The first line of Leopard Print Loincloth’s description says it all: “There’s something about a room when there’s only men inside it.” Written by Jake Stewart (Fraternal, Boys Have Skin, The Helendale Nude Footy Calendar) and directed by Dominic Weintraub (Kissing Booth, Relationshit, Big White Envelopes), the play — which recently finished a run at Theatre Works — explores this ineffable “something” through a series of thematically interconnected vignettes about masculinity and sexuality.

These vignettes — performed by Luey Kemp-Mykyta, Joel Beasley, Ben Goss, Rhys Wilson, Max Greenham, and Eamon Dunphy — included cowboy hats, multiple surprisingly endearing nude scenes, a truly revelatory scene of hypermasculine schoolboys playing ‘gay chicken’, and much more.

Though a little hard to summarise — the show described itself as being “kinda about firemen and Tom of Finland and Nick Riewoldt and first girlfriends and bad boyfriends and gentleness and sex and fear and yeah” — it never felt haphazard. Each vignette felt driven by something similar, at its core — men reaching towards some expression of truth, honesty, and love; men very often charged with fear as they did so. As Leopard Print Loincloth dwelled in spaces of discomfort we might usually prefer to avoid, there was a perpetual sense of opening up, of men revealing themselves in small and varied ways.

Ivana Brehas sat down with director Dominic, writer Jake, and actors Luey, Joel, Ben, and Rhys (Eamon and Max were sorely missed) to reflect on the show.

Where did the title come from?

Jake Stewart: It sort of gets referenced towards the start of the play — Brendan Fraser’s performance in George of the Jungle (1997). I always thought it was quite an interesting depiction of masculinity — very primal, almost childish, rather asexual in a sense. He’s just a man living in a world that’s not really populated by other people; he’s kind of this sweet doofus that’s he’s one with nature, and he’s wearing a leopard print loincloth. It seemed like a garment under which we could explore the stuff we wanted to talk about.

Ben Goss (left) and Eamon Dunphy (right) in ‘Leopard Print Loincloth’.

After the show, I spoke to Dominic and Eamon, and both of you said the process of making it was really interesting. Can you tell me what you meant by that?

Dominic Weintraub: Jake and I were having a lot of conversations about how we felt like a lot of representations of men that we were seeing on stage and on film were really outdated and clichéd. Out of those conversations came a desire to create something. We applied for Bluestone Church Arts Space’s creative development residency program, and got a church for a month to ourselves. We decided to spend our time filling the space with lots of different men, from kind of anywhere we could find them.

We ran workshops and interviews, and had conversations with people about what it was like to be a man through the lens of sexuality, and how people come to their own understanding of that. That’s where we met most of the cast except Rhys. After we’d met a group of people, and told stories, and made art together, Jake would go home — or stay in the church — and interpret it. He turned our experiences and thoughts into a script full of characters and worlds that we really liked and thought worked together well.

Where’d you meet Rhys?

Jake Stewart: I have a friend named Taylor who went to Fed Uni who was part of the same musical theatre course Rhys did. I used to go to her showcases. I saw Rhys for the first time during the cabaret showcase and I was like, “He’s fantastic.” Then I followed him on Instagram like a creep does [laughs], and he followed me back, thank goodness. By the time this opportunity arose, I’d become more transfixed, ‘cause I’d seen him in other things. I just kept seeing Rhys being great each time I saw him. So when we had a vacancy in this project I thought, “Why not that guy from the internet?” [laughs].

Rhys Wilson: Very grateful. Very much so.

So Joel, Luey and Ben — you came to it through coming to the workshops?

Ben Goss: Yeah. I went to VCA with Dom, and he invited us to the development. And I’d really like to compliment Dom and Jake on how they ran the room — they did a really great job of holding a fairly unique space, where we could make some cool stuff in a safe way. Dom kind of wore two hats in this process — later on he was a director, but early on in the developments he was kind of just facilitating our space, and our experience. That was really beautiful and well done.

Joel Beasley: A big part of creating that space was the eight expectations and respectful rules that Dom and Jake wrote. They were parameters to work within — guidelines for respect which then allowed us to open up and create the work or just speak freely in that room with each other, even though some of us were strangers. Maybe that’s why we were so open.

Can you tell me about this list of rules?

