Curiousity brought me to the opening at the Cultch of James Fagan Tait’s The Explanation last night April 18. It was a the frank theatre company production.

While I cannot prove it except by going to the probably long lost files of Hospital Anchorena in Buenos Aires I cannot demonstrate that my birthday was on August 31^st 1942. My birth certificate stipulates that it is April 18, 1943.

My Rosemary was not well so I celebrated my unbirthday at The Box (my name for the Cultch’s Vancity Culture Lab). The joint is small and intimate. The Explanation was that, intimate but bigger than you might expect.

To begin with I must play the trumpet, loudly, here (I am an alto sax player but the trumpet is the appropriate instrument). I believe that Vancouver as a city may have finally arrived. It seems to be sharing some similarities with my Buenos Aires.

I know that in 2007 Rosemary and I attended the opening of the Daniel MacIvor play His Greatness based on a potentially true story about two days in 1980 (in a Vancouver hotel room) in the last years of the life of Tennessee Williams. The play was superbly played by Allan Gray (for me he will always be the General), David Marr (the man with the voice) and Charles Christien Gallant. The latter was perhaps discovered in that play and became Charlie Gallant.

In 2012 there was The Number 14 about a notorious Vancouver bus route.

The Explanation is a Vancouver play. And to be exact (and this makes it better) it is about Burnaby and Vancouver. It features our main public libarary and our transit system.

In Argentina poetry, novels, stories, music and other arts that are about principally one city is called Costumbrismo. Jorge Luís Borges is the most famous of these costumbristas.

Now we have (finally!) our own costumbrismo thanks to Playwright/Director James Fagan Tait..

Before I go to the particulars I must write about the two actors, Kevin MacDonald (John)  and Evan Frayne (Dick). For they are from the Willford Brimley/Spencer Tracy school of non-acting-acting. By this I mean that in the intimate Cultch box these actors made me forget they were actors. The two were people telling us (and me in particular) their story.

The play begins with a little shock and I will not reveal that here. But I have a question for Costume Designer Carmen Alatorre. "Did you buy everthing the two wore at Value Village?"

The play hit home for me because I understood a little bit of the conundrum the two men face in this play.

When Rosemary, our two young daughters and I arrived in Vancouver in 1975 we immediately settled in Burnaby. One of my first jobs, after renting cars at Tilden was for a gay publication called Bi-Line At the end of the 80s there was a huge gay scene in the West End. As the only straight guy (like John perhaps?) and photographer I had to photograph many men in various states of undress and I frequented all the gay clubs in town of which I have fond memories of going for tea at Faces.

One event, at the Luf-a-Fair I have never forgotten. Coming from a very straight Burnaby to see men with moustaches dancing together to a disco version of Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus from his Messiah was a site that brought fond memories when Dick and John dance at a Vancouver gay club (before Yaletown became Yaletown we are told during the play). Their dance movements were choreographed by that man of delicate and elegant taste (not always it would seem!), Noam Gagnon, who here showed another side of him I never suspected!

The play is existential. At one point John says, “We are becoming what we are.” I am not sure that Sartre would quite agree but it is close enough to the idea that we are born to be what we are and we become by being. There is no searching to find oneself in Sartre’s philosophy.

The Explanation is a funny, tender play in which my only piece of advice is if you ever go to the Vancouver Public Library by the literary DVD section think twice before talking to a tall woman dressed in black leggings, a black mini-skirt, a black top, wearing designer glasses and a Prince Valiant wig.

And, I almost forgot. Don't ever eat salmi before a date.

My latent interest in men