A Public Display of Affection

What happens when the generation that lived through police raids, bathhouse closures and the AIDS wards is told to be grateful for rainbow crossings and mortgage offers on “Pride condos”?

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In this sharp, funny and unsparing solo show, a ‘gay elder’ steps up to a podium at a queer community event, ready to give the usual comforting speech about resilience, progress and chosen family. Instead, his notes fall away and the truth starts leaking out.

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We are dragged, willingly, from late 1970s Toronto bar crawls and Halloween street violence to the bathhouse raids, activist marches, and hospital corridors where friends disappeared one by one. There is Tommy, the lover who wanted forever. Orchid, the queen in cork wedges who did the caring work no one applauded. All noted in the little red address book that slowly turns to a slab of black ink.

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Our narrator is no plaster saint. He confesses to running for safety, going quiet, choosing comfort over courage. He dodged the front lines, watched others fight, and now finds his community repackaged as a lifestyle for younger, richer neighbours with open-plan kitchens.

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A Public Display of Affection is a reckoning, not a history lecture. It asks what we owe each other across generations, what happens to hard-won rights when they become real-estate branding, and whether queer elders are meant to be honoured, ignored, or quietly evicted.

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Blending gallows humour with political bite, the show speaks to anyone who has ever outlived a moment and wondered what to do with the afterlife. Expect jokes, ghosts and absolutely no neat redemption arc, just one man trying to tell the whole story before the microphone cuts out.