Watching: My Own Private Oshawa

Overview

Toronto-based gay actor and comedian Jonathan Wilson has written and performs a semi-autobiographical one-man stage show called "My Own Private Oshawa", which tells of his coming out when he was a high school student in Oshawa, Ontario, a bedroom community east of Toronto. Thinking that he was hiding his homosexual orientation - which he really wasn't - Jonathan lived a self-repressed existence in high school until he met transfer student Gordon, who was the first open, stereotypical and defiant gay student at the school. Jonathan tells of Gordon's influence in Jonathan working his own way through gay life as a teenager in the late 1970s. Although Gordon and Jonathan drifted apart as adults, Jonathan needs to head back to Oshawa to visit Gordon one last time.