Cast of Tough Guy by Hayley Moorhouse, Persistent Myth Productions at Edmonton Fringe Theatre. Photo supplied

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Do you remember where you were when you heard …?

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There are moments in life when you know your answer will be instantly available in your memory, forever. Hayley Moorhouse, whose new play Tough Guy premieres Thursday in a Persistent Myth production directed by Brett Dahl (part of the Edmonton Fringe Theatre season), distinctly remembers driving to work one morning in 2016, listening to the radio. En route the news came on: a horrific mass shooting in Pulse, a queer nightclub in Orlando. “I’m not normally a big emotional kinda guy,” says Moorhouse, who indeed has a brisk, articulate sort of thoughtfulness and good humour in conversation. But they found themself “sobbing so hard I couldn’t see and had to pull over. It hit me so hard.”

“I didn’t start thinking about (writing Tough Guy) right there, but it stayed with me,” they say. “The impact of that nightclub shooting was really hard, for many people,” Moorhouse among them. “It stayed with me… But the seeds of the play were planted over many years, if I go way back as a queer person.” There’s been progress, yes, but “things are starting to feel different, scarier these days…. Queer people, trans people especially, are constantly de-humanized and threatened and oppressed, not only by people, but by government institutions in ways that are really quite frightening.”

The five characters in Tough Guy are 20-something friends, grappling to navigate the emotional fallout of a mass shooting in a queer club. And upping the ante is the arrival of another friend, an indie filmmaker back home to shoot a documentary about the fatal  incident.

As Moorhouse was developing the play, the image of a boxer lodged in their mind. “There’s something so visceral and sweaty and alive in that image … a cool way to talk about how we embody our experiences of trauma: we don’t just think them or talk about them, we really feel them in our bodies.” The action of Tough Guy happens in an urban garage, a hang-out space where the friends, including one character who’s a boxer, meet and party. And a punching bag has pride of place.

Playwright Hayley Moorhouse

Two years ago, Moorhouse enthusiastically signed up for RISER, Common Ground Arts’ program of mentorship for the crazily multi-faceted demands of being a theatre producer. “I wanted to produce my own work, things I want to say about the queer experience now. And people have been so supportive and gracious in the theatre community. Everyone I speak to is willing to offer advice or mentorship; the generosity and support are so great!”

A 2018 U of A theatre school acting grad — Edmonton audiences saw Moorhouse in Shadow Theatre’s Robot Girls, Stars on Her Shoulders at Workshop West, Little Women at the Citadel — they have been writing “pretty much my whole life, since I was a little kid,” they say. “I’ve been a writer way longer than I’ve been an actor. It was my first love.”

And Tough Guy, the winner of the 2025 Alberta Playwriting Competition and Westbury Family Fringe Theatre Award, isn’t the first time Moorhouse the writer has been drawn to explore the reverb from trauma. Suspension, which they produced at the 2019 Fringe — “a fly by the seat of your pants experiment” in producing and directing — and then, in a podcast version the following year for the Alberta Queer Calendar Project. They describe it as “a surreal absurdist play with two characters who meet each other in a deserted suburban backyard.” Above them is a plane crash about to happen; “the plane is frozen mid-air and they have time to figure out how to respond.”

Says Moorhouse “I’m very interested in my writing by how people respond when something horrible happens? And how do we tell the story of events like these?” The filmmaker character in Tough Guy wasn’t actually present at the violent event in the nightclub. “But they want their friends who were there to mine their emotions, go back, dig deep. And I’m interested in exploring the ethics, and the cost” of that re-creation.

“In theatre, we are storytellers. And sometimes we tell really hard stories.” It’s “the cost of the story vs what it gives us,” Moorhouse thinks. “Are we telling stories just because they’re sensational or shocking? Or is there something of value we get?”

These are questions that resonate particularly, and often, vis-à-vis “the tradition of telling queer stories that are really sad,” as Moorhouse puts it. “It’s the ‘bury-your-gaze’ trope”: how often does it happen in movies, TV, or plays that a queer character is introduced … “and then they die”?

“Hey, that’s not an accurate summation of the queer experience,” Moorhouse sighs. “Our lives aren’t only sad and only difficult…. I’m curious about finding that balance, really grappling with a story, really diving into it, and also seeing ‘what else is there?’. Making these characters’ lives as three-dimensional and as full and contradictory as possible.”

Jasmine Hopfe in Tough Guy by Hayley Moorhouse, Persistent Myth Productions at Edmonton Fringe Theatre. Photo supplied

They’ve been at pains in Tough Guy to show characters “in the depths of the worst day of their lives, and also show them at their most exuberantly joyful.” So Moorhouse has the play “slip between different time lines. Half takes place in the days after the shooting when everything is really difficult. And half the scenes take place at a party six months prior when all the characters are together, being ridiculous, goofy, drunk, and joyful.”

Moorhouse’s five characters respond to trauma and grief in individual ways. “It’s human nature to avoid pain at all costs. When people go through something traumatic, they brush it off, they make jokes, they pretend it’s not happening. Or they deflect and focus on work or solutions….”

Is Moorhouse finding the full experience of queer-ness in the theatrical storytelling they see at the moment? They consider the question. “We see sparks of excellent theatre that grapples with all the realities of the queer experience. It’s not that it’s not out there; I just wish there was more.” Stories that reflect queer joy, “the silly ones that remind us how joyful it is to be queer,” are at a premium. It’s no accident that one of Moorhouse’s favourite theatre companies is the queer sketch comedy troupe I Hardly Know Them (their very funny TikTok videos revel in the ridiculous and the absurd). Queer comedy, they think, is “a rebellious act in its own way; I love that group so much!”

Michelle Diaz in Tough Guy, Persistent Myth Productions at Edmonton Fringe Theatre. Photo supplied.

“It’s really exciting to show queer people, and queer characters, in a kaleidoscopic way…. To have as many voices and textures and ideas as possible — all with a queer lens.”

As a queer artist Moorhouse admits to being “shocked by the political moment we’re in.  “Maybe I was naive. But 10 years ago I would never have seen it coming, the government making life unbearable for trans and gender-diverse kids,” they sigh. “It’s a frightening, heartbreaking moment. But we’re still here, and we’re still alive, still kicking, still fighting to create change and make things better….”

“I’m heartened by the Edmonton theatre community,” they say. “It’s all our job to be really loud!”

PREVIEW

Tough Guy

Theatre: Persistent Myth Productions at Edmonton Fringe Theatre

Written and produced by: Hayley Moorhouse

Directed by: Brett Dahl

Starring: Mel Bahniuk, Michelle Diaz, Jasmine Hopfe, Marguerite Lawler, Autumn Strom

Where: Backstage Theatre, Fringe Theatre Arts Barns, 10330 84 Ave.

Running: Thursday through Nov. 8

Tickets: tickets.fringetheatre.ca