By: Paula Gilovich and the About Face Theatre Youth Ensemble At: Hoover-Leppen Theatre at the Center on Halsted. Phone: 866.811.4111; visit www.aboutfacetheatre.com for ticket info. Runs through: July 25
Ignore any pre-existing notions you might have of QUEERTOPIA. Billed as an anti-violence play that takes place in some indeterminate time in the not-too-distant future, the expectation is that QUEERTOPIA will introduce radical ideas like out of a George Orwell novel about how "queer" will be defined in the future. That simply isn't so. Instead, this workshop-written ensemble project plays more to what the teens of About Face Theatre do best—create an array of challenging queer characters who wrestle with identity.
As if their secret meeting space was indeed the Hoover-Leppen Theatre ( though it's supposed to be an abandoned condo ) , these teens invite us into their secret club of sorts, the Queer Love Army, a safety nest for self-expression and a place where challenging queer attitudes are formed. The cast represents the gamut in terms LGBTQ and any other letters you want to throw in, each getting the opportunity to build his or her ( or both ) own complex person.
It's intended to be the future to some extent, but contemporary music and pop culture references drown out that possibility. Consider that young people draw a lot on pop culture as far as formulating identity and these young actors are no exception, and there's an understandable need for more than a few Lady Gaga mentions.
Though each character gets a piece, much of the drama centers on a transgender boy named Flea who meets a straight-looking girl named Lexi, a potential relationship that manages to disrupt even the cornucopia of queer that is the Queer Love Army. Lexi's arrival has particular complications for Teddy, a transgender girl who has a leash on Flea and has been receiving some threatening letters lately. As this drama plays out, we get glimpses of the other characters such as Bishop the dancer, unofficial leader Silve Cloud and Lafayette, the mother hen of the group.
The power in QUEERTOPIA comes from these young adults clearly injecting some of themselves into their characters. The best moments come as they tell their stories in monologues at different points in the play. The struggle with identity between what you are, what you feel and what you want to be shines through in these more intimate moments. Several characters share their stories of what they do after they shut their bedroom doors, a universally understood metaphor—especially to the LGBTQ of the world.
So while QUEERTOPIA doesn't play out as it seems, the About Face Youth Theatre ensemble creates some rich characters with familiar problems but with unique attitudes that challenge the always ambiguous concept of queer identity. And despite the "anti-violence project" tagline, the production does not tell a typical tale of queer victimization. The conflict comes from within the group, a reminder that the difficulty of being LGBTQ doesn't always come from outside the walls of the community—a message that will not and cannot ever become irrelevant.
