I was on Matt Besser’s Improv4Humans podcast and Besser read a question from a gay improviser asking why there weren’t more gay characters in improv scenes. It was an interesting and thoughtful question, but no one on that episode of I4H was gay. We answered it. Then afterwards Besser suggested I write about it on my improv blog.

So I wanted to print answers on my improv blog from queer/bi improvisers.



The full question is here on reddit. Here’s an excerpt:

“I can’t help but notice a surprising lack of improvised gay characters on your show. What I mean by this, is that when you and the performers are in a scene, and the characters are in a relationship they are almost always in a heterosexual relationship. This is particularly noticeable when you have LGBTQ improvisers on your show and when they are in a scene they are almost always put into heterosexual relationships as well.”



Answers from queer/bi improvisers after the jump!

Suzi Barrett, UCB-LA

my first thought was “we play gay characters and relationships all the time”. i spent half of our sentimental lady show on saturday playing a gay character. (johnny meeks played my wife) so… i’m not sure i’m seeing this through the same lens as the writer of the question. but here are my other thoughts…

a lot of the relationships portrayed on stage are totally open to interp, because the sex of the characters we play isn’t always labeled. when it is labeled, i think the tendency is to label something according to your own experience… so if the sex of the characters (and hence whether the relationship is gay or hetero) is being named by a straight person, they’re probably going to tend towards making it a straight relationship. that’s their experience, that’s what’s in the front of their brain, and unless something else is called for by the show– they’re going to keep things as “normal” (read: close to their own life experience) as possible. given that 90 percent of the population is straight, that’s a healthy majority of improv scenes. and that’s ok. it doesn’t mean gay relationships aren’t EVER portrayed– they are. they’re just not always go-to’s for straight folks… the same way african american characters aren’t my go-to, because why would they be? you know?

and sometimes things just get lost in translation. everyone plays everything in improv. men play women, women play men, we all play pirates and animals and applesauce machines. so unless an actor is doing an over-the-top gender bend, or using corny dialogue like “as your girlfriend”, their scene partner might just “cast” them as whatever they see them as. that means sometimes a gay relationship might be what one improviser sees, but not what the other one sees. again, it’s ok.



everything is going to be ok.



Jeff Hiller, UCB-NY

I think the deal is that straight improvisers often feel that if they play gay, it will seem like THAT is the game of the scene. I’m sure if Gabrus started out as a gay man, even I might think that was the first unusual thing (and yet I see him at auditions for gay guys all the time…). So, consequently, I think straight improvisers want to be cool about the gay thing and so they don’t make themselves gay, and then weirdly, no gay scenes ever happen. When I taught that queer improv class at UCBNY a few years ago, that was the main thing the students talked about. They loved being able to just be a gay guy and have it seem normal. And they loved that when they started the scene as a neutral character, they weren’t automatically labeled as women (the class was mainly white gay dudes, so let’s all check our privilege here). The (three!) women in the class liked playing in the queer class primarily because they weren’t constantly made to be wives. They were allowed to play men occasionally. And ironically, that’s how the guys felt too. I notice I will often just be playing myself in a scene and I will be labeled as a woman which I often sort of blanch at because I am surprised that I am such a swisher that my neutral tone is projected as boldly female.

Here is what I will also say though. While I love playing in all gay groups and getting to play a gay couple, I wouldn’t want all of The Curfew to suddenly do lots of scenes where they play gay men. For some reason, it often DOES come across as a little bit homophobic to me when straight people play gay people. I would imagine its similar when you (very rarely) see a white person declare that they are a person of color. EVEN in scenes where that fact is not being played for laughs, doesn’t it feel just a little bit weird? Maybe its just that it points out how very straight and very white our improv community is, but I often get uncomfortable in those situations. I don’t know that this is right, or normal, its just how I feel. Like you don’t want to co-opt someone else’s experience. When I am pimped into playing a famous person of color (ahem, PCR) or just like a Jamaican guy on the street, always feel like I am doing something inappropriate.

