Joshua Val Martin’s play With Love, Mr Gay takes his true story of viral bin drama and turns it into a “heartfelt and hilarious mission to find fabulous ways of ending deeply personal battles”.
Opening soon at Camden Fringe, this show features cabaret, comedy, interviews and showtunes – and a laughing Buddha statue from B&M!
Where: Camden People’s Theatre
When: 10 – 11 Aug
Ticket link: https://camdenfringe.com/events/with-love-mr-gay/
What’s your show about and what inspired it?
With Love, Mr Gay is my true story…
It started with this note, that I got from a neighbour in a supposedly nice part of South Manchester:
“To Mr. Gay,
If you move my bin again I will get an ex-mercenary to destroy you… from flat 2”
The letter went viral… but I wanted to go beyond the headlines.
I started interviewing ‘experts’ I could get hold of, such as a historian, a dog trainer, Methodist minister, a middle east peace negotiator, my Auntie Clare – all with the central question of: can a conflict ever truly be resolved?
I then put their advice into action, in a genuine attempt to make peace with my neighbours (you’ll have to see the show to found out how that went).
Why should someone come to see your show and what might they expect?
My motto is to ‘make good nights out that make the world less shit’. That’s what we’re aiming for in With Love, Mr Gay.
It’s a collaboration between a visual artist (Jez Dolan, director), a trained actor (George Bury) and me, a playwright with a microphone. The result is part-autobiography, part-verbatim, with comedy, cabaret and a splash of magic realism.
It’s been a proper hit with both audiences, as well as the people who’ve been kind enough to review it.
Even more of a shock, has been that we’ve somehow managed to attract a cult following, with a handful of fans following us up and down the country to watch every performance!
Who knew a bin drama would prove so popular?
How did you make a start in the business?
I grew up in and around Manchester, working class and gay – the former I particularly felt whilst studying Music at the University of Manchester.
These perspectives very much informed my first play, that was selected to be performed at the Edinburgh Festival by the drama society.
Taking my first play up felt a bit like that Planet Earth episode when a Barnacle Goose is pushed off a cliff by their mother who’s fully aware only half of the chicks are going to survive.
The Royal Exchange Theatre was really my training ground. I was very, very lucky for how many opportunities were thrown my way around that time. Suzanne Bell was a conveyor belt of plays I should read. Matthew Xia made me interrogate everything I thought I knew (and also to distinguish a good IPA). Louise Wallwein taught me to write authentically and with urgency.
Winning a Bruntwood Prize in 2017 opened a lot of doors and gave me the confidence to say outloud that ‘I’m a playwright’.
Do you have a favourite type of venue to work in?
When I’m in a play, I like being able to eye ball an audience, and being close enough for them to see me sweat, and being able to tell them off if their phone rings mid performance.
But, and I know it’s a bit of a cop out, every space has its own parameters, and each venue’s staff and unique audiences bring something new to a play – it’s been one of the most exciting/scary parts of touring With Love, Mr Gay far and wide.
What’s next for the show?
The final dates (for now) are at Camden Fringe, at Camden People’s Theatre. Then I’m having a well-earned lie down.
But we really aren’t done, and now the heart of the show has been found through doing this tour.
We’ve got ambitious plans for how the show might be scaled and where it might next sit… we could just do with finding a few friends with mariana deep pockets.