Iggy Beamish: Johnnie Walker's "charming trainwreck" of an alter-ego, the gay man responsible for making sure everyone has a good time

19 May 2024 - Photos by Greg Wong 

"Iggy has been rattling around inside my head for a while," says Johnnie Walker of his new show Iggy Beamish. "He started showing up in some writing I was doing in the early days of the pandemic. Initially, it was kind of a short story, and then it turned into a TV pilot that I optioned to a production company, which sounds very glamorous, but didn't really go anywhere. But I found that the idea of this person, and his circumstances, and the other people in his life, I wasn't done with them yet. After returning to solo shows with The Heterosexuals, I had the idea of adapting my TV pilot into a new solo show, which was no mean feat, considering it had been written as a half-hour, multi-character script for television and now needed to become a sixty-minute, one-person play with a resolution. But he was always a character I had written to perform myself and even though some of the circumstances of our lives are different, in many ways, he is me. He's a lovely messy alter ego."

Walker feels the  need to clarify, "There's an awful lot of me in Iggy. Not that we're identical, but he's a kind of theatricalized version of myself, or perhaps of the person I sometimes think other people suspect me of being. In fact, his name is a bit of a private joke: 'Iggy' and 'Beamish' are nicknames that my father and mother had for me when I was a kid. 'Iggy' because it was apparently the first 'word' I said and 'Beamish' from Lewis Carrol's Jabberwocky: 'Come to my arms, my Beamish boy!' But he's also based on the feeling of being the gay friend at the wedding who is suddenly responsible for making sure everyone has a good time. It's an experience I've had more than once and something other queers have told me they've also felt. So, I thought it would be fun to push it further. What if some straight couple enjoying their own wedding didn't just 'feel like' it was his job, what if it was Iggy's job? And what would performing that job feel like if, at the same time, he were going through a divorce?"

Iggy seems to straddle the line of tragic and comic. Walker feels confident to walk that line. "It's all a matter of perspective, isn't it? The best comic characters are the ones who take themselves terribly seriously. Lady Bracknell would be aghast at the implication that she was a figure of fun in a comedy. The tragedies of Iggy's life are as real and heartbreaking to him as ours are to us—even if they also happen to be, at times, very funny for us to witness. That said, he's certainly not the most ridiculous character in the play, and I think the 'wink' for him as a character is that he's often the person in the room with the greatest awareness of how absurd a situation has become. There is a part of him that attempts to be the voice of reason in a world gone mad, which is rather tragic of him, but definitely also highly comedic. It's a bit of a cliché, but the whole life imitates art imitates life cycle has been a bit of a trip with this show. There are many situations and circumstances from Iggy's story that come directly from my life. For instance: Iggy becomes a DJ, I am also a DJ. However, Iggy's main gig at the start of the show is being a wedding officiant, which I am not. And yet: in the intervening time since first performing the show last summer, I have had some friends ask me to officiate their wedding. Writing stories can be dangerous! Sometimes they come true."

Weddings have been on Walker's mind. "My wedding was officiated by the fabulous Kaleb Robertson aka Fluffy Soufflé (The Fabulous Show with Faye and Fluffy) who presided over both the ceremony and the DJ booth. And did it all in drag, to boot! I think so many us queers out there, especially the ones working in creative fields, have been stacking side-hustles for years. Weddings may still be relatively new territory for our community, but parties surely are not, and a wedding that isn't a party is a wedding I'm not interested in attending. So, I'm not surprised to see queers taking up space in that industry, or being entrepreneurial in their approach. We're like Kitty Pryde, we can cross boundaries that feel to other people like walls." 

