‘I’m a big homo’

He quit Air Cadets after his first trip to the rifle range. Age 13, David Blue discovered he was neither interested in guns nor in shooting them. Next, his parents tried theatre school to bring the budding teen out of his shell, “and they’ve been trying to push me back into that shell, ever since,” he grins.

That summer in Victoria he found his niche. “There’s that little ping that happens, all of a sudden, when you realize that ‘yes, this is what I like doing,'” Blue remembers. Today his experience covers all aspects of theatre: acting, singing, dancing and writing music-he’s even made stage props.

Most recently Blue has created a small theatre company called Raving Theatre with predominately gay friends. They plan to produce local playwrights’ original works “with either gay content or gay sensibility. I don’t want to pigeonhole us completely but there will always be a certain amount of gayness there.” He grins again: “I’m a big fag.”

Not only has he completed his first romantic musical comedy, The Most Happy Fag in the World, but Blue also composed all 17 songs in the play (which opens after next Pride Week on Aug 9, 2004).

Blue has two more plays in the works. The dark comedy, Happy Birthday, is a collection of one-act plays in which the principal character is having a birthday. The second one, Celebrating John, is a musical. “It’s a celebration of life for this fellow a year after he’s passed away. It has comedic and dramatic themes in it but it’s not maudlin; it’s rather a happy show,” he muses.

Eight years ago Blue founded the Rainy City Gay Men’s Chorus. “It’s sort of a hybrid between musical theatre and choral,” he explains. He is also artistic director, principal choreographer and stage director for the group, which is well known for it’s annual December presentation of Homo For the Holidays. He sang with The Vancouver Men’s Chorus for seven years before that. “They do some great stuff but I’m from a theatre background and I felt the standard choral stuff limited me.”

Also an artist, his oil paintings are displayed on the walls at his salon, David Blue Hair Design. His artwork often appears on posters for different community groups and he’s donated paintings to various organizations for fundraising efforts.

Blue took a hairdressing course after high school. “My parents wanted me to have something to fall back on if I didn’t make it as a singer or dancer or an actor, or whatever,” he remembers. “The hairdressing part, to be quite honest, is the day job. It’s what allows me to do theatre, music and art.”

But after studying back east on a dance scholarship, Blue’s dreams were dashed when he sustained a serious knee injury after only a short time with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montreal. “I was told to think of what I was going to do when I grew up,” he recalls. “Everyone I knew in Toronto was a dancer and I wanted to stay away from dancers while I figured out what I was going to do.”

He moved back here. That was 20 years ago.

“I met my partner Rod shortly after that and started cutting hair fulltime.” Now they live in the West End with Georgia, “the prettiest, sweetest, smartest dog in the world,” Blue gushes. They have two cats, Buffy a six-year-old Himalayan and Tyrell, “a 19-year-old skeleton with bits of fur on him. He’s the grumpiest, sweetest old thing,” he chuckles fondly, “who resembles Mr Burns from The Simpsons.”