People like to joke that lesbians never let go of their exes.
There’s an element of truth in that — regardless of the tension between them, Queer women often do find their way back to each other, whether as friends, lovers or something in-between.
Fifth-year UBC honours English language and literature student Amelia Brooker wanted to centre this phenomenon in their play Shared Space, which will be staged by Bramble Theatre Collective at the NEST Theatre on Granville Island later this month.
Brooker and Shared Space’s Director Natasha Chew, a fourth-year creative writing student and president of the UBC Players Club, believe it’s important for Queer women and non-men to stick together — especially since other women can falsely perceive them as being predatory.
“I think femme Queer people have this very unique community where there's an understanding that we can stab each other in the back,” said Chew. “We'll say a lot of bullshit about each other, but we're going to keep you around [and] make sure that there's a protective bubble.”
In coming up with the concept for this piece, Brooker was inspired by the 1968 play Boys in the Band, which follows a group of gay men at a birthday party. It was a groundbreaking portrayal of gay male domestic life at the time, and Shared Space reimagines this in a feminine Queer space, while also exploring how Queer culture has evolved since the 1968 work.
What it means to share space can vary depending on who you are and the stage of life you’re currently living in. Brooker chose to highlight the experiences of Queer non-men in their early 20s because they were intrigued by the idea of impermanence and how that influences our relationships.
“It's a very transitionary point of your life where you're living very liminally. Often you're like, ‘I have a year lease here and then I'm moving elsewhere. I'm not from the city. I'm here temporarily,’” Brooker said. “I feel like there's a bigger emphasis at this point in people's lives … on the spaces that you do share with people.”
A shorter version of Shared Space was first put on in 2022 at the Players Club’s Festival Dionysia, which was when Chew joined the project.
Since then, it has drawn the interest of actors and members of Bramble Theatre Collective, many of whom are current UBC students and alumni that met through UBC’s Musical Theatre Troupe.
“They're all interested in preserving the space of people who are not necessarily pursuing theatre on a professional full-time level but love it and still want to do it, so they formed Bramble Theatre Collective out of that,” said Brooker. “I think [Shared Space] fit that mandate very well.”
Because it’s a slightly larger, longer production than the 2022 version, it was important to the creative team that actors take the time to get to know each other and the theatre, as well as flesh out who their characters are and how they — yup, you guessed it — occupy space.
Part of this involves having the actors build the set using objects they’ve brought in themselves.
“We asked them to come up with little things that came with stories. Someone was like, ‘these are tickets from a date I went on with someone.’ [Then] they were creating this giant web of people they knew. I was like, 'this is beautiful, you're community building.' It's gorgeous,” Chew said.
The actors are also encouraged to build personalities and character dynamics around how they engage with the pieces. Which mug does each person use? What are the unspoken dining table seating arrangements? How and why do we form these “rules” in domestic spaces?
Shared Space is all about celebrating the mundane, from room decor to imperfect speech patterns.
While writing dialogue, Brooker reflected on the concept of “backstage talk” — a sociolinguistic idea they had read about in Amanda Montell’s Wordslut.
“People love to be like, ‘you have uptalk, you say “like” too much’ … the way that women talk was very fascinating to me, and specifically the way that women talk when it's just a room of non-men,” said Brooker.
They wanted the play to reflect the reality of speech, with filler words, overlapping lines and some nonsensical dialogue — the ways that non-men interact when they can actually let their guard down.
“That is something that I really like about the play — the feeling of not being monitored. Because I think generally when you watch non-men speak, [they’re] constantly saving face on multiple levels,” said Chew.
“No one is afraid to be themselves, even if it's a little, like, ‘that's a crazy thing to say,’” Chew said.
“Because these people love you and these people know you, and they will never villainize you for that.”
Catch a performance of Shared Space at the NEST Theatre from February 28–March 3. Tickets are available here.