Lisa Allen-Agos­ti­ni

Raunchy and re­veal­ing, the bur­lesque mu­si­cal Buss de Mark played for two nights last week at the Big Black Box, Wood­brook. The pro­duc­tion was a staged read­ing of a work in progress writ­ten by Zele­ca Julien and Alexan­der John­son. It was put on by the gen­der and sex­u­al mi­nori­ties or­gan­i­sa­tion I am One. Mem­bers and al­lies of the T&T les­bian, gay, bi­sex­u­al, trans, queer and in­ter­sex (LGBTQI) com­mu­ni­ty com­prised the en­sem­ble cast, who are al­so cred­it­ed as co-writ­ers.

The pro­duc­tion was the cul­mi­na­tion of I am One's in­au­gur­al month long Pride Arts Fes­ti­val.

The play is sub­ti­tled A so­ca, dance­hall, ca­lyp­so, chut­ney mu­si­cal com­e­dy all about fam­i­ly in Trinidad. Di­rec­tor Tim­mia Hearn, in re­marks to the au­di­ence af­ter the show, said the work was meant to give lo­cal queers an al­ter­na­tive to the dom­i­nant me­dia char­ac­ter­i­sa­tions shown in US cul­tur­al prod­ucts like the Broad­way play and film Rent. T&T queers have their own ways and this show sought to por­tray them.

Hing­ing on the con­ceit of the game of whe whe–the in­dige­nous, il­le­gal form of the State-run gam­bling fran­chise Play Whe–the play's four main sto­ry­lines showed var­i­ous as­pects of the un­der­ground world of T&T queers. Mu­si­cal mo­tifs, like the play's epony­mous orig­i­nal theme song, fur­ther unit­ed the ac­tion of the two-hour work.

One cen­tral sto­ry was the ri­val­ry be­tween a les­bian com­mu­ni­ty leader, so­ca star Shane, and a bad-john clos­et­ed gay politi­cian, MP Bene­dict. An­oth­er was the sham mar­riage of shal­war-wear­ing gay man Prikash, a pipe con­trac­tor, and his butch les­bian wife Zion, a man­ag­er of so­ca singers. A third sto­ry re­volved around Maxi Man, a flam­boy­ant­ly gay maxi taxi dri­ver.

Mu­sic was one of the play's strengths. Orig­i­nal com­po­si­tions and arrange­ments al­ter­nat­ed with satir­i­cal re­vi­sions of ex­ist­ing songs like An­dre Tanker's Base­ment Par­ty. Some of these soared; the mu­si­cal bat­tle be­tween the pro-box drain women sup­port­ing politi­cian Bene­dict and the pro-pipe men work­ing for Prikash drew a well-earned round of ap­plause from Thurs­day's au­di­ence. "You can't lay pipe," the women sang to the tune of Kitch­en­er's To­co Band. "Who tell you so?" the men re­joined, "pipe have to lay!"

The orig­i­nal works by mu­si­cal di­rec­tor Joseph Lopez show great promise; I par­tic­u­lar­ly en­joyed Bene­dict and Shane's duet When Men Threat­en Me: "When men threat­en me hell does come down," Bene­dict sweet­ly sang, "I go kill your whole fam­i­ly one by one."

Buss de Mark made its first ap­pear­ance last year at the same space as a staged read­ing, billed as a Ca­lyp­so Cabaret. Some of the cast from that read­ing re­turned in this it­er­a­tion, more fleshed out. One such char­ac­ter was the city panty ven­dor Jem­ma, a gray-haired granny who in one scene ad­mits to Maxi Man that she has had les­bian pro­cliv­i­ties her­self. That line, too risqu� to re­pro­duce in a na­tion­al news­pa­per, was a hi­lar­i­ous un­der­state­ment de­liv­ered with su­perb com­ic tim­ing. It was one of sev­er­al gems in the play.

An­oth­er gem came from Va­grant, a home­less beg­gar played by co-au­thor Zele­ca Julien. With the pref­ace "All pro­to­cols ob­served," she launched in­to a speech ex­tolling the virtues of KFC while stand­ing by the cashier buy­ing a din­ner spe­cial.

There is no doubt the script has a ways to go be­fore the piece can be called ready. Plot holes abound. For ex­am­ple, though the en­mi­ty be­tween Shane and Bene­dict is based on the for­mer blam­ing the lat­ter for her broth­er's death, the au­di­ence is nev­er privy to any de­tails of the back­sto­ry.

And bur­lesque ten­den­cies notwith­stand­ing, the char­ac­ter­i­sa­tions are such broad­ly com­ic stereo­types that at times it is dif­fi­cult for one to rec­on­cile the work with its pro­duc­ers' in­ten­tions.

I left Thurs­day's per­for­mance won­der­ing for whom the play is in­tend­ed. To a pri­mar­i­ly LGBTQI au­di­ence, such as the one at­tend­ing the June 30 show, the plot points and char­ac­ter­i­sa­tions would come across as hu­mour based on old, fa­mil­iar types.

The vi­o­lent les­bian gang­ster, the du­plic­i­tous gay politi­cian, the clos­et­ed young church boy all make ap­pear­ances in a script which draws laughs from its lib­er­al use of T&T's stock of gay stereo­types.

But us­ing such stereo­types does not ad­vance the dis­course around T&T LGBTQI peo­ple and lifestyles, and a straight per­son un­fa­mil­iar with that world would on­ly find his or her own prej­u­dices re­in­forced. In this play, all gay men are rau­cous and over­sexed like the Maxi Man; all les­bians are man­nish and abu­sive like Shane the so­ca star; and the whole LGBTQI com­mu­ni­ty is on­ly in­ter­est­ed in sex, weed and bac­cha­nal.

No script can be all things to all peo­ple. It might be ask­ing too much of a work with its ori­gins in a cabaret show to give nu­anced de­pic­tions of a pop­u­la­tion that is as di­verse as it is mis­un­der­stood. How­ev­er, I am afraid if the au­di­ence is broad­er, it won't be laugh­ing with but at the com­mu­ni­ty the show is sup­posed to rep­re­sent.

Ed­i­tor's note:

Pho­tos used with this sto­ry are re­pro­duced with the cour­tesy of Ulel­li Ver­beke, an LGBTQI ac­tivist from Guyana who at­tend­ed the Pride Arts Fes­ti­val to do a pho­to se­ries called Out of the Box–Gen­der Ex­pres­sion.