Arts & Culture

A postmodern neo-noir, a world premiere from two of Canada’s premier drag artists and a co-production with Native Earth Performing Arts are the shows anchoring Buddies in Bad Times Theatre’s 2024-25 season, its first under new leadership.

Today’s announcement follows a period of instability for Buddies: the world’s longest-running queer theatre company was without an artistic director between August 2020 and August 2023. The new leadership team includes artistic director ted witzel, artistic associate Erum Khan, operations director Kristina Lemieux and producer Aidan Morishita-Miki.

“The works in this season … seek out queerness not only as identity but as a way of being and acting in the world,” reads a press release sent out this morning. “Together Khan and witzel have pulled together works that gesture at audacious, poetic expressions of queerness, reaching toward the expansive and the divine.”

In September, witzel will direct Martin Crimp’s translation of Roberto Zucco, a neo-noir from postmodernist French writer Bernard-Marie Koltès. Set in France in 1989 and written as Koltès was dying of AIDS, the play uses a mix of true crime and mythic fantasy to explore the criminal underworld of Europe, offering a critique of rampant capitalism and liberal family values. Considering witzel first made noise in Toronto via productions of classic plays staged with his indie company the red light district, it feels right that he’ll kick off his tenure with an important work by a dead writer — next to the many Toronto theatres dedicated largely to new scripts, Roberto Zucco is a welcome contrast.

And, during the holiday season, those eager for world premieres can look out for Oraculum, created and co-produced by Canada’s Drag Race finalists Denim and Pythia, which will take the audience on a journey of self-discovery and divine mystery, as filtered through the crystal ball of an online psychic reading website.

Meanwhile, March’s co-production with Native Earth Performing Arts, There Is Violence, There Is Righteous Violence, and There Is Death or; The Born-Again Crow, is a Toronto premiere from Métis theatre artist Caleigh Crow. Directed by Jessica Carmichael, the play follows a woman named Beth, who finds herself talking things over with a crow after starting a fire in a convenience store.

In May, Buddies will present Genrefuck, a series of four movement-driven solo pieces from Julie Phan, Marikiscrycrycry, Augusto Bitter and Gabriel Dharmoo. And, in February, Ludmylla Reis will curate the 46th iteration of the Rhubarb Festival, the iconic, genre-bending festival of experimental live arts.

The season also includes the Canadian premiere of Nightwood Theatre’s Shedding a Skin, a one-woman buddy comedy written by Amanda Wilkin and directed by Cherissa Richards, as well as the world premiere of physical theatre company Bad New Days’s Last Landscape, a meditation on ecological grief conceived and directed by Adam Paolozza.

Buddies is kicking off a couple non-theatrical collaborations, too. Its first-ever “party-in-residence” is New Ho Queen, a collective of queer Asian artists that work together to produce joyful new dance floor experiences. The company is launching I Won’t Envy, a new podcast series in which Vivek Shraya will lead intimate one-on-one conversations with fellow artists on the topic of professional jealousy.

“Buddies … is known as a sacred venue where Toronto’s queer creative heart beats (and flutters, and pounds),” says witzel. “We know that these shows and artists will push us to dream big, and help reintroduce Toronto to Buddies as a place to encounter the pleasure of a disobedient, experimental edge within an otherwise well-mannered artistic landscape.”