From BASH’d

Before rap became the preferred soundtrack of thug-filled suburbs and their oppressed teenage legions, it began in ghettos where anger and social indictment gave real power to rappers’ tracks. And while Edmonton playwright and performer Chris Craddock may be thousands of kilometres away from rap epicentres like Los Angeles and New York, he still sees the infuriating in his backyard.

“Sometimes people live in kind of a liberal bubble, and we think that sexism and homophobia are things that only happen in churches and farms,” he says, “but really it’s a debate that’s national, and it’s not unfair to say that even our own federal government is quite homophobic.”

Along with co-performer and writer Nathan Cuckow and composer Aaron Macri, Craddock’s High Performance Rodeo offering, BASH’d, is a fiery rap opera taking aim at the subtle and even outright contempt that Craddock still sees aimed at gays across North America.

Rapped by white-clad, wing-wearing rappers T-Bag (Craddock) and Feminem (Cuckow), BASH’d is the story of Jack and Dylan, a pair of star-crossed gay lovers from opposite ends of Alberta’s urban-rural divide. Against the backdrop of legalized gay marriage and the opposition by the former Klein dynasty, Jack gets “bashed,” randomly attacked because of his sexuality.

For Craddock, bashing spoke to the larger problem of discrimination, which was an issue that seemed to be a natural fit for a genre built by equally marginalized black artists. And if the tone of the piece could take on a sharper, more visceral edge, so much the better. After all, where would sexuality be without sex? “Nathan and I are both big fans of rap and hip hop, especially certain female artists like Lil’ Kim and Missy Elliot,” he says. “And we noticed that when female rappers were overtly sexual it had a very different impact than when males were. There was a form of ownership that had a very different political timbre than when men did, because it seemed very exploitative. We thought gay rappers as an underclass should have free license to be as raunchy as we wanted to, and that’s where it started.”

Having collaborated before as Wetaskawin headbangers in 3... 2... 1, Craddock and Cuckow have expanded on a series of improvised verses from that play’s rehearsals with a series of three short bits at Edmonton’s Loud’ n’ Queer Cabaret. It was in the third show that the pair found success with a track about bashing, eventually staging an independent production in 2006 at the now-defunct Roost Nite Club. From there, after a workshop at Workshop West’s Springboard Festival and a new director in Ron Jenkins, BASH’d began a fringefest tour that included Toronto, Winnipeg and eventually New York City.

With a 10-day run at Toronto’s Next Stage Festival before the Rodeo and a bead on an off-Broadway run during New York’s 2008 Pride Week, Craddock and Cuckow are keeping the momentum going. It’s a series of successive runs that has the look of that ever-coveted theatrical commodity: a viable touring show. “We knew it was practical that Nathan and I could perform by ourselves with a stage manager and some microphones,” says Craddock of the compact production. “We knew we’d have to take it to bigger markets to find its potential. Edmonton enjoyed it quite a bit, which is great, but we wanted to see if it could stand up with some of the better musical theatre in the world. We wanted to test it in markets like Toronto and New York, where people really make their lives out of creating musical theatre.”

With positive critical reception and continuing runs, the show’s mix of rap and social commentary seems to have already proven its ability. But BASH’d goes beyond pointing out the ways that discrimination attacks the discriminated. Its title also alludes to the building anger that comes from that same victimization, a vendetta as poisonous as the hate that provokes Jack’s bashing. In the play, this fresh anger grows in Dylan after Jack is attacked, demonstrating that the same indignation that fuels powerful hip hop can take on a destructive life of its own. “The bashing sort of destroys what had been a beautiful relationship up to that point,” explains Craddock. “(Dylan) begins to fixate on revenge — the idea of hurting a straight person just for being a straight person.

“But, of course, we’re not inciting violence against straight people,” he adds, “though the odd demure theatre reviewer would think we are. It’s about humanizing the anger people feel when they’re the victim of discrimination, the way that anger destroys people and leads them to lash out, and often not against the appropriate person, if anyone is the appropriate person.”