FIFF: Five Men Auditioning for Terrence McNally's Love! Valour! Compassion!

Five Men Auditioning for Terrence McNally's Love! Valour! Compassion! began not with a script, but with an image: five men suspended in the liminal space of an audition room, waiting to be seen. An audition is a peculiar kind of theater—where certainty dissolves and the boundaries between who we are and who we might become grow unexpectedly thin.

Rather than treating the audition as a step toward the story, I became interested in the audition itself as a story in which the actors represent not only the characters they hope to play, but also reveal fragments of themselves.

Inspired by the emotional honesty of Terrence McNally's work, the film transforms the rituals of auditioning into a cinematic choreography of movement, gesture, and memory. The five men exist simultaneously as actors, auditionees, and echoes of McNally's original characters, occupying a space between reality and performance.

The film explores masculinity as fluid, relational, and deeply human. Through a narrative shaped as much by movement as dialogue, I wanted to create a film that invites audiences to consider not only the roles being performed, but also the people performing them—and the universal desire to be seen, understood, and remembered.

Toby Emert, MFA, PhD, is an award-winning theatre artist, filmmaker, and scholar whose work bridges creative practice and research. He serves as the Annie Louise Harrison Waterman Professor of Theatre and Co-Chair of the Department of Creative Arts at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta, Georgia. His projects span film, theatre, and arts-based inquiry, often examining how narrative and performance shape human experience. He is especially interested in questions of queer masculinity, vulnerability, and memory.

w/ Shot Film Kiloran Bay :

Starring Alan Cumming and Jack Wolfe, Kiloran Bay is a 13-minute musical short set amid the wild beauty of the Scottish Hebrides and the fierce joy of a wedding cèilidh. A moving story of queer joy and self-acceptance, it follows a man returning to his hometown, where he faces the forces that drove him away.
The ensemble cast also stars Stuart Thompson, Giles Terera, David Fynn and David Hayman.

Part of the (FIFF) Fabulous Indeopendent Film Festival - Fabulous Arts Foundation - Sarasota Film Society