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Torch Song Opens Tonight

Posted on October 1, 2026 by Kevin Allen | Leave a comment

Scorpio Theatre’s production of Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song runs October 1-10 at the Pumphouse Theatre.

The two-act revival of Harvey Fierstein’s award-winning Torch Song Trilogy explores the life of Arnold Beckoff, a torch song-singing Jewish drag queen living in New York City. Told with a likable, human voice, Torch Song follows Arnold’s odyssey to find happiness in New York. All he wants is a husband, a child, and a pair of bunny slippers that fit, but a visit from his overbearing mother reminds him that he needs one thing more: respect.

We asked theatre director Joey Sayer five queer history questions about this production of Torch Song.

You first directed Torch Song in Calgary in 1990. What does the play mean to you (differently) today?

I first directed Torch Song (when it was still Torch Song Trilogy) when I was 25 – when I could very much identify with the Arnold (Harvey Fierstein) character, who also starts the show at age 25. Now, 35 years later, I somehow find myself identifying more with his Ma (originally played by Estelle Getty). This might not be too surprising since the characters are very much cut from the same cloth.

When I first directed the show, the original Broadway production was less than ten years old and still relatively fresh (and the movie version had only been released a couple of years earlier). The movie’s impact on the queer community was immediate and intense, and we all embraced it and made it a major part of our culture. Now, it is remembered by an older generation (many of whom never survived the 80s and 90s) but isn’t as well known today. Re-presenting it is a passion project: introducing a new audience to this exceptionally funny, well-written show and allowing them to take from it what they need.

How do you preserve the play’s specific post-Stonewall, pre-AIDS historical context for contemporary audiences?

Torch Song takes place from 1974 – 1980, which puts it into a unique time frame – during the rise of the sexual revolution, riding the wave of second-wave feminism and different groups asserting rights and freedoms – or fighting for them – for the first time. At the same time, conservative values were still entrenched; discrimination, lack of knowledge and understanding, and hatred were still abundant, and many were still in the closet.

Torch Song addresses many of these issues, which were contemporary when it was originally written between 1978 and 1980. This was everyday life for audiences of the time; no explanation needed. However, much – if not most – of today’s audience would not have been alive during this time, and giving a history lesson at the same time as entertaining the audience was essential for me. Throughout the show, images depicting queer life circa 1974 are shown; music is contemporary, and the design is on point. The lobby will have information and displays to help inform the audience. Our designers have done an incredible job of recreating the look and feel of late 1970s New York.

Arnold’s desire for love, family and acceptance was once politically radical. Where does the play still challenge audiences today?

When Torch Song was written, it was one of the first popular works that presented gay people as people, rather than as villains, objects of ridicule or as victims. Perhaps the most radical aspect was how relatable the characters are, and how every member of the audience could identify with them: Arnold and his desire to embrace the sort of life his parents had without compromising his own identity and values; Ed, with his indecisiveness and search for who he is and wants to be; Ma, with her inability to understand and embrace those she loves most. Almost 50 years later, audiences – even with an overall greater understanding of the lives of LGBTQ+ people – will find similar things to relate to.

Back in 1978-1980, the idea of gay marriage and raising children was beyond the imaginings of almost anyone – we eventually reached a point where this is more accepted and legalized. Still, we’re also in the midst of backtracking, where hard-fought rights are being challenged, and scapegoating is on the rise. One need only look at our local government to see how rights for the LGBTQ+ community are being systemically eroded. Torch Song helps us find empathy for others and understand the need to fight for the same things we all want.

What parallels do you see between Torch Song’s New York story and Calgary’s own queer history?

New York in the 1970s, in many ways, foreshadowed Calgary in the late 80s, early 90s when I first directed this show (in the basement of the Forest Lawn Library!) The first pride marches were held in New York in the 70s, a new culture was being formed and exposed to society at large, visibility was increasing and rights were beginning to be legislated. Calgary’s queer community at the time was more invisible and underground, but by 1987 Project Pride was established, and in 1990 CLAGPAG organized the first LGBTQ+ rally, followed by Calgary’s first parade the following year. Calgary took inspiration from New York, and the release of the movie version of Torch Song Trilogy in 1988 played no small part in this.

What do you hope younger queer audiences learn about the generations that came before them?

Of the cast, production team and designers working on Torch Song, only myself, the actress portraying Ma, and our set designer were even alive at the time the original was written – it has been an impactful and eye-opening experience for them. Everyone involved readily understands the importance of the show, relates to the characters, and sees how what occurred 50 years earlier still resonates today.

Certain aspects that are almost incomprehensible to our younger cast (I’m thinking about the backroom scene in the International Stud Bar) are presented in ways that make audiences feel for the characters. What I’m hoping is that younger audiences understand that people in the mid-1970s faced so many of the same struggles, insecurities, worries and challenges that are faced today, but fought for them and survived. I hope young queers who see the show can find empathy for their elders and inspiration for the challenges they face today!

