When American actor and writer Austin Jennings Boykin brought his hotly tipped solo show, “A Gay Masseur’s Guide to Happy Endings,” to Edinburgh’s famed Festival Fringe this week, the performer ran into one unforeseen obstacle in promoting the project.
Like something out of an Edinburgh Fringe play itself, Boykin’s show has found itself going up against a coffee-brewing evangelical Christian group to get noticed.
Explained a Fringe insider: “A bunch of evangelical Christians have blocked the poster to Boykin’s play.”
A church group from North Carolina — which just happens to be UNC grad Boykin’s home state — has traveled to the Scottish city and set up a missionary cafe offering free beverages directly in front of the Fringe promo poster for the play.
Apparently when the show’s producers tried to sort out the situation with the missionaries: “They asked [the show’s staff] what it would take for them to accept Jesus into their heart.”
The show — which previously had a workshop in Provincetown — is a dark comedy that’s based on Boykin’s real-life experiences as a gay masseur and aspiring actor trying to make rent in NYC.
(A wry spy joked of the poster snafu: “This show got c–kblocked at a comedy festival.”)
It’s unclear if the Christian group targeted the show due to its subject matter, or has just coincidentally camped out on the street in front of its poster, which features fit Boykin in the buff covered by a strategically draped sheet.
This week, the actor took matters into his own healing hands and posed with a copy of his poster, and a massage table, in front of the Christian coffee tent.
(FWIW a Fringe source admitted that while they were trying to reason with the group about blocking the poster that their hot chocolate was “delicious.”) Stay tuned….
Apart from any controversy, the show’s produced by Sophia Englesberg and Anna Koppelman, who also serves as dramaturge. Joe DeStefano directs.
The Fringe — where Phoebe Waller Bridge famously launched “Fleabag” — runs for three weeks in August with shows going on at hundreds of venues.
