What does it mean to let your gayness define you -- and is that necessarily a bad thing?
My guest this week is actor Raymond Miller. If you were a teenager in Toronto in 2002, you saw him every afternoon hosting a local after-school TV show. He's also appeared on stage in Mamma Mia, blink and you'll miss him in an episode of Queer as Folk, and you might've caught him performing with the Canadian Opera Company.
When Raymond was newly out, he fell in with a circle of friends who told each other that even though they were all men attracted to men, they shouldn't define themselves as gay. That attitude was echoed by an acting teacher who told him to tone down his proclivities during auditions. At the TV show that he hosted, management told him to get rid of his lisp. And if he couldn't on his own, they told him, they had a solution to straighten him out: hockey.
Here's Mamma Mia in Toronto:
And a little Harvey Milk:
The beginning of The Boys in the Band:
And our friend Kevin Yee, who was coached on acting straighter by his management. It didn't work!
Music:
Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/