New Play Explores Queer Love in the Digital Age

Kurt Engh is making the gay theater he wants to see.

The new production “Only Ugly Guys” is pushing the boundaries of what theater can be. Engh’s first play is transgressive, honest and funny storytelling. He embraces the crazy mess that is gay romance, weaving together witty dialogue and sharp cultural commentary. 

A production of emerging theater company Running Errands, “Only Ugly Guys” explores the queer quest for love in the age of the internet.

Engh has spent a lifetime in the theater. He was a child actor, and he went on to study theater in college, and he has spent the last 10 years working in the industry. 

After spending time in New York, a stint in Spain and a summer outside of D.C., Engh found himself back in his native state of Minnesota. He landed a gig at the Guthrie Theater, but found that working at a theater was not the same as making theater. So, he quit his job at the Guthrie and struck out on his own.

“I started writing theater, working at a restaurant, applying for grants… just doing it on my own,” Engh says. “I was thinking about a lot of gay plays that I could put on, and I wasn’t excited about any of them. I need a play, so let me just write it.”

“Only Ugly Guys” is Engh’s playwriting debut, and he has spent the better part of five years pouring his creativity into this production.

“This came from wanting to see a play about characters that are out and really pushing boundaries … So many gay plays are either about gay birth — what I call coming out — or gay death,” Engh says. “It’s about AIDS, it’s about getting murdered, and there’s this whole lifetime in between.”

The play is a sharp departure from the aesthetic and clean-cut narratives that have a chokehold on pop culture. It is nothing like the charming and heartwarming story of “Heartstopper” or the tragic yearning in “Call Me by Your Name.” They are beautiful films, but their story tells only a small portion of the queer experience.

“Who are these nice, beautiful guys in movies?” Engh asks, reflecting on his own experiences.

“I just know sloppy messes!”

“Only Ugly Guys” leans into the craziness of the queer search for intimacy. Inspired by real life, Engh walks the audience through the subcultures within the subculture in four intersecting short stories that are as honest as they are humorous. 

“[These characters] are all still looking for love and intimacy and belonging … They’re just much worse at it than, like, ‘Love, Simon,’” Engh says.

“When I first started writing it, I was like, this is insane,” he continues. “But the more I write it, I’m like, I’m not being insane enough. This is so true. Yeah, I’m not being insane enough.”

Engh’s play is by the gays and for the gays. 

“It’s like its own language … I feel like gays speak in movie quotes, and that’s a way of having intimacy within a community,” he says. 

“Only Ugly Guys” draws inspiration from screenwriter Julie Klausner. Her distinct comedic style assumes the audience’s intelligence, a tool Engh put his own twist on with biting jokes that a mainstream audience might not have the queer social media literacy to grasp. The play’s dialogue is peppered with just enough niche slang and plays with the idea of an “algorithm-fueled culture.”

Without slowing its comedic momentum, “Only Ugly Guys” explores activism as a permanent fixture within the queer experience, confronting the undeniable reality that the community is deeply affected by the larger political landscape and, on a smaller scale, politics within the queer community.

Each of Engh’s characters is a gay archetype: the queer influencer, the late-bloomer mainstreamer, the demon twink and the himbo.

“Gay men get these six personalities you can choose from,” he says. “We get handed these personas or identities, because that’s like the representation that we seek.”

Engh encourages his audience to break with assimilationist expectations or expectations imposed on them, even from within a marginalized community.

“Each character in the play has a moment where they get to their breaking point … Do they go beyond that breaking point, or do they retreat back to what’s comfortable to them?” Engh says.

Regardless of your proficiency level in gay brainrot, “Only Ugly Guys” is a poignant and funny exploration of modern romance that is sure to entertain. See the production at Gremlin Theater Sept. 12-27.