Blurring the gender landscape
ON STAGE / Zee Zee Theatre's Nelly Boy sidesteps the male/female box
Andrea Warner / Vancouver / Thursday, October 08, 2009
http://www.xtra.ca/public/Vancouver/Blurring_the_gender_landscape-7616.aspx (http://www.xtra.ca/public/Vancouver/Blurring_the_gender_landscape-7616.aspx)
Dave Deveau smiles and shakes his blond head as he recalls being commissioned as a teenager in Toronto to write a monologue for young would-be voters exploring some element of democracy.
He can't fathom why he chose to explore gender, or how he created the character of Nelly, a gender fluid 15-year-old isolated in the hell of suburbia.
But one principle has been the driving force in expanding that original 15-minute monologue into the full-fledged play, Nelly Boy, which makes its Vancouver debut Oct 23 at the Performing Arts Lodge.