September 19, 2023 – March 31, 2024
Buddies in Bad Times Theatre
Introducing the 2023/24 Season! Buddies in Bad Times Theatre milestone 45th anniversary offers an extraordinary lineup featuring a production of a queer classic, two world premieres developed at Buddies, and welcomes two companies bringing shows from the Prairies.
“Welcome to our 45th season. Our 2023/24 programming offers moments of reflection, celebration, and in some instances destruction as we look back to honour our queer histories and look ahead to forge new paths for our queer future. Familiar and new partnerships animate our season, showcasing not only the wealth of queer talent in Toronto but also highlighting enthralling stories and performance from across Canada.” – Daniel Carter, Managing Director
speaking of sneaking
September 19 – October 1, 2023
a groundwork redux and Buddies in Bad Times Theatre production in association with Obsidian Theatre
created and performed by daniel jelani ellis
directed and dramaturged by d’bi young anitafrika
Ginnal is sure like never before: he must make it to Foreign. When he meets a Spider who sets him on the journey, Ginnal faces the cost of freedom.
Inspired by experiences of growing up queer in Jamaica and finding home in Canada, speaking of sneaking is a multidisciplinary mash-up of dance, poetry, and pantomime, where the archetypal Jamaican Ginnal and the mythical African Anansi meet.
First created in Buddies’ Young Creators Unit, and further developed with the Anitafrika Method for Why Not Theatre’s RISER (where it garnered five Dora nominations, including for outstanding production and outstanding new play), speaking of sneaking returns to the Buddies stage for a full production this fall.
The Rocky Mountain Special
November 14 – 19, 2023
Presented by Buddies
by Tiffany Thomas
An elderly trans woman is haunted by her cringe-worthy younger self aboard the Rocky Mountain Special, a luxury coach from Calgary to Vancouver that she’s been riding for the last forty years.
A guitar-driven, one woman musical tour-de-force about the quintessential Canadian urge to run from your past, The Rocky Mountain Special is a prayer for healing, a love letter to the lost kids of fragmented diasporas, and a playlist for the road-trip home.
Angels in America
November 23 – December 17, 2023
A That Theatre Company production in association with Buddies
by Tony Kushner
directed by Craig Pike
In a Reagan-era New York City beset by the AIDS crisis, a recently-diagnosed Prior struggles to make sense of his mystical visions and visitations, along the way colliding with friends, lovers, and a Mormon couple whose marriage is on the brink of falling apart.
At once sprawling and intimate, Angels in America weaves together religion, revolution, and queer (be)longing into an epic, two-part modern masterpiece that speaks to the indomitable human need for change.
That Theatre Company’s Craig Pike helms a new production of Tony Kushner’s seminal plays, Millennium Approaches and Perestroika, revisiting a pivotal moment in our queer histories through a contemporary lens.
We Quit Theatre
January 16 – 21, 2024
Buddies presents a We Quit Theatre Anthology
by Dasha Plett + Gislina Patterson
i am your spaniel, or A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare / 805-4821 / Passion Play
A week of performances by We Quit Theatre and friends. Rituals for the discontented, diversions for the disenchanted, and a carnival for quitters! A conversation between trans best friends and lovers, and a sharing of the things they created, together and apart, in their basement apartments.
Last seen in a google doc performing an iteration of 805-4821 as part of Buddies’ Queer, Far, Wherever You Are series, Winnipeg-based duo We Quit Theatre takes over the Cabaret space with a collection ofthreeworks, including a trans coming out story made out of other stories; an errant lecture on Shakespearean text analysis; and a series of improvised erotic revisions of bible stories, immortalized to cassette tape live on stage. The performance of 805-4821 will be accompanied by a sharing of Sadie Berlin‘s Enchantment Island: This Alien Nation, a loose political exposé and response to We Quit Theatre’s piece.
The Rhubarb Festival
February 2024
Back for its 45th year, Rhubarb transforms Buddies into a hotbed of experimentation, with artists challenging our notions of what art-making and art-watching can be. As Canada’s longest-running new works festival, Rhubarb is the place to encounter the most adventurous ideas in performance and to catch familiar and unfamiliar artists venturing into uncharted territory.
Buddies continues to strengthen international ties with the curatorial performance network, fostering exchanges of artists and works between performance festivals around the globe.
WHITE MUSCLE DADDY
March 20 – 31, 2024
A Pencil Kit Productions and Buddies in Bad Times Theatre production, with the support of Charles Street Video
Soon after Jeremy Río clocks in for his first graveyard shift at an exclusive LA gym, he meets Eugene, a fitness influencer who seems to have the life of Jeremy’s dreams—one that’s double stuffed with money, muscles, and parties galore. What begins as an envious crush quickly morphs into an insatiable hunger that threatens to tear Jeremy’s life apart.
A cinematic theatre piece, WHITE MUSCLE DADDY uses projection art, live camera feed and shadow play to spin a chilling yarn about the politics of queer desire.
