In 20 years the annual Glasgay! festival has become the UK’s largest multi-media LGBT arts festival. Pride Life asks Producer Steven Thomson why you should add it to your cultural diary.
Remember the ‘L’ word? “Legacy” was the buzz term attached early on to the 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games, and it’s been inevitably linked with next year’s Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. But it’s also, quite deliberately, the central theme of this year’s Glasgay! Festival, which celebrates 20 years in Scotland’s largest city.
Established in 1993 by performer and playwright Cordelia Ditton and cultural management specialist Dominic D’Angelo, Glasgay! was a deliberate attempt to create space for LGBT artists and performers while also helping change wider perceptions of post-industrial Glasgow. Running annually mid-October to mid-November, its first year famously included an appearance by Ian McKellan, who described the festival as “a beacon of sanity in a hypocritical and naughty world”. However, Hollywood career commitments notwithstanding, McKellan is quite deliberately not the star 20 years on.
“Despite the great glad-handing of the likes of Ian McKellan on our launch, Glasgay! was really about people like (Scottish poet and novelist) Jackie Kay doing a little poetry reading with the late Edwin Morgan,” says the Festival’s Producer Steven Thomson. “We’d already honoured Morgan in 2010 after his death; now it’s time to honour Jackie, who I call our Significant Other National Poet. Jackie kind of encapsulates the journey of a lesbian artist within Glasgay!; this is a moment to recognise and value the position, the profile, that lesbian writers have had within our programme.”
That said, McKellan’s recent appearance alongside Derek Jacobi, in a certain ITV sitcom, did contribute in a small way to one of the Festival’s new commissions. “It was Vicious that really threw up mother-son relationships in my mind,” Thomson admits. The result is MotherSon, by Scottish writer/performers Martin O’Connor and Donna Rutherford. “Martin very much writes about the male identity in a West of Scotland context that we all recognise. Donna Rutherford is a forensic examiner of familial relationships. I was keen to bring Martin and Donna together to see how they might rub along.”
Such collaborations have become a hallmark of Thomson’s time as Glasgay’s Producer, a post he’s held since 2004. “For most of the first decade, Glasgay! had endured a very hands-to-mouth existence and that made the work of the Producer very difficult; you had to rely on ‘friends of the family’, favours from venues—and the content of their programmes. I came in with a very clear mission; Glasgay! needed to commission, produce, and up its game in terms of quality. We needed to stop being seen as a bunch of cabaret acts.”
Certainly Glasgay! has grown significantly under Thomson’s stewardship, in terms of programme, audiences and levels of funding. This has enabled him to commission a range of new productions, including works by Alan Bennett and Tim Fountain, as well as the UK’s first Tennessee Williams Festival in 2008. Last year Glasgay! was officially recognised as one of Scotland’s four main commissioners of new theatre. “I took that as a significant feather in our cap,” says Thomson, “to be ranked alongside major producers including the National Theatre of Scotland.”
Of course, much of the Glasgay! Festival programme remains work that others bring to the table, not least within the festival’s eclectic film, comedy and visual art strands, as well as Club-nights, talks and debates. Scottish Youth Theatre and playwright John Binnie are reviving Killing Me Softly, his 1987 play about a young Scottish boy coming to terms with HIV/AIDS, while Handel’s Cross, a new production from Theatre North, mixes gay fetish and theatre in an “exhilarating” take on the life of the composer of Messiah.
Possibly this year’s highest profile co-promotion is with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra (RSNO), which is performing the score, live, to a showing of The Wizard of Oz. “The RSNO came to us in a way that was quite unique,” says Thomson. “Normally, mainstream promoters come to us with ‘What little thing can we do for a niche audience in a small dark night in the middle of nowhere, that we have to tick a box for but we don’t really want to draw a lot of attention to?’ But the RSNO came to us: ‘What do you think about The Wizard of Oz—is there anything gay in it?’”
Having explained a little about the film’s place in gay culture, Thomson successfully argued to run with an evening performance for “Friends of Dorothy and all the family”. With rainbow-flavoured posters up across Glasgow as part of the RSNO’s own marketing campaign, Thomson views the collaboration as a great opportunity. “When you have a big mainstream organisation willing to totally embrace Glasgay!, that’s the real mark of how much we’ve moved on. It opens the door for other things to happen in the future. It’s a gift to us, and we should make the most of it.”
So what of the future? “There’s still a tremendous tension within the queer cultural community between those who want to have their own identity—quite firmly queer and separate—and more mainstream writers and performers who want to be accepted for whatever they are without having to put a label or a flag on it,” says Thomson. “I think that’s where the challenge really exists now. You still have to address your core audience with the issues they recognise; equality can’t mean that we don’t have to focus on that because we’re all equal now.
“I laugh at things like the BBC doing a retrospective on T in the Park at 20; well, there’s a significant other festival that’s 20 years old and we’ve contributed just as much,” he laughs. “It’s about their failure to engage with our sector, not our failure to deliver or present. I admit we’re still a small boutique festival, but at least we’re a curated, quality experience.”
Regular surveys suggest that Glasgay’s audience is generally split evenly between gay, lesbian and straight people, but with a growing number of older audience members. “Glasgay has always been dominated by a middle audience, the 18-35s, but older people have started to come in as the quality of the work has matured. I know past directors and some critics say ‘Glasgay’s not really for gay people any more’; well, they still turn up and report at events! We’re still giving the city a bang for its buck in terms of tourism, giving it a profile and identity it otherwise wouldn’t have.
“Glasgay is about reflecting where we are now,” Thomson insists. “I think the future for Glasgay is to continue to be concerned about effective representation of our lives and our relationships, and to be mindful of that across the generations. It’s fine to have a very young audience who are just discovering being gay, lesbian, bi or trans; but they need to understand that there’s a body of work out there, that they’re not the first. So, the future of the festival is to continue to mine stories and look for contexts that others may not have seen.”
More information on the Glasgay! Festival is at http://glasgay.co.uk. Visitor information on what to do in Glasgow, and how to get there, can be found at: www.peoplemakeglasgow.com
First published in Pride Life #14 Autumn 2013.
