TORNADO MAGNET
A Salute to Trailer Court Women
By Darrin Hagen
Guys in Disguise
Until April 28 (Tues. - Sat., 8 p.m.; Sunday, 2 p.m.)
Roxy Theatre (10708-124 St.)
Tickets: $15.00, $12.00 students/seniors, 453-2440

Judy Garland’s Dorothy had it dialed: there’s no place like home. Kansas will always be Kansas – those ruby red slippers just make it that much saucier. This week another Dorothy struts out her own ensemble of prairie gothic when Darrin Hagen returns to the Roxy Theatre as Dotty Parsons in Tornado Magnet: A Salute to Trailer Court Women.

Hagen describes Tornado Magnet as a "one-man/one-woman, low-tech, multi-media" production. First staged by Guys in Disguise for the 1997 Edmonton Fringe, Magnet went onto Regina’s Globe Theatre and the Winnipeg Fringe Festival. "It was written near the beginning of my writing career. It’s essentially the same but better: I’ve grown a lot as a writer and individual since then and the show has matured as well."

Laying out the rules of the trailer court for the audience, Dotty Parsons sets them straight while rallying against "mobile homophobia." Hagen’s history as a trailer court kid inspired the show. He recalled his family’s first trailer as very similar to the one in that "Lucy and Desi movie: not a camper but not a mobile – it cost $3,000 in 1966 and was basically a 47-foot thing with a hallway and bathrooms." Before touching down permanently it was moved "from Grande Prairie to Estevan, stopping at hundreds of towns in between." (Hagen’s dad was an oil rigger.) All those moves shook loose the insulation in the family unit, ensuring that it was always "hot in the summer, cold in the winter."

The immobile foundations of social stigma proved more solidly resistant to erosion. "There was this whole automatic judgment placed on me when people found out where I was from – that somehow I was lower class. I remember Brad Fraser bugging me about growing up in a trailer court until one day I said, ‘Yeah, well your parents couldn’t even afford a trailer!’ Eventually he said, ‘Yeah, you’re right.’"

As a "non-plot-driven monologue" piece chock full of trashy props, Tornado Magnet is essentially a celebration of what it threatens to send up. "When I first moved out I thought, ‘Thank God we’re outta there!’ But over the years I came to appreciate what an excellent and amazing place it was: tight, small, with a strong sense of community. I see it as a tribute to the women I grew up with. A lot of people think rural Alberta is this very conservative, male-dominated place dictated by all these old codes. Tornado Magnet is about the moms because they were the ones that ran the show. The dads were never there – they were working construction or on the rigs and it was the women who took care of everything and they did it by helping each other. If there was one mom who couldn’t make ends meet until the end of the month, all of the other ones got together to make sure she was okay. This show is based on all the stuff I heard as a kid sitting around the table with my ears flapping."

Flapping and flying higher than ever, Hagen has just been signed to Who’s on Top, a six-part series for Life Network by Great North Productions, who say it’s a bit like putting a male and a female in a maze and seeing who comes out on top. As both Darrin and Gloria, Hagen will be the first drag queen to host a national Canadian television show. "On our way to a shoot the other day at West Edmonton Mall, my worst nightmare came true: our car broke down and I was stuck in traffic in drag."

Go Gingham. Go Saucy. Go Home.