Open relationships have provided great material for increasing numbers of LGBTQ+ writers over the last few years. With recent surveys stating that about a third of gay men are in ethical non-monogamous relationships – and with gay Londoners boasting seemingly higher tendencies - it’s really no surprise to me and my friends.
One of my recent favourites of this genre is Four Play by Jake Brunger. A detailed and nuanced portrayal of four very different gay men and their complicated attempts at non-monogamy, which resonated effortlessly with sell-out audiences at Theatre 503. The play is now regularly licensed and performed across the UK.
Excellent theatre relies on drama. So, naturally, the conflict in many of these plays stems from the protagonists’ decision to open-up, leading to the ‘inevitable’ messy fall out. But always focussing on the negative aspects of being in an open-relationship perpetuates an inaccurate myth. In reality, many decisions to consensually explore new relationship dynamics are born of a healthy honest desire for abundance. This is the perspective I’m keen to explore in my own plays.
So if the drama isn’t going to come from the open-relationship itself, then where will it come from? Answering that question freed and galvanised me to utilise the recognised ‘Throuple Play’ paradigm as a theatrical tool to explore something else entirely. But what?
My work so far has affectionately challenged and expanded on a wide range of aspects of the contemporary gay male experience; from navigating not-so-nuclear families while twisting ourselves in knots to avoid stereotypes in My Dad’s Gap Year; to one partner living and thriving with HIV, while negotiating intimacy with a lover who is riding a seesaw of complicated addiction and mental health issues in Undetectable. While it’s important to depict and explore these challenges, it’s also important to remember that it’s a privilege to have such problems when our LGBTQ+ siblings further afield face much more severe consequences for daring to love or even exist.
Integrating this uncomfortable truth with the Throuple Play paradigm, inspired the character of Quasim; a young LGBTQ+ refugee, fighting to make his own way and become his own man. An impressive and complex person whom both the central couple (and hopefully the audience) instantly fall for. Once Quasim came to the life so did my new play, Very Special Guest Star, a socially conscious sex thriller that challenged and even scared me to write.
Representing the migrant experience was important, but also demanded I wrestled with some critical questions. Who am I to make Quasim’s story part of my own? What do we have in common? What does this character’s story have to teach me? What are my intentions and what will the outcome be? How can I honestly explore these themes whilst avoiding the damage of misrepresentation for gay men of colour like Quasim? I reached out to talented director and long-term collaborator, Rikki Beadle-Blair, and together we interrogated these questions dramatically as the relationship dynamics in the play became a metaphor for these writerly concerns.
How much do the couple really want to help Quasim, or is their goodwill fuelled by their desire to have sex with him? How do these intentions develop when their own desires fade or turn off completely? Why didn’t they help earlier? What’s truly holding them back and why? Is there any such thing as a completely selfless act?
In the play, these questions build to a dramatic head with the arrival of a bold, satisfying, yet disturbing twist. As the characters learn of Quasim’s true identity, the audience are plunged into truly original ground. Nervously watching as an interracial gay couple come to terms with their middle-class and/or white privilege through encountering and negotiating sex with this queer person of colour, from their past, feeling both included and challenged by this painfully honest, gloriously comical and accurately cringe-worthy central premise.
The result is a loving but critical whirl-wind examination of British gay privilege. It’s also an study of gay families, intergenerational dating, sexual role-play, kink, daddy issues, and of course; open-relationships.
Whilst there’s so much more to mine in all of these rich areas - and endless inspiration amidst the LGBTQ+ experience as a whole, both contemporary and historical - we’re excited to see and hear how this story resonates with audiences now. We need to have conversations about both what audiences love and what they feel is missing from the growing but still too narrow representation of our experiences on stage.
This is our mission: to investigate the breadth of our queer culture(s) and find the courage together to look at - and sometimes even laugh at - who we are. To bravely explore, before returning home and presenting deeper truths about our beautiful, knotty, messy and profoundly human queer lives. To represent.