Results tagged “buddiesinbadtimes”

Each week, Drama Club looks at Toronto's theatre scene and tells you which shows are worth checking out.

Nominees for the 29th annual Dora Mavor Moore Awards were announced yesterday morning at the Sony Centre. Over muffins and coffee, various TAPA members, politicians, and mainstays of the Toronto theatre scene presented three awards and read off a long list of those eligible for taking home the coveted (if heavy) jesters come June 30th. This year’s nominee list, for the most part, is a rich cross-section of the Toronto theatre-going scene over the past year.

The Eco Show is a new Necessary Angel co-pro currently playing at Buddies. It's also the latest work written and directed by Daniel Brooks, so it would seem to go without saying that it's one of the most visually striking plays of the season, with masterful use of sound, lighting and A/V. It tells the story of a mysterious, insular family presided over by the sanctimonious and wheelchair-bound patriarch Hamm (yes, ha ha). Put-upon wife Gwen takes care of Hamm, his dying father, his sick daughter Fifi and his moody teenage son Joe. Don't be fooled by the title. Although Hamm is prone to the odd "what is the environment coming to?" tirades, the ecology being scrutinized by the piece is a very small and particular one: that of the featured family itself.

Happy: A Very Gay Little Musical is the latest show to open at Buddies and also the first musical by Sky Gilbert the theatre has produced in 17 years. And what a tricky little number it is. Essentially a musical about people writing a musical about people writing a musical, Happy tells the story of Bob and Dave, a married gay couple writing a musical about themselves, and Sue, Bob's dramaturg/faghag extraordinaire. Some scenes in the play are set within the heightened reality of the musical they are working on, and some in rather less glamorous reality. In both scenarios, things take a twist when an unexpected knock at the door reveals a young man who may be an actor, or a symbol for HIV, or just some guy Bob has been fucking.

Pity sex may have gotten some of us through university, but Loree Erickson, a York University PhD candidate and photographer/filmmaker, is determined that it’s not a phrase which should be associated with the disabled.

Photo of Post Porn Modernists Annie Sprinkle and Elizabeth Stephens by Julian Cash.

Sex-positive feminists are all atwitter! Annie Sprinkle Ph.D., prostitute/porn star turned sexologist/performance artist, is coming to our great city for a run of her her newest show, Exposed: Experiments in Love, Sex, Death and Art at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre.

For Toronto's Kids On TV, it's been a long road to get their debut album completed, one that has lasted the better part of three years. For those waiting to hear Mixing Business With Pleasure, released last week by the Blocks Recording Club, there has been the lingering question of how the music would translate from the live show onto tape. For a band that is so infamous for its high-energy, explicit performances, how would the music hold up on its own? Very well, it turns out.

What's that you say? You were out of town last fall when Daniel MacIvor's Here Lies Henry got remounted at Buddies and was the best thing since sliced bread? You were clinically dead in January when Monster, the second awesome remount of the one-man shows MacIvor created with Daniel Brooks went up? Well, cancel your trip to the Sea of Tranquility, because you have exactly 14 more chances to see the final remount, House, before it closes on April 1st and MacIvor, Brooks and Da Da Kamera officially retire these shows and disband their company forever.

Carnival enthusiasts unite this evening at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre for The High Fashion Show, touted as a "runway cabaret" with the spirit of an antiquated midway. Part fashion show, part indie rock concert and part charity gala, all proceeds go to Camp Ten Oaks, a one-week summer camp for children with LGBTQ parents.

Another month, another Daniel Brooks show at Buddies. Technically, this remount of the Daniel Brooks/Guillermo Verdecchia-written show that last appeared in Toronto in 1998 is directed by Chris Abraham, but it has Brooks' fingerprints all over it. And what that means is a masterful use of lighting and sound that is almost worth the price of admissions alone.

Are you excited to see this fall's Hysteria Festival? Gearing up for Rhubarb! in February? Well, stop already, because they aren't happening. Buddies in Bad Times, Toronto's favourite theatre/gay dance party, has scrapped its entire usual season in favour a series of performance creations, put into groups called Wave One, Wave Two and Wave Three (reminds us a little of what Passe Muraille did last season with Stage 3). But don't worry! This is a good thing. Hysteria and Rhubarb! will return from their hiatuses next season (Torontoist is sad too, but we'll manage) and some pretty exciting things are happening in their place. Not least of which are the remounts of three of Daniel MacIvor's one-man Da Da Kamera shows, beginning with Here Lies Henry, running through this Sunday.

On the whole, Torontoist stresses, it has been a good month for Salvatore Antonio.

Poor Jimmy can't get a good night's sleep. Born in a dream of an American army general, Jimmy the gay hairdresser is at the mercy of other people's subconscious imaginations. When the general dies, Jimmy is left in limbo, until his life begins again in the dreams of a Montreal actress whom he loathes. Marie Brassard's exploration of the frustrating inner life of a character who has no agency in his world is the most compelling 90 minutes we've had in a Toronto theatre in recent memory. A talented storyteller and an extraordinarily innovative theatre-maker, Brassard uses a voice modifier to create various characters (and, in one particularly haunting moment, a train whistle). It's a dangerous device, and could have been alienating in the wrong hands, but here it added a surreal element of remove that served the action onstage perfectly, and Brassard has the rare talent of always keeping her audience exactly where she wants them. By the way, JKelly liked it too, especially the train whistle.

And where else would their headquarters be but a bathroom stall at Buddies in Bad Times?

Seems like it's just bad news piled upon bad news for the city's small theatres this fall...

In Volcano's new production of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler at Buddies in Bad Times, the first half of the play is set in 1905 and the second half takes place in 2005. And then the Daleks descend and shoot everybody's heads off!

Last night, before catching the opening night of Darren O'Donnell's A Suicide-Site Guide to the City at Buddies in Bad Times, Torontoist stopped in Kathmandu (417 Yonge St., 416 924 5787) for a little Indian/Nepalese pre-theatre dining.

tonight back in Toronto are: Getting Lucky by Christian Lloyd, Ruby the Clown in... Flood by Becky Johnson and Sonia Norris, (555) 555 5555 by Greg Kearney, The Colour of my Heart by Francisca Zentilli, Crack by Rob Baker, Load by Salvatore Antonio, and a play by Richard Feren called The Reading, which is described as "A playful staging of a reading of a play called 'The Reading' about a staged reading of a play within a play." Does it get any meta than this? Further reading: Toronto Star, Now, Eye.

Buddies in Bad Times Theatre is playing host to Hysteria, a Festival of Women, this week. And while Torontoist tries not to flog events that cater to narrow sectors of our readership (ie- left handers, people with three legs, Albanians), we're shouting up this event, because, well, it's really cool. All week you take an Intro to Breakdance class with Montrealer K8 (Give us a break!) Austerland, for the low, low price of fifty bucks. Then, at week's end, all the top rocks and freezes will culminate in a show. Cool. We don't know if boys are explicitly unwelcome, but there are other all-girl-b-classes to which boys are absolutely invited. Torontoist loves TO girl crew, Shebang, and has enjoyed injuring ourself week in and week out at their team taught boy/girl-inclusive break workshops.