Johnnie Walker on his inspiration for Shove It Down My Throat
23 Mar 2019.

by Drew Rowsome - Photos by Tanja Tiziana ; Rehearsal photos by Greg Wong

"Sometimes when I describe the show or the concept of the show to people it can give the impression that it's very heavy and dark," says playwright Johnnie Walker of Shove It Down My Throat. "There are moments where it is. But for the most part, it's a very funny and fun show despite being about very difficult and serious things. For me as an artist, in the most difficult subject matter I think it's really important to incorporate play and fun and pleasure. When in doubt, camp it out."

Shove It Down My Throat was inspired by the case of Luke O'Donovan who either defended himself in a gay-bashing, or injured five men in a knife fight. The justice system in Atlanta insisted it was the latter. "I just really remember in the summer of 2014 which was when Luke was about to be sentenced and I read a couple of articles about his story," says Walker. "You read so many news stories about injustices, but for some reason that one really got under my skin. There was this real pull in me saying that this is something that is important and you've got to do something about it. And the something you know how to do is make a play so maybe you need to make a play about this. I thought that maybe there was something useful that could come out of trying to take this situation and turn it into art."

It wasn't an easy process. "I investigated the story more, particularly reading Meredith Talusan's article 'The Queer Case of Luke O'Donovan' that told the twists and turns in the story where everything was so much more complicated than I had originally thought. It forced me to examine some of my preconceptions and biases. I started working on a script in the fall of 2014 for Videofag. There were a lot of people I hadn't met or interviewed yet, including Luke. We had started exchanging letters, I had one or two letters that he had sent me while he was in prison, but there were certain things that had to wait for him to be released. I really wanted to meet him and conduct a face to face interview which I did get to do. It was a difficult play to find."

The more people he met and the more research he did, the more convoluted the story became. "With the volume of material that I have, there's enough for a book," says Walker. "Only I'm not writing a book, I'm making a play. The needs are different. There were interviews I did that were fascinating and eye-opening, useful information for me to have, but in the play we were making there wasn't room for it. There is more that I've cut from the show than is currently in it."

The content began to dictate the form of the play. "For most of the show I'm essentially playing a version of myself, sort of a character named Johnnie who is in contact with Luke and is writing a play about him," says Walker who is venturing far from his role in The Love Crimes of Frances Lark. "He's trying to sort things out. The other characters in the show, a sort of chorus, we call them 'the ghosts,' come and help me try out different scenarios. One of the things we noticed about the story when we started is that there are so many variations of what really happened during this knife fight. And they're all very contradictory and tell a very different narrative. There's many moments in the show where I'm standing in for Luke, imagining myself if I were in his shoes. Over the course of the show, almost every member of the cast winds up playing some version of Luke or some spin on him."

The ghosts are portrayed by an intriguing and stellar cast including Kwaku Okyere (The Seat Next to the King), Craig Pike (Lulu v7) and Heath V Salazar (The Wolves, Suitcases). "The thing that we really came to in casting was that it was important to have an all queer ensemble," says Walker. "The story is about that and so often you see straight actors playing these really juicy queer roles. And when working with people there's a certain shorthand that you can have with queer performers, I just don't want to have to assign extra homework to someone who's out of the loop."

Even with that inclusion rider, there was a multitude of choices. "There are tons of queer performers in the city but casting is always difficult," says Walker. There were many people who we saw in auditions or in workshops who were wonderful or do great work but to balance the chemistry of an ensemble like this is really tricky work. So we thought a little outside of the box in terms of some of the choices." 

He cites the casting of Anders Yates who "has definitely worked more in comedy, sketch, improv, that kind of thing here. He used to be based in Montreal and he did more traditional theatre work there. He was just in that show Oslo with Studio 180 so he's definitely moving more into theatre stuff. He's a wonderful performer. He plays a character who's very, very funny, one of the more comedic elements of the show. So it's great to have someone who's a real comedy pro. He came into the audition and delivered so hard that he had to be part of the show."

Walker found Willard Gillard in a racier art form. "Willard is someone who I've worked with through Boylesque TO for the past ten and a half years," says Walker. "He's most well known in the burlesque world. He's a superstar sensational burlesque performer, a great physical performer, funny and very magnetic onstage. But he's also trained and has done more traditional theatre, he has that resumé. Because I knew and had worked with Will and knowing what a great storyteller and comedian he is in his day to day life, I had this idea that this one character we had, he could nail. And he really does."