And I think what it REALLY boils down to, is that the improv gets muddy. You are searching for that ONE unusual thing, and so you want everything else to be really neutral around that. If a (known) straight dude introduces that he is gay, it might add to THAT being the unusual thing, even if that straight improviser wasn’t trying to do that.

Also, I just really love playing ladies. Ladies with purses and hair that I twirl and accessories that I put on and take off through brilliant object work. And so if a man introduces himself, I kind of WANT to be his wife instead of his husband sometimes. Because of all those object work possibilities!

This is so stream of consciousness, I am really sorry about that, but here is another thought that I sometimes have. I tend to worry that if I started playing a gay man to a straight guy’s gay man, it might feel uncomfortable for them. I worry that they would think I was hitting on them, or that I suspected that they were gay or that I was doing some sort of weird gay magic. I would play two gay men with a straight woman without blinking, but I would totally make myself into a lady on purpose to avoid playing gay with a straight guy. Even though straight guys at the UCB are almost uniformly nice liberal dudes, I just have a hang up after being bullied all through childhood and I would rather leave that stuff at the door.



Brian Faas, UCB-NY

My first thought is – Why assume the only way to show a character is gay is by putting him or her in a relationship? I feel like I play plenty of gay guys - which is my base reality - but it might not come up because it’s not the point of the scene. These characters could be single, or not with their boyfriend at that exact moment, or a priest… who knows! Gay people are all around us, but especially in restaurants, shopping malls, and on airplanes.

Jokes aside, I do remember one time when I first started doing improv, I tried to play a gay guy, as a specific game move, and then got labeled a woman. It was a bummer. Over the years, I’ve learned to adjust my acting to make super clear - surprisingly, I found lowering my voice actually reads “gayer.”

It also help to give yourself a name. Might I suggest Topher or Trevor? I’ll never forget the time I was watching Harold Night and Will Hines introduced himself as “Bruce San Francisco.” Zero confusion there.

Love you, Will!

xo,Brian



Oscar Montoya, UCB-LA

I’m of two minds here. I always tend to be on the defensive whenever people label me as gay or of color right away without context because in my experience, they usually make that the focus of the scene and most of the time they CANNOT get away from it. I remember the first time I auditioned for a Harold team like in 2009, and being fairly new to the experience I had a scene partner who commented that he’s “never dated anyone like me before.” Instead of taking it to a place that was playable (different political affiliations, hobbies, etc) I distinctly remember him saying “Well, I guess I do like my coffee like I like my women: black.” The improviser in me internally rolled his eyes (because I’ve been arbitrarily labelled as Carlos or Jermaine or some other “ethnic” name like that. And I still do!!). I tried to “yes and” that but I was so furious about it, and he would just not let it go, that I felt so defeated from improvising for a while.

Looking back at this experience, I do sometimes wonder why he didn’t label me as a guy and instead immediately labelled me as a woman. Was it because he didn’t feel comfortable being a gay dude, even in an improv scene? Did he feel like the “game” was him freaking out that I was black and that adding being gay would dilute the game? Did he not even consider being gay in a scene possible at all? I’m not sure what the answer is, and I probably won’t ever know. I won’t ever know what it’s like to do improv from the perspective of a straight white male, and that’s fine, because there’s a lot of them out there.

What I will say is that I do feel a little trepidatious when establishing a homosexual relationship because I don’t want my scene partner to think that’s the focus of the scene, which has happened many, many, many times. I tend to avoid that fact altogether and just say I’m female because I just don’t want to deal with it. I do have to make clear that in that prior statement I’m referring to doing scenes with people I don’t know, or don’t feel comfortable with yet. When it comes to playing with a team of my friends, I feel liberated to do anything I want. For example, I’m on an all gay team and I don’t think we’ve ever had a scene where a couple was heterosexual, but that’s only because for us a homosexual relationship is the “norm.”

Maybe just having the balls to establish a homosexual relationship in a group of improvisers is what I should be doing. I should be able to trust that these people that I do scenes with won’t take that as a gift of labeling “the unusual thing.” I also think the community is getting much much much better about stuff like this, but I know we have a ways to go.