Jake Stewart: I have a picture of them on my phone:

1. Be open and curious

2. Respect: No put-downs

3. What happens in the room stays in the room

4. Self-management & self-care are key — if something comes up, you are welcome to step out — just let us know

5. When exploring uncomfortable territory, be intrigued by the borders of your comfort zone

6. Recognise the difference between thoughts and beliefs

7. Never feel pressured into speaking or anything else

8. Nudity, intimacy, gayness and physical contact will likely occur – just a thing to be conscious of

Joel Beasley: The “borders of your comfort zone” stuck with me a lot. As time went on, things would come up where I was like, “Oh, I didn’t realise that was where I drew my line”, and then I’d go home, come back, and for some reason be a little bit more okay with it. Or I’d sit in the discomfort for much longer than I was probably used to.

Luey Kemp-Mykyta: “Recognising the difference between thoughts and beliefs” was one I found really interesting. Even in day-to-day life: “I’m feeling this way, but it’s not because I’m fucked as a person or I’m a terrible monster — that’s the way the brain works”. You can choose which thoughts to engage with, and which things actually reflect who you are. Just ‘cause you think something, and you feel like it’s strange, bad, or stupid, that doesn’t mean you are any of those things.

Like intrusive thoughts.

Luey Kemp-Mykyta: Yeah. Dealing with things like anxiety, I thought about that difference between thoughts and beliefs. “I think this, but I don’t believe this.” Like, “I’m worried everyone hates me and thinks I should die,” and then going, “That’s just chemicals in my brain telling me to be crazy, and I don’t have to engage with that.”

One of the rules on your list was about nudity. I wanted to talk about that in general. I spoke to someone after the play who said, “I’m attracted to men, but I have a kind of genital aversion to penises,” and I thought, “Oh, I think I do too.” But this play was kind of like exposure therapy. The nudity felt really safe, non-threatening and healthy.

Ben Goss: Generally, we don’t see male nudity as much as female nudity. Something that certainly supported me in the whole nudity thing was that there was so much of it. Like, there’s three people who are getting totally naked, and it’s a normalisation — “Oh, actually our bodies are nothing to be ashamed of. Of course. It’s totally normal to be in the nude.” Even though, obviously, it’s weird when there are 100 strangers in the room. But we all live in our bodies and they are what they are. It was certainly a liberating experience to actually do it — because, perhaps, it never felt how it usually does in a particularly sexual context. It wasn’t loaded in that way, which was great for me. Usually, when you think about nudity in theatre or film, it has a strong sexual context. But I didn’t strongly feel that was the case in this process.

Yeah. I felt the same way. The thing about bodies, too — my friend drew this response to the show, a picture of themselves in the audience thinking, “I have a body and maybe that’s okay”.

Ben Goss: That’s so great. I’m so glad they took that away, because that’s what I’m interested in as an artist — bodies, and inhabiting the body without shame, and being like, “This is where I live.” It’s really cool for the show to be putting that out there in some way.

Joel Beasley: I think Max’s monologue [a nude scene] did that really well. It framed it in that way. I don’t want to speak for him, but I remember seeing him walking off after that scene every night, and he was just so embodied and powerful in that moment, coming off stage. Every night he was beaming. I waited for him to come off. I wanted to see him walk towards me. [laughs] It was just great.

Luey Kemp-Mykyta: Naked with a massive smile.

Rhys Wilson: Yeah, exactly. I was backstage when he would come around, and he’d walk in like he had the best suit on. Stride in like, “Fuckin’ nailed that. That was great. I felt so good.” Especially — it was either opening night or preview, or maybe it was the one where his dad was in the audience [laughs] — but he just looked the happiest I’ve seen him. It was just great. I felt very happy to see him that happy, and to be that embodied and comfortable with himself. It was really beautiful.

Luey Kemp-Mykyta: I loved it when he would come offstage and, if he liked a scene, he’d be like, “Acting’s fuckin’ easy.” [all laughing] And not once, but every time a scene went well. Throughout the show, across the whole season.

How did this show affect your relationship to your gender, sexuality and body?

