The Prime of Ms David Hoyle at Chelsea Theatre, September 14 2016, with David Hoyle, Simone Simone (Thom Shaw) and Prefect Ben (Ben Walters). Photo by Holly Revell
By Ben Walters
Paul Morris, the man behind the transgressive bareback porn studio Treasure Island Media, once met Michel Foucault, the radical philosopher whose ideas about power and knowledge paved the way for queer theory. They were in a San Francisco bathhouse.
“I didn’t know who it was until after I’d fisted him,” Morris recalled, adding: “I’ve always believed that information is transmitted through the physical communion of sex. Rather than studying with him, I absorbed Foucault through my left hand and arm”.
It’s quite an image. This intense encounter had a lasting effect on Morris, helping shape his own innovative and controversial ideas about sex and freedom.
Intriguingly, Morris compares the moment to an earlier, gentler queer encounter: the simple touch on the small of the back that the Edwardian novelist E.M. Forster credited with inspiring his groundbreaking gay romance Maurice.
These are fascinating stories not just for those who care about gay life but for anyone who cares about education.
In our society, education has become more or less equated with ordered classrooms in which information is transmitted from on high, via the words of a teacher or textbook, with a view to later being tested by a specific exam or target.
But this is only one of the ways we learn, and not always a very fruitful one.
For LGBTQ+ people in particular, school can be a trying or even traumatic time. There’s a high risk of bullying and victimisation, and a low chance of seeing positive role models or receiving even the most basic information about relationships and sex.
No wonder so many of us go on to struggle with self-esteem, longterm relationships and sexual health.
However, there are many other ways of learning that have nothing to do with the traditional classroom – ways that might not even seem like learning at the time but have a powerful educational impact on our minds, spirits and lives.
For LGBTQ+ people, that might be the validation and anticipation associated with our first step inside a gay venue. It might be talking to a queer elder about how their experiences and actions shaped today’s society. It might be listening to unfamiliar music, being in nature, nurturing a friendship, going to a show that resonates with you in ways mainstream culture doesn’t acknowledge.
The Prime of Ms David Hoyle, Chelsea Theatre, September 14 2016 (Image by Holly Revell)
This year, I’ve been working on a show with the legendary underground performer David Hoyle that we hope will resonate like that. It’s about education (semi-inspired by my own re-entry into learning and teaching for my PhD) and it aims to broaden horizons by presenting a classroom experience like no other.
The show is called The Prime of Ms David Hoyle, and it frames David as an inspirational educator – a counterpart to Miss Jean Brodie, the charismatic, controversial schoolteacher created by novelist Muriel Spark and played on screen by Maggie Smith and Geraldine McEwan.
Ms Hoyle is an electrifying figure, taking aim at the failures of conventional education and proposing utopian alternatives, often involving woodland glades. The audience are her class, and she is joined by a classroom assistant (Simone Simone), a prefect (myself) and guest performers in the guise of visiting professors or former star pupils.
These former pupils are in reality graduates of Carnesky’s Finishing School and the Duckie Homosexualist Summer School, real-life grassroots training programmes for young queer cabaret performers who have few vocational options in traditional education.
The Prime of Ms David Hoyle is a fun cabaret show, full of camp laughs, singsongs and pretty pictures, and laced with David’s trademark combination of caustic satire and deep love for the outsider.
But it’s also designed to put into action some of those alternative ways of learning that don’t involve conformity, competition and philistinism.
No, they don’t involve fisting either – that was just an example – but we will discover what David learned about drama from working on the B.H.S. cheese counter, and see what happens when people actually share experiences we are usually encouraged to ignore.
Alternative modes of education are all around us all the time, if we pay attention, opening new windows on the world to powerful effect.
And, as his longstanding fans will tell you, with his perceptive analysis of the world and passionate vision of how things could be, David Hoyle is the best teacher you never had.
The Prime of Ms David Hoyle runs at Chelsea Theatre from September 14 to 25. More information at www.chelseatheatre.org.uk/project/prime-ms-david-hoyle-2/
