Stage Door News
Stage Door News
In an exciting partnership between Buddies, The 519, and the Senior Pride Network, The Youth / Elders Project brings together young and old to create a space where identities, personal histories, and queer perspectives get turned into performance.
Since September 2016, a group of queer youth and elders have been engaged in weekly, theatre-based explorations of queer identities and personal histories, led by Buddies’ artistic director Evalyn Parry, Vanessa Dunn, and LeeLee Davis. From over 50 community members who attended the initial workshops, a thirteen-member ensemble was formed, ranging in age from 18 to 73, with varying degrees of formal theatre training.
The group has worked together to create a space for deep and authentic exchange through theatre and storytelling techniques, including lesbian performance pioneer Lois Weaver’s “The Long Table” – a structured conversation format for fostering dialogue between a group of people. Reflecting back on these exercises – and the presence and absence of topics and voices - has sparked ongoing discussions around how we take and make space, and how we perform ourselves. These ideas and explorations culminate in a main stage presentation that closes off Buddies’ 2017-18 season - part social experiment, part staged conversation, part performance art.
Evalyn Parry, who directs at Buddies for the first time since taking on the artistic directorship, comments, “I see this project as a living experiment in form, content, theatre practice, community building, and creating space. With this project, we are using the framework of theatre to forge real relationships between two generations who don’t find many spaces / places to get to know each other. We are using performance to document the queer narratives and lived experience of this group at this unique moment in history – where the generation gap in queer experience has never been bigger – and to build new community.”
Buddies in Bad Times Theatre and the 519 in partnership with Senior Pride Network present
The Youth/Elders Project
directed by Evalyn Parry
with Leelee Davis + Vanessa Dunn
performed + created by Jordan Campbell, Daniel Carter, Brian Cope, Monica Garrido, Genady Gavleshov, Riley Kelk, Bella Larsen, Lezlie Lee Kam, Neila Lem, Lila Pine, Russell Powell, Shauna Sloan + Ty Sloane
Preview: Wednesday, May 31st, 2017
Opening Night: Thursday, June 1st, 2017
Closing Performance: Sunday June 4th, 2017
Runs: Weds-Sat 8pm, Sun 2:30pm
Tickets: PWYC - $39
Box Office 416-975-8555 or buddiesinbadtimes.com
Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, 12 Alexander Street, Toronto ON
2017-04-18
Toronto: Buddies in Bad Times Theatre presents "The Youth / Elders Project" May 30-June 4