Luey Kemp-Mykyta: When we started, I had never really asked myself questions like, “How does being a man affect this aspect of my personality?” or “How much of who I am is defined by my sexuality or my gender?” But there wasn’t a day where I didn’t go into one of the workshops and have one of my points of view explored, and make me go, “Oh, I didn’t know I felt this way about this, but I do.” It was good for me to work with unique, confident men who weren’t afraid to be themselves fully — in performing, directing, writing and creating — and were open to working together. I’ve never really worked in an environment like that. I think it has intrinsically changed the way I function as a person and as a performer, which is really strange. I wasn’t expecting this to happen, but it did. And it made me better, I think.

Dominic Weintraub: It has changed how I relate to my gender and sexuality, and the way I express it, in a lot of ways. As Luey said, being in in a room of really confident, unique men who all express themselves so differently over a whole month — and then intensively, over the last month, with just seven people — was really nice. It has taught me a certain freedom of how to talk about things that I’ve never talked about with men before — how to talk about sexuality, and how to talk about love with guys. I think being around really interesting people in a safe space, and having lots of conversations about things I wouldn’t usually get to, has given me a lot more freedom in my own life in terms of how I relate to those things.

Something that really surprised me about this show was how so much of it was about denying queerness, or being freaked out about it. It reminded me of Barbara Kruger’s artwork that says “You construct intricate rituals which allow you to touch the skin of other men.” So the schoolboy scene really stuck with me, as well as a lot of other people I spoke to. It seemed to resonate with people’s experience. I’m interested in your high school experiences, especially if any of you went to ‘all-boys’ schools.

Ben Goss: I watched this episode of Four Corners last night — I wanted to watch it because we’d kind of just played in this field. It’s so fascinating — these private schools, all boys, so much power, right? They’re the ‘elites’ of the future. The documentary was sobering and awful, but I’m just fascinated by this territory. But the schoolboy scene was great. I had a lot of fun. I loved it. Even though I recognised some of it was really terrible, it was great for me to kind of go back to high school. The way those boys behave – the jocking for position all the time – is really fascinating. Like, “fuck you fuck you fuck you” —always trying to get above someone else in the group, to cement your status a little bit higher. It was great to go back to that vibe — the game of it, and the pleasure in swearing and being outrageous.

Left to right: Joel Beasley, Ben Goss, Eamon Dunphy and Rhys Wilson in ‘Leopard Print Loincloth’.

Dominic Weintraub: Although the scene existed in this land of extremes — swearing, and pushing each other, and saying and doing things other characters couldn’t get away with in other contexts — it felt like there was still so much truth to it. It never felt like farce or parody. It always, strangely, felt exactly like my own experience. I did go to an all-boys’ school, and every time we performed the scene it felt like that experience for me.

Jake and I have actually just started working with my old high school, with a group of Year 10 boys, to develop a show about good and evil through the lens of masculinity — and holy moly, it has already been an eye-opener two days in. I’m sitting in the room, and there are kids just hitting each other and swearing at each other, making the stupidest jokes, and I’m like, “This is exactly what the schoolboy scene was. This is exactly it.”

But also, something I like about that scene is that it doesn’t feel particularly vicious. I know people think all-boys’ schools are really dangerous places — and I think they certainly breed a very toxic culture — but sitting amongst these Year 10s, they’re all swearing at each other for the sake of jocking for position in this hierarchy, but when someone does open up, they’re like “Yeah, sick. Cool. Great, good on ya,” and give them a round of applause. And then the next person says something really dumb. So many different kinds of men can exist in the same place.

Ben Goss: The jocking and play-fighting isn’t necessarily toxic. There’s actually something quite beautiful — there’s a brotherhood there, and that’s not necessarily bad. Obviously, it can twist into something quite terrible, where people are being bullied, but at some level it’s also really nice, and that’s an interesting contradiction.

Jake Stewart: It’s almost like they’re in charge of teaching each other particular values, and as long as they internalise the right ones, they can pop out decent enough people to not be a toxic addition to society. My high school boyfriend came to the show, like 10 years after we graduated, and said watching that scene felt like he was back in the classroom again. I thought it was nice to have accomplished that.

The scene sprang from conversations we were having in the church back in July, as all the scenes did. It seemed like, regardless of what age the people were talking about something, it was like it had happened to them last week. It felt like high school was a breath away from the current moment. I guess it’s because that’s when you’re your most porous, your most malleable, your most turning-into-the-person-you’re-going-to-be, so everything that hits you hits you so deeply, and maybe forever.

