culture
James Gangl’s Sex, Religion, and Other Hang-Ups Yields Rich, Boozy Comedy
The actor/writer on his hit one-man show, how he's gambling on a full mainstage run, and how the show incorporates his own personal humiliations—including his worst poetry.
James Gangl onstage during the Fringe run of Sex, Religion, and Other Hang-Ups.
Sex, Religion, and Other Hang-Ups
Theatre Passe Muraille (16 Ryerson Avenue)
October 4–22, Tuesday to Thursday at 8 p.m., Friday and Saturday 7 and 9 p.m.; Opening tonight at 8 p.m.
Tickets are $20 (students/seniors/arts workers) or $25 (general admission) from the box office (416-504-7529) or artsboxoffice.ca
We’re sitting in the backstage greenroom at Theatre Passe Muraille, pulling on bottles of Coors Light with actor/writer James Gangl and his director, Chris Gibbs. There’s lots more beer where these came from: “I worked with the now-VP at Coors Light 11 years ago at Unilever,” explains Gangl, “and when I approached them and told them about the show, they donated some cash”—and a lot of cases for opening night.
Coors is involved because Gangl’s one-man confessional show Sex, Religion, and Other Hang-Ups centres on a turbulent time in the actor’s life when he fell hard for an actress cast in the beer commercial he’d also gotten a part in—his first professional acting job. Gangl explains, though, that while events are true—up to a point—there are subtle differences, as he’s telling a (very funny) story. “It is about a time in my life, because with what I do, it’s hard to separate my life from entertainment.”
“I’d been telling this story for the last six years, to friends, and after shows at the bar, so the confidence to turn it into a show came from those people who heard it saying, ‘Wow, that’s a great story.'”
The story as told by Gangl onstage, which is hilarious and revealing (to an embarrassing degree for the likable performer), was one of Torontoist‘s top preview picks for this summer’s Fringe Festival, earned one of our best reviews (Gangl got similar high praise from most publications covering the Fringe) and was one of our top highlights of the huge festival. Now, after “rolling the dice” as Gangl says of the show itself, he’s taking a big gamble by renting out the main stage at Theatre Passe Muraiile for a full three-week run.
Gangl’s been smart about who he’s picked to help him get the show to where it is now, though, enlisting Fringe celebrity Chris Gibbs to direct the show, as well as theatre producer Derrick Chua. “The more we’ve worked on the show, the more I’ve realized the truth of the story is much better than any embellishments—and I credit Chris for that,” says Gangl. “I’d say, ‘Is this too humiliating? Will the audience just be squirming in their seats?’ And he’d say, ‘No, no, we can make that so much more humiliating.'”
Gibbs, reclining on a couch across the room, chuckles at that. A consummate storyteller himself and a veteran of Canadian Fringe tours, he was initially reluctant to agree to officially direct Gangl—out of modesty. “I’d asked him three or four times to direct,” recalls Gangl, who’s been doing improv with Gibbs for years in Toronto (and as a frequent guest on The Carnegie Hall Show), “and I finally asked him point-blank: ‘Can I put your name on the poster as a director?’ And he said, ‘Well, if I thought it would help you… actually, for Fringe, it could help you…’ and that’s how I hooked him.”
Gangl’s involvement with Chua came after Fringe had wrapped and the prolific theatregoer had seen Gangl’s show. “I’d had a couple of offers from people to produce it, but they all felt similar to what I’d done at Fringe—short-run offers. So I said, ‘Fuck it, I’m going to do it myself.’ I had lunch with Derrick, to ask him, ‘If you were producing the show, what would you do?’ Just for advice—and then he says, ‘Y’know, I think I would like to produce it.’ And I said, ‘Great!'”
For Gangl, the full run is a coming-out of sorts into the theatre scene. “I’ve always thought of myself as an actor,” he says, and in truth, it’s a central theme of the show—his desire to be taken seriously as an actor. Despite writing and producing Dreadwood, an improvised take on the HBO series (a production a cut above most improv spoofs), like many improv performers he’s been somewhat unknown as a dramatic actor. That will hopefully change with this show; while it may be very funny, he gives a great performance—some of it in verse. “Yeah, it’s almost like a musical—when the emotions get too strong, I break into poetry,” says Gangl. “Ninety per cent of the poetry in the journal that served as the basis for the show was just garbage, but 10 per cent was alright. That said, we’re trying something different for this run; we’ve put in one of the garbage poems to illustrate how batshit crazy I was at the time. So… come for the garbage poetry!”
As for the future of Sex, Religion, and Other Hang-Ups after this run, Gangl has plans: “I have a TV pitch. It’ll be like Being Erica for men—more sex and violence, but with the same amount of heart,” he jokes with a straight face.