3 DIFFERENT HEAVENS
Directed by Trevor Schmidt. Written by Nathan Cuckow. Starring Coralie Cairns and Blair Wensley. Feb 29-Mar 9. The Third Space (11516-103 St). Tickets available through Northern Light Theatre (471-1586/northernlighttheatre.com) or TIX on the Square (420-1757/tixonthesquare.ca) 

If you’ve ever wanted to see Coralie Cairns or Blair Wensley play 20-year-old gay men, you’d better hurry and see 3 Different Heavens, because the opportunity is unlikely to arise again.

3 Different Heavens, which opens this weekend at Northern Light Theatre, is the latest play by local actor/playwright Nathan Cuckow, but it’s the first one he wrote without the intention of appearing in it himself. It’s the story of two mothers—a straitlaced Mormon named Joyce (Blair Wensley) and a barhopping good time gal named Susan (Coralie Cairns)—whose sons David and Jonathan fall in love, only to die in a car accident, leaving their mothers behind to deal with their grief and to reconcile their feelings about their homosexuality. As in many of Cuckow’s scripts, the characters onstage are fully aware of the audience even as they slip in and out of various roles, and much of the humour in 3 Different Heavens derives from Joyce’s awkwardness at playing her son’s male lover.

“At this stage in my life,” says Cuckow, “I’m not interested in seeing two 20-year-olds come out of the closet and make out.” He laughs and adds, “I’m much more interested in seeing two older women make out in the context of two young gay guys.”

It should be said that Cuckow’s first play as a playwright, the 2002 solo show STANDupHOMO, was indeed about a young gay man coming out of the closet—a closet even stood onstage behind him during the entire show.

STANDupHOMO had a successful Fringe run as well as revivals a few years later in Calgary and Edmonton, but it was very much the work of a beginning playwright, especially in its crude portrait of the relationship between the sissy hero and his abusive, macho father. 

He made great strides forward in his two subsequent shows, 3... 2... 1 and Bash’d, both written and performed with Chris Craddock, and both of them funny, potent, highly theatrical two-handers examining young male sexuality. Bash’d, a “gay rap opera” starring Cuckow and Craddock as proudly limp-wristed rappers Feminem and T-Bag, will be opening Off-Broadway in New York this spring—more about that later. 

All during this time, Cuckow was a driving force behind the award-winning Edmonton independent theatre company Kill Your Television—often, as in their productions of subUrbia, Fool for Love, and This Is Our Youth. Not that Edmonton’s bigger theatre companies have made much use of him. Cuckow has appeared in a couple of Stewart Lemoine plays, and he got a Sterling nod for his performance in Three Days of Rain for Shadow Theatre, but that’s about it. Whether by choice or by necessity, Cuckow has built his career largely outside the system—although he’d probably be too eager to acknowledge his collaborators to ever call himself a self-made success story. 

Cuckow describes 3 Different Heavens as his most personal script, but ironically, it’s the show he’s had the least involvement with during the rehearsal process. Luckily, that gave him plenty of time to talk with SEE about his religious upbringing, his struggle with “liberal bigotry,” and the success of Bash’d.

SEE Magazine: Was 3 Different Heavens always going to be about the mothers, or did that angle only emerge later on?

Nathan Cuckow: It totally did. I always intended to create something that I wouldn’t be directly involved in as an actor, and the initial idea was always two gay sons who die, and one mother knew about their relationship and the other one didn’t. But I envisioned it with four actors—the two young men and the two women. My first big breakthrough came when I realized that it would be much more interesting to just do it with the mothers and have them portray the sons. And then when I came up with the idea of having them directly address the audience and explain how they met and became friends, that really took it to the next level. 

SEE: You take that approach all the time in your plays, where the characters are also performers. Is that a result of your acting background? Or is that a certain self-consciousness on your part as a writer coming out?

NC: Well, that’s not the structure of 3... 2... 1—although actually, that was one of the models for this script. I don’t know—for this show, what interested me about having that present narrative, that direct address to the audience, was that I could start with the two women already being very good friends. Immediately I could get past the divisions between the two women, the kinds of religious and social attitudes that prevent a lot of people from getting to know each other. And then I could show back up the audience how they got to that point. 

SEE: You don’t see a lot of stories about the coming-out process from the parents’ point of view—even though in some ways, it’s just as traumatic and dramatically interesting. Dan Savage, the sex columnist, often compares it to the grieving process. Even if you’re a good, liberal, open-minded parent, it can be a painful experience.

NC: It is, but I think parents go through this experience regardless of their children’s sexuality. Whenever children start exploring and expressing their authentic identity, that can create conflict. Your parents always project onto you what they want you to do: you’ll be a doctor, or you’ll go to this school. And when you choose otherwise, it’s hard for parents to let go and accept your differences. Growing up, when I stopped going to church, my parents accepted that eventually, but it did create a lot of conflict between us. 

SEE: And like Joyce in the play, your family is Mormon as well, right?

