Writer, performer, director, composer, teacher, activist, and drag artiste, Darrin Hagen is no stranger to the Edmonton theatre scene. As artistic director of the Guys in Disguise theatre company, Hagen has delighted audiences with the kind of gender-bending, queer-ensuing performances that could give La Cage aux Folles’ Edouard Molinaro a run for his money. After 30 years of LGBT contributions, Hagen was awarded with one of the 25 Influential Alberta Artists in 25 Years awards from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and continues to impact and delight audiences with a reworked revival of the classic, Tornado Magnet: A Salute to Trailer Court Women, and the new Witch Hunt at the Strand.

Tornado Magnet, brought to stage by Theatre Network, sees Hagen’s classic heroine, Dotty Parsons (played by Darrin himself) continue to combat home-ophobia in The Wild Rose Trailer Court, as she has done on stage for the past 20 years. What’s different this time is the arrival of grandkids.

"It was 20 years ago that I started to write my second play," Haggen says. "Tornado Magnet became my most-produced, most travelled play. It’s been seen in Edmonton (twice), Red Deer, Calgary (twice), Fort Macleod, Regina, Meacham, Winnipeg (twice), Ottawa and Whitehorse. There’s something universal about it: whether or not the audience has lived in a trailer court, they understand that what it’s really about is growing up on the prairies."

"When Brad Moss approached me about reviving Tornado Magnet, my first response was I’m too old. Dotty would be a Grandma now. His response was Well, maybe it’s time to revisit it from a new perspective. And I’m so glad we did. I love performing this character and telling these stories. They take me back to a time when my biggest worry was how to fill the endless summer days with fun. The trailer court in the ’70s was a place I felt safe; before all the fears of growing up queer started to preoccupy my imagination."

"[Tornado Magnet] is all about how a mom creates a home and, growing up surrounded by so many strong dedicated prairie women, is a big reason I am the man I am today."

"Witch Hunt at the Strand takes on a more serious note, as it delves into a life in Edmonton most of us are not aware of." Hagen continues. "Based in Edmonton, in 1942, police investigate a group of gay men who are prevalent in the city’s theatre scene. Based on actual transcripts, the story articulates how gay men were rounded up, assaulted, and imprisoned for simply being gay."

"Witch Hunt at the Strand reveals an Edmonton that most historians have ignored – the ‘underground queer scene’, where gay men moved like ghosts through a military-obsessed capital city during WWII. The story starts with an ad being placed in the personals of the local paper – a gay man from Vancouver has moved to Edmonton and is looking for friends. He begins to meet some of the local gay men. Within two years, 12 men have been arrested, charged with many offences including gross indecency, buggery, and others. Three of those men were high-profile members of Edmonton’s performing arts community. The resulting hysteria dragged hundreds of people into the gossip and innuendo as police rounded up gay men of all walks of life."

"Creating this play, I was able to draw upon my extensive history of LGBTQ Edmonton. I have narrated the Queer History Bus tours for years, so I was aware of the community’s emergence in the ’60s to ’70s but, for the 1940s, there was not a lot of info. However, the arrest records and transcripts – along with dozens of personal intimate letters that were seized as evidence – paint a detailed and frightening account of the lives of gay men in the 1940s. For a historian, like myself, they are a treasure trove."

"The play uses real trial transcripts, personal letters and extensive research into Edmonton and Edmonton’s arts scene at that time."

"At the 2015 Fringe, director David Chereos and I staged the evidence and the documents. It wasn’t a play yet, but the story they told was compelling enough that it was nominated for a Sterling Award for Outstanding New Fringe Work. In this incarnation, I have fleshed out the story significantly, and tried to imagine what’s behind the dark and lurid details of the trial testimony. This is the first major work that specifically illuminates that period in Edmonton’s Queer history."

Related Articles

Writer Dallas Barnes

Locale Edmonton

Person Darrin Hagen

Topic Theatre | Theatre Network | Guys in Disguise