What're you gonna do?!

In addition to the shopping, we took over Galaxyland. It turns out today was a "Wacky Wednesday" at the mall, so we got in for only $15. Awesome! Not only was it half-price, but there was no one there, so we basically had the place to ourselves. We went on all the roller coasters...twice, went on the swings, killed some aliens on the lamest 'ride' ever, and got in some major collisions at the bumper cars. D. and I have never been to a theme park in our two-and-a-half years together, so it was a lot of fun to see stars and feel nauseous beside each other.

We also ducked out halfway through our theme park adventures to check out the sea lion show in the deep sea adventure area. I was totally into it until the star of the show started clapping for himself. Can you believe it? That self-aggrandizing little bastard totally ruined a good sea show for me. I mean, sure he could sing the opening bar of "In the Jungle", but the rest of the show wasn't that impressive.

Other than that, we caught a bit of a talk on sloths while searching for a washroom. Seriously. A woman had a sloth around her and was talking about their habits as several meerkats and another sloth made their way through a little glass zoo behind her. So bizarre.

The one thing we were surprised they didn't have was a petting zoo. It would have been nice to chill with some llamas. Or, as I joked to D., perhaps Jose Llana. (Flower Drum Song; anyone?) I'd totally go to a Broadway petting zoo. Especially if Cheyenne Jackson was there. Although, D. pointed out that if I saw Cheyenne there, it would be a heavy petting zoo. Har har.

Anyway, that was our day at the good ol' West Edmonton Mall. If you want to have a fun time and feel like barfing, be sure to check out Wacky Wednesdays. We highly recommend!

(Go)Ogle

Recently I noticed that an image search on Google always ends up in something pornographic, no matter the title. I was searching for various images to use to describe characters in my novel the other day and every single search had at least a few pornographic pictures per page.

Imagine my surprise when I saw the photos that resulted from the following searches:

"older lady waitress"
"Canadian trucker"
and
"hockey player".

Needless to say, I promptly flipped the "Safe Search" option back to on.

In Conversation

The following is taken from a conversation I had with D. last night as we walked home from a house-warming party full of Ph. D. candidates at approx. 2 AM.

ME: For real, I heard someone say "heteronormative" as we were leaving. That's gross.
D.: Baby, people at your parties do across-the-floor routines.
ME: Okay, fair.

Sophie's Choices

When I did my cabaret last month, my friend Sophie took some fabulous promotional pictures for me to use. She is an awesome photographer and an excellent lady whom I met through her husband, Andrew (Bernardo in our West Side Story). She spent the whole evening capturing some great moments (and some not-so-great ones; I look weird when I sing sometimes) and, as a result, I have a ton of great shots to use for the future.

Anyway, I thought I'd post some of her choices up here for your enjoyment, as well as her website in case you should live in the New York area and need some new headshots or promotional photos yourself. She's fantastic!

(All pictures by Sophia Jasnowski, www.fotofia.com,
Copyright 2009)

1-2-3 JETS!

This was written on Monday, but I'm just getting a chance to post it now. - K.


Well, it happened. We played our last performance of West Side Story yesterday. It was an incredible show, in my opinion, filled with fun, passion, and celebration.

I remember reading in Michael Shurtleff's Audition about "mystery and secret" and their effect on a performance. I think he cites Katherine Hepburn in On Golden Pond as an example. During the filming of the movie, she had some personal tragedy going on off-screen and it brings this depth of emotion to her performance. You don't know exactly what it is - hence, mystery and secret - but there's just something about her that moves you. There was a lot of that going on in our final show.

Some things, however, have always been there. For example, in "Jet Song", Matt Alfano and I would share a look on "Someone gets in our way, someone don't feel so well." Well, Matty and I have known each other since high school, so that look contained the memories and experiences of old friends, a strong connection that the Jets would have. Perhaps no one really saw all of that in our look (perhaps I feel it more keenly than others could), but those moments of something deeper, those connections help to build little moments of depth that register on some level. Chilina and Nicko have those, having grown up practically as siblings; I've known Paul since the age of 11 - those connections are just real.

So those moments have existed since day one, but others found their way through the cracks. Shared glances of people who've spent nine months together. Extra emotion under scenes fraught with the sadness over closing. Extra fire under our butts during "Cool" as we united as the Jets for the very last time. It was magic.

And then came the end. I had really hoped I could make it through the show without crying. I knew the bows would get me, and I was okay with that, but I was determined to keep it together during the show.

Well, you can't win 'em all.

I had a handle on it, but when I bent down to pick Paul up, I just dissolved. I did my best to fight against it as we carried him up aisle five, but I was a goner. Then, the rest was a whirlwind. The lights went down and came up again. We bowed, taking our turns at the forefront, all the while celebrating what we had created and the time we'd spent together.

Afterward, the closing party was fairly subdued. We toasted each other and said our goodbyes, but calmly and without many tears. This struck me as odd, that we could be so moved on stage, but later the goodbyes were almost easy. As I thought about it more, it made total sense. The real goodbyes were on stage. The goodbyes at the party were really just "see ya later"s. With facebook, Skype, and e-mail, even those of us who'll be the farthest away from one another can keep in touch. But the show, the Sharks and Jets, we said goodbye to for good. In its ephemeral way, that world existed for a time but is gone now. And that's the saddest part of all.

So, goodbye A-rab and friends: it's been a pleasure.

Stratford '09 Stats

You may remember that last year I made a little list of stats from The Music Man.

Here is this year's edition that Krista Leis and I put together for the closing of West Side Story:

15, 225 Jet snaps
4, 410 "Maria"s uttered by Tony
2, 100 "Ay"s yelled by the Shark girls
1, 470 "Cool"s said/sung by the Jets
315 calypso jumps
210 knee spins
105 Pits of Despair (a section of the ballet)
7 combinations of stage management teams
5 people lost
5 people gained
2 new babies born
1 fabulous company putting together a fantastic show!

That last factoid is a little bit cheesy, but - hey - it's a closing note!

First Day of Vacation

I have some posts coming up about last week, but I've been too lazy enjoying my first official day of vacation to type up anything.

So, in the mean time, I have this...

I woke up this morning looking like Angela Lansbury in the Sweeney Todd poster art circa 1979.


Anybody?!