When an arts festival is created to celebrate a particular community - as does Glasgay!, the annual LGBT cultural jamboree which begins in Glasgow tomorrow - it faces the inherent danger that the work it showcases might be seen to have been selected more for its origins in the community than on the basis of its quality.
It is very much to the credit of Glasgay!, and its longstanding producer Steven Thomson, that they avoid this pitfall with considerable style and confidence.
Year after year, this multi-arts festival boasts big names and exciting productions which appeal to its intended, wide audience of "LGBT people and their friends". This year's programme is no different.
Given the origins of the modern gay liberation movement in the United States, it is appropriate that there is a strong American strand at Glasgay! this year. The "Pope of trash", filmmaker John Waters (O2 Academy, November 14), will be in attendance, as will controversial performance artist Ron Athey (The Arches, November 11 & 12) and equally taboo-busting comedian Scott Capurro (The Stand, November 9).
Elsewhere, the latest show by comedian Sara Pascoe (The Stand, November 2) and Josh Armstrong's These Delicate Things (CCA, November 13-15), the most recent piece from Glasgow cross-disciplinary arts company Cryptic, give a sense of the artistic diversity of the festival.
The on-going exhibition entitled Sporting Heads (Rose and Grants café, until December 31), which charts the important "coming out" of many gay sports stars (such as Tom Daley and Gareth Thomas) in recent years and decades, is also testament to its socio-political purpose.
Everyone perusing the Glasgay! programme will have a particular show that they are especially excited about. For me, as a theatre lover, the return of Slope (Citizens Theatre, November 12-22) by Scottish company Untitled Projects is a real cause for celebration.
Pamela Carter's play about the tempestuous love affair between the 19th-century French poets Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine was originally staged at Tramway back in 2006. Its transfer to the Citizens Theatre is a fascinating prospect.
Directed and designed by excellent theatre maker Stewart Laing (creator of such acclaimed works as The Salon Project and Paul Bright's Confessions Of A Justified Sinner), the piece premiered in an extraordinary performance space built specially for it. A small audience walked up a steep slope and seated themselves around a wide aperture.
Looking down, they found themselves gazing into a Victorian-era Parisian bathroom. Laing had, as I observed at the time, decided to put his theatre career in the toilet.
Like many others among the happy few who were able to see the drama, I loved its portrayal of the chaos of the relationship between Rimbaud (only 16 at the outset of the affair) and Verlaine (aged 27), and of the dreadful impact upon the latter's wife Mauté. I was less convinced by the set design than by the play itself, writing: "it is difficult to see how the play gains from being played in this expensive, purpose-built performance space, rather than in an existing studio theatre."
Now, as chance would have it, Slope is being presented in a conventional studio theatre. I suspect, like the Glasgay! programme as a whole, this revival will delight its audiences.
Full details of the Glasgay! programme can be found at
glasgay.co.uk
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