University of Calgary PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository Graduate Studies The Vault: Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020-07-23 Us: Identity, Queer Romance, and Dramatic Writing Scalzo, Zachary Scalzo, Z. (2020). Us: Identity, Queer Romance, and Dramatic Writing (Unpublished master's thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. http://hdl.handle.net/1880/112337 master thesis University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission. Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY Us: Identity, Queer Romance, and Dramatic Writing by Zachary Scalzo A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF FINE ARTS GRADUATE PROGRAM IN DRAMA CALGARY, ALBERTA JULY, 2020 © Zachary Scalzo 2020 Scalzo ii ABSTRACT The following dramatic text and artist statement examine the process of developing, writing, and editing Us. It explores themes of identity, generationality, and self-definition, and the stakes of representing such complex themes onstage. Scalzo iii PREFACE This thesis is original, unpublished, independent work by the author, Zachary Scalzo. Scalzo iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my advisor, Professor Clem Martini, for his guidance throughout the process of writing this play and artist statement. Thank you for reminding me that “[l]ife can, and does, place road blocks in front of artists. Art finds a way.” Us would not be what it is and I would not be who I am today without my friend, director, and dramaturg Jenna Rodgers. Thank you for your support, and for insisting I think, write, drink a smoothie, or play with Bramble. I am forever indebted to everyone who has given Us and Taking Shelter a home in their inboxes, their mouths, and their minds. Thank you to Arthur, Beth, Brittany, Craig, David, Dean, Jacqueline, Jennifer, John, Marissa, Nathan, Rachael, Sean, and I’m sure countless others who helped Us make its way from my mind to the page. Thank you to Liam, Mackenzie, Noah, and Rianne for bringing it to life in the form that we could. Thank you to my other Playwriting half in the MFA, Czarina, for being Us’ biggest advocate in times when I felt like its biggest detractor. Scalzo v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................... II PREFACE ...................................................................................................................................... III ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......................................................................................................... IV TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................................... V EPIGRAPH ...................................................................................................................................... 1 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................... 2 CHAPTER TWO: WHY NOW? WHY THEN? INTERGENERATIONAL QUEER ROMANCE ON STAGE AND SCREEN ........................................................................................................... 7 1. QUEER THEATRE ....................................................................................................................... 7 2. IDENTITY, POLYAMORY, AND INTERGENERATIONAL QUEERNESS ........................................... 13 CHAPTER THREE: WRITING FOR AN AUDIENCE BEYOND THE CHARACTERS ......... 18 1. AUDIENCE, IDENTITY, AND EMPATHY ..................................................................................... 18 2. TAKING SHELTER ...................................................................................................................... 22 CHAPTER FOUR: “THE PLAY HAS GOT TO COME HOME:” LISTENING TO A PLAY, AND LEADING IT ....................................................................................................................... 27 1. BEGINNINGS: GOING HOME ..................................................................................................... 27 2. REVISIONS AND REHEARSAL: US ............................................................................................. 31 3. AUDITIONS AND REHEARSALS ................................................................................................. 37 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................. 43 Scalzo vi WORKS CITED ............................................................................................................................ 47 US .................................................................................................................................................. 49 Scalzo 1 EPIGRAPH “Perhaps every time is a period of learning.” Jenna Rodgers “I wanna cut to the feeling.” Carly Rae Jepsen Scalzo 2 INTRODUCTION I’m staring into her eyes, just beyond her glasses. I know I’ve seen her before, but I don’t really know where. She smiles and, as her shoulders slope, I feel my already-too-shaky breath catch. I feel a hand on my shoulder—holding me down, thank God, to the small couch I’m sharing with a man I have no business being on a date with and, honestly? Thank God for that, too. (Later, I will be lucky enough to learn the following: Making out with a guy in a clown nose? Not that hard.) I don’t know if every coming out is a rambling. But mine was. “Thank you.” The woman in front of me smiles, again. (Maybe she never stopped?) “Thank you for sharing that with us.” I know that not every coming out is in front of a room full of strangers, and I know that not every coming out is on a blind date with a clown. But mine was. *** In January 2020, I was selected as the audience participant in Queer Blind Date, a show presented as part of the High Performance Rodeo in Calgary, AB. A “spontaneous theatre creation,” Queer Blind Date is adapted from a heterosexually-oriented predecessor that involves a lead clown-performer and one audience participant performing a blind date. Among many other stylistic influences, it is a long-form exercise in structured improvisation and, in my experience, a similar exercise in trust and exploration. The performance traced my improvised relationship with the clown-performer (a man in the version I attended), from our first date to the birth of our (first?) son, each step fraught with our conversations around what it felt like to exist as a queer person—as queer men, specifically—both growing up and today. Scalzo 3 What proved to be a particularly interesting moment for me—as writer, performer, and creator—occurred shortly after the narrative anecdote shared earlier. I had come out onstage to his neighbours, roles filled by incredibly thoughtful and generous actors who (I hope) didn’t usually have to deal with someone rambling and nearly on the verge of tears. The performer and I took a quick break to step out of the show and move to a previously-established safe space to discuss how we felt and our comfort levels with how the show was progressing. Both aware that the moment was powerful, and almost surprisingly so for how readily we both agreed in-scene to stage my sole public coming out, we spoke about how affected we felt and the performer encouraged the house lights to be brought up so we—actors and audience—could take a deep breath together. This moment would be brought up repeatedly to me in the lobby after the show as a moment of connection that many (myself included) didn’t anticipate, but that they were grateful for. The ability to connect with an audience through performance, a relationship I had been unable to pursue for a number of years before this experience, proved instructive for me as an emerging theatre artist, still unsure of the impact of the staging of my words, my body, and my stories. As the audience participant in Queer Blind Date I found myself in a rare and exciting position. Drawing on my interests as a writer and thinker, I was able to directly comment on a relative dearth of “queer narratives,” which we explicitly did from the outset of the show. Alongside the Queer Blind Date performer’s thoughtful questioning and the sharing of our own anecdotes from our lives, I was able to give voice to the tension I felt as someone who didn’t identify easily with a number of available stories about queer people. I could explore my own hesitancies around claiming and creating these narratives while I was simultaneously embodying a new one through my offers in performance. And, as far as I could tell, it was good. Through Scalzo 4 my experience with Queer Blind Date—from my selection to the improvised performance to the feedback I received from those affiliated with and attending the performance—I was reminded of and encouraged by the potency of staging non-normative identities and relationships, those that cut across dominant narratives or at least curve around them. This artist statement accompanies my thesis play, Us, a work of theatre that stages a queer narrative and that was completed as the culminating creative project during my work in the University