‘Untitled (You construct intricate rituals which allow you to touch the skin of other men)’, Barbara Kruger, 1980.

On that idea of ‘toxicity’, I saw that this show got funding from the Office for Women. Were there discussions about masculinity in relation to womanhood?

Dominic Weintraub: The funding was originally there to support the residency and the development of the work, and the creation of a space where men could come together to interrogate their own experience and expressions of masculinity. It felt important to us that it was a space just for men, because being able to work and talk with just other men was a little bit freeing — or at least, that was the feedback we got. Everyone had the same kind of shared experiences, so there were less filters being put on what was being said and shared. I think it’s important in terms of discussions around gender equality and feminism that men start to collectively interrogate what we’ve been taught as men, and how we’ve been taught to be men, in the same way that women talk about how they are being taught to be women, and what’s wrong with those systems.

I read this beautiful Tim Winton quote — I’m going to paraphrase it badly — that young men nowadays are being taught that all these end goals of masculinity are toxic, bad and dangerous, but they’re not being given any new pathways to what else it could look like. They’re in this weird space of growing up and trying to be men, and they’ve been told that these things are bad, but haven’t been shown anything else. A part of our residency was about coming together and trying to work out what those new things could be — what new ways of communicating between men could look like, and how that’s really important to gender equality.

Jake Stewart: Certainly present in the genesis of this project, and part of why we felt it was important to explore, was how recently amplified voices of women require men to interrogate who they are, and work out why it is that they’ve perpetrated all the things that we all know they have.

Luey Kemp-Mykyta: I was the youngest [at 18], coming to a group of men who had solidified their identities more so than myself — and I know for me, there are conversations we had in that space I don’t think I could’ve had otherwise. Opening up about experiences with sexuality, or experiences we’ve had with women, or talking about our bodies and being comfortable with them. There was a very specific dynamic, and to come into that, there were questions I could ask that I think I would’ve felt too silly asking if it hadn’t just been men. It was like, “I’m not sure who I am,” and that is kind of scary and embarrassing. And to make mistakes is embarrassing, but it’s part of learning and growing. For me, [if it hadn’t been just men], I think there would have been a block which, with my own pride, I would’ve really struggled to get around.

Ben Goss: It felt like quite a special environment. Rehearsals, and making stuff, is like building a community. In this work, it certainly felt like there was a different kind of masculinity happening, just between us as collaborators. The joking that we talked about before is always kind of present for me in most shows and rehearsal rooms that I’m in. Not necessarily on a big scale — it can be quite low-key — but often, particularly with other men, there’s a weird looking for position, or of feelings of jealousy towards other male actors in the space. But that dynamic wasn’t very strong at all in this process. My feelings of comparison, or jealousy, or whatever, weren’t very present. I think that speaks to some kind of different dynamic at work here — to our openness and sense of ensemble as a group of men, which is really lovely.

Joel Beasley (left) and Ben Goss (right).

Are there any issues, assumptions or ideas about masculinity you hope people will talk more about in the future — or that they might talk about as a result of this show?

Luey Kemp-Mykyta: That uncertainty, fear, loneliness, and everything that comes from questioning masculinity, isn’t new. My grandfather came to see the show, and I was kind of scared about him coming, because even though he loves theatre, it’s a fairly challenging play, and I had no idea what he’d think of it. But said he saw aspects of his life reflected in it. And I had some blokey friends of mine come with my arty theatre friends, and I thought, “Oh, they’re going to hate it, or just be confused,” but then my blokey-est friend said he thought it was really cool, which wasn’t what I expected. So: it’s not new, and you’re not alone in questioning aspects of masculinity. And there might not ever be clear answers to identity, gender and sexuality. Forever, maybe, there’ll be a clash of understanding and development. Everyone is lost, but through that, we can all… [a pause] find each other?

Joel Beasley: Like Luey, my dad came, and I know his views on talking about feelings. He’s quite a sensitive person, but still, his generation and his group of friends. I asked him if he talks about things like that with his mates, and he said he doesn’t. He came with all those people, and a conversation I want him to keep having is to remember how he felt after the show, and to be able to express that with his mates as well, because their mental health suffers. It’s an intergenerational thing. I want conversations between men to keep happening, that aren’t just joking about in the locker room.

