It’s been nine years since all-male, Toronto-based burlesque troupe BoylesqueTO formed, and in that time a lot has changed as far as gender identity and politics in Canada go, says performer James and the Giant Pasty. And, he says, these are exactly the topics the show doesn’t shy away from exploring.
“We just wanted to add that to the conversation, because there’s all sorts of different types of expression of gender and sexuality,” he says.
James says that objectifying the sexy male body was a big part of the goal behind starting the show, and so was deconstructing the way that masculinity is traditionally presented. He says society is still stuck in a “rigid gender binary.”
“It would be fantastic if in the future we didn’t have to specify, ‘Oh, this is a male-presenting burlesque show,’” he says, “or, ‘Oh, this is a female burlesque show.’”
In our culture and era, our bodies are presented in a particular way, says James. The performers in the troupe aim to use fun comedy as a tool to open up a dialogue on those issues—and politics, too—but in a very, as James puts it, tongue-in-cheek way in the show.
“We have the Tim Hortons barista, we have the lumberjack, we have camping, we do a really funny retelling of Roch Carrier’s The Hockey Sweater; we take these things [in] Canadian culture and we break them down and we make fun of them a little bit,” he says.
A female member of the troupe, acting as a satirical version of Justin Trudeau, hosts Oh Manada!, the show that BoylesqueTO is bringing to town. It sometimes seems, says James, that Trudeau is more interested in looking good than governing our country.
“Our Justin Trudeau is a little bit of a sexy mimbo—a male bimbo,” he says. “A lot of his politics… can be glorified sometimes, but [are] not the most substantial. Meanwhile, he’s out there prancing around as a pretty boy, taking the shirt off, taking selfies… I mean, literally. Look at him out for a jog in the woods taking a selfie with random passersby. When have we ever had a prime minister who has done that? He sometimes seems to be more focused on that than actual governing.”
For James, comedy is essential, because if you can’t laugh at yourself and all of the things that you do, he says, it would be a pretty boring life. But doing the sort of comedy he does has its risks.
“This is an art form that’s designed for engagement,” he says. “You can get disruptive hecklers.”
But that heckling is always an opportunity to improvise and open up another conversation by putting the audience member in their place.
“I had not so much a heckler but someone who tried to touch me on stage,” says James. “The very next act I came out as a construction worker with a stop sign and I just walked right up to them, and pointed right at them.”
He says that it didn’t feel great to have that happen to him, and that lots of performers in all sorts of different art forms deal with it.
“I definitely have some privilege and safety as a man dealing with that,” he says. “I think it feels probably a lot worse for a lot of our female performer colleagues who have to deal with this stuff on a much more regular basis, every day in their lives.”
James says that when someone touches him without consent, it’s an opportunity to address a much bigger societal problem.
“I try and use that as an educational moment,” he says. “I try to say, ‘Look, I don’t even mind if you slap me on the ass, but you have to ask me first. You cannot do that without consent.’”
Oh Manada!
8 pm Friday, August 30
$20 advance/$25 at door, Capital Ballroom
thecapitalballroom.com