Let’s get to know more about Word Vancouver’s 2023 Guest 2SLGBTQIA+ Curator: C. E. Gatchalian!

As a Word Vancouver Guest 2SLGBTQIA+ Curator, what events and/or stories do you want to bring focus to during the year?

What is an important message you want to impart as the Guest 2SLGBTQIA+ Curator to the readers and writers of Vancouver?

You are rewriting an early play of yours, called Falling in Time, with a Toronto production planned in the next few years. How is that project going? What has the experience been like revising and breathing new life into an earlier piece of work?

Reading your memoir, Double Melancholy, my favourite parts were reading about the young filipinx boy. He’s such a great character in the book. Do you explore, or plan to explore, your younger self as a character in any other of your writings or plays?

You now divide your time between Toronto and Vancouver, but you have lived most of your life in Vancouver. As a Vancouver-born and -bred artist, where do you want to see Vancouver headed with its arts and culture scene?

By Lainie Burgess (ladybugonaleaf.ca)

Contributing Writer for Word

Word’s contributing writer, Lainie Burgess, recently connected with C.E. Gatchalian to learn more about his plans as 2023 Guest 2SLGBTQIA+ Curator, his recent work, plans for the future, as well as his thoughts on Vancouver’s art and cultural scene.

Watch Chris’ full, unedited video responses here: 

Word (Lainie): As a Word Vancouver Guest 2SLGBTQIA+ Curator, what events and/or stories do you want to bring focus to during the year?

C.E.: For me, it’s less about events and stories, and more about bringing people together.

The community has become very divided over the past number of years—racially, intergenerationally, economically, along gender lines… I’d like to do my part in healing these divisions…[by not programming in a] siloed way. 

So, for example, I’m not going to program all the trans/enby books in one session, and all the 2S books in another session. Every session will be a mix in terms of race, gender, genre etc.

My approach [is] about bringing people together and learning from one another…[which] may mean [branching] out of our comfort zones. 

And that’s more than okay.

Word (Lainie): What is an important message you want to impart as the Guest 2SLGBTQIA+ Curator to the readers and writers of Vancouver?

C.E.: Branch out of your comfort zone. 

None of us learn if we don’t do that…if you don’t usually read plays or poetry or flash fiction, why not give that a try? What’s stopping you? 

If you haven’t read a lot of Indigenous or Black authors, why not start now? 

Some of my most revelatory experiences as a reader have been picking up a book that I knew nothing about beforehand, or whose subject matter was foreign to me. I was surprised in the best possible sense of that word.

It may be a truism, but empathy is what we need right now, virtually more than anything.

And books and storytelling are a time-proven, time-honoured way of cultivating empathy.

Word (Lainie): You are rewriting an early play of yours, called Falling in Time, with a Toronto production planned in the next few years. How is that project going? What has the experience been like revising and breathing new life into an earlier piece of work?

C.E.: It’s a rare opportunity and privilege indeed to be able to dig back into an “old piece”. The play originally premiered in Vancouver in 2011, and was published the following year. 

But it’s never left my radar and in the last few years the need to dive back into it just grew more urgent, given everything that the world has awakened to with regards to race relations and toxic masculinity, which are two major issues the play deals with.

The rewriting is going very well. We’re doing another workshop of the play in Toronto this summer with the support of Tarragon Theatre & Buddies in Bad Times.

I actually wish this practice of revisiting previous work becomes more common, not just with plays, but with books as well. Why shouldn’t a writer dig back and rewrite a previous book that for whatever reason they’d like to revisit? Books are LIVING DOCUMENTS. And it deepens the relationship with the reader as well.

Word (Lainie):Reading your memoir, Double Melancholy, my favourite parts were reading about the young filipinx boy. He’s such a great character in the book. Do you explore, or plan to explore, your younger self as a character in any other of your writings or plays?

C.E.: In a word, YES.

I never ever thought that my lived experience was interesting enough to write about, and I think that has a lot to do with being a deeply colonized person with a colonial mentality. Why would anyone be interested in the story of a Filipino queer boy? I certainly never saw any evidence of it in the media I grew up with… there was NOTHING, NO STORIES, about anyone who looked like me. 

Thankfully, though, things are changing, and I’ve changed. I'm learning to love myself more. So yes, I do plan on writing stories about my younger self.

Word (Lainie):You now divide your time between Toronto and Vancouver, but you have lived most of your life in Vancouver. As a Vancouver-born and -bred artist, where do you want to see Vancouver headed with its arts and culture scene?

C.E.:  First, I have to say that splitting my time between Toronto and Vancouver has been a ball so far. They're the only two cities in Canada I'd personally choose to live in, divorced from work considerations. 

They're both very diverse and very intercultural, yet very different from each other. Seeing where Toronto is at, as a city that, at least in colonial terms, is significantly older than Vancouver, gives you a sense of where Vancouver can be as it matures as a cultural centre. 

I haven't lived long enough in Toronto to give you a first-hand account of the Toronto arts scene--but I'd have to say that the main difference I see between the two cities is the [accessibility of the] arts in Toronto…financially, geographically, etc. 

Now we don't have the time to go into all the reasons for this…but I think it behoves Vancouver arts leaders and public officials to keep accessibility in mind when thinking about arts and culture. 

Make the arts accessible to everyone. 

I'm not saying there haven't been efforts in Vancouver in that direction--there have been…we just need to keep doing more of it.

I have lived in Vancouver my entire life, and, in the last year especially, I am struck at how diverse the city has become. It's always been a very pan-Asian city, ever since I can remember. 

But now it's becoming globally diverse. So many more Black and Latinx and SWANA and visibly Muslim folx than I ever remember there being. 

And the Indigenous presence in Vancouver is powerful and strong. I think this level of interculturalism, all these cultures and points of view and takes on the world rubbing up against each other--this is a gift. An incredible gift. Not a lot of cities can boast this. 

…I'm personally very excited about the future of the arts and culture scene in Vancouver. I think it has tremendous potential.