Comedy and burlesque may not be standard casting sources, but they are all part of Walker's oeuvre. "Boundaries have always been frustrating for me because I feel like the shit that I do has always been kind of in-between a million other things," he says. "Doing stuff that is theatre but comes from a real comedic perspective. And from having been a burlesque host for over a decade. We do shows that we write scripts for, it's not just going on stage and improvising and being off the cuff and charming. There is a narrative and a storyline. We've done some awesome work there but the medium can be overlooked or diminished in some peoples' eyes."

When asked if those distinctions are dwindling, Walker is adamant. "I certainly hope so. I love people who cross boundaries. Heath Salazar is another one who does all this great traditional work but also does their Gay Jesus performances." And Walker himself is known for his alter-ego Ginger Darling. "A lot of drag performers are wonderful actors," he notes. "Some of them just are, but lots that I know went to theatre school, they've done plays and all of that. And hosting drag shows night after night in a club is it's own kind of theatre school."

While the casting may seem eclectic, the vision is solid and part of that is thanks to director Tom Arthur Davis (Situational Anarchy, They Say He Fell). "Tom has been around since the earliest days of the project," says Walker. "At the very first ever reading, I asked him to come in as an actor, just to read one of the parts. He's a really wonderful actor - and I keep bugging him to do that more - but he's also a really talented director and he's had a lot of success. Right away he started bugging me about it, 'I really want to be the person to direct this.' He was super keen so it seemed to make a lot of sense. He was also really interested because his company Pandemic, that he runs with Jivesh Parasram, their whole raison d'etre is to do political theatre and they both thought that this show fits inside the kind of work they do and the kinds of topics they want to tackle. Tom has been working on this show for years now and has read every draft. And now he's in the trenches with me."

Walker wants to make sure that Davis gets credit. "A lot of people think I am directing the show which would cause me to spontaneously combust. Writing and performing in it is more than enough. It's great to have all of these things that I don't have to be in charge of. Having spent so long in indie theatre doing shows where I have to do a million different jobs. To be on a show with a really great team who are doing a really great job, I don't have to be the one up to three in the morning making a prop. I'm up to three in the morning doing the stuff that is specifically related to performing and writing which is wonderful."

That support system is courtesy of Pandemic and our city's queer grande dame. "Buddies has been such a great place to have incubated this show," says Walker. "We've had a couple of workshops over the years and I got to meet other artists through the residency program. I spent a ton of time just down at the basement of Buddies in the dressing room with my laptop making faces in the mirror and writing. Putting all these post-its up and sorting through all these drafts and trying to string it all together on a serial killer wall. It's such a distinctive location to me that it became part of the show. For the first half of the show, the set and where we are on stage, is a recreation of the Buddies dressing room. The building itself has become part of the cast. In a big anniversary season where Buddies is looking at the legacy of queer spaces and the changing nature of queer identity, this show dovetails with those contexts quite beautifully."

The title, the artwork and the subject matter of Shove It Down My Throat are all provocative, perhaps deliberately. "It's a show about a violent incident," he says. "There is stage combat. There are knives. Our approach is more stylized than hyper-realistic. There are descriptions of knife violence and injuries that for some people might be challenging material. There is also a certain amount of intimacy on stage so we've been having intimacy rehearsals and fight rehearsals. They work in similar ways."

When I speculate that Walker seems to be treading in the footsteps of another great queer artist and felon fan, he demurs. "John Waters' name does come up in rehearsals but just in relation to the campier elements of the show and the kind of dark humour we go for. But he does have that wonderful essay about his relationship with Leslie Van Houten and visiting members of the Manson family in prison that I really love." 

Walker and O'Donovan are still in touch but sadly O'Donovan won't be walking the red carpet. "He really wanted to do it and we were looking into ways to get him here," says Walker. "He's released now but there are a lot of rules about where he's allowed to go and with Canada, if you have a felony conviction there has to be time before you can apply to come to the country. And technically his sentence isn't over yet, he's on probation. We are going to send a video - he's curious, who wouldn't be? - and for both of our Sunday matinee performances he'll be appearing via Skype or FaceTime for a talkback with the audience after the show."