Our work is very tied to audience interaction, so that has been disorienting. So there's not the energetic audience feedback that we're used to. 'It's been wild,' Foley says of the performances, which continue through October 23rd and are available for anyone in the world to watch. 'It's really disorienting performing in the way that are performing this show in a black box in Brooklyn alone with remotely operated cameras, and then we finish the show and it's just us still alone in the black room.

And it's rightfully gaining considerable attention.Ĭat Rodríguez in Circle Jerk. It's also all performed 'as live as humanly possible' every night, with no Zooming to speak of: the actors perform together in person using remotely operated cameras and operating under safety guidelines. Injecting memes, pop music, TikToks and Britney Spears's Instagram stories, the show also features seven other characters all played by Breslin, Foley and Rodriquez. of everything,' Breslin tells me on the phone earlier this week. 'What is our position?'Ĭo-written by Breslin and Foley, Circle Jerk suggests that position is much more of the oppressor than the oppressed through an impressively chaotic 105-minute show they describe as a 'homopessimist hybrid of ridiculous theatre and internet culture.' It's set during a winter on 'Gaymen Island,' where two gay right-wing trolls (Breslin and Foley) are plotting to rid the world of everyone but gay white men with the help of an ambiguously-raced AI fembot they create (Cat Rodriquez). 'When we started making this piece over a year ago, it was this question of - what is the position of a white gay man in the United States during this era of history, of misinformation, of Trump's horrendous racist policies, of his misogyny. And it does so while also somehow managing to be a thrilling and deliciously messy comedy about. Currently streaming live every night from Gowanus, Brooklyn, the multi-camera performance takes the idea of virtual theatre during a pandemic to a bold new level. To be fair, few performances have interrogated any matter quite like Circle Jerk. And nothing has interrogated that matter quite like Michael Breslin and Patrick Foley's Circle Jerk.

It's become increasingly clear that white gay culture has grown toxic with unchecked privilege, with issues like racism, body shaming and transphobia infiltrating a community that has historically billed itself as inclusive. Queeries is a weekly column by CBC Arts producer Peter Knegt that queries LGBTQ art, culture and/or identity through a personal lens.

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