In James Fagan Tait’s new chamber play The Explanation, the lights come up on a man who’s wearing a miniskirt and a wig. He looks at the audience for a long time and then says: “I’m a man. I’m straight. I just like to dress this way.”

He’s one of two males in the play who are constantly insisting they’re straight, always offering up disclaimers for their budding relationship. But they also seem to be forming a warmer and warmer bond, meeting at the downtown library one day, later going for coffee, and eventually heading out to a club on Davie Street.

Tait, a long-time Vancouver actor, playwright, and director, admits he had trepidation about presenting the script to the frank theatre company’s former artistic producer, Chris Gatchalian. (The troupe is devoted to queer and sex-positive performance.)

“I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, it might be internally homophobic,’ ” he relates over the phone on a break from rehearsal. “The men in it keep reiterating they’re straight. Or maybe the play is going to press those buttons for people. I thought, ‘I hope there’s not an issue here.’ But then Chris read it and said, ‘This is fantastic. It might push buttons, but the company is dedicated to challenging the community.’ And that’s all I needed to know.”

Tait’s take on gender and sexuality likely emerged from his own background, he admits candidly. Like many others in his generation, he didn’t come out to his parents till later in life. They were staunch Roman Catholics, and, on the advice of a psychiatrist, he only broke the news to them at 39 (as it happens, around the age of both characters in his play). He had feared coming out for most of his life, but he adds it was a surprisingly positive experience.

Still, he says, “I always feel like I’m not a good homosexual. I never thought of myself as such a part of the gay community. I never participated in Pride because I was moving around so much with theatre. When people would talk about gay politics, I always thought, ‘Oh, I should be more of a part of that.’ ”

When Gatchalian invited Tait, who is better-known for adapting literature to the stage, to write a play, these ideas came to the surface. So did his dislike of the pigeonholing of LGBTQ people, and his belief in the fluidity of sexuality as well as the fact that sometimes all it takes is an impulsive decision for people to get together.

“It doesn’t necessarily involve a whole lifetime of feeling or thought,” he suggests. “There are relationships out there that aren’t even sexual that are beautiful. At the age I’m at now, I realize that it’s important that you have good friends and relationships, and be glad that you have them and don’t ask them to be anyone else than who they are.”

Evan Frayne and Kevin MacDonald are taking on the roles of the two men, one who cross-dresses and one who doesn’t.

“My insistence is this play should be performed by two straight men,” Tait reveals, adding the casting choice creates a unique tension. “And the characters themselves claim in a cavalier way that they could be at the middle of the spectrum and could go either way.…Also, it invites two straight men into the room to discuss homosexuality. I feel it’s a cultural exchange and a dialogue.”

Despite his initial fears, mounting The Explanation has been nothing but a positive experience so far. “It’s been so fun and so satisfying,” Tait says. “The laughter in the room and the feeling in the room are so exquisite,” he says.

The Explanation is at the Vancity Culture Lab from Tuesday (April 17) to April 29.