Ali and Ash are living happily ever after in their teeny tiny flat. Only one thing would make them even happier — the pitter-patter of furry feet! Even though it’s a big step, they know they’re ready to become #pawrents for the very first time! But to their surprise, not everyone thinks it’s such a great idea…
Come and join Ali and Ash on their quest for puppy love as they battle with burpees at Bradley’s Bootcamp, dodge dangerous ducks with Tina Twitcher and flee from the Pet Shop Boy’s pack of piranhas. Sprinkled with songs and special surprises, this show about two papas and a pooch celebrates families of every shape and size, and being loved for exactly who you are.
We expected backlash and prepared for the worst
Making The Dog With Two Dads
We’d never been ones for making work that was political with a big P. Even — or especially — in relation to all things LGBTQ+, and our own identity as gay men, we always inclined more towards representation than activism. Just being in certain spaces, just being who we are as we were doing what we did, felt like it was enough.
But when you’re living a mile away from a school where protesters are harassing children and intimidating teachers, when you’re living in a city and a country and a world where LGBTQ+ people and lives are still being denigrated, criminalised and obliterated, it becomes impossible to stay entirely silent forever.
The basic metaphor of The Dog With Two Dads was so thin, so undisguised, that it would surely have been impossible for anyone to miss the fact that it was not really a story about two men wanting to get a dog at all. We expected backlash and prepared for the worst, but apart from a handful of comments on social media or directed to the commissioning venue, no storm of controversy ever broke. Maybe the metaphor was more of a cushion than I realised. Maybe the trolls and haters had something else to be angry about that autumn. I’ll never know for sure.
I’m not saying for one second that the script I wrote or the show we made magically and permanently resolved the difficulties and dangers of being LGBTQ+ at any age or stage of life in Birmingham, or anywhere else for that matter. But what we did do, and this I know for a fact, is make a genuine difference to at least some of the people who saw the show. A difference for some LGBTQ+ parents, and some children of LGBTQ+ parents, who saw something of their own lives reflected and celebrated on stage. A difference for some parents of LGBTQ+ children, too, who reflected on their own feelings, their own actions, their own words.
Sometimes a big moment of representation also functions as a modest moment of activism. I’ve learned to be comfortable with that.