*Historic Poster related to a scene in Torch Song*

Thanks, Joey—such insightful answers! Good luck with the run.

Readers, get your tickets here.

{KA}

World AIDS Day & Anger

Posted on December 1, 2016 by Kevin Allen | Leave a comment

World AIDS Day began in 1988, when an international meeting of health ministers in London, England declared December 1st a day to highlight the enormity of the AIDS pandemic. Today in Canada, men who have sex with men* still make up the majority of new HIV infections annually: 57% or about 1400 new infections/year. Men who have sex with men are 131 times more likely to get HIV than men who do not. Pause to consider that.

screen-shot-2016-12-01-at-12-44-46-pm

The world is an angry place today. Foreign national events such as Brexit and the U.S. Election were notable in their antagonistic rhetoric. But even at the most local level, Calgarians are bellicose over reasonably low stake issues such as cycle tracks, public art, and election line-ups (issues I am personally connected to, which have given me lots of practice with wrath management technique).

Recently, I came upon a manifesto in zine form called Queers Read This. It was distributed at the June 1990 Pride March in New York City, and “published anonymously by queers.” It is a concentrated distillation of rage at a time when the stakes could not have been higher. AIDS, at the time, was a growing epidemic and for most, an almost certain death sentence.

The publication has exhortations to “bash back,” meet hatred with hatred, and give no inch to straights. It very much defended the word Queer as a militant signifier of strength which galvanized and branded the generation of activists who came of age then.

Calgary was part of this movement. 1990 was the year of the first Pride Rally in the city. It was also a time of tragic AIDS deaths, frequent gay bashings and other forms of homophobic backlash. Yet it was this anger which helped us stand our ground and ultimately win our human rights battles.

So I am reframing my relationship to anger. Anger can affect social change. Anger can be something positive – like the 1400 Canadian men who have sex with men who will get infected with HIV this year.

*{Men who have sex with men is a term that refers to behaviour rather than identity; it captures not only gay and bisexual men but also those who do not identify themselves based on their sexual practices.}

ANGER (An Essay from Queers Read This)

“The strong sisters told the brothers that there were two important things to remember about the coming revolutions, the first is that we will get our asses kicked. The second, is that we will win.”

I’m angry. I’m angry for being condemned to death by strangers saying, “You deserve to die” and “AIDS is the cure.” Fury erupts when a Republican woman wearing thousands of dollars of garments and jewelry minces by the police lines shaking her head, chuckling and wagging her finger at us like we are recalcitrant children making absurd demands and throwing a temper tantrum when they aren’t met. Angry while Joseph agonizes over $8,000 for AZT which might keep him alive a little longer and which makes him sicker than the disease he is diagnosed with. Angry as I listen to a man tell me that after changing his will five times he’s running out of people to leave things to. All of his best friends are dead. Angry when I stand in a sea of quilt panels, or go to a candlelight march or attend yet another memorial service. I will not march silently with a fucking candle and I want to take that goddamned quilt and wrap myself in it and furiously rend it and my hair and curse every god religion ever created. I refuse to accept a creation that cuts people down in the third decade of their life.

It is cruel and vile and meaningless and everything I have in me rails against the absurdity and I raise my face to the clouds and a ragged laugh that sounds more demonic than joyous erupts from my throat and tears stream down my face and if this disease doesn’t kill me, I may just die of frustration. My feet pound the streets and Peter’s hands are chained to a pharmaceutical company’s reception desk while the receptionist looks on in horror and Eric’s body lies rotting in a Brooklyn cemetery and I’ll never hear his flute resounding off the walls of the meeting house again. And I see the old people in Tompkins Square Park huddled in their long wool coats in June to keep out the cold they perceive is there and to cling to whatever little life has left to offer them. I’m reminded of the people who strip and stand before a mirror each night before they go to bed and search their bodies for any mark that might not have been there yesterday. A mark that this scourge has visited them.

And I’m angry when the newspapers call us “victims” and sound alarms that “it” might soon spread to the “general population.” And I want to scream “Who the fuck am I?” And I want to scream at New York Hospital with its yellow plastic bags marked “isolation linen”, “ropa infecciosa” and its orderlies in latex gloves and surgical masks skirting the bed as if its occupant will suddenly leap out and douse them with blood and semen giving them too the plague.

And I’m angry at straight people who sit smugly wrapped in their self-protective coat of monogamy and heterosexuality confident that this disease has nothing to do with them because “it” only happens to “them.” And the teenage boys who upon spotting my Silence=Death button begin chanting “Faggot’s gonna die” and I wonder, who taught them this? Enveloped in fury and fear, I remain silent while my button mocks me every step of the way.

And the anger I feel when a television program on the quilt gives profiles of the dead and the list begins with a baby, a teenage girl who got a blood transfusion, an elderly baptist minister and his wife and when they finally show a gay man, he’s described as someone who knowingly infected teenage male prostitutes with the virus. What else can you expect from a faggot?

I’m angry.