Queer Foundation

The first year that I put on The Wedding Show, I didn't know it was going to be a queer show.
I got an email from someone who wanted to audition and they said they'd throw their hat in the ring but they wanted to know how I felt about a character in drag.
"Great! Yeah! Of course! Let's do it." Looking back two years later I can't imagine the show now having at least someone in drag. 
People signed up to audition and I knew I wanted to work with the cast to create a show that they felt like they could be themselves in. It was after the auditions ended and after I'd chosen the people that I wanted to bring into the project that I started to figure out who the characters could be. The majority of people auditioning were women or female identifying. So there was a necessity to make the story about two women getting married, or else do another casting call and bring in some more gender diversity. In the audition, people had been relatively open about their sexuality, so I knew a queer show would work for the cast. 
As a devised shows, the cast members developed their characters and sculpted the people they wanted to represent. I wanted them to be a version of themselves and build a back story that they felt so at home inside of...so that they could improvise their way through the night, engaging with any audience member authentically. 

The love triad above features a moment where Jamie learns that Fay, the women she just married was or may still be married to Louis...assuming that elopement in Ghana during their stint in the Peace Corps really led to a legally binding agreement.

The character of Fay is flirtatious, and holds an abundance of love for the people in her life. She falls in love fast and without a second thought, confidently says YES to the people that capture her attention. Her story about marrying Louis and then leaving him when they drifted apart slips out during the 2nd Act. 
We hadn't quite figured out how to get the audience to unlock the story that first year, so the cast created big moments that looked like distractions, only to route audience members through the action. My original vision was that the audience would organically move around the venue spaces and encounter important moments, spread rumors and feel so intrigued by what they were surely missing on the other side of a way, that they'd just have to come back and experience it all again. 
The big moment where Jamie and Fay leave the party to fight about what the marriage to Louis and Fay's failure to share this fact means for their future happened just outside the glass doors to the venue. Every night there would be a few mingling audience members, outside for some respite that suddenly were witness to the fight. In the best situations they would end their conversation to step in and console a cast member or offer advice from their personal life. There was no expectation of this from the audience, but the space that we created made it easy for people to be natural in their interactions and show support. 
Every night after current call someone would exclaim to a random stranger who had inserted themself into the drama, "I was sure that YOU were a cast member!"
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The second year of the show, there were some returning cast members, but a majority of new people, bringing new ideas and realities into the project. We started with some cannon from the first year and then built a new story for the new players.
The difference was that the cast we attracted were specifically here to represent their love stories which aren't often seen in movies or tv or other mainstream media. They auditioned because they wanted to tell queer love stories. Casting people who wanted to build characters that extended from themselves allowed us the have conversations behind the scenes that informed how the cast could support each other in the show. How should we talk about identity, sex and sexuality in the show? What conversations might come up in improvised moments with audience members? What would it look like to normalize queer love in a show? What doesn't need to be said?
Looking ahead to year three, The Wedding Show will be a queer show from here on out. It needs to be. But the question now is, do we take the word "queer" out of the marketing? Is there value in inviting people to experience queer love as just love and letting them step into a world where identify and sexuality aren't a topic of conversation? Can we create a space to just accept one another as we are, perfect and unique and weird and wonderful?