And even the walls are changing. "Most people I know have zero interest in being married in a place of worship by a clergyperson they've never met. Churches in Toronto are all in the process of being converted into chic loft apartments and my only complaint is I'll never be able to afford them. I just think that for so many people from the younger generations (in which I am very generously including myself), there isn't that connection to church as an essential third place and community centre. There's one secular humanist officiant working in the city who seems to be making an absolute killing; I've seen them perform half the weddings I've been to in Toronto in the last ten years. And then a lot of people seem to make the choice to just go to City Hall to do the paperwork and then have a non-legal ceremony MCed by friends or family. I think personal connection is key. In the past, it may well have been true that a local minister or rabbi was a trusted family friend who's known you all your life, but I think that is a reality for less and less people every year. One of my favourite wedding ceremonies that I've attended (excluding my own), was actually performed by Alan Cumming, who was both a personal friend of the grooms and a licensed officiant. The best of both worlds."

Turns out Walker has a long history with marriage. "I think same-sex marriage deserves more respect. Straight people didn't have to earn marriage. We did. I was at the first legal same-sex wedding in Ontario in 2001 as a high school student—one of the brides had been my nanny as a child. I was deeply closeted at the time and I don't think my brain allowed me to realize the full significance of having been a guest at that event, but it's always stayed in my memory. And it wasn't until 2005 that it was nationally recognized.. It's all about what we can imagine. At my friend's wedding, Alan Cumming told me he thought more gay people should get married and that the reason we didn't do it as often as straight people is that we haven't been allowed to imagine it. For most straight people, it's probably easier for them to imagine marriage and divorce than it is for them to imagine never getting married at all. And for most gay people, it's probably the exact opposite. I think it took attending the same-sex marriages of my peers as an adult for me to be able to imagine what my own gay marriage might look like. And look, plenty of queers of all stripes have zero interest in marriage and that's absolutely great, but for those that do, I will say that there's something incredibly empowering about you and your partner taking up the same amount of space that heteros have been given all these years. And part of that means acknowledging the reality that the majority of all marriages end in divorce. But I think a big part of marriage is saying: look, me and this other person have something that is as worthy and magical as what anyone else has been able to come up with, and we think it deserves a shot." 

The press release refers to Toronto's “jubilant queer nightlife scene” and the “nightmarish real estate market.”  Walker has thoughts, "So, one of the key locations for Iggy Beamish is an imaginary West End queer bar called Wickedhole that is an amalgamation of several different bars I've loved from around the world, but definitely most specifically Toronto's late, lamented The Beaver. Wickedhole is an important third place for Iggy that he comes to as a regular and also as a place of work, but he comes to learn that its continued existence is under threat. Meanwhile, he's an underemployed queer creative with a precarious housing situation. For me, the lesson here is that nothing is guaranteed. That bar you love that feels to you as much a part of the city as the streetcar and the ferry docks is actually a private business that has probably already almost gone under more than once, so if you love it, take advantage of it while it's still here. I think the cost of living in Toronto is really scary and it does mean that we will continue to lose amazing people who can't afford to live here. At the same time, we've seen these cycles before: queers and artists will discover some overlooked corner of the city, they'll start doing wonderful things there, and then everyone else will find out about it and set about the slow process of ruining everything that made it great. It's 'Big Yellow Taxi' all over again."

Covid took its toll on both theatre and nightclubs. "It's weird to think about covid and Iggy Beamish," says Walker, "because while I wrote the early version of his story during the worst moments of lockdown, it's not an explicit part of the story at all. I suppose it was the last thing I wanted to devote additional mental energy to at the time. I know that, like me, Iggy would have been heartbroken to have seen The Beaver close her doors, but also thrilled to see Three Dollar Bill open up in Parkdale. It's undeniably a hard time for theatre and for nightlife, but I choose to remain optimistic. And one of the things that actually makes me optimistic is Church Street. I have found that, post-pandemic, there is something lively and energized about that neighbourhood that I haven't seen in a long time. Lineups around the block for Woody's! People showing up to parties at the Black Eagle well before 10! Is this the attrition of having lost so many spaces? Is it the straight Drag Race fans filling up the main floor at Crew's? Whatever the reason, I find it heartening to see our Village bustling and busy at a time when many people lack the funds to go out at night. And in many cases, also the social energy."

