J’étais noyé
This is an excerpt of a projection element from the performance, Catoptromantics. The phrase, “J’étais noyé dans le bruit et la poussière” (I was drowned in noise and dust) comes from the Albert Camus novel, The Stranger. For the projection, we translated the original French quote into Spanish to present the work in Mexico City.
#catoptromantics #theatreofwar
DarlingARCADE
In 2011, 2boys.tv collaborated with Shauna Janssen, founder and curator of Urban Occupations Urbaines, to create darlingARCADE: a critical response to Griffintown, one of Montreal’s rapidly gentrifying neighbourhoods. darlingARCADE was created by 15 participating artists and installed in the Darling Foundry, formerly a 19th century metalworks factory and presently a contemporary visual arts complex, and was exhibited as part of Montreal’s Journée de la Culture.
#shoeboxtheatre
The Teddy Bears’ Picnic
If you go out in the woods today you’ll be in for a big surprise…
This little tribute video has played all sorts of places. Our gratitude goes to the simultaneous translator in Milan who managed to translate live and sing along to the melody. This short marks the beginning of our collaboration together, before we became 2boys.tv.
#drag #homosexualists
Swansong
Consider this an hommage to Gloria Swanson though the voice is Elizabeth Taylor’s and the text is care of Gore Vidal’s screen adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly Last Summer. Absurdity reigns as it all segues into some lusty passages from Carmina Burana. The screaming, rambling and singing of this short little show-stopper all made its way into the long-form zona pellucida the following year. Pure madness.
#drag #homosexualists #lipsync
Bienvenidxs
Is it a video or is it a cabaret performance? When our beloved colleagues at Operación Queer requested a cabaret work for their web launch in late 2020, we were only too pleased to contribute.
Due to the C*****19 p******c, the format for the launch was entirely online. For us, one of the saving graces of this moment in history is the innovation and sheer chutzpah of all those amazing queens out there who are working to connect with each other internationally and to put on their most fabulous faces forward by any means necessary. We decided to make something especially for the occasion but something that could also last for more than its 7-minute duration. What we have here is a video that speaks with a cabaret ethos: Something a little bit raw and absurd with ephemeral qualities but it also available on demand. Strange times.
To make this work, we drew from some texts and motifs that were also part of our recent performance, CatoptROMANTICS.
#catoptromantics #drag #homosexualists
Tesseract 01
The first of two dual-screen work that we developed for the Encuentro in 2014. The video content seen here is a sampling of the projection material that we used in a performance by the same name. The voice-over text consists of excerpts of monologues written for this performance.
#tesseract #paralleluniverses
Monument
Monument is one of several shorts that were commissioned by curator, Sharon Switzer, for Pride Toronto in 2009. Pride Toronto offered up the theme, “Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop”. For us, these words called to mind Walter Benjamin’s famous quote concerning history and progress. That led us to consider Russian Futurism and Tatlin’s tower along with social realism in some of its more pernicious forms.
Monument was our first foray into end to end HD production and was among our last works shot on tape (thank you, progress). As part of Switzer’s program, it showed briefly on a big screen on Church Street in Toronto and it played on a loop at Trinity Square Video. An even shorter version of this short also played in Toronto (TTC) subway stations, minus the full-frontal nudity.
#drag
Show Business
Created for the ordination of Pope Benedict XVI (Rats for short), this little nugget proved to be a cross-cultural crowd favorite. We have had to opportunity to present it on multiple occasions in Montreal and in Toronto, New York, Bogotá and São Paulo and Provincetown.
#drag
boutiqueARCADE
Documentation from the original boutique mounted for Les Escales Improbables in Montreal’s Old Port in September 2009.
#shoeboxtheatre
Manifesto
We were invited to write a manifesto for volume 150 of the Canadian Theatre Review (CTR). We offered a piece of writing that reveals itself to the reader through the act of folding. The end result is an origami swallow.
Tesseract 02
The second of two dual-screen work that we developed for the Encuentro in 2014. The video content seen here is a sampling of the projection material that we used in a performance by the same name. The voice-over text consists of excerpts of monologues written for this performance.
#tesseract #paralleluniverses
Occupé
This short video was initially created in correlation with a performance as part of Studio 303’s Home Show in 2004. This was the year we were evicted from our humble apartment on boulevard St-Laurent in Montreal. Our city’s real estate market was starting to heat up after years of stagnation such that ideas concerning old houses, occupying space and hauntings were at the foreground of our minds.
#drag #disappearance
Casta Diva
Gigi wanted to lip-sync to an operatic aria while conducting a puppet show inside her dress. The invasion of Afganistan was in full swing and we were looking for nuanced and lasting ways to consider and critique western imperialism and geopolitics through the fog of war. We had a week to make it all happen and no budget whatsoever.
Trips to thrift stores and a lucky connection to some bolts of second-hand fabric covered the costume and backdrop quandary. Sifting through old queer film archives led us to draw unlikely connections between Eisenstein, Wellman and Anger so that the miniature puppet show became a wee movie house. In the song, Casta Diva, the titular character of the opera, Norma, is pleading for peace among an angry mob. Norma also seemed like an appropriate choice given its relative ambivalence with regard to nationalism compared to other operas of this period. And you really can’t go wrong lip-syncing to Maria Callas provided that you don’t f**k it up. We only had access to one not so very strong projector so there are no lighting cues for this performance. There is only the light emanating from a single beam of video as it alternates between backdrop, spotlight and cinema. Casta Diva marks an early foray for us into what we now call epic, new media burlesque.
We have presented this little mash-up of classical queer cinema in Montreal, Milan, Toronto, Halifax, Mexico City and San Cristóbal de las Casas.
#drag #theatreofwar
