JORDAN TANNAHILL

The Ottawa-born playwright, director, and novelist stops by to tell us what he's been into.

July 10, 2025

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Jordan Tannahill is an Ottawa-born playwright, director, and novelist. Perhaps you’ve read one of his award-winning novels, Liminal or The Listeners, which was recently adapted into a BBC series. His plays have been produced around the world from major festivals to experimental stages. Currently, his meta-theatrical satire Prince Faggot is running at Playwrights Horizons in a co-production with Soho Rep through August 3. Former Perfectly Imperfect guest Brontez Purnell calls it “refined, reflective, whip-smart, and endearing.” Don’t miss out – tickets are available here. Lucky for us, Jordan’s here to tell us what he’s been into.

WHAT Jordan Tannahill IS INTO...

🎵

Xiu Xiu’s A Promise

As a young queer there were certain experiences that struck me as intolerable and yet held a certain horror-fascination for me — like fisting, or listening to a Xiu Xiu album. And I do think a Xiu Xiu album, especially A Promise, feels like the sonic equivalent of being fisted. The raw, unabashed emotionality of Jamie Stewart’s vocals, the discordant intensity of the arrangements… by opening myself up to what once felt impossible to bear, I encountered sublimity.

🧸

Furries

Every kink is, by nature, a little obnoxious and embarrassing, and either you have what it takes to push past that or you don’t. But let’s not lie to ourselves here, furries are fun. And I want to cuddle them. Their superpower is shamelessness. They don’t give a fuck what you think. I think my kink is other people really committing to their kink.

📖

W.G. Sebald

I’m far from alone in claiming Sebald as my favourite author. His deeply melancholic books are a blend of fiction, non-fiction, and travelogue, interspersed with these oblique, black and white photographs, meditating on time, exile, and the impact of historical events on collective and individual memory. Dig it! My suggestion is to read his work in chronological order, to follow the evolution of his thought and style, starting with Vertigo (1990), then The Emigrants (1992), and The Rings of Saturn (1995), and finally his masterpiece Austerlitz (2001), a work of staggering beauty.

🎭

Nile Harris performances

Since moving to New York City last year, the times I have felt more alive in a theatre have been while watching performances made by Nile Harris.

🪩

Griessmuehle and Ashley House

I miss Griessmuehle in Berlin, especially the Cocktail d’Amore parties there, the sex pit in the basement, and jumping into the adjacent canal to swim as the sun rose. I miss the old Ashley House in London, when Adonis was there. Great raves need rambling spaces with lots of different rooms to roam and explore and fuck in. We can’t hold onto every great space, but I appreciate those in our community who fight to try. The Queer Nightlife Community Center (QNCC) is a new initiative being launched by Seva Granik to convert the Brownsville warehouse where he throws NYC’s best rave, Zero Chill, into a permanent, year-round community space aimed at supporting queer nightlife. I’m all about it.

🎶

Diamanda Galás’s Plague Mass

As we embark on this new era of American apocalypse, I have found it helpful to look back at how artists have navigated the bowels of hell before. I find enduring inspiration in Diamanda Galás, especially her album Plague Mass (1991), a live recording of her performance at Cathedral of St. John the Divine, a howl of anguish and rage at the indifference and hypocrisy of the church in the face of AIDS. Galás lost her brother, the experimental playwright Philip-Dimitri Galás, to AIDS in 1986, and was herself a member of ACT-UP. In Plague Mass, while covered in blood, screeching, ululating, and speaking in tongues, Galás becomes a conduit for the voices of the dead, who in their suffering at the hands of their moralist torturers, remain defiant - “Give me sodomy, or give me death!”

🐐

Satyrs

I’m entering my satyr era. The men I’m attracted to these days have strong satyr-energy. Earthy, playful, a bit feral, a bit goatsy.

📷

Printing out photos

They’re the only photos you’ll have in thirty years.

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JORDAN TANNAHILL

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