Poly Queer Love Ballad

This past weekend I went to a show called Poly Queer Love Ballad.  It is a two person play about a monogamous lesbian musician, a bisexual, polyamorous female poet, and their attempt at a relationship.

The basic idea is these two characters have a powerful, immediate attraction and try to start a relationship.  The central conflict is the the struggle with exclusivity - the polyamorous woman will not be exclusive, so the monogamous woman tries to cope with an open relationship.

I liked the show a lot.  The actors absolutely sold it, and the writing was obviously done by someone familiar with the poetry, music, polyamorous, and lesbian subcultures.  All the bits fit.

I struggled some with the way the relationship went though.  The characters made lots of foolish, disastrous decisions that made poly relationships look pretty messy, if you are a person who isn't particularly familiar with them.

That shouldn't be taken as a criticism though.  In shows people make stupid decisions of all kinds.  That is fundamental to storytelling - people creating problems through poor choices, and then trying to cope with those problems.  It is tough to watch though when you consider yourself an advocate for the thing that is being screwed up so badly.  I try to educate people about the options available in nonmonogamy and watching people do all the normal things that people do wrong makes me shudder.

Fundamentally the characters had an incompatibility that they couldn't resolve - they wanted different relationship styles.  They tried a bunch of strategies and rules that were doomed to failure, and eventually failure arrived, as it was always going to do.

The story felt real.  The results were predictable, but not in a bad way.  It wasn't about 'will this relationship last forever?' but rather 'how exactly will this relationship go?' and I am on board with that.  I love that poly relationships are out there in media and this one was a fair representation.

I want more than fair!

But if you are making art you have to make the art, not just do some pure advocacy thing.  Just its existence needs to be advocacy enough.

But damn I sure went "Aaargh.  No, don't do it!  Not like this!" in my head a LOT during that show.