I Want It That Gay Cabaret Comedy Show

It’s 1998… you’re sitting in front of the telly on Saturday morning watching Video Hits. The Spice Girls pop up on screen, you LOVE the Spice Girls! But soon you’re wondering – do I want to be Sporty Spice or do I want to be with Sporty Spice? I Want it That Gay sheds light and humour on the challenges of growing up with starkly heteronormative music, popstars and paradigms. At times hilarious and at times heartbreaking, the show is an irreverent look at the way popular culture shapes what we see and therefore who we’re allowed to be. Think Destiny’s Child, Britney, Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys and more – queerified! Reminisce on your favourite hits from the 1990s-2000’s through a queer lens.

According to Whitehouse, I Want it That Gay was born in Vancouver, Canada towards the end of 2020, post lockdown. Cara’s visa had just ended abruptly, along with a long-term relationship! While in the shower singing Britney, Whitehouse imagined the accompanying video clip, trying to entice the aforementioned partner back into a relationship. And so the show began!

While pop culture is a common language that helps us interrogate the default way of being in the world, most of us in the western world are only given default heteronormative examples of how to be, look, feel and act. Using blatantly heteronormative pop songs and flipping them into queer narratives, Cara highlights the space between these narratives, making room for experiences outside the default.

Creating moving and rewarding conversations is what the show is all about. For some, the show is a healing experienced, with some audience members saying that it helped them come out to themselves and their family as non-binary or genderqueer. Others say the show helped give them the language to talk to the queer people in their lives. Parents of young children expressed gratitude for the light-hearted education, should their child ever come out as queer.

Whitehouse says the process starting songs always begins by asking; what is the story we want to tell in this moment?

“For each of the formative moments that we share, we asked ourselves what we wished we could say out loud, but never did. Then we chose songs that fit the unsaid thoughts. The first song we parodied was that same Britney hit I was singing in the shower, and it became a sultry break up anthem.

The parody of the lyrics starts with changing a few words and moves from the pedestrian to the utter ridiculous both in words and expression. We are careful to keep the themes universal. That way someone of any gender or sexuality can relate. This isn’t just a show for queers, it’s themes of belonging, self-acceptance and self-expression are relatable to all”.