Photo Coverage: Harbourfront World Stage's 'To Be Straight With You' Premiers in Toronto

Harbourfront Centre's World Stage 2009-2010 performing arts series continues with an explosive new dance work that opens today for a limited run in Toronto. DV8 Physical Theatre's To Be Straight with You is a poetic but unflinching exploration of tolerance, religion and sexuality.

The show was conceived and directed by Lloyd Newson after he dealt with personal experiences regarding homophobia during a Gay Pride march in the early 1990s. After witnessing how much discrimination existed, even between those people who were already members of various minority groups, Newson set out to create a piece of theatre to address the issues he felt needed to be examined.

Newson and DV8 members conducted hundreds of interviews with homosexuals from various backgrounds who were directly affected by intolerance, based on cultural or religious systems of belief. Every word spoken during the production comes directly from those interviews. The result is a powerfully moving work that exposes the realities lesbians and gays face in their ongoing fight for rights.

Newson was recently interviewed about the production, and when asked what he hopes to achieve with this work and what message he intended to get across he said the following: "Many of our interviewees, particularly from ethnic minority groups with strong religious ties, requested that their identities remain hidden, fearful of the consequences should their communities discover their sexuality. Despite the great gains in the law to protect gay people in this country our interviews show how lesbians and gay men, if they choose to become visible, face intimidation or physical abuse. I hope that through this work audiences will become more aware of the lives of people hidden under the veneer of a liberal and supposedly tolerance society."

When And Where?

DV8 Physical Theatre
To Be Straight with You

Dec. 2 - 4, 8 p.m., Dec. 5, 2 p.m. & 8 p.m.

Fleck Dance Theatre, 207 Queens Quay West, 3rd Floor Queens Quay Terminal

Tickets are $40 and can be purchased through the Harbourfront Centre Box Office by phone at 416.973.4000 or online at www.harbourfrontcentre.com/worldstage
Tickets are available for $15 for arts workers and students (Tues-Thurs performances only)

For more information, please visit: www.harbourfrontcentre.com/worldstage

All Photos by Matt Nettheim