Ask Nathan Cuckow about the Mormon view of homosexuality and he takes a fortifying swig of his coffee before launching into a thoughtful albeit strong rant.

"I was watching Larry King, and they had [Gordon B. Hinckley] the president of the Mormon Church being interviewed, and King actually asked what the stance was on homosexuality. [Hinckley] said that they are not anti-gay, but they are pro-family. It’s the great talking-in-circles, and it made me laugh because in essence it’s saying that gays are not pro-family because they don’t reproduce! Just because you have a child doesn’t make you a family, that’s something you work on, you become a parent through your actions. It’s bullshit! But it’s like any religion: you have wonderful Mormons, and Mormons who aren’t so great. I have very open-minded parents, and that probably comes from the fact they weren’t born and raised in the Church; they came to it later in life."

A really good idea

Cuckow’s 2002 Fringe hit STANDupHOMO– wherein a gay, Mormon comedian takes on the attitudes of the religious bastion opposing homosexuality –had its roots in two other venerable Edmonton events: the Loud ’n’ Queer festival and Nextfest. "When I first arrived in Edmonton back in 1998, Darrin Hagen approached me about writing for Loud ’n’ Queer, and I wrote a 10-minute monologue that was kind of stand-up comic based, even though I had no intention of being a stand-up comedian ever, and it was well received. Darrin said, ‘Why don’t you turn it into a one-man show and call it STANDupHOMO’? We laughed, and then I thought, ‘That’s a good idea.’ But I wanted the show to be more than just a queer standup comic–the idea of somebody standing up for themselves, that double entendre was what was interesting to me. I just took that as my starting point and went from there".

Just "going from there" meant a performance at the 2002 Nextfest, then a full debut at the Fringe, an experience which Cuckow says was a bit intimidating "It was my writing debut. Sure I had written stuff for Loud ’n’ Queer, but as far as a play that I was performing in and that was being produced, that was my debut. The learning curve was huge. I have tremendous respect for anyone who creates, writes work, and puts themselves out there like that. It’s incredibly intimidating and I had the good fortune to be supported, to be embraced by Edmonton’s theatre community. It was nice–decent houses, decent reviews. What more can you ask for? [One Yellow Rabbit’s] Michael Green saw the show then and that’s where we made our connection"

STANDup HOMO may have appeared to pull the traditional post-Fringe disappearing act, but over the past two years, the play has continued to have a life. "I’ve been in a period of redevelopment. There was a stint that I did in Calgary with Michael Green, we worked on it a bit together, and then I came back up and continued working on it with Kevin Sutley, the director. In that two years of redevelopment, I’ve gone all over the map with the piece. For a while it didn’t even resemble what I had initially done, which was very frightening but also interesting as redevelopment. As the process has continued, I’ve sort of come full circle and am now back to where I started. It’s gone somewhere completely different–structurally it again resembles the original–but I’ve been able to include the pieces from the developmental process–make the characters deeper, make the connections deeper; try to communicate on a more mature level perhaps. I think it’s funnier too. There’s more humour. That was something I was definitely concentrating on, the actual standup routine. Definitely more humour!"

All change

The 29-year-old Cuckow affably admits he’s also undergone a personal maturation since the show’s debut. "I think the religious perspective in the show was angry and one-note. I now have some distance from that time and have matured some. My approach is to be more balanced in the approach, to show what somebody can find that is good in religion and try to have a bit more balance. Also, I have a Mormon background, my parents are Mormon so I have tried to bring in more of that conflict, more specifically towards Mormonism rather than religion–the stand-up character attacks all kinds of religion, but I think that the fact he’s a closeted Mormon deepens the character and deepens my personal investment in him. It is fiction, it isn’t autobiographical, so I was looking for ways I could involve myself in the storytelling, take it a bit deeper".

Cuckow grew up in Calgary before heading off to the bright lights of New York back in 1994. He studied at the American Musical Academy and after graduation, joined the NYC theatre community as a backstage crew member for the late Tony Randall’s National Actors’ Theatre. "I worked on The Gin Game and The Sunshine Boys and had the opening night party at Sardi’s. I was part of that thing. It was pretty cool. When I went to New York I didn’t even know what Sardi’s was!" However, getting an onstage career started was a different matter, and fate stepped in in the form of Chris Fassbender, with whom Cuckow had made friends at theatre school. "Chris came here and started his professional career and when I was getting ready to shake things up, go back to Canada, I was considering Toronto, I was considering Vancouver, and Chris invited me to the Fringe Festival, and I came to do his show All in the Timing, met a whole bunch of people and saw it was a great place to learn, a great place to grow and develop, so I stayed".

Work with Teatro La Quindicina and a Sterling-nominated turn in Kill Your Television’s SUBurbia established Cuckow as a familiar face on the Edmonton boards. He says events like Workshop West’s Kaboom Festival have contributed greatly to his development as a writer and performer. "A piece that was really influential in the redevelopment of STANDupHOMO was Marie Brassard’s Jimmy. That just blew my mind. It was a gorgeous, gorgeous piece that to this day still affects me."

More recently, Cuckow received another Sterling Nomination as the co-author of 3… 2… 1 with Chris Craddock–a play which trod ground similar to that of STANDup HOMO, despite his intentions. "I really wanted to do something that wasn’t gay and didn’t involve religion. Funnily both of those came up! But you write about what you know ultimately and it really happened organically with 3… 2… 1. We just all of a sudden realized that those were logical choices for the characters. Where we are, Alberta–those things are issues. It had less to do with us, and more to do with the actual storytelling. It didn’t come from a place of ‘we need to make this point’ it came from what’s necessary for these characters".

Outside the boxes

Although STANDup HOMO takes on queer issues, Cuckow says he finds labels frustrating even though they can work to an artist’s advantage "As far as sexuality is concerned, gay and straight are just incredibly limiting and unrealistic. I think sexuality is so much more complicated. To be truthful, what appealed to me about creating a queer piece of theatre was you immediately have a built-in demographic. That was a conscious decision. I am going to create a queer piece that will hopefully attract gays and lesbians, sort of a built in audience. One of the appealing factors was that I look at it as an advantage to be able to perform at a queer festival, a theatre festival, a comedy festival–it’s to my benefit to have different options and not be limited to just theatre, but I do feel that it’s silly to live in a time in this day and age that still separates things into boxes. I find the label Queer more fulfilling that I do Gay, Queer is anything other than straight. It’s an all-encompassing movement".

So far 2005 seems to be pointing Cuckow well on the way to achieving his goal of working at a national level–touring, collaborating with other artists, creating new work. He’d like to go back to New York with his show–a visa mishap scuttled a trip to the New York Fringe last year–but he isn’t so sure he wants to brave the current political climate. However, his six years in Edmonton have, he says, prepared him to build a career bigger than he imagined at the beginning "I’m doing things now that I never dreamed I would have done in New York. I never dreamed of self-producing, I never dreamed of writing. I was all about chasing the gig there, and Edmonton opened up so many possibilities for me. I’m really thankful."