Jake Stewart: This process made me less afraid of the prospect of talking to men. It’s a thing that I’ve very much internalised because of gay reasons, fatherly reasons, that sort of thing. Even coming into this project with Dom — the prospect of meeting and speaking to men, over and over again, and trying to be open with them all, sounded like a potential recipe for disaster on my end. Discovering that I’m able to do that was a good learning experience. The show, and the process, changed my opinions about love. I rethought my whole notion of what monogamy was, and now I don’t believe in it anymore. It really changed some fundamental things, just because I was having conversations, often for the first time, with people I didn’t even know very well. So that happened to me. I hope it has had those sorts of impacts on other people as well.

I also think it’s important to contribute to telling queer and gay stories that exist out of the heteronormative idea of what a ‘gay character’ is supposed to be. I think it’s nice when we can be something other than a sidekick, or a glittery mess, or a slutty drunk, or a self-loathing person. I don’t know — this is not me telling people what stories to tell, but I think we can retire the “self-loathing homosexual who hates themselves because of homosexuality” for a while, because it propagates the idea that we should hate ourselves. It seems to almost function, in a social and theatrical setting, as a way of pre-empting the internalised homophobia of audiences by letting them relax — we hate ourselves for them, so they don’t actively have to.

I feel that very deeply — and the part about feeling more comfortable talking to men also resonates with me as a queer woman. I wrote an essay a while ago about being a woman watching films about men, and I described it as a feeling of looking through a keyhole, because I can never know what it’s like to be in a space with just men — as soon as I’m in that space, I’m “the woman in the room”. So I can only know what those relationships are like by seeing them in art.

Rhys Wilson: About being in spaces filled with men — personally, I’ve always found my relationships with women a lot more comfortable. I didn’t feel like I matched the big, blokey, masculine guys that were at my high school. I obviously went to the drama side of things, and was able to relate more to the boys that were there, but also the girls. I kind of still feel a little bit more comfortable with women.

Coming into this process, I had a pre-conceived notion of, “Okay, it’s going to be all guys, it might be a bit full on; I might be a bit out of my depth with how comfortable I can be.” But even the audition was so welcoming. It was delightfully awkward. I loved it. And then at the table-read, everybody welcomed everybody. They all knew each other, and every time somebody came into the room they’d give them a big hug and say hello. It wasn’t that kind of blokey ‘pat-pat-go-away’ hug — it was intimate. It was a heart hug. I just felt a lot safer. Every rehearsal we had, I felt even more comfortable and confident with all these guys.

Even just sitting next to a man on the train — that would terrify me sometimes, ‘cause I’m bisexual, and kind of new-ish to it, and I was afraid of how I would come across to some people. That’s something that I shouldn’t have to be afraid of. This show has taught me to really feel comfortable, and that I shouldn’t have to worry about how I appear, how I dress, and how I act. I may not be flamboyant, and I may not be super butch, but it’s just something. It’s just me. The show really cemented that confidence in me. I feel very grateful that I did get a message from Jake, because I don’t think I would be who I am if I hadn’t been part of the show. I wouldn’t be as confident and as comfortable. I wouldn’t be as aware of how I can somehow spread that message in my daily life now that the show’s done, and help people in the way that the show helped me.

Ben Goss: I think this show has helped me in the process of realising that articulating your experience, and putting it out there, and “living your truth’” — just feels so much better, hey? It’s much lighter, and it’s more comfortable. It’s just better — to take the stuff that’s internalised and go, “Here it is,” whether it’s in a conversation, or a character, or when writing something. The way forward is to put your truth out into the world, and that makes things better.

Jake Stewart: I think that feeds into what Rhys said — that phenomenon of wanting to love men, but also being terrified of them. Especially men amongst men — so much of the toxicity that people talk about is the fact that we don’t feel like we can be that open because we don’t expect the person to be receptive to it. It’s so much better when you don’t have to be afraid of what’s going to happen when you let yourself be open and vulnerable.

Leopard Print Loincloth ran at Theatre Works from February 4th-8th.

Cover image: The cast of ‘Leopard Print Loincloth’. Left to right: Luey Kemp-Mykyta, Max Greenham, Eamon Dunphy, Joel Beasley, Ben Goss and Rhys Wilson.

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'Talking masculinity, bodies and vulnerability with 'Leopard Print Loincloth' ' / Ivana Brehas