White gay culture gets the scathing, inventive and, somehow, live reckoning it needs in Circle Jerk

Queeries is a weekly column by CBC Arts producer Peter Knegt that queries LGBTQ art, culture and/or identity through a personal lens. 

It's become increasingly clear that white gay culture has grown toxic with unchecked privilege, with issues like racism, body shaming and transphobia infiltrating a community that has historically billed itself as inclusive. And nothing has interrogated that matter quite like Michael Breslin and Patrick Foley's Circle Jerk.

To be fair, few performances have interrogated any matter quite like Circle Jerk. Currently streaming live every night from Gowanus, Brooklyn, the multi-camera performance takes the idea of virtual theatre during a pandemic to a bold new level. And it does so while also somehow managing to be a thrilling and deliciously messy comedy about ... white gay supremacy. 

"When we started making this piece over a year ago, it was this question of — what is the position of a white gay man in the United States during this era of history, of misinformation, of Trump's horrendous racist policies, of his misogyny ... of everything," Breslin tells me on the phone earlier this week. "What is our position?"

Co-written by Breslin and Foley, Circle Jerk suggests that position is much more of the oppressor than the oppressed through an impressively chaotic 105-minute show they describe as a "homopessimist hybrid of ridiculous theatre and internet culture." It's set during a winter on "Gaymen Island," where two gay right-wing trolls (Breslin and Foley) are plotting to rid the world of everyone but gay white men with the help of an ambiguously-raced AI fembot they create (Cat Rodriquez). Injecting memes, pop music, TikToks and Britney Spears's Instagram stories, the show also features seven other characters all played by Breslin, Foley and Rodriquez. 

It's also all performed "as live as humanly possible" every night, with no Zooming to speak of: the actors perform together in person using remotely operated cameras and operating under safety guidelines. And it's rightfully gaining considerable attention.

"It's been wild," Foley says of the performances, which continue through October 23rd and are available for anyone in the world to watch. "It's really disorienting performing in the way that [we] are performing this show in a black box in Brooklyn alone with remotely operated cameras, and then we finish the show and it's just us still alone in the black room. So there's not the energetic audience feedback that we're used to. Our work is very tied to audience interaction, so that has been disorienting. But the online feedback has been really exciting."

Breslin and Foley have different relationships to that online feedback.

"Patrick doesn't want to know anything about what's going on on Twitter or Instagram or whatever," Breslin says. "Whereas in each intermission, I actually have to go to my phone to see what the audience is saying. I like get a little boost of endorphins to do the next act. So, you know, we all have our own process. But it's been really fun because people who would never, ever have seen this show live in New York are seeing it."

Breslin and Foley first started developing the show over a year ago with Manhattan-based theatre Ars Nova. It was originally supposed to debut in July 2020. 

"On March 9th, we almost signed the contract for that whole deal," Breslin says. "And then obviously everything shut down. And we took a few months off and then we started to watch all of the virtual offerings globally. And we were like, 'Our show really fits this model, almost perfectly.' So then we gathered our team together with Caroline Hart, the producer, and we started to dream up to sort of sitcom-inspired, multi-camera Grease Live! sort of version of the show. And that's how we came to where we are now."

The team created a plan in consultation with COVID guidelines that are based on the Center for Disease Control, New York state guidelines and also the guidelines that are used on film sets right now in the New York.

"Doing it safely was of the utmost importance to us," Foley says. "The reason that we chose the cameras we chose are because they can be operated remotely and pre-programed so that people in the space during the performance when the actors can't wear masks are limited. And our tech process was expanded so that the different departments did not need to overlap if they didn't have to."

Breslin says all of that has made for a pretty overwhelming process.

"Everything is constantly evolving," he says. "I mean, there's that anxiety of every time you pick up your phone and there's a new press release from the governor. It's like, what's going to happen? So it's been interesting. But every step along the way, we've always been like, 'We can pause.' There's never a pressure to keep going if anyone's uncomfortable."

Who may be uncomfortable, however, is some of Circle Jerk's audience. As the show weaponizes so much of white gay culture, the more aware you are of what's on screen, the more implicated you might feel about what's ultimately being said. But maybe that's a good thing, especially considering how so much recent content made by and about white gay men fails to significantly hold up an unglamourized mirror. 

"I think what we came to in our collaboration is not necessarily making a statement about white gay men, but more asking questions," Breslin says. "What are our limits? How are we complicit in these these national and international tragedies and how can we move forward?"

"I think the question is how we, as perhaps previously more intensely marginalized communities, navigate our increasing proximity to these power structures," adds Foley. "It's a question of how we incorporate our immense privilege into a history of oppression."

They feel that the show ends on that question rather than necessarily proposing us an answer.

"I hope that white gay men get to see themselves a little bit in the show," Breslin says. "And in a gritty way ... not just in a romanticized, Ryan Murphy way."

Watch Circle Jerk live at 7:30 ET every night until October 25th here (and then you can stream previously recorded performances from October 26th-November 7th).