I declined an audition recently. The audition call was for an actor to play a senior gay man, a closeted gay man married to a lesbian who had children and grandchildren. They enthusiastically come out late in life, embracing their “queerness” in all its grotesque flamboyance. The role is a lead for a series of ten episodes. I am okay with playing a gay man on screen, provided I can play him straight. By that, I mean playing a man who is gay. I am uncomfortable playing a gay man as a caricature, even in jest. That resembles a black actor playing a minstrel show role in jest. Mainly as I am on record for criticism of queer culture, I think that queer culture is demeaning and detrimental to the well-being and happiness of gay men and boys. I said in the note explaining my decision to drop the audition that the role was outside my character type. My character type is the mature father figure. As an older gay man, I do not want to risk being typecast as an older, flamboyant homosexual. 

I see myself in the vein of gay and bisexual actors who came before me: John Gielgud, Harry Andrews, Michael Redgrave, Laurence Olivier, and Denholm Elliott, among them. I saw these men act on screen without knowing their sexual orientation. It did not matter. I admired them for their talent as actors. They played a plurality of roles in their acting careers. Unlike them, I do not crave stardom. I am an Ottawa-based actor. I am devoted to my vocation; I continually train to hone my craft. I strive to earn the respect as an actor from fellow performers, casting directors, directors and cinematographers. Still, the audition call shocked me. I never thought I might be asked to play such a character. As an actor, I played murderers, voyeurs, ruthless military officers, and even an anti-gay priest. Yes, I can play benign and nefarious characters on stage and screen. I was asked to join the cast of a stage production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by the director playing Cheswick, as he had directed me in a show, Inherit the Wind, where I played a happy-go-lucky, illiterate day labourer in rural Tennessee. He saw me in a production of Translations, where I played a nineteenth-century British Army officer. He was impressed by the distinctiveness I brought to each character.

I play comic and dramatic roles. Twice over the years, I was cast in the first public performances of new plays. Both were dramas. One of them, a play called Other Eyes, featured the character Irving, a blind burglar. Irving was included as comic relief. I read the role for the first time at a staged reading and wondered how the character fit into the plot. I asked the playwright about that, and he said he shared that thought, but after hearing me read the role, he kept the character. Also, he asked that I be cast as Irving in the first public performance. In the drama Strange Gods, I played an anti-gay priest. Following the show’s run, the playwright wrote to me, thanking me for my performance and adding that it was eerie how much my characterization was like the man on whom he based the character.

I was appalled when I read the breakdown for the audition and the sides. I could not in good conscience produce a self-tape, let alone submit it. Richard Attenborough correctly said, “Actors are dramatic people.” It could be that I am being melodramatic about the audition. I submitted an audition tape for a Hallmark Christmas movie just before I received the “queer” audition self-tape request. The role was Santa, Santa Claus’s father, precisely. That is a role for which I am well-suited. My agent told me it was a good audition, but I was not called back. Finally, I have a proper demo reel now. It has scenes from four films I made this year. My agent said it is “very good,” and she will use it in making pitches for me. It should help get me more auditions and some bookings. I better prepare myself for more run-ins with Woke roles and production companies. Hitherto, I could play just about any part. The director who cast me in the horror film The Quiet Life asked if I was comfortable with the role of a man while possessed by a demon god who murdered and dismembered several people. I played the part well, “he killed it,” said the director of photography. I learned from this recent experience that I have limits regarding acting assignments. 

Posted by Geoffrey