NC: That’s right. I have a pretty strong religious nonbelief, I have to say. It’s been a struggle for me to accept people’s religion, just because I see so much harm created by organized religion. There’s a lot of negativity and a lot of poison that can come from the segregation of people through religion. I don’t feel any different about Mormonism than I do any form of Christianity, or Islam, or Scientology. As far as I’m concerned, it’s all about the need to believe there’s something bigger than us that takes care of us. We all need meaning in our lives, and religion gives us that. But I also think it was created as a means for controlling a populace, so I think that many of the positive things that come from religion—ethics, morality, the emphasis on  family that Mormonism especially encourages—are things we can find outside religion as well.

SEE: Did your mixed feelings about religion present any obstacles to you when you were writing the Joyce character and portraying her sympathetically?

NC: Well, first of all, it was very important to me that this play not be a conversion piece. Joyce never changes her fundamental beliefs, and neither does her son. So her conflict is between her religion, which she believes in with all her heart, but which is telling her that what her son is doing is wrong. I was actually more interested in exploring liberal bigotry—in Susan’s preconceived notions about Joyce and her religion. It’s hilarious to me how the left is supposed to have this humanistic approach to life, but it’s so for us to think that religious people are all a bunch of fucking lunatics. I mean, I love Richard Dawkins [author of the bestselling atheist tract The God Delusion], but he can come across as self-righteous and arrogant with his attitude of “I’m right and you’re wrong.” It’s hard: you can’t have a rational conversation with a lot of religious people, because they’re operating according to faith instead of logic. My old bigotry still sneaks up on me and I’ll get in a drunken debate with someone, and then I’ll feel ashamed the next day. I want people to accept me for who I am, so it seems like a double standard not to pay religious people the same respect.

SEE: Tell me about Susan, the other mother in the play. Have you known people like her? Are there really moms who tag along with their sons to the gay bar? I mean, given the choice between the two mothers, I think I’d rather have the repressed Christian.

NC: That’s just it! I think I’d prefer Joyce too. But that’s not to say Susan doesn’t have her endearing aspects. I don’t mind it when you can be friends with your parents, but they should be your parent first. I do know someone whose mother is kind of like Susan—not to that extreme, though. Susan’s kind of an extreme case.

SEE: I have to admit, one of the things that worried me when I heard about this script was that it does sound like such a standard character-clash comedy. “One’s a conservative Christian! The other’s a hard-drinking fag hag! Why, they’re the original odd couple—just watch the sparks fly!”

NC: [Laughs.] But, you know, these differences do exist between people. I’ve certainly met both types. And in the play, what brings them together is their sons, who fit more into the middle ground. And for me, it’s just as much the story of the sons as it is these two women. And for the women, it’s about transcending those differences and making a connection. I’m curious to see what audiences take away from the story—this is only the first staging of this story I’m trying to tell, and I find that audiences can teach you a lot about what you’ve created. I experienced that with STANDupHOMO, I experienced it with 3... 2... 1, and I experienced it with Bash’d.

SEE: Well, let me pounce on that segue and ask you about Bash’d. What are the latest developments with that show, and how are things shaping up for New York?

NC: Well, we’re going to New York in March to do a couple of readings for investors, and although the dates aren’t confirmed, the show will be having a commercial run this summer—the producers want to have the opening coincide with Pride. It’s a very different process from Canada, where we count on funding from the government to make productions and festivals happen. In the U.S., it’s all about rich people and their money. The reason the producers are behind the show in the States is that they see dollar signs. Now, they also believe in the show and they believe in the art and the politics of the show too, which is what makes it such a fantastic partnership, but they see the potential to make money as well.

SEE: With that in mind, what advice would you give other artists in Edmonton? You first did your show in New York last summer, on your own dime, at the New York Fringe. Would you recommend that everyone give the New York Fringe a try? Or do you need to have a certain kind of show, with a certain amount of groundwork laid in advance?

NC: Well, we didn’t make any money last summer. New York was really expensive, and we didn’t even get huge audiences. I mean, there are 200 shows at their Fringe in a city that already has Broadway and Off-Broadway. You know? And it’s August, a month when it’s gross and a lot of the city goes away to other places. But I think it’s important to get your work out there in general; I know that starting back in 2004, I really reached a point where I felt I needed people outside of Edmonton to see my work. Getting outside your comfort zone is part of your growth as an artist, and I would recommend that to anybody, whether it’s on the Fringe circuit or the High Performance Rodeo in Calgary or wherever. Bash’d really is an anomaly—I don’t think you can just take a show to the New York Fringe and have this happen to you. Chris and I owe a lot to our agent in New York, who saw one of the Fringe productions, flipped over it, and worked really hard to get a lot of producers to see it.

SEE: So it’s not like you were quietly doing your little show and word of mouth was so strong that a bunch of producers just magically showed up.

NC: Not at all. And none of them came until our very last performance. Our running gag when Chris and I were performing in New York was to peek through the curtains and say, “I wonder how many Guffmans are out there?” It was a joke, but in the back of your head, it’s also a hope and a dream. And it’s phenomenal that the show is going to continue to have a life.

SEE: When you look back at STANDupHOMO, do you think you’ve evolved as an artist?

NC: Well, it’s weird—you look back and you start to notice parallels in theme that you weren’t even conscious of. The theme of identity and being your true, authentic self is something that comes up in everything I’ve done. It’s in 3 Different Heavens as well, with the mothers having to examine themselves after their sons’ death.

SEE: You know, bad things are always happening to gay guys in your plays—they’re always dying or they’re getting beaten up...