The multi-talented trans artist has moved on from her 15-year struggle to be a pop god, but she refuses to take comfort in her many achievements since then.
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In interviewing trans artist, author and performer Vivek Shraya, whose autobiographical show How to Fail as a Popstar plays at La Chapelle next Monday to Wednesday, one is tempted to open with a consolatory word or two about her many achievements. This, though, won’t wash with Shraya, who explains in a phone conversation that fully embracing disappointment is largely the theme of her show.
“The reason I wrote it is because no matter what I’ve achieved, the thing that has kept me up at night was not succeeding as a pop star,” says the Edmonton-raised, Toronto-based Shraya.
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“It sounds so trivial. It’s not like I wanted to cure disease or build tall buildings. But it’s important to think about how we take those feelings of disappointment and honour them instead of trying to look on the bright side or use failure as a stepping stone to other things.”
In Shraya’s case, those other things include being a visual artist, a musician, a prolific author (including of the acclaimed 2018 memoir I’m Afraid of Men) and starting her own publishing imprint, VS. Books. Right now, she is working on a CBC Gem commission for a series based on How to Fail as a Popstar, which began life as a one-woman show at Toronto’s Canadian Stage in 2020.
It all puts one in mind of the famous John Lennon quote about life being what happens when you’re busy making other plans. Or, if you prefer a darker take, the one about making God laugh by telling him your plans.
Whether or not Shraya’s self-confessed obsession with becoming a pop god inspires guffaws from on high, it does seem ripe for self-deprecating comedy. And, yes, there are genuinely funny moments and ridiculous characters in Shraya’s desperate fame-hungry odyssey, including Edmonton mall singing competitions, inept self-absorbed managers and a Parisian boutique label whose only act was “an electro Beach Boys duo, who wore matching Lacoste tennis clothes, called Housse de Racket.” For all that, though, it’s at least as much a tragic story of unrequited love. As she says in the show, “I felt rejected by music … Unloved by music. Why didn’t music love me back?”
Despite the soul-baring honesty of the show, Shraya cautions against taking everything as the unvarnished truth.
“I guess you can say that lies are made up as part of the storytelling — I won’t tell you which those moments are,” Shraya says with a laugh. “But that’s part of the appeal of wanting to be a pop star, the fantasy that we can be bigger than ourselves.”
For the record, Housse de Racket, despite sounding like a pitch for a Coen Brothers movie starring Will Ferrell, are for real. Also true, it seems, is the advice Shraya received from a well-meaning Youth Talent Quest judge that she should don leather pants — “you know, like Ricky Martin.”
This last anecdote is referenced in the show’s climactic list of “40 reasons why” Shraya failed as a pop star. These range from the relatively trivial to far more serious considerations, such as the fact that Shraya was trying to make it in the mainstream as somebody who is “brown and queer and trans.”
Given that the cultural landscape has shifted so much since she launched her bid for stardom, does Shraya think things might have been different now?
“Well, the first reason I give in the list is that I was born in 1981, and there is a part of me that feels like my career could be very different if I was starting now or even five years ago,” she says. “It’s a very, very different world. Even the (television) show we’re making, I cannot imagine a show like this being made 20 years ago.”
Music may not have loved Shraya back as much as she would have liked, but by no means has she given up on it. She continues to put out infectiously catchy songs, some of which are played live in the show. Her 2017 album Part-Time Woman was named as one of the best Canadian albums of that year by CBC. Currently, she performs with her sibling Shamik in the duo Too Attached. And just last year, she received a prestigious Keychange Inspiration Award, which honours women and gender minorities who have made extraordinary and pioneering contributions to music.
So can we at least say (to borrow from Samuel Beckett) that if she did indeed fail as a pop star, she is failing better these days?
“To put a positive spin on it, the nice thing about making music and performing this play now in my 40s is that it has freed me in some ways,” Shraya says. “I had been sitting on the feeling of failure for so long and didn’t really have a chance to express it. It’s kind of opened me up to music again in a new way where the expectations just feel so different. I don’t have the pressure of needing a hit, so I can approach music from a place of pure joy and pure desire.”
Raising the spirit of the climactic song in her show, Shraya adds: “At the end of the day all I can do is keep showing up. Even if the expectations have changed and the dreams have changed, I’m going to keep showing up.”
How to Fail as a Popstar plays from Feb. 6 to 8 at La Chapelle, 3700 St. Dominique st. Tickets: $20. Call 514-843-7738 or visit lachapelle.org