PRIDE: Boy’s Night a ‘love letter to queer male relationships’

Trans writer, director and actor Coryn Urquhart wrote a play that shows his gratitude to those who helped him through his transition. It runs at the Staircase Theatre from June 26 to 29. 

For Hamilton writer, director and actor Coryn Urquhart, Boy’s Night is a “love letter to queer male relationships.”

Featuring a queer cast, Urquhart, a trans man, says his intent is to showcase local talent and give voice to people from his community. 

“It’s happening during Pride weekend in Toronto, so the hope is to keep people here. We don’t have to travel to Toronto to see ourselves on stage.”

In Boy’s Night, Urquhart plays Mac and he’s joined by Keaton Tye as River and Brendan Green as Wheeler. The trio find themselves drunk and ejected from a local punk bar at 3 a.m. after getting into a fight. 

What better time to sit on a curb and solve each other’s life problems, while laying bare their sexualities, gender identities, and relationships to one another?

Urquhart says he read a book a few years ago called Please Kill Me, which covered the history of the punk music scene.

“I was really taken aback by how much influence queer culture had on the punk scene and how present queer people were in it. I have felt both welcome and ostracized in those spaces.”

But queer fashion, an attitude of defiance and rule-breaking, and “an in-your-face blurring of the gender binary” are found in both communities, says Urquhart. 

“I just think there is an interesting, fraught and romantic connection between punk and queer culture.”

So this play sprang from that idea and real nights at punk shows Urquhart, 27, has experienced. 

He grew up in Hamilton and earned a bachelors in English and cultural studies and then a masters in cultural studies and critical theory at McMaster University. He’s acted in a number of local theatre productions, following in the footsteps of his grandfather, Chuck Hayes, and his mother, former CHCH-TV personality Maria Hayes, as familiar faces on Hamilton theatre stages.

“I grew up around the theatre. It was always a part of my life. And then I wrote my first script in undergrad in a creative writing course. My prof encouraged me to write a one-person show. It was really challenging and it wasn’t good but I learned from it.”

Urquhart conducted a staged reading of Boy’s Night in December at James Street North bar Farside and was pleased by the reception it got.

“That gave me motivation to keep working on it, and I approached The Staircase, which is one of my favourite venues.”

Urquhart came out when he was about 21 and started slowly transitioning socially and medically over the next few years. He left theatre during that time because, he says, “there were not a lot of roles that fit me at that time.”

But he returned to the stage in last year’s A Question of Justice and in this year’s production of The Catering Queen, both at the Players’ Guild of Hamilton.

“It was just an incredible experience. I missed the theatre and I really want to get back into it fully.”

Also last summer, Urquhart contributed a monologue to a production called Scheduled Maintenance at the Hamilton Fringe Festival. The first presentation of Monday Press, the project wove together six queer stories of love, identity, and pain, all told by people simply waiting for a train.

“It was the first time I heard an actor deliver my words and it was life-changing, I just thought, ‘I have to keep doing this until I’m dead.’”

Urquhart’s character was trans masculine, as was the actor performing the dialogue. 

“People came up to me afterwards and told me they felt seen and that I had told their story. That was a hugely emotional thing for me.”

Urquhart started writing Boy’s Night on his phone in June 2023. He knows that because the first two lines are still in his Notes app. So, exactly two years later, Boy’s Night is making its debut. 

Urquhart has high praise for his co-stars Tye and Green, the latter of whom serves as the show’s producer. 

“They are two of the most incredible performers I’ve had the luck to spend time with. They’re so earnest and sincere in their performances and they are inquisitive and generous. They’ve put so much work into this.”

He’s also grateful for the support he’s received from people in theatre and the queer community. 

“I think that there are really tight-knit pockets of queer artistic support in the community. Over the past few years, I’ve become more aware of that. I see more queer artists and queer folks working to create bonds with each other and to create their own spaces.” 

Urquhart’s brother and sister have both moved to B.C. and have encouraged him to go, too. But he’s not willing to leave Hamilton.

“I have a very strong emotional connection to the city,” he says. “I really love Hamilton’s flavour and character.”

Audiences will hear Boy’s Night characters make references to local places. 

Green and Urquhart canvassed downtown businesses about the show, distributing posters and having conversations. 

“There were far more people enthusiastic about it than I thought there would be. Uplifting of artists happens here. There’s something hopeful about that.” 

That’s not to say it’s always easy. Urquhart says, at a petite 5’4”, he doesn’t present as a hetero-normative man. Having the 6’4” Green at his side, meant he got yelled at much less that day than he would have alone. 

But he’s undaunted. “I am a trans person and I’m allowed to exist in whatever form I want to.”

Urquhart hopes his show helps other trans and queer kids. He grew up in the suburbs and went to a Catholic school and wonders if he could have avoided some deep struggles if he had seen more stories like his.

And it’s frightening, he says, to witness gender-affirming care and trans rights under attack south of the border, and that Canada is seeing its own resurgence of anti-queer hate.

The altercation at the centre of Boy’s Night is transphobia but the story is really about queer friends and their ability to lift each other out of that kind of aggression, says Urquhart.    

“This is a heartfelt thank you to every queer person who helped me through my transition.”

NEED TO KNOW

Boy’s Night, presented by Rogue Theatre
Staircase Theatre
27 Dundurn St. N., Hamilton
June 26, 27 and 28, 8 p.m.
June 29, 2 p.m.
Tickets are here