RHUBARB FESTIVAL Presented by Buddies in Bad Times (12 Alexander and various offsite venues). Runs to February 22 see schedule at rhubarb.buddiesinbadtimes.com. $20 evening pass offsite and Young Creators Unit pwyc. 416-975-8555.
With a background in dramaturgy, Mel Hague is used to being hands-on with new works.
As the incoming director of Buddies in Bad Times’ 36th annual Rhubarb Festival, she’s discovering a whole different and exciting game in terms of the creative process.
“Festivals like SummerWorks and the Fringe choose companies to take part,” says Hague on a short break. “What’s fascinating about Rhubarb is that we pick individuals and then watch the companies grow around them. Over the course of a few months, one artist becomes a collective of 10 people.”
You can expect just about anything in Rhubarb’s 30-plus presentations in and around Buddies, as well as elsewhere around town: theatre, dance, music, performance art, drag and everything in between, presented by established artists and up-and-comers.
Rhubarb allows artists to use every nook and cranny of its spaces, says Hague, who’s also play festival coordinator at Obsidian and heads the WOW Project, which looks at theatrical representations of queer women in Canada. WOW’s Rhubarb presentation, The Wow Project Comes Out, features coming out stories by 10 queer artists.
“It’s like offering me a blank slate, a playground to fill with whatever I want. Rhubarb changes every year, defined by those involved. The important part of my role is asking artists what they want from us. They come in with a series of pipe dreams, and the Buddies team does its best to bring those wishes to reality.”
Hague didn’t want to come into the festival with a theme in mind rather, she’s allowed this year’s theme – transgressions in performance – to emerge from the works she chose.
“Transgression requires that you have a sense of the mainstream, the homogeneous, the dominant, against which you juxtapose what’s different. Buddies, in fact, offers that dichotomy it’s a publicly funded organization as well as a queer organization, capturing the spirit of rebellion within an institution.”
Every evening, viewers can select their shows – several run simultaneously – and piece together a night of experimentation and surprises.
You’ll know some of the people involved – Sharron Matthews, Anand Rajaram, David Bateman, Keith Cole, Ryan G. Hinds, Bruce Dow – but they’ll be treading into new artistic territory, as will popular clown duo Morro and Jasp, who’ll have one-on-one interactions with the audience.
An important part of the festival is the inclusion of works by the Young Creators Unit, a quartet of budding artists collaborating with senior people to stage their solo shows. This year’s group is kumari giles, Andre Prefontaine, Faith-Ann Mendes and Brian Postalian, guided, respectively, by Tara Beagan, Alistair Newton, Mumbi Tindyebwa and Brendan Healy.
“What’s great about this group is that all four pieces deal with intersectionality, not defining themselves by any one thing. They touch on queerness, race, class, gender and sexuality as they work through this process of creation. We’ve been witnessing these people between the ages of 18 and 25 work through, in a theatrical context, a crucible of development.”
The three offsite venues, notes Hague, continue the festival’s transgressive theme. At the Canadian Gay and Lesbian Archives, co-curators Jessica Carmichael and Rhubarb assistant director Cole Alvis have assembled works by seven artists. Videofag hosts Your Cloud, an immersive installation of unanswered text messages and emails. Gein Wong takes her performers and audience to an rooftop pool at Oasis for Ocean Carving (see more on this show at nowtoronto.com/stage).
“CGLA and Oasis, an upscale sex club, are in heritage buildings, while Videofag is housed in a repurposed Kensington Market barber shop. All three offer a facade that’s one thing and an internal life that’s something quite different.”
jonkap@nowtoronto.com
