Angus Cameron's award-winning play 'cavemxn' premieres at Melbourne’s Chapel Off Chapel this November-December.
'cavemxn' follows Mike, Tim, Chris, and Oscar and spans five years and three continents. Over the course of the play, the quartet crash in and out of each other's lives – hurtling through hook-ups, raves, saunas, and airports.
Along the way, each will need to confront, within themselves, the reality of their identity, and what they want.
'cavemxn' is directed by multi-award-winner Bronwen Coleman, and proudly acknowledges the 40th anniversary of the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Victoria.
Here, 'cavemxn' Producer and Performer Patrick Livesey pens an open letter ahead of the show.
“Yesterday I was told by a major arts funding body that the market is oversaturated with queer stories. That they've ‘been done’.
The first time I read 'cavemxn' was in 2019. It was honest, hilarious, heartbreaking and revealed four gay characters who were so real each of them gave me a visceral reaction. They weren’t caricatures or stereotypes but they also weren’t sanitised or watered down for a straight audience. Reading 'cavemxn' that first time, at 23, was a revelation.
But I didn’t think for a second there was a market for it.
Audiences don’t want gay stories, I told myself. People don’t want stories from a writer who candidly and with total vulnerability and lack of shame puts on to the page his experience of being a queer man in Australia today. People just don’t want to see that.
I put 'cavemxn' into the back of my mind until my friend and director Bronwen Coleman read it and demanded we produce it. It was an Australian classic, she said. The kind of play that doesn’t come around very often. Once in a decade! This was a story so achingly human that she saw herself in every single one of the characters.
Wait, what?
Hetero mum-of-one Bronwen from Warneet saw herself in Oscar, the amyl-huffing drag queen turned HIV activist? She saw herself in Chris, the insecure bear who drops a tab of acid and wades into saunas looking for love? Or Mike, the DJ who cruises strangers in airport toilets just for the thrill?
If the mum from Warneet related to this story then maybe I was wrong?
In 2022 the hunt for newness and unique voices moves so fast it’s easy to forget the people and stories we’ve left behind. It’s easy to think with our TikTok attention spans that because 'Bros', 'Fire Island' and 'Heartstopper' came out in the same year that we’ve ‘done' gay stories.
But think about the differences between those three? The multitude of experiences and perspectives contained in those three stories alone that are lazily lumped together just because of who the lead is attracted to?
'cavemxn' is funny, for sure. It is gay, indeed. It’s also intense, passionate, its characters are dark and messy, charming and flawed. Should we miss out on exploring those parts of being queer just because we got three rom-coms this year?
Four decades ago, in the early '80s, when we finally found our collective voice as a community, millions of us were wiped out. When the world eventually decided that those deaths weren’t punishment for our sins, they celebrated straight voices for bravely stepping in to tell our stories.
We’ve only just, in the last couple years, arrived at a point in Western history where gay people feel safe enough and have the opportunities to tell our own stories.
What a horrible shame to tell ourselves that our time has already passed.
As 2022 is the 40th anniversary of the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Victoria, as well as the first diagnosis of HIV/AIDS in Australia, one dollar of every ticket sold will be donated to Thorne Harbour Health, to help them continue their fight for a future free of HIV.”
The first time I read 'cavemxn' was in 2019. It was honest, hilarious, heartbreaking and revealed four gay characters who were so real each of them gave me a visceral reaction. They weren’t caricatures or stereotypes but they also weren’t sanitised or watered down for a straight audience. Reading 'cavemxn' that first time, at 23, was a revelation.
But I didn’t think for a second there was a market for it.
Audiences don’t want gay stories, I told myself. People don’t want stories from a writer who candidly and with total vulnerability and lack of shame puts on to the page his experience of being a queer man in Australia today. People just don’t want to see that.
I put 'cavemxn' into the back of my mind until my friend and director Bronwen Coleman read it and demanded we produce it. It was an Australian classic, she said. The kind of play that doesn’t come around very often. Once in a decade! This was a story so achingly human that she saw herself in every single one of the characters.
Wait, what?
Hetero mum-of-one Bronwen from Warneet saw herself in Oscar, the amyl-huffing drag queen turned HIV activist? She saw herself in Chris, the insecure bear who drops a tab of acid and wades into saunas looking for love? Or Mike, the DJ who cruises strangers in airport toilets just for the thrill?
If the mum from Warneet related to this story then maybe I was wrong?
In 2022 the hunt for newness and unique voices moves so fast it’s easy to forget the people and stories we’ve left behind. It’s easy to think with our TikTok attention spans that because 'Bros', 'Fire Island' and 'Heartstopper' came out in the same year that we’ve ‘done' gay stories.
But think about the differences between those three? The multitude of experiences and perspectives contained in those three stories alone that are lazily lumped together just because of who the lead is attracted to?
'cavemxn' is funny, for sure. It is gay, indeed. It’s also intense, passionate, its characters are dark and messy, charming and flawed. Should we miss out on exploring those parts of being queer just because we got three rom-coms this year?
Four decades ago, in the early '80s, when we finally found our collective voice as a community, millions of us were wiped out. When the world eventually decided that those deaths weren’t punishment for our sins, they celebrated straight voices for bravely stepping in to tell our stories.
We’ve only just, in the last couple years, arrived at a point in Western history where gay people feel safe enough and have the opportunities to tell our own stories.
What a horrible shame to tell ourselves that our time has already passed.
As 2022 is the 40th anniversary of the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Victoria, as well as the first diagnosis of HIV/AIDS in Australia, one dollar of every ticket sold will be donated to Thorne Harbour Health, to help them continue their fight for a future free of HIV.”
'cavemxn' plays Chapel Off Chapel (Melbourne) 28 November-4 December.
