It's a play about being young, gay and single AF...so of course it's on Zoom

The new class of Canadian theatre-makers might be stuck at home like the rest of us, but the COVID-19 crisis won't stop them from doing what they love. So when the pandemic struck, the National Theatre School launched Art Apart. Its mission: support projects by emerging artists. Some 100 applicants from across the country have already received a $750 grant from Art Apart. And now, their shows are ready for an audience. Every week, CBC Arts will put the spotlight on one of these original works.

If you're single right now, the hottest "date night" you can hope for is an X-rated video chat. And suddenly, the best format for a play about love, sex and consent might just be a Zoom window.

That's something of a happy coincidence for the makers of The Gay Card. Previously staged at the 2019 Frigid Festival in New York, the play's written by Logan Martin-Arcand, and it's about being young, queer and single AF in a smallish prairie city. Saskatoon, for instance — the playwright's hometown. 

Told from the perspective of three different men, the show's something of a millennial dating diary. Between coffee dates and 3 a.m. texts, all three struggle to express their true hearts and minds, never quite clicking with their latest match. Blame hook-up culture, maybe — or just being 25 and human.

With the support of Art Apart, the drama was remounted as a play reading live-streamed on Twitch, Facebook Live and YouTube on April 18 and 19. Directed by Ed Mendez, and starring actors in Toronto (Brendan Chandler), Saskatoon (Mitchell Larsen) and Vancouver (Connor Riopel), you can now watch a recording of the hour-long performance.

Larsen plays hopeless romantic (and Grindr noob) ColdPizzaSlice, a role he first took for the stage version. There's something about the Zoom format of the latest production that suits the confessional nature of the script, he says: "I think it lends itself really well to kind of a vlog-like style." But that's not why the show felt especially timely to the cast. 

Larsen told CBC Arts more about the project. Read on.

Why was this the right time to re-mount the show? Why was this a story you wanted to bring to audiences right now?

Yeah, I think it's relatable to a lot of people. I think it's particularly relatable right now, for sure. 

It talks a lot about loneliness and about how we can distance ourselves from other people emotionally using the barriers of space, or of technology, as an excuse. 

It's about how difficult it is to connect to other people through technology — but also just because of our own hangups, whatever those might be, which I think we can all relate to right now.

You've done the show onstage, so I'm wondering how the experience compares. Did the show gain anything from being re-worked for video?

Yeah, I think when we were first starting rehearsals it felt a bit like a barrier, having to connect through this camera and across this distance. We had to figure out a lot of technical things. 

Logan likes to say that we had to remove other barriers in order to create the same sort of intimacy that you get in a live performance.

It's about how difficult it is to connect to other people through technology — but also just because of our own hangups, whatever those might be, which I think we can all relate to right now.- Mitchell Larsen, actor

We were able to have a fully queer cast, which was incredible, and at the end of every rehearsal we would have a debriefing, because a lot of the subject matter is really personal. It can be very triggering in a lot of ways, and a lot of the team had traumatic experiences that in some way related to the experiences that these characters were going through. 

I think those conversations really added a certain quality to the performance — a feeling that we could be honest and open to each other.

If we weren't living through a global pandemic, what would you be up to right now?

I'm a dancer outside of the work that I do with theatre, so I would be dancing at the moment with the company that I work with, Free Flow Dance Theater Company. We're still dancing, but very distantly. (laughs)

We were planning on performing with the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra and also with an opera company called Collectif that's based in Toronto. But obviously with the travel ban and the ban on large groups, that had to be cancelled. We were also supposed to be performing at the Remai Gallery here.

When we're on the other side of this, how do you think your approach to theatre might be different?

One of the things that's been most exciting for me was being able to connect with performers from different parts of the country. I think it's kind of tricky within Canada, because we're so geographically spread out. I mean, I personally feel like it's such an investment to be able to go to another city to work with somebody that oftentimes I'll end up being very, very Saskatoon-based in terms of the people that I collaborate with. 

But I think with this, with the technological way that we had to connect with each other — or just with the social distancing — I feel like it's kind of a levelling of things. It's just as easy, or just as difficult, to connect with someone who is in Toronto or Vancouver as it is to connect with someone who's a block away.

It's really kind of shifted the way that I think of distance and the way that I think of working with people, and I hope that it will mean more connections with people in other cities and being able to connect with people who are far, far away. 

Watch The Gay Card.

This conversation has been edited and condensed.

CBC Arts understands that this is an incredibly difficult time for artists and arts organizations across this country. We will do our best to provide valuable information, share inspiring stories of communities rising up and make us all feel as (virtually) connected as possible as we get through this together. If there's something you think we should be talking about, let us know by emailing us at cbcarts@cbc.ca. See more of our COVID-related coverage here.