Walker himself has orchestrated a long-running club night but has bittersweet news. "HEY GIRL HEY, she's actually going to be saying BYE GIRL BYE this Pride," he says. "It's a sad decision for me, but also it was time. June will be the party's eighth anniversary, ninth if you count the year before when I was doing a very similar event at the same venue under a different name, and that's ancient for nightlife. I've had a wonderful time stewarding that event over the years; so many people have told me how they met their partner or their best friend at a HEY GIRL HEY. But I started it at The Steady, which closed all the way back in 2017, and I started it with Beardoncé, who hasn't lived in Toronto since covid (although we will be luring her back for the final edition!). I'm excited to get some new nightlife stuff going later this year, but it's definitely been a real time of transition for me, as well as for the city."

The theatre scene has not been as resilient. "Prior to covid, I had just premiered my biggest and most ambitious work in a full run as part of a theatre season," says Walker of Shove It Down My Throat. "Now, I'm touring solo shows to festivals and producing my own short runs in Toronto. It would be wonderful to have the opportunity to work on something larger again, but I'm also a very pragmatic person and solo shows are something I know I can accomplish without a ton of outside resources. After the Toronto run of Iggy, I'm not sure what's next for the show, but I'd certainly be interested in touring it should the correct opportunity arise. As for expanding the cast, that would totally make sense if I ever did do a film or TV adaptation, but for stage, it's maybe a harder sell. Who's going to want to hire all those other actors once I've shown them I can do it all myself?"

However, "I miss collaboration. And I'm excited that I'm going to be working with Byron Laviolette (Emilio's a Million Chameleons, The Family Crow, Chautauqua) as a director on this run of Iggy. For the previous run (and for The Heterosexuals), I self-directed in a dance studio, watching myself perform in front of a mirror and making adjustments as I went. So many other performers have told me I'm nuts for doing that and that they can't imagine it, but maybe just because I had done Redheaded Stepchild for so many years and felt very comfortable with the form of solo performance (even though I worked closely with director Morgan Norwich on that one), it didn't seem scary to me. There's something very satisfying about a smaller-scale, personal work that I can be so self-reliant about, but the joy of collaboration is always one of the things that drew me to theatre in the first place, so I hope that's something I'm able to continue exploring in the future."

Enough philosophizing, we need to get back to promoting Iggy Beamish. "Well, it's still a solo show with minimal staging, but I can promise an element of glitz and glam," says Walker. "It's interesting coming to Iggy right after doing The Heterosexuals, which was so bare bones: just me, a chair, and a plaid shirt. This time, it's me, a chair, and a little bit more than a plaid shirt! The main costume that I wear in the show is really fun and then there are some . . . embellishments that show up throughout the show that tend to go over quite well with the audience. But it's funny how quickly the tiniest things add up. Iggy Beamish has just a few more tech cues than The Heterosexuals, just a few more props, just a few more costume pieces, just a bit more this and a tad more that and it all adds up to a lot more work for me." But it is joyful work. "I use direct address in the show, so the whole thing becomes this chatty hangout between me and the audience. And if you talk to people and look at them and make them laugh, they'll be on your side immediately. So in performing the show, a lot of the pleasure for me comes from letting the audience watch me as Iggy make a bad decision and feel them have that 'No, don't do it!' energy. Sometimes, they'll even gasp."

Walker refers to Iggy as a "trainwreck." A charming trainwreck. "Well, we love looking in the mirror! I think you're right that gay men are drawn to a charming trainwreck, whether it's that favourite messy diva, that high drama hookup we can't bring ourselves to block, or even that one friend who's so dangerously fun you need about six months to recover each time you hang out. Messy people are exciting because they allow us a glimpse at our own inner messiness." But no matter how much Iggy is based on Walker, there is a marked difference in terms of work ethic and theatrical discipline. Walker has plans. "The Heterosexuals has proven very fruitful for me—earlier this year, I took it to Vancouver and Victoria and I have upcoming dates in Toronto, Atlanta, Edmonton, and Rochester. It would be wonderful if Iggy could find a similar life on tour, although I haven't yet found an opportunity to do the two shows back to back anywhere. It's an intriguing possibility, but there's a chance it could also give me a nervous breakdown. Perhaps keeping them on separate rotations for now is the safest move."