The team behind Fringe hit ‘Gay for Pay with Blake & Clay’ is back
What a difference a year makes.
Exactly 12 months ago Daniel Krolik, Curtis Campbell and Jonathan Wilson were nervously preparing their satirical show “Gay for Pay with Blake & Clay” for the Toronto Fringe Festival.
Within hours of opening, word spread quickly and it became one of the hottest, buzziest shows of the first post-pandemic Fringe. Karen Fricker of The Star called the piece “perfect satire.” I called it, pun intended, “straight-up brilliant.”
The show sold out and won the coveted extra performance of Patron’s Pick. Within a few months it was picked up by Crow’s Theater – who suddenly had an open slot in their programming – for a renewal. Last month, co-writers Campbell (who also directs) and Krolik (who stars in the show alongside Wilson) were nominated for one of the country’s most prestigious theater awards: the Dora Award for Best New Play.
It’s every independent theater performer’s dream.
“On Sunday I was at peace that I was done with theater and it was time to move on,” Campbell said in a recent interview with his two actors. “And then on Monday we got the Dora nomination and I was like, ‘Ah, f—. It draws me back.’”
That kind of love-hate relationship with the entertainment industry was one of the inspirations for ‘Gay for Pay’. In it, underutilized gay actors Blake (Krolik) and Clay (Wilson) give a seminar to a group of straight actors on how to “play gay” so they can land great roles that can win big prizes.
Think Tom Hanks in ‘Philadelphia’ and Mahershala Ali in ‘Green Book’.
Now the team is debuting Fringe’s follow-up show called “Blake & Clay’s Gay Agenda,” a work that focuses much closer to home. It raises contradictions in the queer community itself.
In addition to revealing a little more about themselves, Blake and Clay joke about current issues such as slut shame, heteronormative assumptions, body dysmorphia, and why Glenn Close hasn’t won an Oscar yet.
To be clear, there were references to queer power struggles in the earlier piece. After all, two of the show’s satirical targets were outspoken gay couple Pete and Chasten Buttigieg.
“I remember some onlookers saying we shouldn’t go after Buttigieg because he was such a role model,” Wilson said of the squeaky clean American politician. “But our feeling was that everything and everyone was up for grabs. If he’s a strange person, he understands that should be part of the conversation.
“And what does ‘go after him’ really mean?” asked Campbell, whose first novel, “Dragging Mason County,” is due out this fall. “We had pleasure with him.”
“Let’s put things in perspective,” added Krolik. “Pete Buttigieg is trying to change the world for the better. We’re just a bunch of bitches putting on a show.”
What’s so refreshing about the trio’s work—besides the humor—is how Campbell, Krolik, and Wilson represent three generations of gay theater performers working together. That feels unprecedented. In the past, marginalized artists have traditionally created work with and among their immediate peers.
Wilson is the most experienced of the three.
“I’m like the aunt,” he said self-deprecatingly. One of Second City Toronto’s first openly gay performers, he earned a Dora Award for his role as Timon in the long-running Toronto production of ‘The Lion King’. A cast member of The Kids in the Hall’s cult film “Brain Candy,” he also starred in Studio 180’s staging of “The Normal Heart,” Larry Kramer’s iconic queer AIDS drama.
Krolik, who remembers reading Wilson’s critically acclaimed Fringe play “My Own Private Oshawa,” performed with him during a reading of David Rakoff’s “Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish” at the 2015 Pan Am Games , and the two stayed in touch. Krolik considers him a mentor.
For his part, Campbell, the couple’s baby, says “The Normal Heart” was one of the first shows he saw in Toronto after arriving at York University from his small rural Ontario town.
He and Krolik met while setting up Brian Francis’ multi-generational gay play “Box 4901”, and the two hit it off. When the pandemic hit a few months later, they started uploading chatty conversations about pop culture to YouTube. As the pandemic continued, they came up with “Gay for Pay.”
Krolik said the bizarre circumstances of the pandemic meant there was less pressure on them to try and write a conventional piece.
“Normally I would feel like I had to write something that artistic directors and agents would enjoy,” he said. “But because the theater community had been closed for two years, I wasn’t bombarded by Instagram posts of other actors doing this and that. So we really need to focus on making each other laugh.
While writing, Krolik came up with a line about Toronto serial killer Bruce McArthur that he thought could bomb in front of a live audience; he expected to cut it on the Fringe run. Instead, it turned into one of those “Whoa!” moments when the audience suddenly realized it was a darkly funny ride.
When Wilson first read the script, he recalls thinking it was “filthy, disgusting, and hilarious.” And it scared me. So of course I had to say yes.”
This Fringe, Wilson also stars in Sky Gilbert’s play “Inside,” about a gay man obsessed with a porn star (real life adult entertainer Ryan Russell). He said it feels liberating to work in a strange environment.
“I can be completely myself,” he said. “I know that sounds sentimental, but it’s really profound. On movie and TV sets you hear things and you have to say, ‘Well, hello, I’m actually gay, please don’t make assumptions about me.’ Here, when I enter a room, I can take every part of myself into the process.
