On Halloween weekend, About Face Theater's ( AFT's ) XYZ Festival will present Let Them Eat Cake, a workshop performance on the hot topic of LGBT marriage equality.Moe Angelos of The Five Lesbian Brothers and The Builders Association; AFT artistic associate and Chicago director Megan Carney; and performance artist and University of Michigan Associate Professor Holly Hughes all helped to create the piece, in collaboration with a diverse Chicago-based cast that includes John Brooks, Deb Durham, Spencer Gartner, Sage Morgan-Hubbard, Coman Poon, Cat Crowder, Misty DiBerry, Feresteh Toosi, IK Bradford and Lane Fenrich.
Let Them Eat Cake was born during the November 2008 Proposition 8 protests. While some of Hughes' queer-identified friends thought marriage equality an issue not worth pursuing, she didn't agree and wanted to make a work that would "push against the boundaries of everyone's understanding."
The work employs text, improvisation, movement, music and humor, asking questions such as: "Is marriage good for the gays?," "Are gays good for marriage?" and "Is it a step forward, backward, sideways or all of the above, set to a disco beat?"
Before a recent rehearsal in the raw storefront XYZ Festival space in Uptown, the trio tabled some of the humor and expressed serious hopes for "gay marriage" and marriage in general.
"Marriage equality is a basic benchmark of citizenship, as is serving in the military," stated Angelos. "Two things that I would probably never do in my life, but there are many things I fought for as a feminist, struggled with, that are not things I am going to take advantage of. However, I feel that it would be better for everyone concerned if women, gays and lesbians, queers, gender queers, the whole beautiful spectrum, all of those people have access to these things. It is part of being a citizen."
"In fact," said Hughes, whose edgy performance work helped spark the "culture wars" of the 1990s, "I agree with some of the arguments that the conservatives are making—that gay marriage will change marriage. Just troubling the notion of who you are to each other and changing the language from the default of husband and wife starts to put attention on gender roles in marriage. I think it's a misguided strategy on the part of marriage equality advocates to say that it's not going to change the institution." Within her generation, she reminded the group, men could legally rape their wives—and that change can be a very good thing.
"There is a lot of fear around this issue," added Carney. "How will marriage be changed and how will marriage equality change the queer community? We've taken so much pride in defining ourselves as 'other'. But, maybe getting a progressive voice in the room, we can shape marriage into something cooler than we can even imagine right now."
"Let Them Eat Cake probably won't answer the questions," said Carney, "but we will certainly entertain them—and the audience. And, there will be cake."
Performances will take place at XYZ Festival Headquarters, 4707 N. Broadway, at 7:30 p.m., Friday-Sunday, Oct. 30-Nov. 1. Tickets are $10-$15 each; visit www.ovationtix.com or call 866-811-4111.
